Wild Storm by Richard Castle Read Free Book Online Page A

just—”
    She stopped. She realized she was repeating herself. She had slipped into past tense, too.
    She had been relying on this police chief too much. A police chief who had clearly given up. And that was fine for him.
    She would not give up. Not as long as her Bill was out there and in danger.
     

CHAPTER 6
    GLEN ROCK, Pennsylvania
    D
    errick Storm had done disguises. He had been a Venetian gondolier. He had been a reporter for a soy-related trade publication. He had been a doctor, a lawyer, a barista, a math teacher, a race car driver, a Hollywood screenwriter, a ditchdigger, and so many more they blurred together.
    Every time he assumed a new identity, he did as much research as possible so he could credibly carry off his cover. Sometimes, he studied his “role” for a week or more, to the point where he felt like he understood the person he was trying to become almost as well as someone who had actually lived that life.
    This time he had no such luxury. As he made the ninety-minute drive from Langley up to the rural Pennsylvania town where Flight 76 had come to a tragic rest, he took a crash course in the Federal Aviation Administration, courtesy of “Professor” Kevin Bryan.
    But, really, all Storm had to convince the world that he was George Faytok from the FAA’s Office of Accident Investigation and Prevention was a flimsy white badge and his own chutzpah.
    His orders from Jones were to figure out what made the plane go down and figure it out fast. He was driving in a white Chevrolet with an FAA seal that one of the nerds had gotten by hacking into an FAA public relations guy’s computer, downloading it, and turning it into a decal that another one of Jones’s agents had hastily slapped on the side. On the back was a bumper sticker that instructed other motorists to call a 1-800 number if they saw the vehicle being driven unsafely.
    Like that was even possible, given how underpowered the engine was compared to Storm’s usual standards. Storm hated Chevys. He was a Ford man for a reason.
    It was dusk, heading on full darkness, by the time Storm reached Interstate 83’s exit 4. He turned off the highway on Forrest Avenue, which wasn’t actually forested at all. He passed through a small town, then some typical modern housing subdivisions, and then made a turn on Kratz Road. In the way that this part of Pennsylvania did, it quickly transitioned from suburbia to farmland. He followed the winding road through a patchwork of woods and fields until he reached a police checkpoint.
    This, Storm knew, was to keep out the riffraff—reporters, especially. Not that the fallen cargo plane had been as interesting to the media. The other crash sites of what were collectively being called the “Pennsylvania Three” were already becoming magnets for grieving family members; and, hence, for cameras. This site had no such hysteria. It was the quietest of the Pennsylvania Three.
    Storm rolled down his window and presented his George Faytok badge. The local cop manning the roadblock had no idea that the FAA actually had little to no business at a crash investigation site being run by the National Transportation Safety Board. They were two completely separate federal agencies. The NTSB wasn’t even part of the Department of Transportation.
    Luckily for Storm, such administrative distinctions were lost on a young patrolman who was just trying to get to the end of his shift. The cop waved Storm through and told him to park the car along the side of Kratz Road.
    Storm followed the instructions and was soon walking toward the crash site, which rose above the road on a small hill. He could already see the temporary light stanchions that had been erected over the field so investigators could continue working through the night. Their sodium halide glow cut through the advancing darkness.
    Underneath, a small horde of humanity, moving in no discernible pattern, scurried about. Storm could already make out some of the larger pieces