Evidence of Mercy by Terri Blackstock

jumpy?”
    Jake frowned. “What are you getting at?”
    â€œI just want to know how she acted, Mr. Malone. Did she seem to behave normally?”
    â€œHow do I know if she was normal? It was the first time I’d met her. But yeah, I’d say she was pretty normal. She wasn’t crazy about selling her plane. That was obvious.”
    â€œDid she suggest you test fly it alone? Or balk at going up with you?”
    Jake thought for a moment. “No. She mentioned something about the crosswind, but I really don’t think she would have let me go up alone.”
    â€œDid she mention her financial condition?”
    Jake stared incredulously at him. “You don’t think Lynda had anything to do with this.”
    Malone shifted in his seat. “We’ve been on the site since the crash yesterday,” Malone said. “And we’ve found evidence that a hose was partially cut so the hydraulic pressure would pull it completely apart as soon as the landing gear was lowered.”
    Jake sat silently for a moment, trying to make sense of that. “It could have torn-”
    â€œThere’s more. We’ve gone over all of the airport’s security videos, and on the night before the crash, it caught someone tampering with that plane.”
    â€œWho?”
    â€œWe can’t tell exactly,” Malone said. “All we were able to make out was a penlight around the wheel well and the vague shape of someone under the plane. We can’t rule out that the plane’s owner might have set up the crash to collect the insurance.”
    Jake was getting angry. “Let me get this straight,” he said. “You think she would sabotage her own plane and stage her own crash just to get the money when she could just as easily have sold it to me for full market value?”
    â€œMaybe she didn’t plan to fly with you,” Malone said. “Or she didn’t anticipate such a dangerous landing. After all, she did survive.”
    Jake gaped at him for a moment, unable to believe what he was hearing. “That is the most ludicrous thing I’ve ever heard. Lynda Barrett had nothing to do with that crash. She was as surprised as I was when the landing gear didn’t go down. And she was scared to death. She could easily have died in that crash. What good would the insurance money have done her then?”
    â€œAll we know is that somebody did it.”
    â€œThen stop trying to pin this on her and find out who really did it and why.” He struggled to sit up, but dropped down, defeated. “And when you do,” he said through his teeth, “you tell me who they are. If it’s the last thing I do, I’ll make sure they pay.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
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    I don’t believe this.” Lynda sat in a vinyl chair that hadn’t been made for comfort, watching the parking lot below through her hospital room window as the insurance investigator cut between the cars. “He thought I had something to do with the crash.”
    â€œDon’t sweat it,” Mike said from where he sat by Lynda’s bed. “Between Jake and me, we convinced him you didn’t. But the question is, who did?”
    She turned back to Mike, the light from outside casting a shadow on one side of her face. “Why would any body want to sabotage my plane, Mike? Wouldn’t they know that the next time I flew it—?”
    Mike only looked helplessly at her.
    â€œThat’s it, isn’t it? Someone was trying to kill me.”
    â€œMaybe. Maybe not. It could have been a random act.”
    â€œWere any of the other planes tampered with?”
    â€œNo. We’ve inspected all of them and checked back over the videotapes for anything out of the ordinary. It looks like it was just your plane.”
    She leaned back in the chair and looked out the window again. “How could I have made such an enemy and not known it?”
    â€œI can’t believe you