Altitude ~Liam Payne AU~

Chapter 34

~Day 7~

A day had gone by since I had seen Liam. My older brother Stephen was excited to see me home and promised to come visit me more often than he had before I left to join the RAF. In the meantime my father had finally gone back to work now that I was home safe.

Yesterday my dad had found a box of my mother's stuff in the attic and brought it down for me to look at. I splayed the items out across my bed to view them all at once. There was a compass, my mother's uniform, her badges of honor, her diploma from graduation, some photographs, and other small items that she had while in the service. I was looking at one of the photographs when my phone buzzed.

"You home? I'm outside -Liam," it read making me scrunch my eyebrows. When did he get my number? I scooted off my bed as quickly as I could and hopped down the hallway getting annoyed of using my crutches for short trips. I opened the front door to see Liam standing outside holding a medium-sized box in his hands.

"Hey!" He smiled as I waved him in.

"Hey, how'd you get my number?"

"Asked William for it, said I had a few things to bring you," he said while pointing to the box and walking inside.

"Nice, I have a few things to show you too," I said hopping alongside him and into the hallway.

"Where are your crutches?"

"In my room, too lazy to grab them," I smirked making him shake his head and grab one of my arms to steady me down the hall. I leaned into him appreciating the help as I started to feel unsteady. Once we reached my room he set the box down on the corner of my bed and looked at all the trinkets I had set out. 

"Great minds think alike," he said opening the lid of his box to reveal similar items of which I'm assuming belonged to his dad. I looked into his box and found a few badges similar to ones my mother had earned. I then pulled out the photographs he had stashed in his box. There was a large group photo of the district and Liam's father and my mother were in it. My mother was also the only female in her district as well.

"Funny how history repeats itself," I chuckled looking down at the photo before handing it to Liam to look at.

"Were you able to find any documents pertaining to your mother's crash?" He asked setting the photo down and rummaging through his box.

"I found part of a newspaper clipping describing her disappearance, but it's basically everything I already knew," I huffed as Liam pulled out a torn piece of paper.

"I found this, it was a firsthand account of a fellow flyer that had gone up the same night of your mother. He recounted it as a very scary evening," he said handing me the piece of paper. It was an interview where the soldier described seeing other jets in the air but none on his radar. It seemed as though he was insinuating someone was in their fly zone that shouldn't have been. The last part of the paragraph had been ripped from the paper being so old making me frown.

"Do you think they still have copies of this somewhere? This seems like a really important account they may have looked over," I said feeling hopeful that digging through all this old stuff would lead to something.

"Well if we were on base I'd go look in one of the file rooms, but can't do that. I'd doubt they'd have something this old on file still."

"If we're going to start building our case we need to start somewhere," I said placing all the items back into the box.

"I'll be contact with Horan and Malik soon to try and figure some more information out, they might know more about what the RAF is planning to do." I nodded my head as my phone dinged making me look over at it. A reminder popped up on my phone for my doctor's appointment in half an hour to get my stitches out. "Shoot I forgot I had that today!"