Then all the questioning started. They had crashed in a national recreational area, so the Forestry Service was involved. The rescue team leader had to fill out his report. The NTSB was notified. A reporter with an area newspaper heard about them on his scanner, and he showed up. The town’s chief of police came by to check them out. Cam talked quietly with the two men from the Forestry Service, with the chief of police, and he talked on the phone to an NTSB investigator. Neither he nor Bailey breathed a word about sabotage to the reporter.
Things moved fast. Charles MaGuire, the NTSB investigator, was on his way. Someone loaned Cam a cell phone, and he called his parents. When he was finished, Bailey asked if she could borrow it, too, and she called Logan’s cell number.
“Hello?” He answered on the first ring, giving her the impression that he’d pounced on the phone.
“Logan, it’s me. Bailey.”
There was a moment of dead silence, then in a shaky voice he said, “What?”
“I’m at a hospital in…I don’t know the name of the town…Idaho. I’m not hurt,” she said quickly. “We were rescued from the mountain early this morning.”
“Bailey?”
The disbelief in his voice was so profound that she wondered if he believed her, or if he thought someone was playing a trick on him. “It’s really me.” She wiped away a tear as it slid from the corner of her eye. “Want me to tell you what your middle name is? Or what our first dog’s name was?”
Warily he said, “Yeah. What was our first dog’s name?”
“We never had a dog. Mom doesn’t like animals.”
“Bailey.” His voice shook, and she realized he was crying. “You’re really alive.”
“I really am. I have some bruises, a black eye, I just ate some real food for the first time in six days, and I had to have a tetanus shot which hurt like hell, but I’m okay.” She could hear Peaches in the background, her light, sweet voice asking questions so fast she was incoherent, or maybe that was because she was crying, too. “An investigator is flying down to talk to us, and then I guess we’ll come home. I don’t know how yet, because I don’t have any money, credit cards, or ID with me, but we’ll get there somehow. Where are you?”
“In Seattle. At a hotel.”
“There’s no sense in paying for a hotel room; stay at the house. I’ll call the housekeeper and tell her to let you in.”
“Ah…I think Tamzin is staying there.”
“She’s what?” Bailey felt her blood begin to boil, and sparks shoot from her eyes. Her rage was so immediate and consuming that she wouldn’t have been surprised if her head had started spinning around and around.
“She was there the day after the crash. I haven’t called there since to check.”
“Well, check now! If she’s there, have her arrested for breaking and entering! I’m serious, Logan. I want her out.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll get her out. Bailey…Tamzin said something about Seth. I think he could have had something to do with the crash. He denied it, but what else would he do?”
“I know,” she said.
“You do?”
“Cam figured it out.”
“Cam…the pilot?”
“The one and only,” she said, smiling at Cam the Pilot himself, who winked at her.
“I think we might get married. Listen, this is a borrowed cell phone, so you can’t call me at this number. I don’t know where we’ll be before we come home, but I’ll get in touch with you when I know. Go eject the bitch from that house before she trashes it. Love you.”
“Love you, too,” he said, and she disconnected before he could ask any more questions, which he was guaranteed to do considering what she’d just told him.
“Might get married?” Cam drawled, his eyebrows lifted.
“He’d had enough shocks for one day,” she said, going to him and nestling against him. They had spent a large part of the past five and a half days in each other’s arms, asleep or awake, and something in her felt wrong if they weren’t touching. She rested her head on his shoulder. “Tamzin’s in my house.”
“I heard.”
“It really isn’t my house, but I live there, and she has no business going through my things. She’s probably already donated all my clothes to a church charity—if she didn’t dump them in the trash.”
“She definitely needs ejecting.”
“She told Logan that Seth had something to do with the crash.”
“Hmm. Why would she say something like that? That was stupid.”
A rather obvious conclusion occurred. “Unless she wants Seth arrested.”
Thoughtfully, Cam scratched his newly shaved jaw. “That’s something to think about,” he said quietly.
34
CHARLES MAGUIRE HAD TUFTED EARS LIKE A LYNX, BUT that was where his resemblance to a cat began and ended. He was as solidly built as a fireplug, with a thick shock of gray hair and shrewd blue eyes. How he’d gotten there so fast Bailey couldn’t imagine, but she guessed that when you worked for the NTSB you could take a flight to anywhere at any time.
No one had seemed to know what to do with them, and though a lot of people in the friendly little town were offering their hospitality to two strangers, in the end the chief of police, Kyle Hester, had offered to let them use his office at city hall, and that had seemed the best bet all around. Chief Hester was a no-nonsense guy in his forties, former military like Cam, so they seemed to be on the same wavelength. Cam told Bailey that he’d informed Chief Hester about the sabotage of the plane, so the chief was well aware there was more going on than just the usual hoopla over a rescue.