John Gilstrap - Scott Free

Scott Free

John Gilstrap

*

DAY One.

Chapter 1

The Cessna danced all over the sky.

The pilot shouted to Scott over the engine noise, "Everything's gonna be just fine. The storm's just a little heavier than I'd anticipated."

A little heavier. As in, the walls of the Grand Canyon are a little steep.

The pilot tried to put the best face on it. "Forget it. In ninety minutes, our ears'll be bleeding from the music."

Scott shot him a look. "You told me ninety minutes a half hour ago."

The pilot tossed a tense shrug. "Like I said, the storm's worse than I thought."

Metallica was appearing at the Delta Center in Salt Lake City, and the pilot-a ski patroller named Cody Jamieson-had somehow scared up two tickets from a couple of college kids who'd let the blizzard intimidate them. Nobody in their right minds would risk getting stranded on the back roads of the Wasatch in weather like this.

For Cody, however, road conditions were irrelevant. He had his very own airplane-a twenty-five-year-old high-wing job that he'd picked up for a song and maintained himself in a little corner of the hangar at SkyTop's private airstrip. The idea was to fly out of the storm, then beat its arrival in Salt Lake City. If they ended up stranded after the concert, Cody knew some people at BYU who'd put them both up in a heartbeat.

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

The aircraft lurched violently, the worst bump yet, knocking Cody's flying charts onto Scott's lap. "Air currents," he explained before Scott could ask.

This whole thing was beginning to feel stupid. They'd met less than a week ago while Cody was writing Scott up for skiing out of control on Widow Maker. It turned out that the ticket was little more than a warning, but Scott had gone off like a bomb anyway. He was the only skier in control, for crying out loud. It was a matter of principle. He'd thrown down his poles and his hat, kicked off his skis, and was ready to fight it out. "Why don't you write up those assholes for doing two miles an hour on a black diamond slope?"

Cody ignored the challenge and asked him what he played.

"What?"

The ski patroller nodded toward Scott's head. "The hair. I figure you've got to be part of a band."

Scott's bushy crop of blue hair had earned him the nickname Smurf from his soccer teammates. "Guitar," he said, caught off guard by the randomness of it. "Lead guitar." Just like that, the acrimony evaporated.

At twenty-one, Cody was five years Scott's senior, and also a guitarist-heavy metal all the way. A first-year member of the patrol, the guy was anxious to find somebody to jam with, and Scott put him to shame. As payment for impromptu lessons, Cody introduced his new buddy to the gang, giving him the chance to slug down illegal beers and participate in the ski patrollers' late night snowmobile races. Best of all, it gave Scott a reason to spend as much time as possible away from his mom. They dubbed him their mascot, and thanks to the nod from Cody, they treated him like a full-fledged member of the crowd-almost more a member than Cody, who, as a rookie, was the brunt of unrelenting teasing and practical jokes.

So, when the Metallica tickets became available, Cody chose Scott.

But this snowstorm crap was more than he'd bargained for. Rodeo cowboys enjoyed smoother rides. "Do you have any idea what you're doing up here?" Scott shouted.

The question drew a nervous glance. "I know enough to find the airport and set us down."

"Then how come we're still in the air?"

"I think the winds blew us a little off course," Cody admitted.

Something in his tone sparked a note of terror. "Does that mean you don't know where we are?"

"It means I know reasonably well where I am. If I could just get a quick peek at the ground, it would help a lot."

The reality hit Scott like a slap. The only way to catch a glimpse of the ground was to get closer to it, and here in the mountains, that was a good way to get snatched out of the sky by a rock. "Why don't you call on the radio? They'll look at your spot on the radar screen and tell you where you are." Scott had seen enough movies to know how this sort of thing worked.

Cody Jamieson seemed not to hear the question. When Scott repeated it, he snapped, "I don't have a transponder, okay? They can't see me on their screen." "Well, call in a Mayday, then."

Again, Cody seemed not to hear.

"Cody?"

"The radio doesn't work."

"What? "

Cody didn't bother to repeat himself.

Scott's head swam with the utter stupidity of it all. He was in the company of a moron, but he swallowed his anger. Never piss off the only guy who knows how to fly the plane. "Can you at least turn up the heat?" he asked. "I'm freezing."

This time, he didn't even expect an answer. He pulled the headphones from his Discman over his knit cap, hit Play, and cranked up the volume. That done, he pulled his seat belt tighter, donned his gloves, and tried not to think about the approaching wave of air sickness.

With his eyes closed, he tried to become a part of the music, to forget about the danger. The Stones CD was one he'd stolen from his dad's collection-not his first choice for facing death, but he wasn't about to go fishing for something new. As he tried to concentrate on the power and complexity of Keith Richards's guitar licks, Scott did his best to ignore the slamming beat of his heart.

Cody Jamieson's terrified shriek cut through the music like a razor through flesh. Scott snapped his eyes open and started yelling, too, even before he saw the obstacle that loomed up out of the darkness ahead of them.

By the time he realized it was a tree, they'd already hit it.

Sherry Carrigan O'Toole sat in the far corner of the White Peaks Lounge. She thought of it as the power spot-the one from which she could take in the entire room with a single glance. The place was packed, despite the $9.00 price tag on the drinks, and the atmosphere positively vibrated with news of the blizzard. Sherry gleaned from her targeted eavesdropping that as good as the slopes had been these past couple of days, another foot or two of fresh powder would make this the vacation of a lifetime. Add the presence of the president of the United States, who had already proclaimed SkyTop Village to be his family's longtime favorite vacation spot, and the tongue-waggers could barely contain their enthusiasm.

Whoop-de-freaking-doo.

In the forty-five minutes that Sherry had been waiting for Larry to show up, she'd been hit on twice, once by a ski patroller who looked like the Marlboro Man, and the second time by a guy in his sixties who must have had a lot of money, because guys that ugly always had a lot of money. On a different day, she might have been complimented by the attention, but not today. This whole trip had been a disaster from the very start. Brandon had Scotty so thoroughly brainwashed that she'd never had a chance to break through to the boy.

In fact, at the close of their fifth day in skiers' paradise (and Sherry's personal hell), they were further apart than when they'd arrived. How was that for gratitude? Here, she'd negotiated him a week off from school, footed the bill for him to spend a week in the place he'd always dreamed of going, and he copped an attitude because she didn't want to ski. Like that was some big surprise? She'd never liked to ski.

For the better part of a week, then, they'd barely seen each other, their interaction limited mostly to breakfasts on the heels of his late-night returns, his breath smelling of beer. Night before last, she could have sworn that he purposely breathed on her to get a rise. Nice try. She'd be damned if she was going to play the queen-bitch role that ex-hubby Brandon had assigned to her. If Scotty wanted to experiment with underage drinking, then she couldn't think of a better, safer place for him to test his wings.