Free Emily Locke 01 - Final Approach by Rachel Brady

o’clock on a Thursday night, the parking lot was as busy as noon on Saturday. A mammoth SUV hogged the center of a lane, laying claim to a spot when another was vacant three spaces behind it.
    I made my way inside, where I was greeted by a middle-aged man in a blue vest and dopey octopus hat. A small McDonald’s occupied a front corner of the store, and when I walked inside, Richard was leaning against the restaurant’s wall waiting for me.
    “Let’s sit.” He steered me toward a table. The photo envelope was in his hand.
    “Hi, Richard. Good to see you too.”
    He shot me a look of flat irritation as I slid into my side of a booth.
    He removed the photos from their envelope. The picture on top of the stack included the group I’d jumped with right after my dive with Vince. Scud and Marie had jumped into the shot for fun, but I didn’t remember the names of the others. I reached for my handbag. My logbook was there, and I’d written down all the names earlier. I flipped to the entry, ready to match forgotten names with faces, when Richard surprised me.
    “This one, right here,” he said, tapping the glossy print. “Karen recognizes this woman. Who is she?”
    I frowned. The name wasn’t in my book, and I’d never even thought to ask it. In the background of the shot, between Scud and Marie’s heads, a woman was walking across the landing field. Richard must have read my confusion.
    “What is it?” He leaned in close, hungry for information I didn’t have.
    “I don’t know her name,” I said, shaking my head. “She was our pilot.”
    An obese woman in a muumuu and flip-flops lumbered past us with a loaded tray, and two chunky school-agers followed several paces behind her. Richard slumped backward into the hard plastic booth. At first I thought he was reeling from disappointment. Then he bit his lower lip and started nodding.
    “That actually makes sense,” he said, mostly to himself. “Here’s the thing. Eric worked for a local petrochemical plant. Sometimes the job took him away from home for extended periods.”
    I kept my mouth shut and let him go on.
    “Karen was a stay-at-home mom, so sometimes she and Casey traveled with him.” He did his salesman nod. I nodded back to show I was following.
    “They traveled on the company jet.” He looked hard at me. “Who flies the company jet?”
    How the hell should I know? I wondered. And then, mercifully, the light came on. I grabbed the photo off the table and pointed to the woman in question.
    “
She
does?” I said. “She flies for Eric’s company?”
    “Karen recognized this woman from the airstrip Eric’s company uses.”
    I digested that.
    “If this woman flew the Lyons family around, she’d know about Casey,” I said.
    Richard pulled a pen from his shirt pocket and grabbed a napkin from the tabletop dispenser. He scribbled a note.
    “Easy enough for her to get their address,” he said.
    One of the kids with Muumuu Woman shuffled past us on untied sneakers to get a few paper cups full of ketchup.
    I lowered my voice. “What would she want with their child? Nobody asked for ransom money.”
    He clicked his pen shut and shook his head.
    “Oh my God!” I whispered. “Do you think this woman had something to do with Eric’s murder?”
    Richard shrugged. Questions were coming too fast for both of us.
    He rubbed the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes, concentrating.
    A moment later, they snapped open. “I need her name. Some background.”
    “Okay,” I said. That would be easy to get from the chatty crowd at the DZ.
    Richard continued, “It’s been six days. You know what they say about missing kids and the first twenty-four hours, right?”
    “Their odds plummet after the first day.”
    “Casey’s been gone for six days. Finding out this pilot’s name and story might not be enough.”
    “What are you saying?”
    He regarded me briefly. “How comfortable would you be searching through the drop zone office?”
    My stomach