Six Seconds

60

In-flight to Montana

Within four hours of Wanda’s call, Maggie and Graham had canceled their flights and had located and boarded a departing charter that served Great Falls, Montana.

“You’re in luck,” the ticket agent had said, smiling. “A number of seats just opened up and we want to fill them.”

Maggie had paid for her ticket out of the six hundred thirty-one dollars she’d won on the slot machine. Graham paid out of his own pocket, deciding to take care of the expense claim when he got back to Calgary.

Because he had accepted the truth.

He could not walk away from the Tarver case. Even though he’d been ordered to return, he couldn’t.

Not yet. There were too many questions. Now, as the plane skirted the Great Salt Lake Desert and neared Yellowstone, and as Maggie drifted off, he searched the clouds for answers.

Emily Tarver’s dying words troubled him. And he swore he’d heard Nora’s voice when he was in the water. If he didn’t pursue the family’s deaths, he’d be haunted by the ghosts of his failures for the rest of his life because this went beyond the case.

This was about Nora.

Maybe he could live with what went wrong if he could make something right for someone else.

Maybe.

By the time the plane passed over the Bitterroot Mountains, Graham had resolved to request immediate personal leave, freeing him to investigate the case on his own and on his own dime.

And if that was denied?

He’d resign.

Would he?

If that’s what it took.

Because he’d be finished.

Because he was hanging on by a thread.

Great Falls was about a seven-hour drive from Calgary, or a short flight. Funny, he thought, looking at the snowcapped peaks reaching up to him, reaching all the way north to the Faust River where he’d stood not so long ago, drowning in guilt as he held Nora’s ashes.

He’d pretty much come full circle.

When the captain announced their descent into Great Falls, Maggie woke, left her seat and took her place in line for the restroom at the rear.

Upon returning, she met the intense eyes of another passenger, a man squeezing by her. Her polite little smile was received with stone-cold indifference, send ing a shiver coiling up her spine as he brushed by.

It couldn’t be.

He looked familiar. Like that creep from her book store.

Maggie glanced back at him, but other passengers blocked her view. She took her seat thinking, no, it couldn’t be him. It was her imagination, given all she’d been through.

Nearly overdosing. Graham saving her. Getting her to Las Vegas, which got her to Montana. Closer to Logan. Closer to Jake.

Closer to what awaited her.

Maggie buckled up. The landing gear lowered. As the jet neared the runway, she prayed she would finally find the truth.

Whatever it was.