The Nameless Luna novel · Chapter 9 of 32

Chapter 9: Night Medevac

"Not that one," I said.

"What do you mean?"

"That logbook went missing last November. It was on my desk in the hangar office, and then it wasn't."

Warrick went very still again.

"I thought I'd left it in a plane," I said.

"I tore the office apart. I started a new one and filled in my hours from memory."

"Who goes in that office?"

"My father. The mechanics. Me."

"Then it's still in Anchorage."

"Or it's in a stove in Juneau."

"If it was in a stove, nobody would have needed to steal it in the first place."

He had a point.

"I'll go down Wednesday, when the front's through," I said. "I know every drawer in that building."

Gussie had gone back under the Cub's tail.

Her boots stuck out. They weren't moving.

"Gus," Warrick said.

"I'm fine. I'm working."

She wasn't working. Her wrench was lying on the floor beside her hand.

I sat down next to her boots and stayed there until she slid out, blotchy-faced.

"Wednesday," she said. "I'll check every bolt on the Otter before you go. Twice."

The front didn't go through.

It sat on top of us all Monday and into Tuesday, low and gray, spitting snow.

On Tuesday night the base radio crackled at nine-fifteen.

The camp at the far end of the valley, four hours by snowmachine, nothing by road.

A man's voice, scared and trying not to be.

His little girl was four. She'd been hot all day. Now she was shaking, and her eyes had rolled up, and she wouldn't wake properly.

The cook was already pulling on her boots before he finished.

"Fever fit," she said. "Fairbanks. Tonight."

Every face in the bunkhouse turned to me.

I looked out the window at the snow coming sideways through the floodlight.

Ceiling maybe eight hundred feet. Visibility two miles, then one.

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