No Return (9 page)

WHAT WES REALLY WANTED TO DO WAS TAKE A
look at the pictures in the bar and see if he could find one with the pilot in it. He knew he should have just told Anna that, but until he found his proof, he felt it was better if he kept it to himself. No one wants to come off as a conspiracy nut.

In the forty-five minutes it had taken to get Monroe settled and then walk back to the bar, the crowd at Delta Sierra’s had doubled, and the sound level had gone up exponentially.

Wes spotted Danny right away. He had moved to the bar and seemed to have made a couple of new friends—two women who were in at least their mid-thirties, but dressed like they were still in high school. Thankfully, though, they were monopolizing all of Danny’s attention, so Wes’s return went unnoticed.

Wes started with the wall closest to the main door. Though some photos were in color, most were black-and-white. Where there was any terrain visible, he saw the unmistakable desert of the Mojave, plains of nothingness and in the distance barren hills and mountains.

Wes’s eyes darted from frame to frame, searching for the face he’d seen. There were a couple of possibilities in some of the group shots, but these were so small, he couldn’t be sure.

He’d gone about a third of the way through the room when he found an empty spot. Despite a thin layer of dust on the surrounding wall, the spot was clean. Whatever had been hanging there had been removed recently.

He finished the back wall and started making his way along the one that led toward the bar. Two more empty spots, one on top of the other. Recent.

“Wes! You came back!”

Wes winced. A part of him had been hoping he could avoid Danny, but no go. He put on a smile and walked over to the bar. “Came to see how you were doing.”

“Me? I’m great. This place is awesome.” Danny was standing between stools occupied by his new female friends, and definitely drunk. “Hey, let me introduce you.”

The two women turned toward Wes, smiling.

“Ladies, this is my buddy Wes. He’s the one I was telling you about. Wes, this is Regina.” Danny tipped his beer toward the woman with a too-friendly look in her eyes.

She held out her hand and Wes shook it. But when he went to let go, she resisted for a moment, then stuck out her lower lip in an exaggerated pout when he finally pulled his hand free.

Danny put a familiar arm around the other woman. “And this is Dori.”

She shook Wes’s hand, mercifully with no lingering touch.

“Danny told us what you did,” Regina said. “That was very brave.”

“Let us buy you something to drink,” Dori said.

“I’m fine,” Wes told her. “Thanks, though.”

“That wasn’t a question,” Dori said, then caught the bartender’s attention and got Wes a beer.

“Thanks,” he said.

Regina lifted her glass. “To the hero.”

“I’m not a hero.”

“To the hero,” Dori repeated.

Wes clinked glasses with everyone, then raised the pint to his mouth. He let the liquid brush his lips, but he refrained from actually taking a drink.

“So, what were you doing?” Dori asked.

“Pardon?” Wes said.

She nodded toward the room beyond the bar. “You were checking out the walls.”

“Who was checking out the walls?” Danny asked, a bit unsteady.

“Your friend. He was walking around the room, staring at them.”

Wes shrugged. “I wasn’t staring. I was just taking a look at the pictures.”

“See anything interesting?” Regina asked.

“A bunch of pilots and planes,” Wes said.

Regina reached out and put her arm around Wes’s waist. “Want to share the stool, sweetie?”

He pulled himself back. “Actually, I need to use the restroom. I’ll be back in a minute.”

Her hand lingered on his hip. “I’ll be waiting.”

Wes angled himself through a break in the growing crowd and headed toward the restrooms. Just before the hallway, he turned to the left and finished examining the wall near the bar.

Nothing.

Whoever the pilot in the downed F-18 had been, his picture wasn’t here.

Disappointed, Wes made a wide circle around the bar, avoiding Danny and his friends, and headed quickly for the exit. Just as he reached the far side, someone grabbed his arm.

“Thought you were coming back.”

He turned to find Dori standing behind him.

“I’m tired,” he said. “Gotta work early tomorrow.”

“Danny doesn’t seem worried about it.”

“He’ll pay for it in the morning.”

“I think Regina likes you.”

“I’m sure she’s very nice,” Wes said, “but I’m attached.”

Dori frowned. “Kind of attached, or very attached?”

“Very.”

“Really? Well, that’s good news,” she said, then added, “not for Regina, of course.”

Wes faked a smile. “I’ll see you later.”

“Will you?”

“Good night, Dori. It was nice meeting you.”

She regarded him for a moment. “Bye, Wes.” She disappeared back into the crowd.

As Wes turned for the door, something on the wall behind the bar caught his eye. He stepped closer to get a better look. It was a framed photograph of Lieutenant Lawrence Adair, the same shot that had been in the paper. There was a black ribbon around the frame and several candles burning below it.

That’s when it dawned on Wes. The missing photos on the walls, they must have also been of Adair. Taken down out of respect.

So
where
was Wes’s pilot?

He frowned to himself, then straightened up. It had been worth a try.

After a quick glance back at the bar, he started to turn for the door, but paused. Someone had been looking in his direction. He turned back to see who it was, and was surprised to find Lieutenant Jenks, one of the pilots from the previous evening, staring back at him. The lieutenant smiled and raised his glass, tilting it in Wes’s direction.

With a nod of acknowledgment, Wes turned back toward the door and left.

ANNA WAS ASLEEP WHEN WES RETURNED, BUT
stirred when the start-up tone rang out as he booted up his laptop.

“What are you doing?” she asked, barely able to keep her eyelids open.

“Go back to sleep. I just want to check something.”

“You did understand what I said about no sex, right?”

“Right, if you’re asleep. I promise to wake you first.”

A pillow flew across the room, landing near his feet. “Not what I meant.”

He put his computer on the small motel-room desk, then walked over to the bed.

“Get away from me.” She giggled as she pulled the covers over her head.

He started to pull them down, but she held on tight, putting up a fight.

“I’ll scream,” she said.

“So will I,” he said. “I’ll claim you snuck in here and surprised me. I’ll say that you’ve been stalking me, then we’ll have to get a restraining order, and that’ll just make this relationship thing all the more difficult.”

She struggled with him some more, but he was able to inch the blanket down below her chin. He leaned in and kissed her. Her lips remained pressed tightly together for several moments, then they began to soften and part.

Finally she whispered, “You never told me what your mother said when you told her.”

Wes kissed her again. “She said no woman is good enough for her son.” Another kiss. “Of course, I told her that you were already aware of your inadequacies.”

“Oh, really.” She kissed him deeply. “Maybe you can detail them for me.”

“Happy to.” He smiled. “Just give me a few minutes to check something.”

“Ugh,” she said, pushing him off. “You really know how to kill the mood.”

“Not kill it,” he said, standing up. “Just put it on ice for a few minutes.”

“And that’s supposed to make me feel better?”

“It’s all about anticipation.”

As he sat back down at the desk, a second pillow sailed through the air and hit him in the back.

Wes accessed the footage from the camera auto-backup drive. He wanted to see what Danny had shot of the crash. The night before, there had been no real reason to look at it. But now, after the picture in the newspaper, and his fruitless search of the pictures at the bar, he wanted to make sure he
wasn’t
crazy.

The first shots were just B-roll stuff of the Pinnacles. Then there was the wide shot of Monroe standing next to the unusual rock formations. This went on for nearly thirty seconds before the image swung quickly to the left, then down at the ground.

Suddenly the picture whipped up and focused on the sky. Center frame was the plane. The image held for five seconds, then cut off.

The next shot started with a jolt. Shadows. Car mats. Shoes. Then the dash of the Highlander, and the desert outside. The picture bounced and jerked with the movement of the car.

Another shot. Still inside the SUV, this time with burning vegetation on all sides. In the distance was the back of the Escape Wes had been driving, and beyond that the cloud of dust and smoke that enveloped the plane.

The final shot started in the car, but the chaotic motion was gone. Suddenly the door opened and the picture moved outside. The frame moved up and down as the image quickly approached the downed jet, then steadied once it was in position.

It spun to the right and focused on Wes trying to get up to the cockpit, then caught his miscalculation as he nearly fell off. The image stayed on Wes while he pulled himself back up and leaned into the cockpit. Unfortunately, Danny had positioned himself so that Wes blocked the view of the pilot from the camera.

“Dammit,” Wes whispered.

Danny sped forward, keeping the pace just slow enough so he could get an idea of what was going on. But the whole time there was no clear shot of the pilot.

Then Danny had followed him with the camera as he’d made his dash for the knife.

“For God’s sakes, Danny,” Wes said.

“What’s wrong?” Anna asked.

“Nothing,” he said. “Everything’s fine.”

Wes watched himself race past burning brush for the SUV. Anna ran out to meet him, handing him the knife. Then, as he turned to go, Dione stopped him.

As Wes pushed past her and headed back toward the plane, the image panned quickly to the cockpit, then swung back to pick up Wes again.

Wes rewound to the cockpit shot, then hit Pause.

The image of the man’s face was there for only a few frames before he turned his head to look back at Wes on the wing. Wes clicked through, frame by frame. Five total. NTSC, the video format used in the United States, ran at approximately thirty frames a second, which meant the man’s face was on camera for only one-sixth of a second.

Wes studied each frame separately, but they were too blurry to distinguish anything. He then looped them so that they’d play over and over. In motion, unlike still images, there was just enough to get an idea of what the pilot looked like.

He did have to admit that it didn’t definitively prove it wasn’t Lieutenant Adair, but to his eyes, he was sure the man in the shot wasn’t the same man whose picture had run in the paper.

“I thought you said you were only going to be a few minutes,” Anna said.

“I am.”

“It’s already been twenty.”

“No it hasn’t.”

“You’re right. It’s actually been twenty-three.”

Wes glanced at the clock on his computer and was surprised to see she was right.

“Look, if you’re going to work all night, I’m going back to my room.”

There was the rustle of blankets and sheets.

“No, don’t go,” he said. “I’m just finishing up.”

He saved the file to both the hard drive and his portable thumb drive. Behind him, he could hear Anna shuffle across the floor, then felt her lean over his shoulder and look at the screen.

“What are you doing?”

Wes closed the laptop and stood up. “If I tell you now, you’ll fall asleep before I finish. How about we wait until morning?”

Before she could say anything, he picked her up and carried her to the bed.

“Don’t think this is helping your cause,” she said. “I’m going back to sleep.”

“I doubt it.”

“You do?”

“I do.”

WHEN WES RAN OUT OF HIS ROOM THE NEXT
morning, he was already three minutes late for morning call time. But he slowed his pace as soon as he noticed no one else was at the SUVs yet. Behind him, he heard someone on the sidewalk, and wasn’t surprised when Anna jogged up.