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After abandoning the plane, they had trekked through dense forest, made more challenging by the fog. However, they reached the doctor’s no-frills sedan without mishap or getting lost…only to be met there with another problem.
Rye had been about to get into the passenger seat when he noticed that the right front fender had collided with a fence post set in concrete. That side of the hood was buckled, but worse, the wheel was bent up under the chassis. He swore.
“What’s the matter?”
He looked at her across the roof of the car. “Don’t bother getting in. We’re not going anywhere in this.”
She’d walked around the rear end to join him on the passenger side and surveyed the damage with dismay. “I didn’t realize I’d hit it.”
“How could you not realize it?”
As exasperated as he, she fired back. “Something awful must’ve distracted me. Like a propeller in my windshield.”
Cursing under his breath, he’d gone around her and set out on foot. She hurried to catch up before he disappeared into the fog.
Within a few minutes, they’d reached the turnoff she had missed earlier. A sign pointed them toward the Howardville County Airfield. The road leading to it was bumpy, narrow, and enshrouded in fog. They stayed in the middle of it to avoid veering off into the ditches on either side.
He set a brisk pace. His companion had become a bit winded, her breaths escaping as puffs of vapor. But she hadn’t once complained or lagged behind. He supposed her mention of a freight dog was an attempt to make conversation, but he didn’t follow up on it. His thoughts were too focused on how he was going to deal with Brady White.
Why would the asshole offer to scare up a beer or two for him, then blind him with a laser beam?
Like drones, the more sophisticated, powerful, obtainable, and affordable lasers had become, the more of a hazard they posed to pilots and by extension the aviation industry. He’d read harrowing accounts from both private and commercial pilots who, hit by one, had narrowly avoided an accident. Many feared that it was only a matter of time before someone with a laser, either a terrorist or a prankster, caused a catastrophic crash.
Rye was well aware of the threat. He’d just never expected it to happen to him. It had. He’d come to within feet of killing the doctor, and, with just a bit more momentum when he hit that tree, his crash could have been fatal.
But, unless he caught that son of a bitch red-handed with the laser, he couldn’t prove it existed. If he called the cops and filed a formal complaint, it would be Rye’s word against White’s. Stalemate. A waste of time. A hassle that would keep him grounded for at least a few days.
Besides, he would rather skip getting local law enforcement involved and mete out White’s punishment himself.
He would have to include the laser in his accident report to the FAA. It was the responsible thing to do. He would do so with reluctance, however. Agents would be all over him, asking questions, forcing him to fill out countless, time-consuming forms.
On the upside: No damage had been done to property on the ground. Even the tree was still standing. No one had been injured. No one had died. The lack of casualties would minimize the amount of red tape.
The downside: Without proof of the laser, his claim might be discounted as a lie to save face. In which case, he would have to suck it up and let the accident be attributed to pilot error.
That was the most galling aspect of this whole damn thing, and reason enough to pound the living daylights out of Brady White.
“The slang term escaped me earlier.”
The comment pulled Rye out of his angry musing. “Sorry?”
“Freight dog. It just now came to me where I first heard it.”
Because of the exertion, the doctor had pushed back the hood of her coat. Light from their combined flashlights limned her profile. He wondered how he could have mistaken her for a man, even from a distance and in darkness and fog. Maybe the laser had done more damage to his eyes tha
n he’d thought. Because there was nothing manly about her. She was pure female.
Although he hadn’t encouraged her to expand on the topic, she did. “Several years ago I went on a Caribbean getaway with a couple of girlfriends. One afternoon it started raining hard enough to drive us off the beach and into the bar.”
“As good an excuse as any.” His droll remark caused her to smile. Her lips sure as hell weren’t masculine.
“These guys were gathered around a table,” she went on. “Five or six of them, getting drunk and loud and rowdy, talking about airplanes and flying.”
“Which island?”
She named the island, and Rye named the bar.
“You know it?”
