Tail Spin

her tongue. Monk’s Cafe opened early back then, for truckers, and maybe it still did. If Mrs. Jersey was still there, Rachael prayed she wouldn’t recognize her, prayed no one in Parlow would recognize the twelve-year-old girl in the woman, and hoped she’d let Rachael use the landline since cells didn’t work out here in the boondocks, and tell her who the best mechanic was in Parlow. She wasn’t going to call Uncle Gillette; she was careful now, very careful. She had no intention of leaving any trail, no matter that they believed her dead, no matter that as faras she knew, they’d never heard of Parlow, Kentucky, or Slipper Hollow.
    I’m safe. I’m dead, after all.
    She shivered, remembering the slapping cold of the water, and pulled her leather jacket closer. She’d forgotten how cold it was here in the early morning even in the middle of June. She looked around again at the fog-shrouded mountains, a grayish blue in the early morning light. But this morning she wasn’t moved by the incredible raw beauty, she only wanted to get home. She wanted to plan, and Uncle Gillette would help her. He was very smart, a marine captain. There was no such thing as an ex-marine, he’d said once with a snap in his voice, and she’d never forgotten.
    But her Charger had let her down on the final lap. Rachael hitched her duffel onto her shoulder, looked toward Parlow, seeing houses dot the distance among trees and hills and narrow winding roads.
    She’d taken three steps when she froze in her tracks at a distant noise, a sputtering sound, an engine coughing, and it was coming closer.
    She looked up but didn’t see anything. Maybe it was a car coming on another road, maybe it was ... No, no way could it be them. She drew a deep breath, then continued to scan the sky. No, what she’d heard—well, she didn’t know what she’d heard.
    But still she didn’t move. She stared toward the end of long, narrow Cudlow Valley, cut like a knife slice through the mountains. She stood there, her hand shading her eyes from the slivers of sunlight trying to break through the fog.
    And there it was, a single-engine plane coming over the low mountains at the far end of the valley, jerking and heaving, black smoke billowing out near the tail. The plane was in trouble, dear God, it was going to crash, no, the pilot was pulling the bucking plane to line up at the far end of the narrow valley. She saw flames shooting out through the smoke, moving up toward the wings. He wasn’t going to make it. She watched, couldn’t take her eyes off that plane even as she began to run toward it.
    Was Cudlow Valley long enough and flat enough to land a plane? She had no idea, she’d never learned to fly. She watched the wings straighten, pictured the pilot willing his plane to a sloping trajectory, lower and lower. She held her breath, and prayed.
    An explosion rocked the small plane, nearly flipping it over, and it began to spiral, out of control.

FOUR
    Unbelievably, the pilot wrenched it back in line. The next second, the engine went dead and the small single-engine plane dropped like a stone. She knew she was going to watch him die, there was no way he could bring it in. But somehow, somehow, he caught an air current and managed to glide the dying plane forward and down until the wheels finally touched the ground. The plane bounced and lurched, the front came up, then slammed down again. It jerked and shuddered before coming to a rolling stop not fifty feet from where she stood at the very end of the valley. Smoke gushed out and the flames licked higher.
    Rachael started running toward the plane even as she saw the pilot kick open the door and struggle to drag an unconscious man across the seat and out the narrow door. She didn’t know how he did it, but he did. He hauled the man over his shoulder and began to run away from the plane.
    He stumbled and went down. The unconscious man flew over his head and landed hard, his head striking a clump of rocks. He didn’t move. The plane exploded into a bright orange ball, flames gushing high into the air, spewing parts of the plane in every direction. She saw the pilot pull himself up and stagger toward the unconscious man. What looked like part of the tail struck his leg and he went down, and this time he stayed down.
    It was terrifying, Rachael thought—life or death, all decided in under two minutes. She’d had maybe another minute.
    She reached the unconscious man first and dropped to her