Part 1

My name is Greg, and before the world knew me as inmate number 0982, I was a Captain. I didn’t just fly planes; I commanded them. I was a Check and Training Captain for a major US airline, the guy responsible for ensuring other pilots were competent enough to carry hundreds of souls through the sky. I was methodical, precise, and disciplined. My life was a checklist, and I never missed a step. I had a home in the suburbs, a family, and a membership at an exclusive shooting club. I had everything a man works his whole life to build.

But it only took one evening in the San Juan National Forest to burn it all to ash.

It was March 2020. The world was on the brink of the COVID lockdowns, and panic was starting to ripple through the grocery stores and news stations. I needed to get away from the noise. I packed my Jeep Gladiator, hooked up my trailer, and headed for the high country in Colorado. I wanted silence. I wanted the crisp mountain air and the solitude of the pines. I drove deep into the wilderness, navigating treacherous switchbacks and mud-slicked trails until I reached a spot known as Buck’s Landing. It was remote, rugged, and usually empty.

When I arrived, however, I wasn’t alone.

A white Ford F-150 was already parked there, claiming the prime spot near the river. I remember feeling a twinge of irritation—that selfish, territorial feeling you get when you think you’ve found a secret paradise only to find someone else living in it. The campers were an older couple. The man, let’s call him Rusty, was in his 70s, but he moved with the sturdy, stiff confidence of a retired logger or trucker. He was loud, taking up space with a sprawling campsite setup. With him was a woman, Clara. She seemed quieter, almost nervous. I didn’t know it then, but they were high school sweethearts rekindling a romance that had been buried under decades of marriage to other people. This was their secret getaway.

I set up my camp a distance away, trying to be respectful, trying to carve out my own slice of peace. I just wanted to hunt deer and sit by the fire. But the peace never came.

The next day, the buzzing started. A high-pitched whine that cut through the silence of the forest. I looked up and saw a drone hovering above me. It was Rusty’s toy. He was standing by his truck, staring at a screen, flying that camera right over my head, invading my privacy in the one place on earth I went to escape surveillance. I waved it off, annoyed. It dipped and zoomed away, only to come back later.

It felt like a violation. I walked over to confront him. “Can you keep that thing away from my camp?” I asked. Rusty didn’t take kindly to being told what to do. He was an old-school American tough guy, the kind who thought the public lands belonged to him personally. We exchanged words. It wasn’t violent yet, just tense. The kind of masculine posturing that happens when two stubborn men cross paths in the middle of nowhere.

To drown him out, I retreated to my Jeep. I opened the doors and blasted music—loud, obnoxious tracks designed to irritate. It was petty, I admit that. It was childish. But I was angry. I was a Captain, used to authority, and here was this old man buzzing me like a gnat.

As the sun began to dip behind the peaks, casting long, bruised shadows across the valley, the music stopped. The silence that followed was heavy. I was packing up my gear, cleaning my rifle, when I heard the crunch of boots on gravel.

I looked up. Rusty was coming toward me. And he wasn’t empty-handed.

In the dim light, I saw the silhouette of a shotgun.

My heart hammered against my ribs—a sensation I hadn’t felt in the cockpit of a Boeing 737 during even the worst turbulence. This was different. This was primal. He was shouting something, his face twisted in anger, fed up with the music, fed up with my presence.

“Get out of here!” he yelled, raising the barrel.

I didn’t think. Training kicked in, but not pilot training. Survival instinct. I dove behind the bullbar of his truck as a blast echoed through the canyon. BOOM. The sound was deafening, shattering the tranquility of the mountains. I heard a woman scream—Clara.

“Rusty, stop it!” she shrieked.

I peered over the hood. He was fumbling with the gun, maybe trying to reload or clear a jam. I saw my chance. I lunged.

I wasn’t a young man, but adrenaline is a powerful drug. I grabbed the barrel of the shotgun. We wrestled, two desperate men locked in a dance of death against the grill of a Ford truck. He was strong for his age, fueled by rage. I was fueled by terror. I twisted the gun, trying to wrench it from his grip.

And then, it happened. A second blast.

It wasn’t aimed at me. In the struggle, the angle shifted. The shot punched through the side mirror of the truck and struck Clara.

She dropped instantly. No sound. Just a crumple of fabric and limbs against the dirt.

The world seemed to freeze. Rusty stared at her, then at me, his eyes wide with a horror that eclipsed his anger. He let go of the gun. He ran toward her, falling to his knees, wailing. I stood there, panting, the hot shotgun in my hands. I should have de-escalated. I should have tossed the weapon away.

But then Rusty turned back to me. His grief had mutated instantly into a murderous resolve. He grabbed a knife from his belt—a hunting blade, sharp enough to dress a deer. He charged.

“You k*lled her!” he screamed.

I dropped the gun and braced myself. We collided again. We hit the ground, rolling in the dirt, dust choking my throat. I felt the blade nick my arm, felt his hot breath on my face. I grabbed his wrist, pushing the knife back, straining with every ounce of strength I had left. We rolled once, twice.

Then, a sudden jerk. A wet thud.

Rusty went limp. His weight settled heavy on top of me.

I pushed him off, scrambling backward in the dirt, gasping for air. I looked down. The knife was buried in his chest. He had fallen on his own blade.

I sat there in the fading light, the silence of the forest rushing back in to fill the void left by the gunshots. Two bodies lay before me. A secret affair ended in blood.

I stood up, my knees shaking. I looked at the carnage. I looked at my hands. I was a Captain. I had a pension. I had a reputation. I had a life.

If I called the police now, who would believe me? A pilot with a campsite full of guns? Two dead senior citizens? I would lose my license. I would lose my freedom. I would lose everything.

Panic, cold and calculating, began to set in. I wasn’t going to call 911. I was going to make this disappear.

Part 2

The Checklist of the Damned

The silence that followed the violence was heavier than any silence I had ever known. It wasn’t the peaceful quiet of the San Juan National Forest anymore; it was a vacuum. A void where two lives used to be.

I stood over Rusty and Clara. My chest was heaving, my heart hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs, like a bird trapped in a cage. Thump. Thump. Thump.

For a moment, I was just Greg, a man in the woods, terrified and shaking. But then, something else took over. A lifetime of training kicked in. As a Captain, I had spent thousands of hours in simulators practicing for catastrophe. Engine fires, hydraulic failures, rapid decompression. The golden rule of aviation is: Aviate, Navigate, Communicate.

But here, on the ground, the rule changed. It became: Contain. Conceal. Survive.

My mind snapped into a cold, terrifying clarity. I dissociated. I stepped outside of myself. I wasn’t the man who had just wrestled a knife away from a jealous husband. I was the Pilot in Command, and I had a situation to manage.

Step 1: Secure the Scene.

I looked at their campsite. It was a sprawling mess of domestic comfort—the large canvas tent, the folding chairs, the cooler, the table. It looked like a crime scene because it was one.

I needed to make it disappear.

I moved with robotic precision. I grabbed their camp chairs and threw them onto the fire ring. I collapsed their table. I dragged everything into a pile. The tent was the biggest problem. It was a high-quality, heavy-duty shelter. I collapsed it, the nylon rustling loudly in the night air—a sound that made me flinch.

I went to my Jeep and grabbed a jerry can of gasoline. I didn’t hesitate. I doused the pile. The smell of raw fuel overpowered the scent of pine and blood. I struck a match and tossed it.

Whoosh.

The fire roared to life, an angry orange beast eating the evidence. The heat was intense, singing the hair on my arms. I watched the nylon melt and drip like black wax. I watched the metal frames twist in the inferno. I needed it to look like nothing more than a campfire that had burned too hot.

Step 2: The Cargo.

I couldn’t leave them there. If a Ranger came by, or another camper, it was over. I had a 7×4 box trailer attached to my Jeep. It was meant for firewood and gear. Now, it would be a hearse.

I approached Rusty first. Rigor mortis hadn’t set in yet; he was dead weight. I grabbed him under the arms. It was a struggle. I dragged him through the dirt, his boots leaving twin furrows in the earth that I would have to smooth over later. I heaved him into the trailer.

Then Clara. I tried not to look at her face. I tried not to think about the fact that ten minutes ago, she was likely thinking about what to make for dinner. I wrapped them both in a heavy blue tarp, tucking the edges in tight. I piled my own camping gear on top of them—firewood, a chainsaw, boxes. I hid them under the mundane detritus of a camping trip.

The Drive into the Void

I cleaned the ground. I scuffed the dirt where the blood had pooled, mixing it with ash and soil until it looked like ordinary wear and tear. I picked up the spent shotgun shells. I checked for my footprints.

I got into the Jeep. My hands were shaking so bad I had to grip the steering wheel with white-knuckle force to steady them. I turned the key. The engine roared to life—a sound that felt like a scream in the quiet night.

I had to get away. Far away.

I drove out of Buck’s Landing, my headlights cutting through the pitch black. The shadows of the trees seemed to reach out for the truck, like accusations. I had a plan: find a deep ravine, somewhere off the grid, and disappear the bodies.

But the Colorado high country is unforgiving.

I turned onto a logging road, looking for a drop-off. I drove for miles, the adrenaline slowly turning into a cold, sick dread. Then, I saw it. A metal gate. A sign reflecting in my high beams: ROAD CLOSED – SEASONAL CLOSURE.

Panic. Pure, unadulterated panic.

I slammed on the brakes. I couldn’t go forward. I had to turn around. But the track was narrow, barely wide enough for the Jeep, let alone the trailer. I had to jackknife the rig, reversing into the brush. My tires spun in the mud. The engine whined.

As I swung the headlights around, they swept across a small clearing. There was another camper there. A dark van parked in the shadows.

My heart stopped. Did they see me? Did they see the trailer? Did they see the tarp?

I didn’t wait to find out. I gunned it. I drove recklessly, the trailer bouncing and rattling behind me, the cargo thumping with every pothole.

Union Spur

I drove for what felt like hours. Finally, I found a turnoff that looked abandoned. Union Spur Track. It was an old, overgrown logging trail, choked with weeds and debris. It was perfect. It was desolate.

I backed the trailer into the dense brush.

Unloading them was harder than loading them. The reality of what I was doing crashed down on me. I was dumping human beings into the weeds like garbage. I dragged them into a thicket of blackberries and fallen logs. I covered them with branches, leaves, and bark. I tried to make them part of the forest floor.

I stood there for a moment in the dark, listening to the wind howl through the trees. It sounded like a mournful cry. I whispered into the darkness, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

But apologies don’t reverse bullets.

The Return to the Facade

I drove home to the suburbs of Denver. I arrived as the sun was bleeding over the horizon, painting the sky a bruised purple. I pulled into my driveway, the house looking idyllic and peaceful.

I stripped in the garage. My clothes smelled of smoke, sweat, and death. I put them in a black trash bag. I would burn them later. I scrubbed my skin in the shower until it was raw, trying to wash the feeling of the night off me.

When my wife, Mel, woke up, I was in the kitchen, brewing coffee. “You’re back early,” she said, squinting in the morning light. “Yeah,” I lied, my voice steady, practiced. “Crowded up there. Couldn’t get any peace. Just a bunch of loud music and partying.”

Lies came easily now. They had to.

The Long Wait

Life went on. That was the most surreal part. I went to work. I flew planes. I sat in the cockpit at 35,000 feet, looking down at the rugged expanse of the Rockies, knowing that somewhere down there, two bodies were rotting under a pile of sticks because of me.

Then, the news broke.

“Police Searching for Missing Campers in San Juan National Forest.”

I watched the report from my living room couch, a cold knot forming in my stomach. They flashed photos of Rusty and Clara on the screen. They looked so alive. So normal.

The news said they had vanished. Their campsite was found burned. The police suspected foul play.

I became obsessed. I bought a police scanner. I refreshed the local news pages every hour. I lurked on forums where internet sleuths dissected the case. They were talking about a “white truck” seen in the area.

My Jeep was beige. But under the moonlight, or on a grainy camera… beige looks white.

The Second Act: Destruction

Months passed. COVID-19 locked the world down. The snows came and covered the high country. It bought me time. But when the snow melted in late 2020, I knew I had to go back.

I couldn’t leave them there. Bones last forever. DNA lasts forever.

In November, I told Mel I needed another solo trip. “Just to clear my head,” I said. She kissed me goodbye, having no idea she was sending her husband back to the scene of a double homicide.

I drove back to Union Spur. The dread was a physical weight, pressing down on my chest. When I found the spot, the bodies were… changed. The wild animals had been there. Nature is brutal.

I retched. I fell to my knees, dry heaving.

But I had a job to do. I built a pyre. I gathered logs and dry brush. I doused the remains in kerosene this time—it burns hotter than gas.

I lit the fire.

I sat there all night, feeding the flames. I was the keeper of a hellish vigil. When the fire finally died down in the gray light of dawn, nothing remained but fragments. Calcified white chips of bone.

I took a heavy branch and crushed them. I pulverized them until they were nothing but dust and gravel. I scooped up the ashes and threw them into the wind, watching them disappear into the valley.

Dust to dust.

I drove home feeling a sick sense of relief. There were no bodies. No weapon (I had cut the gun into pieces with an angle grinder and buried the parts in three different counties). No witnesses.

I thought I had committed the perfect crime. I thought I was free.

But I had forgotten one thing. You can burn bodies, but you can’t burn the truth. And the police were watching.

Part 3

The Ghost in the Machine

For months, I lived in a state of high-functioning paranoia. To the outside world, I was Captain Greg Lynn, a senior pilot, a family man, a guy who liked to tinker in his garage. But inside, I was a man walking on a wire over a pit of vipers.

The Colorado Bureau of Investigation (CBI) hadn’t stopped looking. They just stopped talking to the media. They went silent. And silence is the loudest sound to a guilty man.

I started noticing things. A car parked down the street that stayed too long. A click on the phone line. I told myself I was crazy. It’s just guilt, I thought. You’re seeing ghosts.

But the ghosts were real.

The Visit

It happened on a Tuesday. I was in the driveway, working on the fence, trying to maintain the illusion of a normal domestic life. A black sedan pulled up. Not a police cruiser. A generic, government-issue sedan.

Two men stepped out. They wore suits that looked uncomfortable in the Colorado heat.

“Gregory Lynn?” one asked. He didn’t smile. “Yes?” I put down my paintbrush. My heart began that familiar, frantic thumping. “We’re with the Missing Persons Unit. We’re following up on vehicles that were in the high country back in March.”

They were calm. Professional. They walked around my Jeep Gladiator. “Registration says this vehicle is white,” Detective Florence said, tapping the hood. “But this… this is beige. Sandbank, right?”

My throat went dry. “I painted it,” I said. The lie was ready; I had rehearsed it a thousand times in the shower. “Lockdown project. I used some leftover industrial paint I had. Wanted a more… tactical look. Does a better job hiding the dirt.”

It was a half-truth. I had painted it. But I painted it because the news reports said they were looking for a white truck. I had tried to change its skin, to camouflage my guilt.

Florence stared at me. His eyes were flat, unreadable. He wasn’t buying it. I could feel it. But he didn’t have enough to arrest me. Not yet. “Alright, Mr. Lynn. Thanks for your time.”

They left. But they didn’t really leave.

The Bug

I didn’t know it then, but that night, while my family slept, a tactical team shadowed my property. They moved like smoke. They bypassed my security lights. They slipped into my garage.

They planted listening devices. In the kitchen. In the living room. inside the cabin of my Jeep.

From that moment on, I was living in a glass house. Every conversation I had with Mel, every heavy sigh, every mutter to myself—it was all being streamed live to a listening post where detectives sat with headphones, waiting for me to slip up.

The pressure began to crack me. I would drive to the grocery store, and the silence of the car felt oppressive. I started talking to myself. “They got nothing,” I would whisper to the dashboard, unaware that Detective Florence was listening. “No bodies. No weapon. Just an old man who got lost.”

I was trying to convince myself. To them, I sounded like a man rehearsing his defense.

The “60 Minutes” Trap

The police were clever. They knew they couldn’t just wait for me to confess. They had to provoke me. They had to shake the cage.

They coordinated with the producers of 60 Minutes to run a special update on the case. They released a new piece of “evidence”—a grainy, enhanced image of a dark-colored truck towing a trailer, caught on a resort camera miles from the crime scene.

They knew I would be watching.

I was sitting on the sofa with Mel. The TV cast a blue glow over the room. The dramatic music swelled. The host spoke in grave tones about the “mystery of the mountains.”

Then, the photo flashed on the screen. A dark Jeep. A box trailer.

Mel laughed. A sudden, sharp cackle. “Greg, look!” she pointed at the screen. “That looks exactly like your truck used to! Before you painted it!”

The blood drained from my face. My stomach dropped through the floor. I knew the bugs were recording. I knew they just heard my wife identify the vehicle.

I snapped. “It’s not funny, Mel!” I barked, my voice harsh, filled with a terrifying aggression. “It’s a tragedy! Two people are d*ad! Don’t joke about it!”

She went quiet, shrinking back, confused by my outburst. But the damage was done. The detectives high-fived in the listening post. They had their link.

The Downward Spiral

After that night, I began to unravel. I couldn’t sleep. I stopped eating. I felt the walls closing in. I knew it was only a matter of time before they came for me with handcuffs.

I started making dark plans. I drove the Jeep out to lonely roads, talking to the empty air. “I can’t do this,” I sobbed, tears streaming down my face. “I’ve ruined it. Mel… the boys… I’ve destroyed everything.”

I talked about ending it. “Maybe a snake bite,” I muttered to the windshield. “Go out into the bush. Step on a rattler. Make it look like an accident. Then Mel gets the life insurance.”

The detectives listening were alarmed. I was becoming unstable. I was a flight risk, or worse, a suicide risk. They couldn’t wait for DNA results anymore. They had to act.

The Arrest

I decided to go on one last trip. I needed to be in the woods. I needed to be where it happened. I drove toward Arbuckle Creek, a remote spot. I told myself I was just camping. But deep down, I think I was going there to say goodbye.

I set up my camp. I sat by the fire, peeling an orange, watching the sun dip below the jagged peaks. It was beautiful. For a fleeting second, I felt peace.

Then, the world exploded.

Thwup-thwup-thwup.

Helicopters. Two of them, screaming over the treeline, banking hard. Dust and ash kicked up into a blinding cloud.

“POLICE! GET ON THE GROUND!”

The shout came from everywhere. I looked around. Men in camouflage, holding automatic rifles, were rising out of the bushes. They had been tracking me for miles, moving silently through the undergrowth. S.W.A.T. officers.

Laser sights danced on my chest. Red dots.

“SHOW ME YOUR HANDS! DO IT NOW!”

I dropped the orange. It rolled into the dirt. I raised my hands slowly. I didn’t reach for a weapon. I didn’t run.

In a twisted way, I felt relief. The running was over. The lie was over.

They swarmed me. Knees in my back. Cuffs ratcheting tight on my wrists. They dragged me to an unmarked SUV.

The Chess Match

They drove me back to the city, to the interrogation room at headquarters. It was a cold, sterile box. Steel table. Two chairs. A mirror that I knew was a window for the prosecution.

Detective Florence walked in. He didn’t look angry. He looked disappointed. He placed a thick file on the table.

“We know, Greg,” he said softly. “We know about the truck. We know about the paint. We heard you talking in the car.”

I tried to hold the line. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” “I wasn’t there.” “I have rights.”

But Florence was good. He chipped away at me. He didn’t yell. He sympathized. “Greg, look at me. You’re a pilot. You’re a Captain. You’re a disciplined man. We don’t think you went up there to murder two old people. That doesn’t make sense.”

He leaned in closer. “We think something went wrong. Maybe an argument? Maybe he attacked you? Maybe it was self-defense?”

He was offering me a lifeline. A narrative that wasn’t cold-blooded murder. A way to save some shred of my dignity.

I looked at the steel table. I thought about the jury. I thought about the gas can. I thought about the bones.

I took a deep breath. “I want to tell you what happened,” I whispered. “I’m going to ignore my lawyer’s advice.”

I asked for a piece of paper. I drew a map of the campsite. And then, I spun the tale. The loud music. The drone. The confrontation. The shotgun.

“It was an accident,” I insisted, my voice cracking. “Rusty fell on his own knife. The gun went off in the struggle and hit Clara. I didn’t murder them.”

Florence listened, nodding. Then he asked the question that would seal my fate. “If it was an accident, Greg… why did you burn them? Why did you crush their bones?”

I looked him dead in the eye, and I told the truth for the first time. “Because I have a career. I have a reputation. I knew if I reported it, I’d lose my license. I’d lose everything. I was trying to save my life.”

They charged me with two counts of first-degree murder. My “accident” defense didn’t explain the cover-up. It didn’t explain the meticulous, industrial destruction of human beings.

I was booked. Inmate 0982. The Captain was gone. The Killer remained.

Part 4

The Theater of Judgment

The trial began in May, four years after that night in the woods. The courtroom was packed. The media had descended like vultures, dubbing me the “Pilot Killer.” They ran stories about my “secret life,” my “obsession with guns,” my “arrogance.”

My family sat in the gallery. Mel looked like a ghost, pale and thin. My sons refused to look at me. The shame radiating from them was hotter than the fire I had built at Union Spur.

The Prosecution’s case was a hammer. They didn’t have bodies—just 2,100 tiny bone fragments the size of gravel that I had failed to crush completely. They had a tooth. They had a wedding ring. And they had my own voice, recorded in my car, sounding guilty as hell.

“He didn’t call 911 because he didn’t care,” the District Attorney thundered, pointing a finger at me that felt like a loaded gun. “He slaughtered them. He burned them. He pulverized them. Does that sound like a panic attack? Or does that sound like a man cleaning up a mess?”

He walked the jury through the timeline. The painting of the truck. The lies to the police. The second trip to burn the remains. “This was calculated,” he said. “This was the work of a man who thought he was smarter than everyone else.”

The Defense

My lawyer, a sharp, formidable woman named Sarah, had an impossible job. She had to convince twelve strangers that a man who burned bodies was innocent of murder.

Her strategy was simple: Panic is not proof of murder.

“Greg Lynn made terrible, immoral choices after the deaths,” she argued, pacing in front of the jury box. “He was a coward. He was selfish. But being a coward doesn’t make you a killer. The state cannot prove how Russell Hill died. They cannot prove it wasn’t self-defense.”

Then, I did the unthinkable. I took the stand.

It’s rare for a murder defendant to testify. It opens you up to a brutal cross-examination. But I had to. I had to let them hear my voice. I had to show them the Captain, not the monster.

I sat in the witness box, wearing a suit that felt like a costume. I spoke calmly. I used my pilot’s voice—measured, authoritative. I looked the jury in the eye. “I am guilty of desecrating their remains,” I said. “I am guilty of trying to hide my involvement. And for that, I am truly sorry. But I did not murder them.”

The prosecutor tore into me. He mocked my story about Rusty falling on the knife. “A million-to-one shot, wasn’t it, Mr. Lynn? He just happened to impale himself perfectly?” “It happened,” I maintained.

The Verdict

The jury deliberated for a week. A week of sitting in a holding cell, listening to the buzz of the fluorescent lights, wondering if I would ever see the sky again.

Finally, the knock came.

I stood in the dock. My hands were trembling, just like they had that night in the woods. The Foreperson stood up. She was a young woman, nervous.

“On the charge of the murder of Russell Hill…” She paused. The room went silent. You could hear a pin drop. “…We find the defendant Not Guilty.”

A gasp ripped through the courtroom. My knees buckled. Not Guilty? They believed me? They believed the self-defense story?

“On the charge of the murder of Clara Clay…” She looked at me then. Her eyes were hard. “…We find the defendant Guilty.”

The room erupted. I stood there, frozen, my mind racing to catch up. Guilty? How?

Later, my lawyer explained the logic. It was twisted, but brilliant. The jury believed that the fight with Rusty might have been self-defense. Without a body, the state couldn’t prove otherwise. There was reasonable doubt.

But Clara?

Clara was the witness.

The jury’s logic was cold: If I killed Rusty in self-defense, why was Clara dead? The gun “accidentally” going off and hitting her in the head was too convenient. They believed I had eliminated her because she saw what happened. I killed the witness to save my career.

I was cleared of killing the man who attacked me, but convicted of executing the innocent woman who watched it happen.

The Sentence

The sentencing hearing was a funeral for the man I used to be.

Clara’s daughter stood up. She held a photo of her mother. She looked right at me. “You treated my mother like garbage,” she said, her voice shaking with rage. “You burned her. You crushed her. You denied us a funeral. You are a monster.”

Rusty’s wife, Robin, spoke next. She was frail, but her voice was strong. “I hope you suffer,” she said. “I hope you rot.”

I sat there, stone-faced. There were no words. Apologies were insults at this point.

The Judge looked down at me over his glasses. He wasn’t impressed by my pilot’s demeanor. “Mr. Lynn, you are a man of high intelligence and discipline. You used those skills not to help, but to hide. You prioritized your pension and your reputation over the dignity of human life. You showed a breathtaking arrogance.”

He banged the gavel. “I sentence you to 32 years in a maximum-security prison. You will not be eligible for parole until you are 80 years old.”

32 years.

I did the math instantly. I was 57. I would be an old man, if I lived that long. I would likely die in a cage.

Epilogue: The View from the Ground

I am writing this from a cell in a Supermax facility. My world has shrunk from the boundless sky to a 6×8 concrete box. My view is no longer the curvature of the earth; it is a sliver of gray wall.

I have a lot of time to think in here. I replay that night in my head, over and over, like a black box recording.

I think about the drone. That stupid, buzzing drone. If I had just waved… if I had just smiled… if I had just walked away… I would be home right now. I would be grilling steaks on my deck. Rusty and Clara would be home, telling their families about their secret adventure.

Two lives ended, and mine destroyed, because of one moment of ego. One moment of anger.

And then, the cover-up. That was the real crime. The arrogance of thinking I could outsmart the truth. The arrogance of thinking my life was worth more than theirs.

The mountains keep their secrets, they say. But they don’t. The earth spits everything back up eventually.

I was a Captain. I was in control. But in the end, I was just a passenger on a plane crashing into the mountain, and I was the one pulling the yoke.

Don’t let your anger drive. And never, ever think you can burn the truth.

End of story.