Alaskan Mountain Pursuit Elizabeth Goddard (best short novels .TXT) 📖

the right one for this task, but she and Will were the only ones. She swam forward and floated next to the sheer wall of a deep crevasse. More sea anemones clung to the wall, and down much deeper, eighty feet or so, Sylvie guessed the plane might rest. It could be spread out, or have tumbled a few hundred more feet from the wing.

She thought she might get sick. Throw up. Now wasn’t the time to think of her mother’s terror. Sylvie couldn’t afford to lose it. She couldn’t let herself crumple or let racking sobs take over. She steeled herself, imagining this was just another recovery dive. But she’d only thought she had nerves of steel, as Will had said.

She had no choice but to see this through. She glanced at her dive watch, the computer relaying time and temperature, complete with a tissue-loading graph, to reassure her they had time to search and time enough to ascend. Then she signaled to Will.

They were going deeper.

Sylvie guessed at the trajectory and swam toward where the remainder of the plane could rest. Why was the plane here, so far off track, when it had been headed to Mountain Cove?

Sylvie turned to make sure Will followed her and spotted him about ten feet away. Her heart palpitated at the distance between them. They had to stick together. He turned to look at her and then pointed. She glanced to where he gestured, but couldn’t see what had drawn his attention. Sylvie swam toward him, planning to close the distance, but he swam ahead of her, leading her on.

Something told her that he’d found the downed plane.

God, I’m not ready for this. Help me!

Will paused and turned back to face her, features pale behind the mask. There was something behind his brown eyes now that was far from warm. Sylvie never wanted to see that look in his eyes again. She closed the distance. Could just make out a small craft cresting on the edge of an even deeper crevasse. The fuselage was intact, but slightly twisted.

I wasn’t prepared to see this.

Will grabbed her. Had she been swimming away? He gripped her and tried to convey what he could not say through his gaze. In his eyes she saw understanding and compassion, and that he shared her horror at the situation—but she also saw his conviction that they had to move forward. Their mothers would never get justice if they didn’t find the proof inside the plane.

Sylvie had thought she was stronger than this, and though she’d coached Will to breathe through it when they found what they were looking for, he was the steady one.

But they had a reason to be here. And now it was time to get the evidence that would put her stepfather away—the missing piece to tie him to her mother’s murder and attempts on Sylvie’s life. The pain stabbed at her now like never before.

Could she do this?

Will left her and swam toward the fuselage. He would do it if she couldn’t. She followed him. They would do this together. Now they had discovered the plane, they would come back, of course, with an actual dive team and the proper authorities to recover the bodies. Today was just about retrieving one thing.

She was messing with a crime scene, but underwater crime scenes were the most difficult to comb through. If they didn’t retrieve the thumb drive now, it would fall into the wrong hands.

The downed craft was eighty feet deep, resting on the precipice of a much deeper sea canyon. Had the plane rocked forward and fallen farther, she and Will would have a much different kind of dive on their hands.

Sylvie wanted—no, needed—to take deep breaths to calm herself, but she couldn’t afford that. Decompression sickness was one thing, but a quick glance at her watch told her that they would soon need to head back up. They would likely need to dive again to complete their task.

When they approached the fuselage, Will was the one to swim to the passenger’s side of the plane and search. Sylvie had experience, but Will was the one to take charge, and she let him. In fact, she couldn’t look. She averted her gaze, looking at the fuselage of the plane, still in one twisted piece, except for jagged edges where the wing had ripped away. What had happened? A small-enough bomb to simply rip off the wing?

Will had wedged himself deeper, searching for the thumb drive. Her mother claimed to have had it on her when she left—the drive the reason she had fled. Sylvie watched intently, aware that the plane might not be stable against the precipice. Was Will paying attention, too? She needed to warn him and swam closer.

From inside the plane he gestured wildly at her.

Will’s leg was caught in twisted metal. Caught and bleeding.

EIGHTEEN

Will held it in his gloved hands—the thumb drive that had cost his mother’s life. That had cost Sylvie’s mother’s life. The price had been too high. With the pain shooting through his leg that was somehow snagged on a sheet of twisted metal, the price might still climb higher.

If he couldn’t get free before his tank ran out of oxygen, Sylvie could buddy breathe with him, but eventually she would run out of air, too. The terrified look in her eyes didn’t help. He wouldn’t have thought it—she being a master diver. That showed him the true danger of the situation they were in. If he couldn’t get free, she would blame herself for this for the rest of her life.

He tugged and pulled on his leg, but the pain only intensified, and nothing he did helped to get him free.

Sylvie cautioned him. She signaled that too much moving could jar the plane from the precipice. Will brandished his knife. He had to live. If not for himself then for Sylvie’s sake, and Snake’s sake, and for his mother’s sake, to make whoever had killed her pay