The Courage Tree - Diane Chamberlain [64]
“There’s the Shenandoah,” Janine said, after they’d been flying about half an hour. Lucas looked down to see the river below them. It was broad and calm at this point, and a couple of cows stood knee-deep in the water near the bank. He wondered if being above that river reminded Janine of the ill-advised canoe trip she’d taken when she was eighteen. He reached over to squeeze the back of her neck, just in case her mind was on that other child she had lost.
After a short time, Janine cut away from 66 and began following Route 55. In a few minutes, they were above the deep woods of the George Washington National Forest.
“Do you see where I marked the camp on the map?” she asked him.
He did, and he helped guide her in that direction. Soon, a lake appeared below the helicopter.
“There’s the camp.” Janine pointed to the other side of the lake, and they flew above the water, low enough to ripple the surface with the wind from the blades. A few dozen girls were swimming and playing in a roped-off portion of the lake, and Janine actually smiled as she let the helicopter hover above them. The girls looked up at them, round faces tipped to the sky, and waved.
“So,” Janine said, as they flew over land again, “let’s just make some circles out from the camp. Sort of a spiral, at least for a mile in every direction.”
They flew low over the trees, following the path of a narrow road, and Lucas’s head quickly began to ache from the effort of trying to see beneath the dense green cover.
“Let’s try this road,” he suggested, when they had completed their spiral. He held the map toward her, pointing to one of the smaller roads leading away from the camp.
“That’s one of the roads Joe and I drove yesterday,” Janine said. “We didn’t see anything, but we might as well try it again from this vantage point.”
The road was very narrow. It looked as though it was rarely used, the paving sloppy and edged with wide bands of gravel. It snaked through the woods for a mile or so before beginning a descent from the mountain. It was easier to see the road then, as it was cut into the side of the mountain and not as obscured by trees. A sheer cliff rose above the road on one side; the land on the other side fell away to deep forest. Suddenly Lucas’s gaze was drawn to something in that forest, something dark.
“Janine,” he said. “Can you circle around there?” He pointed ahead of them and to the right, where the earth dropped away from the road. There was no guardrail. “I just want to get a closer look.”
She turned the helicopter in the direction he pointed.
“A little to the left,” he said. “Then stop for a minute so I can—”
He looked through the glass bubble on the lower right side of the helicopter, and his own body began to shake. Below them, carving a space for itself among the young scraggly trees on the steep slope, was an overturned car. He doubted Janine could see it from where she sat.
“Jan.” He worked at keeping his voice even and wrapped his hand lightly around her wrist. “There’s a car down here. It’s turned over. It must have gone off the—”
“Where?” Janine maneuvered the helicopter to try to see what he was looking at, and Lucas wished he knew how to fly this thing so that he could get her away from the area. He didn’t want her to see.
“I think we should just make a note of where we are,” he said, “and go back to—”
“Oh, my God, my God!” Her hand flew to her mouth, and he knew she had given herself a good view of the overturned car. “Is it a Honda?” she asked.
“I can’t tell from up here.”
“Maybe I can land on the road.”
“No,” he said firmly. “First of all, that’s too dangerous. Cars wouldn’t be able to see you as they come around the bend.”
“There are no cars on this road!” she shot back.
“And second, that cliff is too steep. Even if we could land here, we’d need help to get down there. We should find some other place to—”
“I need to know if it’s Alison’s car,” Janine