TailSpin Read Free Page B

incredible raw beauty, she only wanted to get home. She wanted to plan, and Uncle Gillette would help her. He was very smart, a marine captain. There was no such thing as an ex-marine, he’d said once with a snap in his voice, and she’d never forgotten.
    But her Charger had let her down on the final lap.
    Rachael hitched her duffel onto her shoulder, looked toward Parlow, seeing houses dot the distance among trees and hills and narrow winding roads.
    She’d taken three steps when she froze in her tracks at a distant noise, a sputtering sound, an engine coughing, and it was coming closer.
    She looked up but didn’t see anything. Maybe it was a car coming on another road, maybe it was . . . No, no way could it be them. She drew a deep breath, then continued to scan the sky. No, what she’d heard—well, she didn’t know what she’d heard.
    But still she didn’t move. She stared toward the end of long, narrow Cudlow Valley, cut like a knife slice through the mountains. She stood there, her hand shading her eyes from the slivers of sunlight trying to break through the fog.
    And there it was, a single-engine plane coming over the low mountains at the far end of the valley, jerking and heaving, black smoke billowing out near the tail. The plane was in trouble, dear God, it was going to crash, no, the pilot was pulling the bucking plane to line up at the far end of the narrow valley. She saw flames shooting out through the smoke, moving up toward the wings. He wasn’t going to make it. She watched, couldn’t take her eyes off that plane even as she began to run toward it.
    Was Cudlow Valley long enough and flat enough to land a plane? She had no idea, she’d never learned to fly. She watched the wings straighten, pictured the pilot willing his plane to a sloping trajectory, lower and lower. She held her breath, and prayed.
    An explosion rocked the small plane, nearly flipping it over, and it began to spiral, out of control.

FOUR
    U nbelievably, the pilot wrenched it back in line. The next second, the engine went dead and the small single-engine plane dropped like a stone. She knew she was going to watch him die, there was no way he could bring it in. But somehow, somehow, he caught an air current and managed to glide the dying plane forward and down until the wheels finally touched the ground. The plane bounced and lurched, the front came up, then slammed down again. It jerked and shuddered before coming to a rolling stop not fifty feet from where she stood at the very end of the valley. Smoke gushed out and the flames licked higher.
    Rachael started running toward the plane even as she saw the pilot kick open the door and struggle to drag an unconscious man across the seat and out the narrow door. She didn’t know how he did it, but he did. He hauled the man over his shoulder and began to run away from the plane.
    He stumbled and went down. The unconscious man flew over his head and landed hard, his head striking a clump of rocks. He didn’t move. The plane exploded into a bright orange ball, flames gushing high into the air, spewing parts of the plane in every direction. She saw the pilot pull himself up and stagger toward the unconscious man. What looked like part of the tail struck his leg and he went down, and this time he stayed down.
    It was terrifying, Rachael thought—life or death, all decided in under two minutes. She’d had maybe another minute.
    She reached the unconscious man first and dropped to her knees. He lay on his back, motionless, eyes closed. He was slight, and older, near fifty, and there was blood on his head and all over his chest. She pressed her fingers to his throat. He was alive, but his pulse was faint. She lightly shook him. “Can you open your eyes?”
    He didn’t move. She sat back on her heels. Without thinking, she took off her leather jacket and covered him as best she could.
    Her head whipped up when she heard the pilot groan. She was at his side in a moment, looking down at