Off the Grid Christmas Read online

  “Is that why the light is flashing?”

  “That’s a warning that the plane’s left aileron is malfunctioning. In other words, the flaps on the plane’s wing aren’t controlling the plane’s roll like they should.”

  “So, the plane can’t turn properly?” she guessed, putting the information he’d provided together with other things she’d read over the years. Things about how planes functioned.

  And how they failed.

  Having a near photographic memory was both a blessing and a burden.

  “It can turn. I just have to compensate and allow a much wider turn radius—and a much bumpier ride.”

  “Human error is the number one cause of small plane crashes,” she said, spouting off another bit of information that she’d read years ago. “Most commonly, they run out of fuel because pilots miscalculate distance or fuel efficiency.”

  “I don’t plan to make an error.”

  “No one ever does,” she responded, the fatalistic words ringing in her ears. “JFK Jr. died because of pilot error. John Denver ran out of fuel because he couldn’t access a very important fuel selector valve.” She’d be better off singing, but she couldn’t stop remembering every story she’d ever read about small plane crashes and spouting off the horrible endings like some kind of macabre recording.

  “I’ve got some good news for you, Arden,” he said.

  “We’re landing?”

  “This plane has two fuel pumps, and I’ve already switched to the auxiliary, so you don’t have to worry that I don’t know how to do it.”

  “I wasn’t worried about that. I was just providing examples and evidence to support my position.”

  “Which is that we’re doomed?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Arden, how about you go back to singing?” He adjusted a gauge and frowned. “It looks like we’re still losing fuel. I was hoping the bullet hit a tank, but it looks like it hit a main line.”

  That did not sound good.

  As a matter of fact, it sounded really, really bad.

  She glanced out the window, saw cars and houses far below. “Where’s the nearest airport?”

  “Behind us.”

  “But we can’t turn around.”

  “Right.”

  “So we’re going to—?”

  “Keep flying and pray we find a spot to land.” Kane finished her sentence.

  She wished he hadn’t.

  She would have preferred to create a fictionalized version of what they were going to do. Like—somehow turn and land on the airfield they’d just left. Or—strap on parachutes and jump from the doomed vehicle.

  Although, she wasn’t sure she had the guts for that.

  Still, anything would be better than sitting in a plane not much bigger than a Barbie Dream Jet waiting for it to go down.

  She glanced out the window again; she couldn’t help herself.

  They were high above the tree line now, tiny lights twinkling through the darkness. House lights. Streetlights. Cars. Hundreds of people going about their business while she and Sebastian and Kane went about the business of dying.

  Not that she wanted to be melodramatic about the situation. She was a facts gal. Numbers and figures and stats.

  And right now, all those things pointed in one direction.

  “I don’t suppose you have parachutes on this plane?” she asked casually. At least, she tried to sound casual. She didn’t want Kane to know that she was on the edge of full-out panic mode.

  “No, but we’re not going to need them.”

  Give me some evidence to support your supposition, she wanted to say, but she kept her lips pressed firmly together, afraid she wouldn’t like the answer.

  * * *

  Arden was taking the news better than he’d expected.

  He could let that worry him or he could concentrate on getting them both out of this situation alive.

  Kane checked the gauges and eyed the instrument panel. The plane was off its intended course and flying much lower than his flight plan specified. There was nothing he could do about it except search for a place to land.

  There were a few lights in the darkness below. Maybe houses or streetlights, but nothing that gave any indication of a clearing big enough to land the Cessna.

  Flakes of snow pelted the windshield, cutting down on visibility. He glanced at the GPS to keep his bearings. His original flight plan routed his plane around congested airspace used by commercial flights over coastal Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts, then parallel to the Appalachian mountain range, turning back toward the coast as the plane approached Maryland. But Maryland was hundreds of miles away and Lubec was behind them. The malfunctioning aileron made it nearly impossible to change course.

  It would be nearly impossible to land, too, but they’d have to do that before they reached the mountain range that was directly in their path. The tallest range in Maine was just over five thousand feet high. Once they hit New Hampshire, the White Mountains would be a threat. At over six thousand feet, those peaks would require him to ascend even higher. Taking the plane’s current condition into account, he didn’t think that would be safe.

  “Is that a mountain range in our path?” Arden was looking at the navigation screen displayed on the instrument panel.

  “Yes.”

  “How close are we?”

  “About twenty minutes out.”

  “Maybe you should call the air tower and find out where we can land before then, because from where I’m sitting, it looks like our chances of getting over the mountains are slim to none.”

  “I’d rather not contact air traffic control at this point.” Or at all, if he could avoid it. Whether Arden liked it or not, his plan was to get them on the ground undetected if possible, call his business partner, Silas, for a ride back to Maryland and deliver Arden DeMarco to her brother.

  “Um, okay...why not?”

  “Given who’s after you, it’s safe to assume someone may be monitoring the dispatch system. I don’t want to give away our location.”

  “It’s going to be given away when we crash into the side of that mountain,” she muttered.

  “We’ll find a place to land,” he assured her. “And we’ll probably be better off than we’d be if we’d stuck to my original flight plan and headed back to Maryland.”

  “You think they’ll have people waiting there?”

  “They had people in Lubec.”

  “Right.” She hummed a few bars of “O Christmas Tree” and then fell silent.

  She’d have probably been happy if he let the conversation die. But to keep her safe, he needed answers.

  “Arden, you need to come clean. According to Grayson you’re wanted for suspected espionage.”

  She remained quiet.

  “You said you were helping a friend,” he prompted.

  “Yes.”

  He waited for more, but she just sat staring at the instrument panel, her coat pulled up to her chin.

  She looked young.

  She was young. Even if there was only a five-year age difference between them, he’d seen things in combat that made him feel a lot older than his thirty years.

  She didn’t look scared, though. She looked determined and resigned. Maybe a little annoyed that her plans had been derailed. Jace had told Kane to expect that; that she liked to do things a certain way and didn’t much care for change.

  “What friend?” he prodded, and she met his eyes.

  “Look, Kane, it might seem like we’re in this together—”

  “We are in this together.”

  “Right now, we are. But once we’ve landed, we don’t have to be. You can go back to whatever you were doing before my brother talked you into coming a
fter me.”

  “No. I can’t.”

  “Sure you can. It’s easy. You just rent a car or call for a ride and go back home. I’ll go back to what I was doing, and we’ll both be fine.”

  “You were hiding from the FBI,” he pointed out. “And from a company that seems to want you dead.”

  “They don’t want me dead. Yet.”

  “What do they want?”

  “Encrypted files that I took from them.”

  “What kind of files?”

  “That’s a good question. I won’t know until I decrypt what I have. That takes time. A lot of it. Which is why I went off the grid. I needed solitude to work.”

  “And safety.”

  “That, too. And I was doing fine on both counts. I still would be, if it weren’t for Sebastian.” She pulled the jacket down and eyed the cat. “And Christmas,” she muttered.

  “Christmas?”

  “Only the best time of the year,” she responded, covering the cat again and leaning forward in her seat to peer out the windshield. The snowfall was heavier now, the flakes sliding off the windshield almost as quickly as they landed. “Although, tonight, I’d be happy if it were the middle of summer. The weather is getting worse.”

  “Yeah. That happens this time of year. Your family has big Christmas celebrations every year, don’t they?” Kane began carefully, knowing that he was about to do something he’d probably regret later. He wasn’t big on manipulating people. He didn’t like using information to get what he wanted, but he wanted to make very sure he and Arden were playing for the same team before he landed the plane and helped her get back to her family.

  He’d agreed to find her because of his friendship with Jace. He’d assumed that she had as much integrity as her brother, but she’d admitted she’d essentially stolen encrypted files. Files that he could only presume were classified. GeoArray was one of the largest defense contractors in the country. Much of what the company did was top secret and well guarded.

  Arden was on the FBI’s most wanted list because of those files. She didn’t want to tell him how she’d gotten them or why she took them. If he had to manipulate her to get the answers, so be it.

  “What does my family’s Christmas celebration have to do with anything?”

  “I heard Jace might be home this year.”

  Her expression didn’t change, but he knew the news had gotten to her. He could read it in her quick intake of breath and the sudden tension in her muscles. She knew her brother wasn’t scheduled to return from his tour for several months, and she had to know that his early return meant something was wrong.

  “What happened?”

  “He was injured in an attack a little over a week ago. Their helicopter went down just outside of Syria. Three of his men were killed. He’ll be getting an early discharge.”

  “How bad is he?” she asked.

  “He didn’t give me many details, and he wasn’t sure when he’d be on the medical flight back. He was more concerned about you than he was about his injuries,” Kane responded, purposely keeping the extent of Jace’s injuries from Arden. His friend hadn’t wanted his family to worry.

  “He wasn’t supposed to be in contact with the family for the next few months. How’d he find out I was gone?”

  “Tell you what.” Kane adjusted something on the instrument panel and frowned. “How about you ask your brothers?”

  “My brothers aren’t here. You are.”

  “I don’t know, Arden. Jace called me from a hospital in Munich. He asked me to get in touch with Grayson, said he’d been injured and would be coming home and that he needed me to find you. That was the extent of our conversation.”

  “I wish I’d known,” she muttered.

  “You weren’t around.”

  “Are you trying to make me feel guilty?” Her voice trembled, and he thought tears pooled in her eyes, but she didn’t let them fall.

  “I’m trying to make you see that you’re not the only one who is being impacted by the decisions you’ve made. Jace is returning home. He’s planning to be surrounded by his family. He needs to be. He needs time and rest to heal. Not added stress. Plus, if you’re picked up by the FBI and tossed into federal prison, you’re not the only one who’s going down. I am, and maybe Grayson, too.”

  “That’s why I’ve stayed away. I’m sure they’re already watching him. Grayson’s like a dog with a bone. I don’t want him getting hurt or jeopardizing his job because of me.”

  “Then give me something to go on. Some information that will help me get you off that list and get Grayson out from under the veil of suspicion.”

  She hesitated, but he knew he had her. The thought of her brothers suffering because of her actions wasn’t something she could live with. All the DeMarcos were like that—all about family, about being part of a team built through shared experience and a lifetime of affection.

  As an only child, Kane had never experienced that firsthand. And with parents who preferred their careers to raising a child, he spent more time in boarding schools and later reform schools than he had with his own parents. Aside from summers and school breaks with his grandparents, family bonds and holiday traditions were things he knew little about. He’d been pulled into them through his connection to Jace, but he’d never fully understood them.

  “My best friend’s husband, Dale Westin, killed himself last month while on a business trip to Boston. He was a network administrator.”

  “For GeoArray Corporation?”

  “Yes.”

  “What does that have to do with the encrypted files?”

  “My friend didn’t think he killed himself.”

  “This is the friend you were helping?”

  “Yes. Juniper. She said there was no way Dale killed himself. I knew Dale. I agreed with her.”

  “Depression can be masked,” he said gently. “Some people are very good at putting on happy faces for the people they love.” Kane had seen firsthand the devastation that suicide brought down on survivors. It was hard being left behind, wondering if there was something you could have done to prevent it. For years after Evan’s death, Kane blamed himself for missing the signs. And they’d been there. Evan had been in a downward spiral since the night his sister drowned, but he’d masked it until the end.

  “I know the facts and the figures, Kane. I did the research. But Dale had none of the markers. Not even one, and the way he died, the reason he supposedly committed suicide? It just didn’t make sense.”

  “To people who aren’t depressed, suicide rarely does.”

  “That’s not what I mean. According to GeoArray, Dale had been having an affair with his married boss and she’d coerced him into building a backdoor on the network so she could transfer files outside of the network without detection. Files that she was selling to the highest bidder.”

  “And they were caught, so Dale killed himself?”

  “Supposedly.”

  “What’d his boss say?”

  “She died in a car accident the night before Dale’s body was found.”

  “That’s convenient.” Kane didn’t put much stock in coincidences. Someone was hiding something.

  “Yes. All the loose ends were tied up—nice and tidy. By the time I got my hands on Dale’s laptop, it was clean. Too clean. Someone had deleted his work-related email and files from his hard drive.”

  “If the files were already deleted, what was left to find?”

  “Getting rid of computer forensic evidence is not as simple as hitting delete and emptying the trash bin. I won’t get into the technical aspects of it because I’ve been told it bores most people. But I was able to find evidence that Dale had discovered the backdoor on the company’s networks and immediately reported it to his boss. The email chain I found eventually made it all th
e way up to GeoArray’s CEO, Marcus Emory. Emory asked Dale and his boss to meet him in Boston. They both died on that trip.”

  “Why not just report what you found on his computer and let the authorities take it from there?”

  “I didn’t think the email evidence was strong enough to bring to the authorities, so I accessed GeoArray’s network, located the backdoor and intercepted some files that were being exfiltrated along with some encryption software I found.”

  “Exfiltrated?” Kane asked. “Like a military op?”

  “Exactly. Just like that.” She smiled. “Only instead of sneaking a person out of a hostile environment, I was attempting to sneak the files out of the backdoor without being discovered.”

  “So you basically hacked into GeoArray’s secure network and stole proprietary files.”

  “Yes.”

  “And that’s why the FBI’s after you.”

  “That’s a likely possibility,” she agreed.

  “What’s in the files?”

  “I don’t know yet. I’m working on decrypting them.”

  “You didn’t think to go to the FBI with what you found—let them decrypt the files?”

  “I thought about it, but first, there’s no one more qualified than I am to decrypt the files. Second, it’s obvious Marcus Emory has the ear of someone in the FBI. I have no idea if that person’s an unwitting pawn or a paid accomplice. Going to the wrong person could have meant even more trouble.”

  “I’m not sure how you could be in any more trouble than you already are,” he responded, eyeing the fuel gauge and then the darkness below.

  “If I’d trusted the wrong person, I could have ended up in jail with no access to the files, no way to prove my innocence. It could have also implicated Juniper—after all, she suspected GeoArray was behind Dale’s death and gave me access to his computer. Sooner or later, they’ll put two and two together and see her as a threat, as well.”

  “If everything you’ve said is true—”