Gruber's jaw hung open in mid-chew, the wad of gum gleaming pinkly between his teeth, pale eyes staring from the badge to Liam and back again.

"That tarp, Mr. Gruber?" Liam said.

Gruber flushed, nodded once, and went off, shifting the gum from one cheek to the other, the cheek muscles working like pistons again.

The two halves of the small red and white plane's left-side door were folded open, the top portion fastened to the wing with a quick-release latch, the bottom half left to hang. The cockpit of the plane was, to put it kindly, utilitarian. The seats were little more than plastic stretched over a metal frame, the interior was without the usual fabric covering, and the dash was held together in places with duct tape. She'd seen better days.

Wy saw his look. "She flies," she said.

Liam let that pass. "Where's the ignition?"

Liam had spent his life in a concentrated effort to learn as little about flying as he possibly could, which was a neat trick given his profession and where he practiced it. There were roads in Alaska: one between Homer and Anchorage, two between Anchorage and Fairbanks with a spur to Valdez, and one between Fairbanks and Outside. You needed to go somewhere there wasn't a road, you flew. Troopers needed to go everywhere, so troopers flew, some in their own planes, some that they contracted. Liam contracted.

Wy had been his pilot, and 78 Zulu had been her plane, back in the days when there was a lot less duct tape and a lot more spit and polish about her. It was because of 78 Zulu that Liam could recognize a Piper Super Cub when he saw one. It was the only plane he could recognize, outside of a 747, and that only because of the bump on its nose.

They stood shoulder to shoulder, staring at the inside of the little plane. He looked at Wy from the corner of his eye. To anyone else, to anyone who didn't know her as well as he did, as intimately as he had, she would have looked calm, controlled, perhaps a little pale, understandable in the circumstances. But he knew what to look for, always had, and he relished the pulse thudding rapidly at the base of her throat, at the way her gaze avoided his.