The Nameless Luna novel · Chapter 11 of 32

Chapter 11: Nine Seconds

"I didn't," Gussie said.

Her voice went up high and thin.

"I didn't, I wouldn't, Warrick, I didn't."

"I know," he said.

"You don't know. I don't know. I don't know how it got there."

She held the wrench out to him.

He didn't take it.

He took her instead, wrench and all, and held her against his coat while she shook.

I crawled under the belly with her flashlight.

The safety wire on the drain had been snipped clean, both ends.

The drain itself had been backed off just far enough to hold on the ground and walk open in the air.

Somebody who knew that Otter very well had done it.

I flew Gussie home in the back of the Cub.

She kept her eyes shut the whole way.

Then I flew back to the bar with two cans of fuel and new safety wire, twice, while Warrick kept the fire going.

We had the Otter home by dark.

The pack met us on the strip again.

Nobody cheered this time.

On Thursday morning the whole pack crowded into the bunkhouse.

The camp families had come in on snowmachines. The trapper sat by the stove with his hat on his knee.

The cook had made enough pancakes for a hundred people, and nobody was eating them.

Gussie sat at the end of the long table with her phone in front of her.

"Monday night," Warrick said. "Go through it."

"I went to bed at ten-thirty. I woke up at six with my feet freezing." She swallowed.

"There was gravel in my socks. I thought I'd sleepwalked to the outhouse."

"Your phone."

She turned it around so everyone could see.

One call. Monday, eleven fifty-two at night.

A Juneau number. Nine seconds.

"I don't remember answering it," she said. "I don't remember anything."

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