Chapter Twenty-Eight

The smell of smoke brought Evan back to full consciousness. He coughed, blinking to clear his vision and get his bearings.

Cracks spiderwebbed the chopper's windshield. Smoke poured into the cockpit from the broken dashboard. Outside his door, flames shot horizontally from beneath the passenger compartment—where the fuel tanks were located.

Chip's head lolled forward, his chin resting on his chest. Evan unbuckled his seat belt and leaned over to unbuckle Chip's. Blood trickled from the other man's temple.

"Chip! Chip !" The pilot didn't move. Evan shook the man's shoulder. "C'mon, wake up! We gotta get outta here!" Before they died of smoke inhalation or the chopper exploded.

He grabbed the latch, pushing against the door with his shoulder. It didn't budge. He shoved harder, then kicked at it. Still, it didn't open. The chopper's frame must have twisted on impact, jamming the door.

Outside, the flames shot higher. Inside the cockpit, the smoke thickened, getting darker by the second. Evan coughed, as did Chip in his semi-conscious state. He reached for the extinguisher strapped to the floor by his feet. Not big enough to put out the growing inferno. Getting them outside was the priority.

Coughing again, he scrambled into the rear passenger compartment. The fuel tanks were right beneath his feet. He shoved at the door on the pilot's side. Mercifully, it opened. He leaped over the flames shooting from beneath the floorboard and raced to Chip's door, jerking it open and hauling him from the cockpit.

He bent enough to get Chip over his shoulder, then half walked, half jogged away from the chopper. His heart pumped harder than he thought possible, and his breath sawed, loud and uneven, coming out in heavy wheezes. Any second, the flames would hit the fuel tank. Putting distance between them and the doomed aircraft was the goal, but with a two-hundred-pound man flopping over his shoulder like a speared fish…

The muscles in his back, neck, and shoulders screamed in agony. His legs were quickly turning to rubber.

Keep going. Keep moving.

A loud explosion split the air. The ground rocked beneath his feet, the impact throwing him to his knees. As he twisted to cushion Chip's head with his arm, a rock rushed up to meet him.

Sharp pain lanced into his shoulder. Gritting his teeth, he twisted to see the chopper fully engulfed. Thick black smoke spiraled skyward.

"Chip, wake up! Stay with me, buddy." Relief swept through him as the other man's lids fluttered, and he moaned.

"I'm good." Chip groaned as he tried to sit up. "The chopper?"

"Going back to the taxpayers." Evan hitched his head to what was quickly becoming a twisted, burning mass of metal. A strong gust of wind blew the cloying, pungent smell of smoke and fuel in their direction. A loud roar came from the wreckage as the fire intensified.

Chip groaned again. Being a military rotorhead, Evan suspected it was more over the loss of the chopper than actual pain. "What a Charlie Foxtrot."

A total clusterfuck. He couldn't agree more.

Still sucking in heavy breaths, Evan tugged the phone from his belt and called 911. His phone beeped. No service and no bars . He looked around for a house or a farm. Someone had to have seen them go down. Then again, this was Wyoming. There could be miles between them and any residences, farms, or ranches.

About two hundred yards off, he spotted wire fencing. Could be a road just beyond the fence line. "I'm gonna hump it to the road, try to get a cell signal. Stay awake, okay?"

"Yeah." He pressed a hand to his bleeding temple. "I'll just sit here on my ass and get warm by the fire."

Evan chuckled, happy they were alive, and Chip was well enough to crack jokes. "I'll bring you some marshmallows."

He took off at a slow jog. With every step, his shoulder ached worse than an unsedated root canal. Hopefully, he hadn't busted it. Halfway to the fence, he stopped and checked his phone for a signal. Nada . He kept going to the road, then checked again. One measly bar.

His phone buzzed with notifications of calls he'd missed—two from Marlie and one from Tony Wong. Seeing Marlie's name sent a jolt of excitement through him, followed by a twinge of worry. After the way things had ended between them, he hadn't expected to hear from her anytime soon. Unless there was a problem with Noah. As much as he wanted to hit redial, he had to prioritize. Getting Chip medical assistance came first.

Again, he punched in 911. While he waited for the operator to pick up, he pulled up his location on the phone's GPS app. The chopper was equipped with an ELT—emergency locator transmitter—but there was no guarantee it was still transmitting.

"This is 911. What is the location of your emergency?"

He rattled off the coordinates, then, "This is FBI Special Agent McGarry. An FBI chopper was just shot down two hundred yards from my location. Two souls on board, including myself. The pilot is injured and needs medical assistance. Probable concussion." In the background, he heard the dispatcher relaying the information to police units and requesting paramedics.

"Emergency services and police are on their way to you. Please confirm, did you say you were shot down?"

"Affirmative. Shots fired from the gated property at the end of Painted Sky Road." The camp .

There was no doubting now that was the location Manello had taken Noah. "I need you to send police to that location and secure the gate. No one gets in or out." Through the gate, anyway. There'd be no way to monitor a thousand acres without air support, something he didn't recommend at the moment.

After the dispatcher relayed the information, he called Brian Mimoa and gave him an update.

"You sure you're okay?" Brian asked.

"Ten-four. The pilot's got a concussion, but we're both alive."

"Thank God," Brian said. "I'm heading to you now with the entire office."

"Copy that." By the time they arrived, this could all be over. "Call Deck and Brett. They're in Fort Collins. They can be up here in less than thirty minutes. This is an active shooter scenario. That gives us PC to go in without a warrant." Evan planned on commandeering a ride from the local PD and busting into the camp before the shooter took off.

"Agreed," Brian said. "Be careful."

"Ten-four, boss."

The fire still roared, sending a plume of black smoke billowing skyward from the wreckage. Sirens wailed in the distance. No sooner did he hang up, than his phone rang. It was Tony Wong again.

"I emailed you the complete Red Notice file on Bram Ackerman," Tony said when Evan answered. "INTERPOL is still hot to make an arrest."

"Stand by." He put Tony on speakerphone while he opened the file.

Sirens grew louder. Evan could make out the first emergency vehicle turning off the main road.

He scrolled to the photo at the bottom of the report. His blood went colder than ice, then seemed to freeze entirely.

No way. No. Fucking. Way .

Police cars, fire trucks, and an ambulance roared around the last bend, but he barely heard them, as pieces of a very ugly, convoluted puzzle fell into place.

The ambulance screeched to a stop, along with several patrol cars.

"Tony, I gotta go." His fingers were unsteady as he ended the call.

After all this time—all the grief, heartache, and misery his family had been through—he now knew who was responsible for Gracie's and all the other missing children's disappearances.

Even if it took his very last breath, one way or the other, he'd put an end to this.

Today.