The Bear smiled. “He has flown in worse.”

 • • •

On September 3, 1996, Ron Bower and John Williams broke the round-the-world helicopter record in seventeen days, six hours, and fourteen minutes. They were able to accomplish this feat due to the Bell 430, which had a four-blade, bearingless, hingeless composite main rotor and close to eight hundred horsepower produced by two Rolls-Royce/Allison turboshaft engines. I was listening to the same sort of engines whine as we ducked under the swinging props and climbed into Omar’s helicopter, the rain now blowing sideways.

I envied the poncho the Bear had appropriated from the duty closet as I clamored toward a seat. “This fits the parameters of my worst-case scenario.”

We thumped into the soft, butter-colored leather of the obscene conveyance as the Cheyenne Nation closed the door behind us.

“Wait. It will most likely get worse.”

Omar called over his shoulder, “We in?”

I yelled back. “For better or worse!”

In revenge, he throttled up, and I felt my guts settle into the cradle of my pelvic bones, suddenly rushing up and skyward. “Oh, hell.”

The Bear turned and looked between the seats at our pilot. “You know where you are going?”

He nodded, most of his face covered from my view by the massive headset. “Start at the dig site?”

Henry shouted. “We will do a circle out, and if we find nothing then we can begin a grid pattern.”

Omar nodded, and we raced over Durant’s main street, headed south-southeast. The last time the three of us had been in this self-same helicopter had been in an attempt to save a young man who was being stalked by an unknown sniper in the Cloud Peak Wilderness Area. The weather had been moderate when we’d started, but then a front had come in with snow, sleet, and sixty-mile-an-hour winds that had sent Omar and the Neiman Marcus helicopter down the mountain and Henry and me on a life-threatening hike on snow-covered trails. “Don’t get shot this time.”

“I intend to do my best.”

“And don’t sing.”

“I did not sing before.”

I glanced out the window at the rolling hills we traversed, only a hundred feet or so above the wet, waving grass. “Can’t we fly higher, so we don’t have to go up and down so much?”

“I think he is attempting to avoid the wind, which is worse higher up.”

“Oh.”

He glanced out the window on the other side of the helicopter. “It also means the helicopter will fall a shorter distance should something happen.”

“Shut up.” I fastened my seat belt. “How fast are we going?”

He leaned forward again, reading the instruments over Omar’s shoulder. “One hundred and forty knots.”

I thought about the rough knowledge I’d received behind the control seats of a B-25 Mitchell by the name of Steamboat years ago. “One hundred and sixty-one miles an hour?”

He shrugged and went back to looking out the window. “I think he likes to go fast, and since it is his helicopter . . .”

I looked out and was barely able to make out the contours of the land now. “How are we going to see? It’s as dark as the insides of a cow out there.”

“Omar has assured me that he has enough auxiliary lighting that we should be able to spot them if they are out here. We can search for them until dawn and then refuel and start out again.”

He studied me. “How is your stomach?”

“Flipping like a trout.”

“Does it help to talk?”

“Some.”

“MMO?”

It was a game we had played for as long as I’d been in law enforcement, maybe even a leftover from Vietnam: Motive-Means-Opportunity. “Is it my imagination, or was it on this same helicopter that we last did this?”

He shrugged. “Breaks up the monotony.”

“And keeps my mind off my stomach.” I settled myself. “Suspects?”

“Jen, Taylor, Enic, Eva, Randy, and your friend, Dino-Dave.”

“No one else on the ranch as far as we know.”

The Cheyenne Nation nodded toward Omar. “Him.”

“He was there, but he doesn’t have a motive; anyway, we’ll throw him in when we get to opportunity.”

A voice suddenly sounded in both our headsets. “You two know I can hear you, right?”

Henry smiled. “Might be an opportunity to ask.”

So I did. “Hey, Omar, did you kill Danny?”

“No.”

I gestured with my one hand. “He’s innocent.”

Omar’s voice rang again. “I understand your having to ask.”

“Thanks.” I glanced at Henry as we both removed our headphones and hung them back on the interior hooks. “Jen.”

“Low on motive—what would she have to gain?”

“Taylor?”

“We’re moving on?”

I shook my head. “No, she had Taylor to gain.”

“You think Danny would have prevented the two of them from getting together?”

“Possibly.” I tilted my head. “But she was obviously trusted enough by Danny to be invited to all the Cheyenne Conservancy meetings. Two?”

He nodded. “Opportunity?”

“Zero, she didn’t live there and wouldn’t want to be caught near the pond, as nobody knew about the relationship with Taylor, or so they say.” I shook my head. “Randy seemed genuinely surprised.”

“All right, we will give Jen a total of two.”

“Eva?” I thought about the psychopharmic cloud surrounding the woman. “Who the heck knows?”

“She would keep her son from Jen, and Enic would side with her on traditionalism.”

“And the two would override Randy?”

“Yes.”

“Give her a three.” I looked out the window but still could see nothing but the rain pelting the glass. “Means?”

“She cooked for him.”

“Yes.” I sighed. “Three.”

“Opportunity?”

“Three.”

He nodded. “We have a new leader at nine.”

I moved on. “Taylor.”

“He would get the ranch eventually, but there are two surviving generations ahead of him.”

“He’d get the girl.”

He shook his head. “Do you think the objections to their May/September relationship were strong enough to kill his grandfather for?”

“Seems like a stretch.”

“Give him a one? I am not giving him a zero.”

“Means?”

“He had access to the alcohol and the turtle feed.”

“He doesn’t drive.”

“True.”

“Two.” He glanced back out the window. “Opportunity?”

“He was around the house all the time, when he wasn’t running away, and he didn’t seem to have too much of a problem shooting at us after we found Danny.”

“Two, which gives us five.”

“Dino-Dave.”

“Killing Danny would only complicate things for him.”

I agreed. “One.”

“Means?”

“He doesn’t live on the ranch; I’d give him another one.”

“Opportunity?”

“Same, so we’ve got an all-time low of three.” Suddenly I could feel the aircraft pull up, and we hovered there in the air, probably a hundred feet or so above the ground. Omar motioned toward his earphones and then gestured toward ours.

Henry and I plucked them from the hooks and put them on, adjusting the microphones in front of our mouths as Omar’s voice sounded in our ears. “You’ve got a call from the FBI.”

“Yep, I left a message for McGroder on his cell phone. Mike?”

His voice was groggy. Static. “I just got the message to call you.”

“Any luck on that computer?”

Static. “No, it’s annihilated; any information on the hard drive is corrupted. Sorry . . .”

“Well, that’s a disappointment, but I’ve still got one ace in the hole. Hey, Mike, do you guys have any kind of whizbang satellite gizmo that can pinpoint the location of some suspects out here on the—”

Static. “Where the hell are you?”

“I’m in a helicopter; we’re looking for the runaways and Enic, and I was hoping to call in a favor and see if the bureau had any way of helping us track them down.”

Static. “Tonight?”

“Well, yep.”

Static. “No.”

“What do you mean no?”

Static. “I mean no as in you’re only going to get satellite reference on a twenty-four-hour basis, and then somebody’s going to have to go through the data. Besides, is it still raining?”