Free Midnight Heat by Donna Kauffman Page A

out in Indian Head about ten minutes ago. He’s been out of town on business and came home early this morning to discover some fuselage in his front yard, caught up in some trees on his property. He called Metro and they connected him to us.”
    “I’ll meet you out there.” Dane made a mental note of the directions and hung up.
    “Good news?”
    Dane turned to find Adria in the doorway. His gut instinct was to play this one close to the vest. Too much had happened betweenthem too quickly. The phone call was a much-needed wake-up call. It was time to step back a little.
    Adria moved into the room. She must have sensed his withdrawal because she stopped beside the table. “That’s okay, I understand,” she said.
    Dane had a sudden urge to tell her it was anything but okay. All he wanted to do was hold her and she stood there trying to be so reasonable.
    “I have to go.” He closed the distance between them, but only to grab his briefcase. He didn’t dare take that last step to her. “You’ll be okay?”
    “Yeah.”
    “You could always check into a hotel for a while.”
    She shook her head. “No. I’m sure I’ll be fine. It’s almost morning anyway.” She paused. “Thanks for coming over.”
    This was all wrong, he thought, even as his mind fought to regain its usual detachment. He managed a short nod, then left.

SIX
    Dane wished he had grabbed some breakfast on the way to his office after another long night spent at the warehouse the fuselage pieces were stored in. Putting them together wasn’t nearly as complex as putting together the jagged remains of an entire plane, but it had still been a challenging jigsaw puzzle. To his dismay, every last scrap they’d recovered belonged to either the Liberty or the AirWest planes.
    Most of his time last week had been spent on computers, where, with the help of a team of other professionals, he had recreated the flight paths of the two planes. He had covered each aspect of the mishap, anything and everything that could disprove that the two planes had hit each other.
    He didn’t come up with one shred ofproof. All he had was a few crank phone calls and Adria’s conviction that she was telling the truth.
    He hadn’t heard from her, so he assumed she hadn’t gotten any more disturbing calls. But it had taken an enormous amount of discipline not to check up on that fact personally, telling himself that his time was better spent—for both of them—working on the facts of the case and letting Adria take care of herself.
    His phone rang; another annoying sound adding to the pounding inside his skull. This time Dane welcomed the intrusion.
    “Colbourne.”
    “How you coming with that report on the Metro mishap?” It was Forster, his boss.
    Dane didn’t mistake the command for a question. Forster had been an air-force colonel, but Dane wasn’t sure anybody had told
him
that he was retired. Forster barked out orders and expected complete and swift obedience as if he was still in uniform.
    Dane was half-surprised Forster didn’t wear his silver eagle on his lapel.
    “It’s coming along,” he said, knowing the vague answer was not what Forster wanted to hear. It certainly wasn’t usual for Dane. Ambiguity was simply not characteristic of him.
    “You’ve still got that Cairo incident on your desk as well as that mishap out in Seattle,” he reminded Dane unnecessarily.
    “I’m aware of that, sir. I’ve been putting time in on those as well.” The only thing he hadn’t put any time into lately was sleeping.
    “I’d like to turn this one over to the FAA ASAP,” Forster said. “So wrap it up.”
    “I still have a number of details to clear up before I can complete my report.” Dane supposed it wasn’t totally out of line to be getting pressure so soon. His preliminary report did make it appear as if the case would be open-and-shut. So why were his instincts clamoring?
    “I want it on my desk before the week is out, Colbourne.”
    The sense of