But he still wasn’t about to let her fly into danger alone. He’d never forgive himself if she was shot down a second time.
“The gunmen were trespassing—” he let his tone drop to a low, even rate, let the warning carry through in his words “—and if I ever find out who it was, you can believe I’ll press charges. Nobody hurts you and gets away with it.”
Elise felt a shiver run down her spine at the chilly threat behind Cutch’s words. But what made her nearly gasp was the zealous protection implied in his final statement. Didn’t he realize how much he had hurt her? Just the memory of the way he’d set her up for humiliation eight years before made her heart squeeze and the old wounds cry out in pain. Their first and only kiss, the moment she’d dreamed about since she’d first fallen in love with him, had turned out to be a trick, a stunt he’d pulled to embarrass her in front of half of Holyoake. In fact, their entire relationship had been a farce, another way for a McCutcheon to humiliate a McAlister.
Still, she figured she was mature enough to work with him without letting on to the distress he caused her heart. She’d just have to keep him at arm’s length and stomp down any tender feelings, such as those that had flooded her when he’d put his arm around her on the viewing tower. Surely she could handle that…
“I’d like to come with you. I’m sure I can help.” Cutch announced matter-of-factly as he parked the truck behind the hangar and killed the engine.
What could she say? He seemed intent on going up with her, and honestly, after the terror she’d felt that morning, it would be an enormous comfort to have along a strong man she could trust. She just wasn’t convinced Cutch was that man. But she was in a hurry to find her glider, and he was probably correct about being able to help her quickly locate it in the thick trees. She’d scrambled through the woods in such a blur that little clear memory remained to guide her.
“If I’m not imposing on your time—”
“You’re not.”
“Then let’s hurry. I still don’t want Uncle Leroy to see you.”
They ducked out of the truck and went around the hangar to the door facing the airfield. “Leroy’s probably in the office. He and Rodney are usually the only ones around on Saturdays,” Elise explained, opening the wide hangar door. “They shouldn’t see us if we use this door.”
She hurried over to her Cessna 172 Skyhawk and patted the white-with-red-stripes plane affectionately on one wing. “This is my baby,” she informed Cutch.
“Looks like your baby is older than you are.”
“She is,” Elise admitted, circling the plane as she initiated her preflight check. “But I’m saving my pennies to buy her a little sister. Aren’t I, darling?” She gave the rudder a gentle tug. “Anyway, she’s a good little bird and keeps me in the sky, which is more than I can say for my powered hang glider.”
“You don’t think there’s a chance somebody will try to shoot this girl down, do you?” Cutch looked concerned.
Elise faced him under the wing. “We should be out of the range of a shotgun. I fly my glider at a lot lower elevation than I fly my plane.”
“But when you’re dusting crops—”
“That’s different.” Elise wasn’t fond of crop dusting and wished her aerial photography business was self-sustaining enough so she could give up working for her uncle. But so far, her dreams had yet to pan out. “I’m capable of flying low, but I wouldn’t try it in those hills. Besides, this plane is a lot faster and way more maneuverable than my glider. I can get out in a hurry at the first sign of trouble.”
Cutch seemed to accept her response and stayed quiet as she finished checking the plane and climbed aboard. She reached behind his seat for the extra headset and noticed her camera still in the backseat of the four-seat plane. A thought occurred to her.
“Do you know much about taking pictures?” she asked.
He grinned back slyly. “Don’t you recall my 4-H entries?”
Elise almost smiled back, but then she remembered the year he’d swept the purple ribbon right out from under her. She’d been nine years old, he eleven, and though she now realized the composition of his scenic Loess Hills landscape had been precociously perfect, at the time, she’d been devastated. Her father had chalked up the incident to just another example of how she couldn’t trust a McCutcheon. “Can you still use a camera?”
“Maybe not as well as you can, but well enough.”
She handed him the digital camera and explained. “It’s all set for aerial photographs, so all you’ll have to do is point and shoot. Oh, and don’t erase the stuff on my memory card—I was out with Rodney yesterday taking pictures of the Mitchum’s corn maze. I haven’t had a chance to download the pictures yet.”
Cutch accepted the camera from her. “How’s the aerial photography business going?”
Her mind focused on the preflight check, Elise murmured a distracted response. “It keeps me busy, but it doesn’t pay the bills. I have to pay a pilot to take me up since it’s impossible to fly and take pictures at the same time. That takes a big chunk out of my profit.” She toggled a switch. “So I still do crop dusting for Leroy on the side.”
“That’s too bad. You’re such a talented photographer.”
Cutch’s comment surprised Elise, and she looked up from her checklist to find him leaning across his seat toward her, his face much nearer to hers than she’d have liked inside the close quarters of the cockpit. She felt her cheeks turn red and looked nervously back down at the laminated booklet in her hands. “As I recall, you’re the one who won the purple ribbon.”
“Only once. You won it every other year.”
“But that’s the year I remember.” When she dared to glance back up at him, she found him still leaning her way, still looking at her in that unsettling way that made her heart leap inside her more violently than it did during a bad landing.
“Funny what we choose to remember,” he said, chuckling softly and turning away to adjust the headset over his ears.
Elise pulled her attention back to her preflight checklist. She had to focus. Though she’d been flying for years and knew the drill backward and forward, having Cutch in her plane was just the kind of distraction that could cause her to miss something, and today was the last day she wanted that to happen.
“Sky Belle to Big Bird, Sky Belle to Big Bird.” She radioed Uncle Leroy in the office.
“Sky Belle, this is Big Bird. What are you up to this morning?”
Elise relayed their flight plan to her uncle, who okayed her for takeoff. Fortunately, he didn’t ask any questions about why she was headed out. If she’d talked to him in person first, he certainly would have done so then, but she knew he liked to keep their radio conversations strictly professional, which was why she’d waited until she was in the plane to talk to him. Hopefully, he wouldn’t suspect anything strange was up.
With Cutch safely buckled in, Elise taxied out and lifted off, feeling more in control with her plane in the air than she had since she’d heard the first shot that morning. She was at home in the sky. It was her peaceful retreat where none of the pain in her life—not her absent mother or her struggling business or the ongoing feud with the McCutcheons—could trouble her. The invasion of her peace was just another reason why the attack that morning had disturbed her so deeply.
The airspace of southwestern Iowa was empty as usual, and the clear skies and gentle breeze made for perfect flying conditions. They quickly and uneventfully found themselves closing in on Cutch’s pecan grove. Elise aligned the plane with what she could recall of her flight path that morning.
“We’re right above where I was flying earlier,” she explained to Cutch. “We’re coming up on the spot where I heard the first shot.”