"What?" She peered around him and reached between him and the doorjamb to slap his hand as it stretched toward the dash. "Don't touch anything."

Again his skin burned where it had grazed hers. Their bodies had been forced very close together in the open doorway of the little plane. He took a deep breath and said, pointing from a safe distance, "What's that wire?"

"What wire?"

"That wire coming from out of the bottom of the dash."

"What?" All self-consciousness gone, she elbowed him aside and bent down, breast against the forward seat, nose inches from the bottom of the dash. Her braid slid forward to fall between the seat and the right-side door, and he resisted an impulse to pull it back. "What the hell?" She reached out, and it was his turn to reach over her and slap her hand aside, leaning against her back as he did so. She jumped. So did he. His voice was gruff. "What is it? What's wrong?"

There was a brief silence, just long enough for him to imagine everything she wasn't saying. "The p-lead's off."

"The p-lead?" He wasn't thinking all that clearly, and it took him a moment to follow. "Oh, yeah. The wire connected to the ignition, I mean the mag switch." He did look at her then, eyes all cop. "You mean it's not connected to the switch?" he said sharply.

She nodded dumbly.

"So the switch was…"

"It was on," she said. She jerked her chin toward the front of the plane. "It was on when Bob thought it was off. When he pulled the prop through."

There was a stir in back of them, and a bluff voice calling out, "What the hell's going on here? Get the hell outta the way, Gruber, let me see." Heavy feet slapped to a halt against the pavement, followed by a long, drawn-out, "Jeeeesus H. Key-riiiiiist."

Liam turned. Gary Gruber had returned with a blue plastic tarp. He was holding up one end for the perusal of an Alaska state trooper in full-dress blue and gold glory, a square red face beneath the badge pinned to the center of the black fur cap, earflaps tied neatly together over the crown, bushy black eyebrows over deep-set dark eyes. He wore sergeant's stripes.