Emily Locke 01 - Final Approach

open. Someone was bringing out the plane.
    From my hiding spot in the tall grass, I couldn’t see the back door sliding open, but the landing field behind it become gradually washed in soft yellow light. When the door was fully opened, the air fell eerily silent again.
    I crouched and moved forward. When I came to the edge of the grass, about a hundred feet of clearing separated me from the parking lot. I made a run for it.
    Another set of headlights swung onto the dirt road behind me.
    I didn’t stop running until I reached the far end of the hangar. I rounded the corner and stooped at its base to catch my breath. I peered around the front, and watched a fifteen-foot U-Haul drive around the opposite side of the building, straight to the back. I didn’t think I’d been seen.
    When I peeked around the rear, the U-Haul was backing up to the hangar near the picnic table and the Coke machine. It stopped, and two men in coveralls stepped out. One went to the back of the truck and raised its door. I couldn’t see what was inside. The men disappeared into the hangar, and muffled voices carried out into the field.
    The only way to see inside the building would be from a position in the landing field, but it was illuminated now. It would be better to get inside the training room and listen through the wall.
    I peered around the corner again. Both exterior doors to the training room were closed. The large, enormous one was out of the question. Its smaller, standard counterpart was about thirty feet away.
    I took a deep breath and scurried to it. The doorknob was cold in my hand, and when I twisted it, the knob turned. I pulled it open and ducked inside, working hard to control my breathing.
    Inside, I stood paralyzed, grasping the knob behind me. A rapid series of beeps startled me.
    It was my stupid watch. The GPS satellite signal had been lost inside the metal building and my watch wanted to make sure all the criminals in the next room knew it. I mashed buttons until one silenced the alarm, then I waited. No one came.
    I turned on my flashlight and aimed it toward the wall that separated me from them. Garage equipment and rows of stacked plastic chairs cluttered its entire length. The Cessna mock-up where I’d sat with Vince was to my right. A small window in the interior door let in a little light from the room that housed the Otter and, now, those here to use it.
    Voices resonated on the other side of the wall in erratic bursts. I inched closer to the door to listen. Then I froze.
    Beside me, a training harness swayed almost imperceptibly. Before I could fully register its significance, a powerful arm closed around me from behind and a hand clamped over my mouth so hard my face felt bruised.
    “Don’t make a sound,” a man whispered. “For your own good.”
    I kicked backward and tried to scream. His grip tightened. I tried to elbow his ribs, but his grip on me was solid. He shuffled me forward, directly toward the wall, and pressed his weight into me until my cheek was flush with a cool, steel beam and I couldn’t move.
    He whispered again. “I won’t hurt you, but be quiet. Understand?”
    I tried to swallow but my mouth was dry. I stared straight ahead and waited.
    He took the flashlight from my hand.
    “Quiet,” he repeated. I nodded, aware I was trembling. A tear fell into the space between my cheek and the steel.
    He removed his weight from my head, but not my body. I turned and recognized the rat features of Craig Clement. He stared at me with unspoken warning. Then, still leaning heavily into me, he reached one-handed for something I couldn’t see. I feared it was a gun.
    Instead he produced some kind of leather wallet and held it in front of my face, pulling it backward slowly until I focused on a headshot of him below the words Federal Bureau of Investigation.
    When he released his weight, it was all I could do to keep from collapsing onto the floor.
    “I checked you out,” he whispered. “You’ve got nothing to do with NASA.”
    “I’ve got nothing to do with any of this—”
    He held a finger up.
    If Clement was a good guy, who was helping Trish?
    He put a hand on each of my shoulders and eased me forward, away from the beam.
    “You’ve got more to do with this than you think,” he whispered.
    He positioned himself behind me and directed me through the training room.
    “I think I know what happened on Lake Erie,” he said.
    Before I could speak, he put a hand over my mouth again and