The Courage Tree - Diane Chamberlain [65]
There had been a fire. The saplings and leaves around the car were black, as was the car itself. He could not see the sides of the car, only the underbody. It was the shape and size of a Honda, though, and Lucas knew he was looking at the remains of a horrific accident.
Janine again pressed her hand to her mouth. “This is it, isn’t it?” she asked.
“It may be,” Lucas said.
“We have to land, Lucas! What if Sophie’s still alive in there?”
Lucas’s eyes burned as he studied the car. No one could have survived this crash, he thought. Alison must have been driving a bit too fast for the narrow, winding road, or she might simply have hit a patch of loose gravel. Her car had flown off the road at the curve and landed here upside down, maybe crushing everyone inside, killing them instantly, before bursting into flames. He said a silent prayer that was what had happened, that Sophie and the other two would not have suffered.
“Give me the radio,” he said. “I’ll call the police and let them know what we’ve found. They can be out here in an hour.”
“We might not have an hour!”
“Janine, look at me.” He grabbed her wrist hard this time, and she turned toward him. She was weeping freely, and the panic in her eyes, the tremor in her lower lip, broke his heart. He blocked all thought of Sophie being in that demolished car from his mind, or he knew that neither of them would be able to function rationally.
“Now, listen to me,” he said. “You have to stay in control of this helicopter. That’s your first priority right now, okay? You won’t do Sophie any good if you…get in an accident, too. I’ll call the police. Sergeant Loomis is it?”
She nodded.
“Then we’ll find a safe place for you to land, and we’ll come back here and meet the police.”
Janine was staring down at the car again, and he turned her face away from the window with his hand.
“How will we get back here?” she asked.
“We’ll find a way,” he promised. Right now, he just wanted to be back on terra firma.
“Call first,” she said. “Call right now.”
“All right.” He dialed the number for the Fairfax County police, and it was mere seconds before he had Sergeant Loomis on the line. “This is Lucas Trowell,” he said. “Janine Donohue and I are in a helicopter above—” he checked the map “—above a little, unmarked road about a mile and a half west of the Scout camp. There’s an overturned vehicle below us. It looks like it went off the road and flipped over. It’s going to be hard to get to.”
In his deep, calming voice, Loomis said he would alert the sheriff in that area. Janine could find a place to land and then someone from the sheriff’s office could pick them up to bring them back to the scene of the overturned car.
It was a few more minutes before they received the call from the local sheriff. He directed them to a church parking lot a couple of miles away, where Janine managed to set the helicopter down smoothly. She’d stopped crying, and her trembling had ceased.
She was trying to be strong, Lucas thought, and a stranger might think she was succeeding. He knew better, though. Behind that calm facade, Janine was falling apart. The next few hours would be agonizing for her, and he wished there was some way to spare her from the heartache. He knew that heartache and how it could claw at a person until it ripped them to shreds.
He knew it all too well.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“I think you were supposed to turn back there,” Paula said.
Joe drove his car onto the shoulder of the road to prepare for a U-turn. This was the fourth or fifth time Paula had needed to correct his sense of direction on this trip, but her voice never lost its patience or concern, even though he’d barked at her in irritation a couple of times. He wondered if Lucas had navigated for Janine. Did she bark at him? Probably not. Janine, under the worst of circumstances, was no barker.
He made the U-turn, then pulled back onto the road.
“I think it’s right there.