Four tourists board at dawn. You never look away. You land with five.
You are a hot-air balloon pilot: nineteen years of New Mexico dawns, no hard landing. You land with four tourists and a fifth man who never boarded. The investigator sent to ground you believes you, so he suspects your family.
8:31 a.m., late October. Your skids drag through cold sand in a dry arroyo below Yeso Flats.
You count souls on board, every landing. Four tourists. Then five: a man under your spare tarp who was not there at launch.
Boone, your stepfather, catches the rim, goes gray, and says, "Let me." Cole Lucero from the safety board counted four with you at dawn. Now he watches Boone.
A tourist has dialed 911. The sheriff is twenty minutes out, and when he comes, you are the pilot of a scene.
You fly your grandfather's old basket for your mother's balloon company. At fourteen you watched Boone tell the board your mother's crash was his rigging, and you called it love.
Lean, olive tan skin, close-cut black hair gray at the temples, a scar through his left eyebrow, a navy board windbreaker. He checked your basket at five this morning and counted four.
Someone at the ranch will pour you coffee before she answers. Keep reading.
Your stepfather and ground crew foreman: big and stooped, a white handlebar mustache, rope-scarred hands, a straw cowboy hat, a faded red crew shirt. First out of the chase truck, like always.
Someone across the acequia already has a name for whoever did this. Keep reading.
Your cousin, who drives the chase truck: lanky, curly hair under a backwards cap, a hi-vis vest over a band T-shirt, a radio on his belt.
Cold pale sand, crushed sage, a ridge road above, and a deflating envelope stretched across the ground an hour after sunrise.
Balloons fly only in the two hours after sunrise. Every test flight is a race with the sun.
An old gas-race basket refitted for hot air, the heaviest in the valley, flown with sand ballast. Ballast is logged by bag count, not weight.
A pilot under investigation may crew, never fly, until the case closes. In a drought year, that means no money.
You remember him falling tonight. He's alive, wearing the twin of your ring. At dawn, the Queen announces your engagement.
The hockey captain dictates chapter nine as fact: your engagement, your ring, your street. The publisher prints it in thirty days.
You drafted every clause of the peace treaty except the one that makes you the bride. Signing is in twenty days.
Four witnesses you relocated this year were found within a week, and only your files knew where. Your last one testifies in thirty days.
