Page 64 of Long Way Home

Lila Ford is in Mercy River.

Rhett

Jackass.

How did you find out? Who else knows?

Rhett

It’s like you’ve never met our parents.

How the hell should I know who else knows? Why?

She’s lying low for a while. The fewer people who know her whereabouts the better. Keep your mouth shut.

Rhett

Wtf is going on?

Rhett

Seriously? You’re going to leave me on read for 8 hours?

Rhett

Hey, do you think I could borrow your wife for a couple of hours tomorrow afternoon? Silence means yes.

I beg your fucking pardon

The steady purr of a single-engine aircraft rumbled above us. Lila tipped her head back, her red curls tumbling around her shoulders, and shielded her eyes with her hand as she scanned the sky.

“Is that him?” she asked.

I pushed my sunglasses down so I wouldn’t blind myself with the sharp sunlight. White Cessna Skywagon, blue wings, with navy blue and canary yellow stripes down the sides. I nodded. “That’s him.”

She jumped down from her Land Rover, patting the hood as though to say thank you, and waved at the plane. “Here he comes!”

Excitement made her cheeks pink and her eyes sparkle. Fuck, she was pretty when she was happy.

I’d been hesitant when Rhett texted me the details. An adventure magazine was doing a profile on him—specifically, the work his company did for the National Park Service, which included wildlife surveys and wildfire reconnaissance. The writer had shown up, but the photographer was sick. Lila was the perfect solution.

Of course, I’d done a background check on Claire Warren, the journalist, to make sure this wasn’t some kind of elaborate scheme, and even then I’d only agreed after Rhett had told me the article wouldn’t go to print until April.

Now I was glad we were doing this. I was so damn proud of my brother, and Lila was bouncing around like it was the last day of school.

The Cessna circled closer, getting ready to land. Lila made excited chipmunk noises. I slung an arm around her shoulders, forcing her to hold still long enough for me to drop a quick kiss on her smiling mouth. And then I kissed her again for good measure, because once Rhett landed, I wouldn’t be able to do that for a while.

She kissed me back, and then I was smiling, too.

The Cessna was small, but it had room for all four of us plus a small cargo area. Lila hadn’t stopped grinning from ear to ear as Rhett explained to Claire that the plane was equipped with state-of-the-art sensors and multispectral gimbals to provide high-resolution data and imaging. I wondered what the hell they had talked about on the flight here if he was only just getting to the specs now.

“We can track all kinds of things from up here,” Rhett said. “Mostly we do wildlife tracking and data gathering, but NPS calls us for wildfire mapping more and more these days. But today is all about bears.”