Emily Locke 01 - Final Approach

he asked me to play for him again. It was becoming a regular thing for us and, he joked, was mutually beneficial: He liked my voice. I liked his guitar.
    My song ended abruptly when I broke a string.
    “Concert’s over.” I removed the broken string and shoved it in the back pocket of my jeans.
    “Naw,” he said, and brushed my cheek. “This is only intermission.”

Chapter Sixteen
    “Guess I’m not supposed to skydive in leather pants,” Jeannie said, running her hands over her tightly fitted hips.
    I looked her over. “Or high heels.”
    She lit up again and we walked across the grass to my tent. She stomped her cigarette into the damp ground and we crawled inside, Jeannie taking care to avoid kneeling in the grass. I fished in my bag for a top and shorts to loan her. She’d need them to practice exits and parachute landing falls. I unlaced my only pair of sneakers, handed them over, and slipped into Birkenstock sandals instead. Jack used to call them my Lesbian Shoes. Jeannie just called them ugly. I told her I’d learned Trish Dalton’s name and what Richard had determined so far.
    “How’s Cole treating you, anyway?”
    “He’s not annoying me as much,” I said. “We’ve only talked about the case, nothing else.”
    “Got any socks?”
    I searched for those too and tossed her a pair.
    “You know,” I said, “I’ve been thinking about this case and the first one. When Casey was kidnapped, his mom’s security system never sounded.”
    She worked herself out of the leather pants. “I thought you said Casey’s dad had the pass—” she grunted “—code.”
    “True, but he was later found murdered. We’re assuming he wasn’t the kidnapper. So, that leaves the question…what happened to Karen’s alarm?”
    “Shit,” she said, finally free of the pants. “Makes you wonder what you pay the security company for.”
    She pulled my tee over her head and reached for my shorts.
    “Jeannie, do you remember…Do you remember the time Jack went to Pittsburgh?”
    Her expression hardened and she stopped moving. I could tell by her concerned look she got my meaning.
    Shortly after I’d received the threats during my friend Nora’s investigation, Jack left for a two-day business trip. His first night away, I was attacked in my sleep. The man who broke into our house straddled me in my bed. I woke up staring at a facemask, with a gloved hand pressed over my mouth and my attacker’s body weight pinning me at the hips. I wasn’t raped. I wasn’t even hurt. The intruder shoved a piece of fabric into my hand, leaned so close to my ear I thought he might bite it, and whispered, “This is how close I can get to your daughter.”
    The fabric was a swatch of pajamas he’d cut off of Annette while she slept down the hall. He’d come into our house, cut my little girl’s pajamas from right over her heart, left her sleeping in her bed, and come to threaten me in mine.
    It all happened without triggering my alarm system.
    Days later, a phone technician reported signs of tampering at the junction box down the street. A specialist from my home security company tinkered for hours before discovering cut wires in my attic, severed in a spot hidden by insulation. With a disabled audible alarm, temporary interruption to my monitoring service, and no immediately detectable signs of tampering, it was clear I’d been hit by professional criminals.
    ***
    Rick and I stood in the landing field and watched Jeannie’s orange and brown Manta creep three thousand feet overhead. Rick spoke into a ground-to-air radio used to talk students back to the landing area. He asked Jeannie for a right-hand turn. Her canopy continued straight ahead. He asked for a left-hand turn. She still flew straight. Soon it was obvious Jeannie was freewheeling with a broken radio. Where she’d land was anyone’s guess.
    “She’s headed for Cromwell’s place.” Rick shook his head. “Lord, keep her.”
    “Cromwell’s place?”
    “Our resident Farmer McNasty.”
    I winced. “Rough on a first-timer. I’ll go pick her up.”
    From the highway, I found the dirt road Rick said would lead to Jeannie and followed it for nearly a mile until it curved behind a leaning wooden barn. An orange and brown parachute emerged from behind the failing structure. The parachute’s cells were puffed up, obscuring most of Jeannie’s head, but I recognized my shoes. She looked like the Great Pumpkin with legs.
    I put the car in park and tapped