Read Emily Locke 01 - Final Approach for Free Online

Vince.”
    I glanced at his guitar case. “Caught with my hand in the cookie jar.”
    “My guitar never sounded so good. Was beginning to think something was wrong with it.”
    I forced my eyes away from his chest, finding irony that such efforts usually go the other way around.
    He started to speak again, but Rick brought someone over. It was Billy, the rigger, and I brightened at the prospect of being in the air again soon. I excused myself from Vince, and followed Billy to the office. When we passed through the door, I tried to sneak a final look over my shoulder, but I got caught. Vince tipped his cowboy hat at me and grinned, and then the door snapped closed between us, leaving his image sharply focused in my mind.

Chapter Six
    Billy was in no hurry. I followed him into the rigger’s loft, a glorified walk-in closet that opened off the drop zone office. When I handed him my rig, he put it beside five others and sat down to enjoy a pinch of Skoal. “Sometime this afternoon,” is all he would promise. Even his voice was a slow drawl. His easy smile told me any attempt to hurry him would only make him take longer.
    I felt stymied about what to do next. Without gear, I’d have to go back to the hotel or invent a reason to keep hanging around the drop zone. Going back to the hotel wouldn’t help find Casey, but making up an excuse to stay seemed dangerous, considering my ineptitude at lying.
    A third option was to rent student gear. It wouldn’t be pretty—student rigs are like your dad’s station wagon—but at least it would keep me at the drop zone for the rest of the day. I paid Rick his thirty-dollar per jump rental fee and he handed me a 170 square-foot Manta in return. I’d be falling from the sky under enough fabric to cover the old Astrodome. I heaved the giant rig over my shoulder and toted it out of the office like a pack mule.
    I couldn’t find Marie, but managed to line up a jump with her friends. Their names were Linda and Beth. Linda seemed too young and exuberant to be mixed up with anything dark and sinister like kidnapping. Her attentive eyes and infectious laugh gave the impression she was a people-pleaser. She smoothed a wayward ringlet into her ponytail and told us she’d find our fourth. The Cessna wouldn’t go anywhere without a full load of four. Otherwise, Rick and Marie wouldn’t make money.
    While we waited, Beth lit a cigarette, then tossed her lighter onto the picnic table where it landed next to an open issue of
Blue Skies Magazine
. The magazine’s pages lifted in the slight breeze, and I was about to pick it up and read the latest news when Linda returned with Scud shuffling behind her.
    “Sweetheart!” I said.
    Beth took a drag off her Newport and turned her head to exhale.
    Scud’s legs were still in his jumpsuit, which was now only partially zipped. He’d taken his arms out of the suit and tied its sleeves around his waist like a jacket. He wore a faded No Fear shirt underneath.
    “Wouldn’t miss this,” he said, ogling the three of us in turn.
    “We’re on a twenty minute call,” Linda said. “Let’s dirt dive.”
    We practiced the dive on the ground, rehearsing maneuvers we’d try in the air. Each time I took someone’s arm or leg gripper, I had the uneasy feeling I might be hanging on to somebody involved with the abduction. And each time one of them joked or smiled, I switched to feeling like a nitwit for suspecting decent people. How did the pros tell good guys from bad?
    I spotted two men I didn’t recognize near the Coke machine. They watched us line up at the Cessna. One was a heavyset red-haired man who wore a Harley-Davidson bandana and held a camera helmet under an arm. The other popped the lid on a can of Mountain Dew. His face was wide at the top and narrow near his chin, and his too-thin mustache reminded me of rodent whiskers. Both were in their late twenties.
    I smiled at them. The cameraman nodded back. Rat Man didn’t acknowledge me.
    I