Author's Note: This is a sequel to my Non-TG Novel, Missing Without A Trace: A Kelly Mitchell Mystery by Charles Schiman.
This is also a non-tg novel. However, I am a male writing the novel first-person as a female. And I created Kelly as the female person I thought I could have become--my alter ego, if you will--had I been born a girl.

The first novel, Missing Without A Trace: A Kelly Mitchell Mystery, is available for purchase online as a Nook Book at the Barnes and Noble Nook Store.

“Hi,” I said, “I’m Kelly Mitchell.”

I smiled as I greeted the family as they entered the Cooper Air hangar. I was really feeling good that morning. I had, in fact, awakened that morning feeling wonderful, cheerful, wide awake even before my two cups of mandatory instant coffee before breakfast. I glanced across the half-empty floor of the hangar and felt the corners of my mouth quirk up into a happy grin as I pointed at the old boat-hulled amphibian—my old Grumman Goose—gleaming in the bright light pouring in through the hangar’s open main doors. I pointed to it and added, “And that’s the plane which will be taking you to the campsite of your vacation.”

The Olsens—the family in question—stood there for a split second, looking at the aircraft, taking in the arching expanse of the hangar, the gleaming white and blue-trimmed high-winged twin-engine aircraft with its boat hull fuselage and floats suspended downward a couple of feet inboard of the ends of each wing; and then they smiled, too. I was hoping that they felt that everything looked just the way they had pictured it in their imaginations when Jack Piper had suggested Cooper Air to them as the perfect outfit to handle their proposed one-week vacation on the shores of an isolated northern wilderness lake.

“That is a beautiful plane,” Mister Olsen commented, nodding his head. “I’ve never seen one like it before.”

“It was built back in the late nineteen-thirties by Grumman Aircraft,” I replied. “It was refurbished and modernized number of times before my father acquired it. Its present engines are more powerful than the ones Grumman originally used and the fuselage was beefed-up and strengthened and the passenger windows enlarged. It can carry eight passengers plus cargo.” I paused and then added, “It’s not as fast as modern floatplanes but is very easy to fly and is very stable when moving on the water. I love flying her.”

“Cool,” the daughter commented. She was a little shorter than I was, maybe ten or eleven years old, thin as a rail, full of energy, and cute. “Mister Piper told us that he taught you how to fly and that you can fly a plane better than he can!”

I felt my face turning red. “Well, I don’t know about that,” I said. I looked at her father, “I don’t know how well you know Jack Piper, but he’s a great pilot in his own right around here.”

“Did you really catch a gang of kidnappers and rescue everyone?” the girl asked, interrupting her father’s answer. I felt my face getting more red.

“Annie,” he said quietly, “You know Mister Piper said that Miss Mitchell would probably not want to talk to anybody about that.”

“But, he said—”

I raised my hand. “It’s okay.” I turned to her and said, “Jack was probably exaggerating when he told you about that.” I looked at her parents. “I was part of the group that was taken hostage by them. I managed to get loose and make it to one of the planes and call for help. It really wasn’t anything extraordinary.”

“What about the grenades and shooting at ‘em with machine guns?” Annie demanded.

“Um—what?” I said, startled and looked at her parents. “Jack told you about that?”

They nodded. The mother looked amused and said, “He made it all sound very impressive and very exciting.”

I ran a hand through my hair nervously. “Well, it wasn’t like I was running around with an M-16 in each hand—I was just trying to get them to stop shooting at me.” Then I added, “Jack’s always thought of himself as kind of an Indiana Jones type wilderness bush pilot, so I think he might have been projecting a little there when he was telling you about me. I’m really more of a quiet, by-the-book type who doesn’t like looking for trouble.”

“Can I look at the inside of the plane?” Annie asked.

I grinned at her. “Sure, why not! I’ll even let you sit in the pilot’s seat.” I looked at her father. “If that’s okay with you, Mister Olsen.”

“Call me Jim,” he replied and gestured toward the plane with an open hand. “Lead on, Miss Mitchell.”

“Call me Kelly.”

“Okay.”

“And you can call me Charlotte,” Mrs. Olsen said. She was taller than I was, with long hair, blonde, like her daughter. “Or ‘Charlie,’ for short.”

I nodded and led the way into the plane, showing them the handholds, so that they could easily climb in through the rear passenger door. The amphibian only has the one rear door for people to get in and out of the aircraft. The designers had forgone adding forward doors to the fuselage in order to make the boat hull as strong as possible—to withstand the shock and stress of water landings.

I showed them the aircraft, starting at the rear, pointing out the passenger seat accommodations and the various cargo and equipment compartments built into the interior walls inside the aircraft. We moved forward into the cockpit and I motioned for Annie to place herself in the pilot’s seat. I slid into the copilot’s seat next to her. As she wiggled into the seat, Annie noticed the twin sets of foot pedals in front of each seat.

“How come two sets?” she asked. “Is it so if one of you guys gets taken out, the other can take over and fly the plane?”

“Yep, pretty much,” I said and nodded my head. “If you look at the instrument panel, you’ll see that pretty much everything is duplicated on each half of the panel. Same idea with the control wheels—which are called ‘yokes.”

“Yokes?” she looked at me.

“Yes. The whole assembly is called a yoke. That’s because the control wheels are not for turning right or left, like in a car. The control wheels control the ailerons, which cause the plane to bank left or right. The yoke also slides forward and back, too, to control the plane’s upward and downward movement, through the horizontal wing on the tail which is called an elevator.” Then I pointed to the pedals below her feet. “And those pedals are not for the clutch and gas.”

“They’re not?” She looked at me for a moment. Then, when I didn’t say anything further, she asked, “Okay, what are they used for?”
“When you turn the control wheels, the plane banks to go into a turn. But the rudder is controlled by the pedals. The pedals are actually attached to a horizontal rod and the pilot uses his or her feet to turn the whole pedal assembly while he or she turns the control wheel and that is what makes the plane go into a controlled turn.”

Annie nodded her head and frowned, looking straight ahead through the windshield in concentration. She gripped the pilot’s control tightly with both hands and turned the wheel slowly, in a tentative turn. I glanced down and smiled. Her toes were straining to touch the pedals and she was activating the tail rudder carefully in time with the movement of her hands. Without breaking her concentration, she said, “You look different than in your pictures.”

My smile was replaced by an expression of confusion. Pictures? “What do you mean?”

She turned her head to look at me and smiled. “On the internet. When Dad first talked to Mister Piper about a wilderness vacation and he suggested hiring you, I Googled you on the computer. Your hair looks different. Your face, too, somehow.”

My hand went to my hair and then I touched my cheek. “I’m wearing my hair a little longer now.”

“How’s that working out? I find it a bother—it keeps getting in my face.”

I chuckled. “The jury’s still out about that. But you’re right,” I said and gave my head a little shake, “any kind of breeze and my hair wants to either get in my eyes or go in my mouth!”

She laughed with me and then her expression became serious. “Your head injury. It was serious, wasn’t it?”

I nodded. “Yes, it was. I spent almost two months in the hospital before they let me go home. I’ve only been flying again for a couple of months.”

“But you’re okay now?”

I nodded my head emphatically. “As right as rain.”

“Good. I was worried.”

“Don’t be. Everything is just fine.” Then I slapped my hands against my thighs and said, “What do you say to getting out of the plane and I’ll show you and your parents the lake where you’ll be spending your vacation?”

We got up and headed out of the cockpit. I wasn’t really surprised to find that Jim and Charlie Olsen had taken the two passenger seats immediately aft of the cockpit and had been sitting there listening to us the whole time. I smiled and motioned for them to follow Annie and me as we headed toward the open rear door of the amphibian, saying, “If you two will just follow us, I’ll show you some maps and pictures of the lake that you’ll be camping at, and then we can go get some lunch and meet with the guide who will be running your camp, taking you on hikes, and generally looking after you.”

We went into my office and I got out my maps. I spread them out on a table while saying, “The lake where you’ll be staying is part of the state’s National Forest Park System. It’s a designated wilderness area. The public is allowed to camp in the National Forests, but they aren’t allowed to do anything which might cause permanent damage to the wilderness. This includes the felling of trees, the wanton killing of wildlife, and pollution of waterways or dumping of trash, garbage or sewage.” I paused and then added, “Generally, you are expected to leave your campsite as neat and clean as possible.”

“No problem, there,” Jim said quietly.

“Good.” I nodded my head. “Now, the man I hired to head-up your vacation is a guide who is well respected in the area among both hunters and recreational campers and hikers, as well as fishing enthusiasts.” I paused to brush my hair back, out of my eyes. “Since the lake is about ten miles from the nearest highway, Dean—the guide—will be equipping all of you with headset two-way radios, which will keep you in touch with a powerful transceiver at the main camp. That way, if there is any kind of emergency, you will be able to call Dean or the camp for help. He can also, through the radios, summon any of you back to camp if he needs to. I will also be on call—either here at Cooper Air, or through the Police Department—to provide emergency air service if anything happens where you would need to be evacuated from the campsite in the event of an accident or an emergency.”

Annie’s mom looked worried. “How dangerous is it out there?”

“Not that dangerous,” I replied. “But accidents do happen. Hatchets can miss while chopping firewood and kindling. There are bears out there.” I paused and looked at each of them. “One thing most people forget is that you should never leave snacks or food lying around at a campsite. It attracts animals—like bears. Racoons and skunks can also be attracted and can attack people who try to scare them away.” I nodded to Annie and added, “It might also be wise not to carry anything edible in your pockets, too.”

“How do we store our food supplies?” Jim asked. “I assume there’s a special way of doing things out in the woods?”

“Yes, there is,” I replied. “Dean will be providing bear-proof containers. They are all metal and are watertight and leak-proof, and the bears will not be able to smell whatever food is inside them.” I waved my hands and said, “Well, that about sums everything up. I’ll explain all the flight and aircraft loading instructions when we get ready to fly to the camp. That’ll be tomorrow morning, bright and early. Now, how about we all meet Dean at the restaurant and have lunch!”

I led the way to the restaurant, the Olsens following me in their car. Dean was waiting for us. The restaurant wasn’t crowded, so we were seated immediately. I introduced everyone to Dean.

Dean was a second-generation guide, having learned the business from his father and uncle. He was tall and lean, with rugged features that you would expect from someone who spent most of his time outdoors, in all kinds of weather. “The lake you will be staying at is beautiful. There’s good fishing—if you’re into that sort of thing—and the site I’ve chosen for the campsite is at the lake’s southern end. There’s a flat open area that requires minimal clearing to pitch your tents. We’ve used the site before, so there a stone-lined firepit for campfires and cooking meals.” He paused and then went on. “There won’t be any hunting of game this trip. From what Jack and Kelly have told me, you’re interested mainly in swimming, hiking, and exploring.”

The Olsens all nodded in agreement.

Dean smiled. “Good. It makes my job easier.” He pulled his chair forward and leaned forward a little. “Now the area of the National Forest where the lake’s located has not been “improved” in any way—other than keeping the campsite cleared of small trees and brush that grow up every spring. By that, I mean that there are no maintained or purpose-constructed hiking trails or rest areas. There are established deer paths that the deer maintain themselves. Those are fun to explore, but you have to keep in mind that—generally—the trails don’t really go anywhere. They just connect feeding areas that deer have sort mapped out and travel to regularly enough to wear-in the trail.”

He continued on, telling them of several beautiful spots he would take them to see, such as following the small river-stream which gave the lake its supply of fresh water. There was a small—like slightly more than a couple of feet—waterfall, where the stream poured down from a rocky ledge and made a little pool before continuing on to the lake. Stuff like that.

He wrapped up the talk with an explanation of the sanitation setup at the camp. That consisted of burying the garbage each night in a deep hole that he would dig every afternoon for that purpose. Restroom facilities consisted of another set of holes and a toilet seat built on a stand where human waste would be deposited and covered up and buried to become compost when they left to return to civilization.

That all done, we left. The Olsens went off to their motel to unpack a little and then do some sightseeing. Dean left to go and start ferrying his equipment over to the Cooper Air hangar, while I headed back to the hangar to wait for him and then load the amphibian with his gear, tents, and supplies.

Steve came by in the late afternoon and helped me lay out all the equipment and supplies Dean had brought over. We weighed each item—and I carefully noted each of them and their weight on my clipboard—and then placed each item on the hangar floor next to the amphibian. The amphibian could carry eight thousand pounds of cargo and people in flight. Dean’s equipment and food supplies didn’t come anywhere near that limit, but I liked to weigh everything and then figure out where each item should be stowed in the plane so that the aircraft would remain balanced. Some pilots just stowed stuff willy-nilly and just used their piloting skills to compensate if the plane ended up nose heavy or tail heavy, but I think it’s better to just get it right before you ever get the plane off the ground and into the air.

The next day dawn bright and sunny. The Olsens arrived and Dean and I loaded their suitcases into the back of the passenger area of the amphibian. There was enough room back there, because Steve and I had removed all of the passenger seats of the amphibian except for the four seats that Dean and the Olsens would be using when I took them to the lake.

The trip out was noneventful. The Olsens ooo’d and ahh’d over the sight of the forests below them and Annie squealed in excitement as we made our water landing and motored—"just like a boat!”—right up to the point where I beached the nose of the aircraft on the shore.
I helped unload the plane and then we all helped Dean as he laid out the camp and told us where to place the tents, all the food, and the camping equipment. After checking with Dean for the radio frequency he would be using and the time each afternoon when he would be checking in with me and updating me on how things were going at the camp, I climbed back into the amphibian. Dean and Jim pushed the plane free of the shoreline and I turned the tail rudder to full right and started the engines. Then I took off headed back to North Liberty.
The next two days were pretty uneventful. Dean checked in that afternoon and Annie got on the radio to tell me that they had gone exploring and she had found some beautiful crystals of rose-colored quartz. Dean had chipped them free of the granite shelf they’d found them on and she was going to keep them “forever.”

The second day they were going to have an evening bonfire and roast hotdogs and marshmallows.

The third day was the game changer when Dean failed to make his radio call and—for all intents and purposes—the camp went off the air.

End of Chapter One.

Author's Note: This is a sequel to my Non-TG Novel, Missing Without A Trace: A Kelly Mitchell Mystery by Charles Schiman.
This is also a non-tg novel. However, I am a male writing the novel first-person as a female. And I created Kelly as the female person I thought I could have become--my alter ego, if you will--had I been born a girl.

The first novel, Missing Without A Trace: A Kelly Mitchell Mystery, is available for purchase online as a Nook Book at the Barnes and Noble Nook Store.

By four o’clock I was pacing the floor of my office. Why hadn’t Dean made his radio call yet? Had there been an accident? Had something happened to his transceiver? Had something terrible happened? I chewed my lower lip between my teeth. I would give Dean until five o’clock. No longer.

I walked quickly into the hangar and started checking the amphibian. I checked all the control surfaces of the aircraft and then climbed inside and sat in the pilot seat and methodically checked all the controls, looking out through the side windows at the bottoms of the wings to make certain the ailerons, rudder, flaps, and tail elevator were all functioning properly.

At a quarter to five, I couldn’t wait any longer. I picked up my phone and called the North Liberty Police Department and asked for the sheriff, my life-long friend, Hank Wallace. After an interminable wait, which was probably only a couple of moments, he came on the line.

“Kelly,” he said. “How are you?”

“There’s some sort of trouble at Spirit Lake,” I said without small talk or preamble. “I’ve got a family of tourists spending a week out there with Dean as their guide. He’s missed his radio check.”

“You are about to go check on them, right?” Hank said. Before I could answer, he went on. “Spirit Lake’s pretty tame, as I remember. Isolated, but no rough terrain or danger areas. Maybe something just went wrong with his transceiver.”

“I still need to go check on them. They’re the first tourist charter of the season, Hank. As far as I know, they’re the only camp out there right now. It’s too early in the season.”

“Do you want me to fly out there with you?”

“Um—no,” I said, after a moment of hesitation. “There’s no need for that. It’s probably just a broken wire or a burnt transistor or diode or something. I just wanted to let you know that something was up.”

“Okay then,” Hank replied. “You be careful out there and let me know what you find when you get there.” He paused and then added, “And take a breath and calm down a little. You sound nervous as hell.”

“I’m just fine,” I snapped into the phone. The nerve of that man! “If something is really wrong, I’ll call you on the radio and have North Liberty tower patch me through to your police radio center.”

“Okay,” he replied. “Keep me informed.”

“I will,” I said and hung up the phone.

I grabbed my leather flight jacket from its hook since it would probably be a little chilly at the lake. Then I opened the hangar doors and wheeled the amphibian outside before closing the doors and locking up. I climbed inside the amphibian and went forward and settled into the pilot seat. I belted in and then switched on all the plane’s electrical systems. I started and warmed up the engines, then I radioed the tower, giving them my destination and asking for clearance to takeoff. By the time I reached the runway, they had given me clearance. I pushed the throttles forward, accelerated down the runway and surged into the air.

The flight to Spirit Lake was swift and fast. I didn’t buzz the camp or do anything dramatic. I just landed the amphibian as quick as I could and raced in to the shore, nose up, twin geysers of spray arching high along the sides of the aircraft as the deep “vee” of the bow of the boat-hull cut the surface of the water. I chopped the throttles about five yards out from the shore and felt the nose of the amphibian drop precipitously as the forward speed suddenly dropped as though brakes had been applied and the carrier wave of water of our wake overtook us and lifted the rear of the plane.

The amphibian leveled itself as our wake wave passed under us and then we grounded, nose cutting a groove in the soft sand of the lake’s shore. Before the plane had really stopped moving, I was slapping off switches and shutting down the engines and everything else with one hand while yanking on the release buckles of my seat harness with my other hand. I hurried aft and swung the rear door all the way open, letting it bang against its stops as it locked into position against the outer skin of the aircraft’s fuselage. I hopped down from the open door into the water, which was about knee-deep.

I turned and scanned the shoreline, then moved my focus to the open clearing and the camp itself. As I did so, I was hit with a small gust of wind which swept over me as though the camp itself was expelling a breath outward into the lake. A disquieting sense of déjà vu hit me and I shivered. The camp seemed empty. Oh no! This can’t be happening again! I swallowed, my throat dry.
Then I waded ashore and stopped as I stepped onto the beach. I forced myself to just stand still and look around. Just stand still and look at everything. Don’t start running around and messing everything up. I took a deep breath. Had anybody landed at the beach besides myself? I didn’t think so. I could still see a depression in the sand which was all that was left of the imprint made by the amphibian three days earlier, when I had beached her the first time, bringing Dean and the Olsens to the clearing.

I rubbed the palms of my damp hands against the fabric of my jeans and walked up the slight incline into the camp. Conduct the search systematically—don’t wander around checking out everything that catches your eye. I nodded to myself. Yes. That’s what I would do. I would conduct myself like Hank—the sheriff—would.

I angled my path toward the firepit. How recently had it been used? At noon for lunch? Earlier? Maybe as far back as the night before? I remembered that Dean had talked about an evening bonfire in the firepit on the second day check-in call. The day that Annie had told me that they had gone exploring and she’d found some rose-colored quartz crystals. Could that little exploration trip have anything to do with their disappearance? Had someone been lurking in the forest and spotted them? Followed them back to their camp and then done whatever it was which had been done to the family?

I knelt beside the firepit and examined it. Maybe. The charred pieces of wood were all pretty damp—either from morning dew, or from getting doused with a bucket of lake water to kill any leftover embers the evening before. I figured that if they’d had a fire at noon, for hotdogs or something, the burnt wood would be more wet, having gotten soaked only a few hours before they missed their afternoon check-in call.

Not good enough, Kelly. The timeframe is still ‘iffy.’ I made a face and stood up, trying to rub the damp carbon from touching the wood in the firepit from my hands. I looked at each of the tents. There were three of them, all the same size. These were large enough to hold four people comfortably—yes, I know that the manufacturers always say that their tents hold a couple more than they seem to in real life, but that’s probably because the tent makers think in terms of how many people can lie in their tent with maybe an inch or two of space between them. No way are normal people going to pack themselves into a tent like they were a bunch of sardines in a can.

So…one tent for the Olsens. I was pretty sure that they would want their daughter in the same tent as themselves, simply because of the fact that they weren’t used to being in the wilderness and, therefore, would be hyper-aware that there could be wild animals prowling around the tents during the night. Second tent would be Dean’s. It was big enough that he would probably keep his gear and most of her personal equipment in there with him. Third tent was the “cook” tent. Open sides with roll-down netting to keep out the insects. Not for cooking inside the tent, but for eating their food away from the mosquitoes and horseflies and things.

I knew that Dean kept a journal of his guide trips. Plus, there would be a radio log; where he would record check-in calls, transcribe the messages which were sent and received, and make observations of conditions around the area and excursions and trips with guests to sights outside the camp—either around the lake or in the nearby areas of the forest—which he might want to remember so he could repeat them on other hunting or fishing guide trips in the near future.

So, Dean’s tent would be my next stop. I walked over to it and unzipped the flap. Dean had rolled up his sleeping bag and closed-foam ripstop cordura-covered mattress that morning. Or he never unrolled it to go to sleep last night. Um, yes—it could be either one. So much for narrowing the timeline. The transceiver was inside the tent. It was sitting on a table made from using one of the ice chests that the food and beverages had been packed in. I smiled. That was pretty clever. Back in the early days of exploration, the old-time British explorers had been from the gentry class, and they’d thought nothing of bringing along furniture-type tables to hold their equipment. Even today, some campers thought that bring fold-up aluminum tables for their computers and things was standard procedure. I liked Dean’s practical sense more and more. It showed that he probably thought ‘outside the box’ on a number of different things.

I sat down cross-legged in front of the transceiver and studied both it and the top of the case it was sitting on carefully. Both the log book and Dean’s little journal were placed neatly beside the radio. I reached forward and switched on the transceiver. It was one of the newer ones, digital, with a little computer inside and frequency scanning capability. It only took a little while to boot up. I punch up the list of frequencies Dean had been using and then set the transceiver to the one that the two-way headsets used. I picked up the earpiece rig with the little boom mike that the transceiver was equipped with and cleared my throat.

“Testing, testing,” I said. “This is Kelly Mitchell at the Olsen camp on Spirit Lake calling. Anyone hearing my voice, could you please reply?”

My boom mike, which was voice activated, stopped the transmission and the transceiver went to receiving mode.

Nothing. Of course, the two-way headsets only had a range of a mile or two. Less, if the wearer was out of line-of-sight, down in a little valley or had an intervening ridge or hill in the way.

I repeated my call twice with no reply. I sighed. Why did I never get into easy situations? I always seemed to land in crappy head-scratcher situations with no light at the end of the tunnel. I switched the transceiver to the airport tower frequency.

“This is Kelly Mitchell from Cooper Air calling North Liberty Tower,” I said. I made my voice firm and matter-of-fact. Didn’t want the tower guys to think for a minute that there were any scaredy-cats out here. No siree! “I am calling from the Olsen Camp at Spirit Lake. I need you to patch me through to Sheriff Hank Wallace. We have a situation here.”

“Roger that, Kelly,” the tower replied. “Are you declaring an emergency?”

“Not yet,” I replied. “The camp missed its radio check-in earlier this afternoon and flew out here to check on them. I found the camp deserted, but no signs of foul play. I need to talk to Hank so he can get a team together and fly out to the camp and decided what to do next.” I paused. Then I added, “I’ll stay here and keep an eye on things until he arrives with re-enforcements.”

“We will relay the message,” the tower guy responded. “Unless, that is, you wanted to talk to him personally, Kelly.”

“Nope,” I replied. "That will work, just fine.” I signed off.

I switched the transceiver back to the two-way frequency. The I picked up the radio log and look at the last couple of entries. Nothing. Just last check-in call he made to me the day before. I put the radio log down and grabbed his journal. Hmm. A creative writer Dean was not. Simple sentences. Not much description. Heaven forbid he ever told you what he was feeling. I did, however, get the impression that Annie had made a real impression on him. I smiled to myself. Yes, the kid was a charmer—that was for sure. And if I wasn’t mistaken, the little girl had developed a huge little-girl crush on the rugged guide with the deep tan and ready smile. Then I came to the last bit. It was about Annie and Dean’s excursion the day before.

She had wanted to explore one of the deer trails which ran up hill toward the east of camp. Dean tersely noted that the trail ‘did not go anyplace’ and then noted that ‘at the summit’ they had found an outcropping of crystals.

Then there were the words, ‘Also an odd marker. Can’t tell how long it been here. First time I’ve seen it. Small cairn of rocks. Marked with some sort of metal beam. Aluminum or something else. No corrosion. Looks like it might have come from a plane or something.’

There was nothing else to say where, exactly, this “cairn” was located. I sort of half-turned and looked over my shoulder at the opening of the tent. East of the camp? Up near the summit? Summit of what? A hill or something?

I leaned forward and switched off the transceiver. Could this cairn have been the catalyst which started the events which led to Dean and the Olsen family’s disappearance? I got up and peeked out of the tent toward the east side of the camp. There were several hills in sight. I wondered which one Dean had been talking about. I tucked some of my hair which had fallen forward back behind my ear. I really needed to get my hair cut short again. This was a nuisance.

I glanced toward my plane. I suddenly felt very vulnerable, alone here in the camp. Someone could be watching me even now, from the edges of the forest. I didn’t like just standing around. When I didn’t have something to do, I thought too much. I glanced at the plane again. I really shouldn’t leave the camp. Hank would be here soon and he would be really pissed if I wasn't here to meet him. But, I mean, how many deer trails could there be east of the camp? Not that many, I would wager.

Hank would have to get a team together. Get their equipment and hand it out. Call Jack Piper and arrange transport to the camp. Jack would have to get his floatplane ready and Hank and his team would have to drive out to the airport. Then they would have to fly out here.
I headed for the plane. Inside it was my little GPS device. That would keep me from getting lost. I waded out and climbed into my plane. I grabbed my rucksack from a compartment near the cockpit and put the handheld GPS in the pack. Then I unlocked the compartment I’d built to store the lever-action 30-30 I’d picked which nobody but Jack knew I owned. I figured it might come in handy. After all, I had no idea what I might run into up there, south or east of the camp. I pulled out a box of ammunition from the compartment and loaded the rifle. I closed the box and added it to the GPS inside the rucksack. Then I closed and locked the storage compartment for the rifle.

I climbed out of the plane, being careful to hold the rifle up high, so that it wouldn’t get wet, and headed for shore. I stopped in the camp just long enough to grab some bottled water from the cook tent, which I placed inside the rucksack with the ammo and handheld GPS.
I went back to Dean’s tent, where I opened his little journal to the place where he mentioned the crystals and cairn and bent the notebook so that it stayed open to that page. For good measure, I put the transceiver headset on to of the journal, placing it on top of the open pages.

Hank would be able to figure it out.

End of Chapter Two

Author's Note: This is a sequel to my Non-TG Novel, Missing Without A Trace: A Kelly Mitchell Mystery by Charles Schiman.
This is also a non-tg novel. However, I am a male writing the novel first-person as a female. And I created Kelly as the female person I thought I could have become--my alter ego, if you will--had I been born a girl.

The first novel, Missing Without A Trace: A Kelly Mitchell Mystery, is available for purchase online as a Nook Book at the Barnes and Noble Nook Store.

I got the handheld GPS out of my rucksack as I reached the edge of the forest on the east side of the camp. I turned it on and waited as it booted up and acquired the signal of three overhead satellites. Then I locked in the location of the camp as my starting point. Then I put the device back in the rucksack and took a moment to examine the forest before me.

It didn’t look so bad. The undergrowth immediately surrounding the edge of the tree line went from being four-to-ten inches of grass and weeds, to a little over knee deep. I figured that it would thin out considerably after I got inside the forest where the drop in the sunlight reaching the ground would have limited the growth rate of the various plants and small trees which struggled to grow in the shadows of their huge brothers.

Before stepping into the forest, I also took a moment to spray myself with insect repellant. And, sure enough, as soon as I entered the confines of the forest, clouds of mosquitoes and gnats and things rose from their resting places on the ground and formed a dancing cloud around me, inches from my body, face, and hair. I kept my mouth shut and used my free hand to wave away anything which tried to fly up my nose as I inhaled as I walked deeper into the forest.

There had been several deer paths which opened onto the east side of the camp. I chose one of them at random and, luckily, I think I guessed right, because the path headed uphill, directly toward the east. It jogged left and right, following the easiest path up the hill. This part of the National Forest was dotted with rocks and boulders left from when the glaciers of the Ice Age had melted. As the pioneers had discovered—and then later farmers and more recent landowners—the boulders were mostly hidden below ground. They were like icebergs. Sometimes, only a small portion of the rock poked above the ground. What might look like a small, two-foot long half-buried rock, becomes a massive underground boulder after you dig a ten-foot-wide hole around it and only uncovered eight inches of the stone’s depth.

I reached the top of the first hill and had to decide whether or not I wanted to continue following the deer path. I was tempted to used the GPS to cut in a straight line across the forest to the start of the next hill. But I had the niggling suspicion that Annie and Dean might have come across something that I might notice but they might not have grasped its significance. What if the marker Dean had written about wasn’t the only one. Maybe there were others which he had missed and had only come upon the last one, the one which marked the cairn, by accident?

So I stayed on the deer path and, even, I also almost missed the next clue. It was kind of well hidden, slightly off the path in a little cleared space. I would have missed it, too, because I had chosen that moment to refresh my insect repellant which I was walking and wasn’t really paying attention to where I was going. I had just closed my eyes, to spray around my face and head, when the toe of my shoe caught against something sticking out of the ground and tripped me. I fell forward, sprawling flat on my face, losing my grip on my rifle and knocking the wind out of me.

As soon as I could breathe again, I rolled into a sitting position and scrambled to get hold of my rifle again. Dam!Dam!Dam! I frantically wiped the dirt and crud off the rifle, fearful that I had damaged it somehow. Why did I always have to be so clumsy! It looked okay. I was lucky I had been smart enough not to added a bullet to the firing chamber when I was loading it. Otherwise it might have gone off when it hit the ground—had the safety jarred loose when it had hit the ground. I scowled at my pant legs as I realized that, because they were still pretty wet from wading in the lake, all the dirt and wet mulchy stuff from the forest floor that had gotten on the was going to work its way into the wet fabric. Crap.

I turned my attention to what had precipitated my fall. On the edge of the path was a half-circle of rectangular stones. Bricks? I leaned forward and brushed the dirt away. No. Not bricks. They were made of clay which had been hardened with fire or something. The ground inside the circle seemed empty, so I grabbed a stick and started scraping. A corroded piece of angle iron appeared about a half an inch below the surface. It formed a kind of pointer, I decided. The bottom of the rod touched the bricks which connected with the edge of the deer trail. The top of the rod ended several inches from the opposite edge of the circle, pointing slightly to the north. Both ends of the pointer were staked into place with what looked like rods which had been bent into a ‘u’ shaped and hammered into the ground. I took out the GPS and bookmarked the site of the ‘pointer.’ Then, taking a heading on the pointer, I began walking a straight line toward the next hill.

Every once in a while, I would stop and try to brush some of the dirt and stuff from my jeans and pantlegs. I was not very successful. I was able to get most of the mulchy stuff off me, but there was no way I was going to my pants back to their pristine, pre-tumble in the muck, look. Near the summit of the hill, I began to see granite poking through the ground cover, in the form of angled shelves of rock. This was probably near the spot where Annie got her quartz crystals. I reached the summit and looked around. At first, nothing leapt out at me. Then I noticed something odd over on the side of the hill farthest away from me. I moved a little and something glinted in the sunlight.

Getting a better grip on my rifle, I hurried toward it. Whoa! It was more impressive than anything I was expecting. Most guides and hikers think of cairns as stacked piles of flat rocks, maybe two or three feet high at the most. Like a little sign post or something. A playful attention-getter. This was obviously built for more than just getting your attention.

For one thing, the base of the cairn was built upon a perfect circle of carefully placed flat stones. I glanced back over my shoulder. Whomever had constructed this had, quite probably, pried away flat sections from some of the granite shelves which were protruding out of the hill. Then they had dragged them to where they wanted to build the cairn. Each flat section had been placed into the ground and levelled carefully. The cairn itself was built like a little tower, but it looked solid and not hollow. No windows, nor was there any sign that they’d constructed stairs or things to aid the workers doing the construction.

It was, maybe, six or seven feet high. Four feet in diameter. Kind of thick and squat. The sides angled in at a shallow angle and it the top was not ‘a piece of metal’ maybe from some aircraft or machine. It was a ten-inch thick wing spar. In spite of having its thickest end anchored into the top of the cairn, the spar had the aerodynamic curve necessary to generate the lift needed for an aircraft. Each long edge of the spar had an ‘I’ beam shape and a series of lightening holes had been milled into the spar in decreasing sizes up the spar’s length as it tapered to a narrow point.

Dean’s comment that it was ‘odd’ didn’t say the half of it. It was a memorial to a crash. Some time in the past, an airplane or a floatplane, or some sort of an airfoil flying vehicle, had crashed somewhere near this memorial. Perhaps there had been fatalities and the survivors—or their surviving relatives—had built this in memory of the event. Or maybe they had built it hoping someone would see it from the air and come looking for them. I really didn’t know.

I looked up at the sun and was surprise at how low it was in the sky. More time had passed than I’d thought. I got out the GPS and bookmarked the location of the cairn. Hank was going to want to see this.

Then I clicked to the menu and set the GPS to guide me back to the camp.

It took me less than a half hour to make it back to the camp. I spotted Jack Piper’s Cessna floatplane sitting on the shore next to my boat-hull amphibian and I could see Hank and three of his men photographing and checking things out. They hadn’t spotted me yet, so I walked into the camp to where Hank was standing next to Dean’s open tent.

“So-help-me-God,” Hank was saying to one of the troopers, “I’m going to shake some sense into her if it’s the last thing I—"

“Hey, Hank, I’m back,” I said, interrupting him. “Wait ‘til I tell you what I found!”

He whirled to face me. “Don’t you ever do something so stupid as that again! Didn’t you even think to take a radio along with you so we would know that you were all right?”

“I didn’t have a radio I could take with me,” I protested indignantly. “I only have the one that the amphibian’s equipped with.”

“What about the handhelds that Dean equipped the campers with?” he growled, unappeased. I wasn’t going to get off easily on this one.

“There wasn’t one,” I said. Then I added, “I looked,” actually I hadn’t, but you understand, “but Dean obviously only had the base transceiver and four headsets. When he left with the Olsens—either with them or to find them—he must have taken the fourth headset for himself and left the one for the base transceiver behind. That one’s just a headset mike, it can’t work away from the transceiver.”

I blinked my eyes and gave him my innocent look. “Did you read Dean’s journal?” I asked hopefully. “I left it open on the table next to the transceiver.”

“I did,” Hank replied. “A lot of good it did me. He doesn’t even give any directions.”

“East of the camp,” I said. “I found it. You’ve got to come see it.”

“What about the missing campers?” Jack suddenly demanded from beside me. I jumped a little, startled. Where had he come from? “I swear, you’re like some dumb squirrel who’s spotted a new shiny object sometimes!”

“I am not!” I snapped. I looked back at Hank. “Annie might have taken her parents out to the cairn. We should look for them out there.”

“What about Dean?” Jack snapped back at me, not giving Hank a chance to respond to my suggestion. “He took the remaining headset with him. That means he thought something bad happened. Otherwise, he would have called you on the transceiver and given you a head’s up before going out to check on ‘em.”

“Whatever!” I said, scowling at Jack. I looked back at Hank. “What did you guys find? Any blood? Any sign of foul play or that they were forcibly abducted?”

“No,” Hank replied. He eyed me for a moment. Then he decided to let everything slide. “Dean’s rifle is missing. He probably took it with him when he left the camp.”

“So,” I said, “if they’re not here hiding from us in the camp, then they’re out there in the forest somewhere. Therefore—”

“Oh god, here comes the logic bomb again,” Jack said.

“Therefore,” I repeated. “It is the only logical thing for us to do. Go up to the cairn and search the area around it for clues. Annie and Dean were there the day before. It’s only logical that Annie would take her parents back there to show them what she and Dean had discovered.”

Hank looked at Jack. Then he looked around at the three other troopers.

“Okay,” he said. “Listen up. We’ve got, maybe, two hours of daylight left.” He looked at Jack. “Jack, we need some high power portable lights. Both for photographs at the cairn thing and for when we get caught in the dark coming back to the camp.”

“I have a bunch of ‘em, Hank. How about one for each of us?”

“Sounds good,” Hank said. “Go get them.” He looked at one of the older troopers who was standing nearby, holding a digital camera. A macro lense for the camera dangled from a strap halfway down the front of his uniform shirt. “Bill, you can wrap up photographing the inside of the Olsens’ tent. It pretty much looks as though whatever happened to them and Drew took place someplace other than at the camp.” Bill nodded his head. Then Hank looked at me. “Kelly, I’m letting you come along with us, seeing as how you are the one who found where the cairn is.”

I smiled. “Thank you, Hank.”

“Leave the rifle in your plane. It’s not coming with us.”

“But—”

“Go put it in your plane. Right now. We don’t want to have you shooting somebody by accident.”

“I’ve never shot anybody by accident!” I protested.

“What about yourself,” Jack asked, his voice quick.

I whirled and frowned at him. “That was an…”

He laughed as my voice dropped off and my face got red.

“Yeah, an accident,” Hank said sourly. “I remember it well. Get moving and lock that gun up. We’re wasting daylight.”

Keeping my irritation at Hank and Jack in check, I nodded my head and headed toward the amphibian. Once inside the aircraft, I found a rag and carefully wiped down my rifle. Then I unloaded the gun, replacing the bullets in their box. I locked both into their compartment and sighed to myself. Jack was right when he’d said I’d let myself get distracted by the sight of the cairn. Confronted by a mystery—who had built it, where had the aircraft spar come from, had there be some sort of crash, what was the incident the cairn was supposed to remind people about, why didn’t any of us in North Liberty know about it—those thoughts had led me, once again, to fail and screw up.

I refastened the top of my rucksack and left the plane. Jack, Hank, and the rest of the troopers were waiting for me. The three troopers were all wearing bulky backpacks; full, I assumed, of evidence bags, sealed empty vials for collecting liquid samples, and stuff like that. I handed Hank the GPS, which I had turned on before I left the plane so that it was all up-and-running when I reached the group.

I pointed to the first bookmarked location. “That’s where I found a small marker of brick-like stones. There was a metal bar anchored into the ground, pointing northward, off the deer trail.” I paused, glancing toward the trees. “I think Annie and Drew missed seeing it. Or they didn’t know what it meant. Anyway, I think they continued following the deer trail. It probably led them eventually to the cairn. By following the pointer’s direction, I cut straight to the hill, taking a shorter route. I think the deer trail that Annie and Drew followed brought them to the cairn on the opposite side of the hill than the way that I went.”

Hank nodded. “Then that’s what we’ll do. We’ll check out this first spot—the stone circle. There might be something else to find there. Let’s go.”

Examination of the brick circle was quick. Hank was right, in that there wasn’t much more to learn from the marker. It was pretty simple. There were no tracks around it to be found—except my own, which I had left there when I’d found it. Jack made an interesting observation about the marker. If it was indeed put there to tell people the direction of the cairn, that meant that whoever put it there knew the cairn was, if not secret, then at least the marker maker knew that the cairn monument was unknown to the general public.

Bill, the older trooper commented quietly, “Yes, it could be either one of the two reasons. But what bothers me is what timeframe we’re talking about here. When did the cairn thing come about? Ten, twenty, thirty, forty years ago? It couldn’t be earlier than the nineteen-thirties, because most of the aircraft flying back then were of wood and fabric construction. Metal-bodied aircraft with aluminum spars and metal support structures were unknown until just before the Second World War.”

Jack cocked his head to one side, thinking. I was, too. This area was pretty uninhabited back then. Not pioneer times, but a lot of the forests were unmapped and unknown. Could a plane back then have crashed around here and the survivors had become like castaways from a south seas shipwreck—but instead of being castaways on a deserted sea island, they’d been stuck inside a vast and unmapped forest primeval? Maybe the monument had started out as a signal tower. Maybe, instead of an aircraft spar, there had been a signal fire, trying to alert the outside world of their plight?

Hank picked two of the troopers and told them to follow the deer around until they reached the cairn. They were to keep watch along the way for any signs that the Olsens had been waylaid somewhere along the trail and abducted. That done, the rest of us set off, up the hill, taking the shortcut to the cairn.

At we reached the summit, Hank stopped walking and halted the group.

“We unpack our gear, here,” he said. “Then we examine everything, step-by-step. We are looking for evidence. Footprints. Damaged vegetation. Evidence that anybody’s been here. Blood evidence. If the Olsens and their guide were attacked up here, somebody might’ve dropped something in the struggle. We’re looking for evidence that they might’ve been injured or killed. If they were killed,” and here, I swallowed a little convulsively, thinking about Annie, “then there will be fairly large places where we’ll find blood. If they were just slightly injured and taken away from here, then, not so much.” He looked at each member of our group individually. “But they have to have left something behind.” He turned to Bill. “Bill, I just want you to use the camera to document the resting point of each piece of evidence. We don’t need photos of the whole crime scene—if that’s with this is. Understand?”

Bill nodded. “Yes, Hank.”

“Then let’s get to it. Remember: Don’t get too far out ahead of everybody else. I don’t want anybody accidentally contaminating the area with their own footprints. Sing out if any of you see a foot or boot print in the dirt. That boot or foot print will give us clues as to who we’re looking for. If we’re lucky, those footprints will also give us a rough idea of how many perpetrators we’re looking to deal with.”
In less that five minutes, one of the guys yelled, “Over here! I’ve got boot prints!”

“They could be mine,” I said in a low voice to Hank.

“I don’t think so,” he replied. “You ain’t wearing boots.” He raised his voice. “I need two men over there to help him make some plaster casts of the prints! Move carefully! There are probably more foot prints close-by!”

“Sneaker prints over here!” Jack yelled. “Not Kelly’s! These are kid-size!”

My hand went to my mouth. Annie!

“Is there any blood?” I called out to him.

Jack’s head came around and he looked at me for a moment. Then he said, “Nope. It’s looks like she was running away from the cairn, toward the woods.” He paused and then straightened up. “I’ve got some big boot prints following the sneaker prints into the forest.” He pointed to a point where the tree line started back up, part way down the hill. “That way!”

“Stay where you are!” Hank yelled. “Everybody! Keep searching the ground! I want to know where the parents were standing—where Dean was standing—where the perpetrators came out, onto the scene! We need to know the complete situation that unfolded up here before we go running off on a hasty pursuit.”

End of Chapter Three

Author's Note: This is a sequel to my Non-TG Novel, Missing Without A Trace: A Kelly Mitchell Mystery by Charles Schiman.
This is also a non-tg novel. However, I am a male writing the novel first-person as a female. And I created Kelly as the female person I thought I could have become--my alter ego, if you will--had I been born a girl.

The first novel, Missing Without A Trace: A Kelly Mitchell Mystery, is available for purchase online as a Nook Book at the Barnes and Noble Nook Store.

Processing the area around the cairn seemed to take forever. I kept getting more and more wound up as every time it seemed as if we could get moving, someone would find something else to check out and look at. The only sign that Hank was also getting tense was that he had shifted his stance so that his legs were more farther apart and he had folded his arms across his chest and was glowering a bit.

I will have to admit that we did learn a lot more about the situation than if we had just gone charging into the forest, following the boot prints of Annie and her pursuers. We determined that a group of seven had confronted the Olsens. They’d come at them from three sides, with the cairn blocking the out the fourth side as a possible escape route for the family. It appeared that there had been some sort of a struggle and that someone—possibly Jim Olsen, I thought—getting some cuts and leaving some small smears of blood against one of the sides of the cairn. Someone had either hit him with their fists, I thought, or tackled him; throwing his back against the stone side of the squat tower, where he’d scraped his head against the rough surface of the rocks.

One odd thing that we learned was that all of the assailant boot prints had a distinct identifying feature: the lugged soles of their boots each had a deep “V” cut across the bottom of the heels. One of the troopers commented that this would make them easier to track and Jack had replied that it also made the assailant’s job of tracking the family easier because they would know immediately whether or not any tracks they came across were left by one of the family or whether it was an old foot print which had been made long before by someone on their own side. Since Jack was the most experienced tracker, he was the one who examined the ground on either side of where Annie’s tracks went into the forest.

“Well,” he said after a moment. “One thing I can say for that little girl, is that she can think where others would panic.” He gestured at the point she had plowed through the brush. “She didn’t waste time heading for one of the deer paths. And she’s fast. When I met and talked to the family last year, that kid could run like a deer!” He moved a couple of feet to the side of where Annie had entered the brush. “Here’s where her first pursuer went in after her.” He studied the ground. “Two men, by the size of the boots. The other five were probably busy getting Dean and the parents under control.”

Hank agreed with him, saying, “And it looks as though the five took the Dean and Jim and Charlotte Olsen west.” He gestured toward Jack and me. “While your two followed Annie, south.”

“So, what do we do?” I asked. “Pick one group to follow? Or split up?”

“You and Jack, follow Annie’s trail and try to catch up with her. We’ll follow the larger group and see if we can catch up with them.”

“I’m unarmed,” I pointed out. “Those two who are chasing Annie are probably armed to the teeth.”

“Jack’s got his rifle,” Hank replied. “And you each have one of our police radios. You’ll be okay. Just be careful and don’t go charging into something without looking first.”

Trooper Bill grinned at me. ‘I can loan you my combat knife,” he said, “if you promise not to cut yourself.”

“That’s not funny, Bill,” I said. Then, thinking about it, I said, “Okay. I promise.” I stuck my hand out and raised an eyebrow. “Hand it over.”

Bill looked over at Hank for guidance. Hank shrugged his shoulders as if to say, ‘It’s up to you.’ Bill hesitated a moment longer and then unclipped his black double-edged knife and sheath from his service belt and handed it to me.

It looked especially lethal. I took it and clipped it to the waistband of my jeans. “Thanks,” I said quietly. “I’ll be careful with it.”

“It’s double-edged,” Bill replied. “If you have to use it, Kelly, slash—don’t stab with it. Stabbing slows you down.”

“Um—” I swallowed My throat suddenly felt dry. “Thanks for the tip.”

“Don’t mention it.”

Hank rubbed his chin, as though he was thinking about saying something. Then he just nodded at me and then pointed at Jack. “Jack, watch yourself.” He looked around at the other trooper. “That goes for all of you. Move quickly, but as quietly as you can. Right now, these guys don’t know that we’re after ‘em. Let’s keep it that way—at least, until it’s too late for them to do anything to stop us.”

I turned and followed Jack into the waist-high scrub and weedy grass which formed a kind of barrier between open space around the cairn and the edge of the rest of the forest surrounding us. Annie and her two pursuers had punched a sort of opening through the tangle of high weeds. The weeds really thinned out once we were inside the forest itself. The shade created by the foliage overhead created a “dead zone” of relative darkness inside the forest proper. The forest floor was a thick carpet of moist dead leaves. We determined that Annie had run downhill in a fairly straight line, zig-zagging left and right to avoid protruding outcropping of shelf granite. I could also see the two trails of her pursuers. One had entered at almost the same place as she had and I figured this one must have been the person she’d broken away from when she escaped. The other trail stated almost twenty feet away from the point where Annie and the first man had broken through the underbrush and into the relatively clear slope of the forest floor. Annie must have heard him as she ran, because her trail abruptly angled to the left, away from the side from which the second man was coming down the hill.

I swallowed, my throat a little dry. All this had happened hours ago. For all I knew, Annie’s fate had already been decided. I looked over at Jack, whose mouth was set in a grim line. He was thinking the same thing. I looked ahead and there was a small creek running along a little gully which was formed by the bottom of the hill we were descending and the base of the next hill. The small creek was following the downward slope between both of the hills. It was partially choked by deadfalls—old trees and branches which had fallen and then been moved down to the creek by erosion and thawing snow and water during the spring. We reached the creek and Jack paused and studied the banks upstream and downstream from where we were standing.

“Which way do you think she went?” I asked.

“Downstream, probably,” Jack replied. He looked at me. “She’s smart. She knew the second man would cut her off if she turned upstream.” He looked across toward the upward slope of the hill on the other side of the creek. “And running in a straight line would have meant running uphill. That’ll wear you out fast and you can run faster going down a slope than running up one. So—if I was her, I would move along the bank and head downstream as fast as I could.”

“Sounds good,” I replied.

“I’ll take the lead,” Jack said. “That way we won’t move too fast and miss her tracks. She could see a path or an animal trail or something and head down that at any point along here.”

I nodded my head and we set off, along the bank of the creek, downstream. It was pretty easy going, at first. The grass went all the way to the edge of the creek. There wasn’t much of a drop-off to the water. The bed of the creek was composed of stone, mostly broken granite, washed down the hillside by runoff during the spring thaw and from rainstorms during the rest of the year. A half mile downstream, the going became rough as the creek circled round the bottom of the hill and butted up against two more hills. There was a growing pile of fallen trees piled up here, almost as though something had happened up on the hillsides a long time before.

Jack had hopped down onto a moss-covered trunk which was half-submerged in the creek-bed, and was reaching up, extending his hand to help me climb down when I heard a small voice whisper right next to me, “Kelly?!”

I jerked my head around and stared for a moment. Annie’s face was staring back at me from an open space between one old deadfall and the tree trunk I was climbing down to. I almost lost my balance fell. Jack took a half-step closer to me and clapped his hand against my hip to steady me. I looked at him, wide-eyed.

“What is it?” he asked.

I pointed toward the gap next to me. “Annie,” I whispered. “She’s here! Next to me!” I looked back at Annie as Jack scrambled to climb back up to where I was. “Jack Piper’s climbing back up, Annie. We are part of the team that’s out looking for you guys.”

“Oh—that was Mister Piper?” Annie exclaimed. “I thought he was one of them!” Even in her surprise and fear, her voice remained low. Almost a whisper. “They went by here a while ago. They didn’t realize I was hiding in here. I was afraid that they’d come back!”

“How deep is that space you are hiding in?” I asked. It looked pretty small in there. This log was probably forming part of the creek’s bank.

“I’m not sure,” she replied. “It seems kind of deep. And the floor’s funny. It’s got these evenly spaced ridges—they are like ribs that curve up toward the ceiling. It’s so dark in here that I can’t tell how far back the cavern goes.”

Jack stood beside me. “I’ve got a portable flashlight,” he said. “Step out of the way, Annie, and I’ll light up your little cavern.”

Jack switched on the big electric torch flashlight—which really wasn’t all that huge, I reminded myself. It was about twice the size of a regular police light, the increase in size coming from both its battery, which hung, box-like, beneath the long carry handle which doubled as part of the reflector assembly, and the wide lense which covered the reflector. He leaned into the opening and aimed the light upward, so that the beam bounced off the cavern’s interior roof and then defused, filling the dark area behind Annie more evenly than if he had just flashed the beam around the walls to see what was in there.

I gasped in surprise. The inside of the cave was not composed of rocks and the trunks and branches of fallen trees. It was metal. Bare weathered aluminum. I felt the fingers of both my hands touch my lips as I covered my mouth.

“It’s part of an aircraft’s fuselage,” I said softly.

Jack set the portable flashlight inside the cavern and then unclipped his radio from his belt. He pressed the transmit button and said, “Hank? This is Jack.”

There was a pause while, I assumed, Hank got his radio out to reply. Then Hank’s voice came through, saying, “I hear you, Jack. What’s going on?”

“We’ve found her,” Jack said quietly. “She’s okay.”

“Great!” Hank said, relief evident in his voice.

“We found something else, too,” Jack said.

“What, exactly?”

“Part of a wrecked aircraft fuselage. Buried next to a creek.” He paused. “It’s been here a long time, Hank. Maybe decades, from the amount ground that’s accumulated over it and the moss and decay of the deadfalls that have fallen over it.”

“Mark the location on your GPS,” Hank instructed. “We’ll check the wreckage out at some later date.” There was a pause. “We are about a mile northwest of the cairn. We are certain where the attackers are taking the victims. The maps we’ve got show nothing but forest north of here. Terrain’s getting rougher.” There was a pause and then Hank said, “According to Bill, if you head north-northwest, you are only about three miles from us. Head this way and we’ll meet up. I’ll call if our guys change their direction.”

“Roger that,” Jack said and returned the radio to his belt. He smiled at Annie. “You’re a smart and brave little girl,” he said quietly. “I would never have thought to hide in there to get away from those guys. How did you know this was big enough for you to hide in?”

“I didn’t,” Annie replied. She glanced at me. “And I wasn’t very brave—or smart. I was scared to death and I only found this place by accident.”

“Being brave doesn’t mean not being scared,” I said. I reached in and squeezed her shoulder to reassure her. “It’s continuing to move forward instead of letting your fear freeze you in place.” I paused and then gave her a small smile. “Let’s get you out of there. Okay?”

She nodded and Jack and I each grabbed one of her hands and helped her slide out through the narrow opening.

“You know,” Jack commented as he helped Annie get to her feet on the creek bank’s narrow edge, “I don’t think that opening’s big enough for me—or Kelly—to have wiggled through.”

Annie laughed. “I am pretty small for my age.”

“That you are!” Jack replied. He leaned down and looked inside the cavern again. “That section of fuselage is not very big,” he commented. "The inside space only runs back a couple of feet. No windows in the expose metal, that I can see.”

I leaned forward and looked inside, too. “There’s not enough there to tell what kind of an aircraft it was, either.”

Jack straightened up and looked at Annie. “Did you see your two pursuers after you slid inside the cave?”

She nodded, gulping. “Yes, I did. But I ducked down. I was so sure that they had seen me fall, right here, and that they would check inside the opening. But they just kept on going. They never even noticed the opening.”

Jack rubbed his chin. “That’s a good thing.” He studied the slope downstream. “Now…if they keep following the creek, they’ll be heading southeast. Away from us.” He looked at me. “I think we’ve spent enough time standing here. Let’s make tracks and head north.”

We took a few minutes to let Annie wash some of the mud and muck from her hands, arms and pant legs, then we headed uphill and made our way back to the cairn. Jack figured that it would be easier to take a north-northwest bearing from the open area around the cairn, plus it would lower our chances of running into Annie’s two pursuers if we did not retrace our path along the creek.
When we got to the cairn, Jack contacted Hank on the radio. Hank informed us that his group had tracked the abductors another mile but had not made contact with them. Hank was picking a spot for them to make camp for the night and gave me the coordinates of the location of their intended camp. I entered it into my little handheld GPS. Then, using those coordinates as the destination point, set up the GPS to ‘home’ in the that location. Thus, we would be kept constantly on track instead of me trying to keep us on a directional bearing as we moved.

As I was doing this, I had glanced upward into the sky and my gaze rested for a moment on the aluminum wing spar which rose from the top of the cairn. Briefly, I wondered if the five or six-foot section of broken aircraft fuselage which had formed part of the side and ceiling of Annie’s hiding spot was part of the same aircraft. There really wasn’t any way to tell. There hadn’t been any visible marking on the interior piece of fuselage. Any identifying numbers would have probably been painted on the aircraft’s exterior—not inside. If it was part of the same aircraft as the cairn’s wing spar, I wondered what had happened to the rest of the plane.

Had the piece which had ended up buried in the bank of the creek sheared off during the crash? Did that mean that there were countless other little pieces of the aircraft’s body buried around the creek’s banks? If that was so, it meant that the plane had lost its wings first, as it broke apart, making the fuselage and its occupants a wingless missile. The wings, having aerodynamic surfaces, would act like sails and come to earth some distance from the main body of the wreckage. The fuselage must have broken up as it plowed through the trees on the last leg of its final descent.

I sighed. If that had been the case, it would have been a wonder if anyone inside the plane had survived.

End of Chapter FOUR.