Crash & Burn Read Free Page B

premium SUV should’ve been a thing of beauty. Charcoal-gray exterior paint with equal parts black and silver sheen. A two-tone interior, boasting silver-gray leather seats, jet-black inlays and chrome accents. One of those vehicles designed to haul groceries, half of a soccer team plus the family dog, and look damned good doing it.
    Now it sat, ass cocked up, front end buried deep into the muddy earth, rear cargo door ajar. It looked like a sleek urban missile that had misfired into the woods of New Hampshire and was now stuck there.
    â€œTwenty-inch titanium-finish wheels,” Kevin muttered, voice half awe, half longing. “Sport steering wheel. Eight-speed tiptronic automatic transmission. This is the 3.0 edition; means it has the six-liter engine that can go from zero to sixty in under six seconds. All that power and you can bring along your golf clubs, too!”
    Wyatt didn’t share Kevin’s love for automobiles or statistics. “But does it have all-wheel drive?” was all he wanted to know.
    â€œStandard issue for all Audis.”
    â€œStability control? Antilock brakes? Anything else that should’ve helped a driver navigate a rainy night?”
    â€œSure. Not to mention xenon headlights, LED taillight technology and about half a dozen airbags.”
    â€œMeaning the vehicle should’ve been able to handle the conditions? A dark and stormy night?”
    â€œUnless there was some kind of unexpected mechanical or computer error . . . absolutely.”
    Wyatt grunted, not surprised. Cars these days were less a boxfor transport, more a computer on wheels. And a fancy-looking Audi like this . . .
    Hell, the car had about a dozen different built-in controls designed for its own self-protection, let alone the safety of its driver. So, for it to have ended up in this condition . . .
    Best way to work an accident was backward, as in, start with the end point—the wreck—and work in reverse to pinpoint the cause—the braking that never happened or the fishtail that led to swerving into the guardrail. In this case, the vehicle appeared to have landed at a forty-five-degree angle, taking it on the nose, so to speak, with resulting distributed front-end damage: crumpled hood, shattered front and side windows, and other damage consistent with a massive front-end impact.
    He didn’t see signs of paint chipping or scraping on the sides, implying the Audi had not rolled down the embankment through the tangle of bushes, but had rather sailed over them. Enough speed, then, for a nose dive off the proverbial cliff. Straight angle, at least by his dead reckoning; graphing it with the Total Station would certainly tell them more. But the vehicle appeared to have left the road at their coffee-drinking point above, then flew briefly through the air before it returned abruptly to earth, slamming nose first into the muck.
    First question: Why had the vehicle left the road? Driver error, especially given the driver’s apparent state of intoxication? Or something else? Second question: At what speed and what rpm? In other words, had she sailed over the edge, pedal to the metal, a woman on a mission, or had the vehicle drifted into the abyss, passed-out driver waking up only to attempt too little too late?
    Good news for Wyatt. All these modern computers with wheels were equipped with electronic data recorders that captured a car’s last moments much like an airplane’s little black box. The county sheriff’s department wasn’t considered cool enough to have theirown data retriever, but the state would download the car’s data onto their computer and bada-bing, bada-boom, they’d have many of their questions answered.
    For now, Wyatt kept himself focused on the matter at hand. A missing child, female, approximately nine to thirteen years of age.
    Footprints currently surrounded the wreckage, but given the quantity and size, Wyatt