Secret of Deadman's Ravine. B.J. Daniels
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Errol stepped away, disappearing from the edge, Carter turned again to Eve. He’d seen Eve Bailey vulnerable only once before. He shoved aside the memory of her in his arms, her bare skin pressed to his, the windows steaming up on his old Chevy pickup….
“You found something?” he repeated.
She rubbed her ankle, wincing as if it hurt. “I found a body.”
He felt his stomach clench even as he told himself she had to be mistaken. He’d had his share of calls from residents who’d uncovered bones and erroneously thought they’d found human remains.
Eve shook her head as if she still couldn’t believe it herself. She drained the contents of the second water bottle before she spoke. “It was in a plane that had crashed in the ravine.”
“An airplane?” he echoed as he looked down into the deep gorge and saw nothing. If there’d been a plane crash out here, he’d have heard about it.
“It was a small one, a four-seater,” she said, her voice sounding hollow. “It’s been there for a long time.”
“Where?”
She glanced to the west. “Back that way. I’m not sure how far. I lost track trying to find a way out of there. But I’ll know the ravine when I see it.”
He hoped so, but the ravines all looked alike and in the state she was in… “The pilot was still in the plane?” he asked, thinking about the body she’d said she found.
“Not the pilot,” she said without looking at him. “One of the passengers.” She raised her eyes, locking with his for just an instant before she looked away again.
She’d found a crashed airplane in a ravine with the body of one of the passengers still in it and she hadn’t said anything about it until now? The old Eve Bailey would have blurted it out the moment she saw him.
But then he and the old Eve Bailey had been friends. Lovers. The old Eve Bailey would have trusted him.
Maybe she was right. Maybe he didn’t know her anymore. But he knew that wasn’t the case. Because just looking into her face, he’d seen that she hadn’t wanted to tell him about the plane.
The realization shocked him. Why would she keep something like that to herself?
He took a breath and let it out slowly. “You say the plane looked as if it had been there for a while?”
“Thirty-two years.”
He sat down on a rock across from her so they were eye to eye. “What makes you think it’s been there for thirty-two years?”
She continued rubbing her ankle for a moment before looking up at him. “There was a logbook in the cockpit. The last entry was February seven, 1975.”
Carter couldn’t believe this. His grandfather and father, both crop dusters, lived and breathed airplanes. They would have known about a missing plane. There would have been a search for the plane and, when found, the body removed even if it was impossible to get the plane out.
Unless the plane had never been reported missing.
He looked at Eve and felt a jolt. There was more.
“The passenger in the plane,” she said, her voice almost a whisper. Her gaze met his. “He has a knife sticking out of his chest. At least I think it was a man.”
From above them came the sound of more voices, the whinny of horses and more small rocks showering down.
Carter rose, shaken. “I’m going to ask you not to say anything about this to anyone,” he said to her.
She looked up at him and nodded slowly.
“Do you think you can tell me where you found the plane?” he asked.
She shook her head. “It’s hidden. If not for the storm, I wouldn’t have seen anything down there. I’ll have to take you to it.”
“No, you need to go back with the search party so you can get medical treatment, food, rest.”
“I’m fine.” She rose to her feet with obvious difficulty. “I assume you brought me a horse?”
“Titus has one up on top for you, but Eve—”
“I told you, I’m fine.” She glanced toward the canyon far below them, then at him as if she could read his mind. “Don’t worry, I can find the plane again. Maybe you’ve forgotten, but I grew up here. I know this country.”
Unlike Deena, the woman he’d dumped her for. The woman he’d stupidly married, divorced and was still trying to get out of his life. Deena didn’t know one end of a horse from the other and she could get lost in the city park. Deena would never have survived five minutes out here last night.
“Eve—”
“I really need to get moving.”
He nodded, not even sure what he’d planned to say. Whatever it was, this wasn’t the time or the place to talk about the past. “I’ll be right behind you.”
They climbed out of the ravine, using the exposed rocks like steps. He could see that Eve was dead on her feet. She needed sleep, a hot shower, real food.
But she seemed to draw on some inner strength that the dry clothing and candy bar and water had little to do with. Eve was a strong woman. Isn’t that what he’d told himself so many years ago, that Eve Bailey was strong. She’d get over any pain he’d caused her.
He’d lied to himself because he couldn’t face the fact that he’d hurt Eve.
IT TOOK THE LAST of her resources to get to the top of the ravine, but Eve was bound and determined. She reached the top to cheers of the search party, making her feel even more foolish, as she apologized for wasting their time, although they all insisted it had been no trouble.
“So what happened?” Errol Wilson asked.
Whenever Eve saw Errol, she thought of Halloween night when she was five. Her father had taken her to a party at the community center. Her mother had stayed home, complaining of a headache.
In Eve’s excitement to tell her mother about the party, she’d been the first out of the truck and racing up the steps to the house when she thought she saw Errol Wilson hiding in the dark at the edge of the porch.
Startled, Eve had let out a bloodcurdling scream and tripped and fell, skinning her knees. Her father had come running, but when Eve looked toward the end of the porch, there wasn’t anyone there.
She’d tried to tell her parents that she’d seen a scary man, but they hadn’t believed her, saying she’d just imagined it.
All Eve knew was that every time she saw Errol Wilson after that he seemed to have a smug look on his face, as if the two of them shared a secret. The smugness had only intensified after he’d seen her yesterday when he was coming out of her mother’s back door.
“Eve was thrown from her horse and ended up at the bottom of a ravine,” Carter said before Eve could answer.
She shot him a withering look. “I’d prefer that story not get back to my sisters, if you don’t mind. I will never live it down.”
Everyone laughed. Except Errol.
“Eve, you should know how hard it is to keep a secret in Whitehorse,” he said.
“Eve and I are going to take it slow on the way back,” Carter said, and looked over at Eve as if wondering what Errol had meant by that. “I’d appreciate it if the rest of you would go back and let everyone know that Eve is fine.”
“I know your mother will be relieved,” Errol said. “She worries about you. I’m glad I can relieve her mind.”
Eve couldn’t suppress a shudder as she saw him look back at her as he rode off with the others.
Apparently