“I wonder what Dad would think we should do?” he asked, knowing darn well that Ben would love to bring down a world of trouble on Wayne Poulin.
“If you tell Ben, then you’re going to have to tell him we stuck our nose in this in the first place. How do you think he’ll take that news?”
“He’ll lecture a bit, but then he’ll realize that maybe we can’t pass up the opportunity.”
“Michael Sands, I’m going to lock you in your room for a year,” Emma said, pushing past him through the underbrush.
She’d opened a can of worms with this little excursion, and now she didn’t know how to put the lid back on the damn thing. God help them all if Ben decided to get involved.
They found the road a quarter of a mile to the east. As the map indicated, it was an abandoned old logging road leading up a mountain that hadn’t been harvested in over forty years. The bushes had grown in, but not enough to make passing impossible. Emma and Mikey stood in the middle of the old track, looking in both directions.
“It’s passable here, but any number of old bridges or culverts could be washed out farther down,” Emma said.
Mikey started walking toward the Golden Road, looking down as he went. “There’s been traffic up here since last spring.” He moved the bushes and checked their branches. “There’s broken twigs here, but they’re weathered.”
“Any number of people like to see where these old roads lead,” Emma said, trailing behind him and studying the gravel. “That doesn’t mean it was Wayne.”
They walked on in silence, looking for any signs of recent use. “Maybe this is no longer a drop site,” Emma said after a time. “Maybe it never was.”
Mikey suddenly stopped and hunched down, touching the ground in front of him. “This track is fresh,” he said, looking around. He stood up and walked back a few steps. “And look. A truck turned here.” He grabbed a bush and fingered a broken branch. “This is new.”
Emma walked up and looked at the tracks in the road. They were fresh. She looked in both directions and then up the forested mountain. For the second time that day, a chill brushed down her spine.
“Someone was here today,” she said, continuing on until she came to a mud puddle with a tire track through it, the ground still wet from the splash of the truck passing. “Not long ago.” She turned to her nephew. “We’re going back to the plane, Mikey. I don’t like this.”
“Aw, Nem. It’s just getting interesting.”
“No, it’s getting creepy. What are the chances that two different parties ended up in this particular spot at the same time?”
“We couldn’t have been followed. We flew here.”
“But Wayne knew I had been in his desk. He might be checking to see if I discovered the coordinates and came here.”
“He knew? How?”
Emma felt her face redden. “I must have rearranged something in his desk. Or maybe he counts his stationery.”
Mikey did his own scan of the area, suddenly looking worried. “If Wayne’s been using these woods to run drugs, then he knows them well. He’d know where we’d land our plane. Maybe we should head back and make sure it hasn’t been discovered.”
“We’re going to check that plane out with a magnifying glass,” Emma said as she started up the road, searching for a game trail that turned off to the northwest. “And then we’re flying home and dropping this whole thing. It’s not worth our getting involved.”
She was talking to the trees. Mikey was still standing in the road, staring at her.
“Not worth getting involved? Nem, we can’t just do nothing. The guy could be running drugs.”
“It’s not our problem. We’ll tell Ramsey, and let him decide what to do.”
“But where’s your sense of citizenship?”
“It’s hiding behind my sense of responsibility,” she countered, walking back to him. “Your safety and my safety come first. Drug dealers are dangerous and without conscience, and we are not going to put ourselves in the middle of this.”
He simply started walking up through the forest until they came to the mountain, then turned south and skirted it.
Emma walked quietly behind him. Well, she’d done it now. Michael Sands could be one stubborn, ugly dog when he got a bone between his teeth.
She knew he would go to Ben as soon as the man got back, and tell him their suspicions and persuade him to do something about it. And she would have absolutely no control over what they decided.
Michael Sands had apparently had enough of female guidance.
Chapter Fourteen
It took them half an hour to reach the plane, and it felt like the longest trek Emma had ever made. Silence can be such a wearing thing, especially when the longer it continues, the wider the void becomes. Right now there was a distance growing between her and Mikey nearly as wide as Medicine Lake.
“It looks to be riding low on one side,” Mikey said as they approached the plane, speaking for the first time since they’d left the road.
Sure enough, one of the floats was sitting on the bottom of the pond, making the Cessna look like a wounded bird with its wings spread out for balance.
Dammit, someone was out here with them.
And whoever it was didn’t want them leaving by air.
“We’re going over every inch of it,” she said, remembering Ben’s tampered-with oil pan and lug nuts.
Scrambling onto the still-floating pontoon, Emma opened the engine cowling and peered inside with a small flashlight. Running her light along the wiring and hoses, it wasn’t long before she found trouble.
“He wasn’t a very imaginative saboteur,” she told her nephew as she fingered a severed hose. “He simply cut the fuel line in half.”
“Then he doesn’t know you very well. You always shut off the fuel,” Mikey answered, unlocking the door to the plane and throwing their packs inside.
