The Negotiator

by Dee Henderson

  Kate nodded. Jennifer was in good hands. “I need to change.”

  “I’ll buy you a tourist T-shirt at the airport.”

  “I could use something for the baseball game.” She saw the question in his look.

  “The O’Malleys have a game on the Fourth, and my lucky shirt died last year.”

  “Really?”

  “I did this slide into home, and Marcus didn’t move out of my way. I need a better shirt.”

  Dave grinned at the image. “Something that will make him move?”

  “Exactly.” She tossed the apple core into the trashcan by the house. “Can you afford me?”

  “Probably.” He held out his hands. “Come on, let’s go.”

  Twenty-two

  Compared to the complexity of O’Hare, the Milwaukee airport was a breeze. They parked in the lot across from the terminal, then browsed in the tourist shops. They passed through security and walked out to the private hangars.

  “There she is.” Dave pointed to a plane by the third hangar.

  Kate stopped, stunned. The plane was a gleaming, midnight blue Eagle I V. “It’s beautiful.”

  “She. This lady has her own personality.”

  The pride in Dave’s voice was obvious. Kate looked at the jet, then back at him. “This is what you fly for fun?”

  “Yes. Though I do use it frequently for work. It makes it easier for the team to get around. Come on; let’s get you settled inside. My flight plan is already filed. Give me twenty minutes to complete the preflight, and we’ll be ready to get in the air.”

  She reached up to slide her hand across the smooth, gleaming metal of the wing. “It’s such a sleek, beautiful plane.” Not small either. It would take some walking to circle this plane.

  “One of the best.” He brought down the stairs and offered her a hand.

  “Oh, my.” Kate had expected nice, but this was really nice. No crammed together seats or lack of legroom here. It had been configured with plush leather seats and mahogany side tables, and honest-to-goodness wallpaper and blue carpet. There were even two sketches carefully mounted on the cabin wall. “This is great.”

  “The cockpit has windows that come all the way down to your elbows. You’ll see what I mean about a great view.”

  “I can join you up front?”

  “I can even teach you to fly it if you would like.”

  “Don’t you have to be certified to instruct?”

  He smiled. “Yes. I’m a good teacher, too. Care to find out?”

  She let that settle in. He wasn’t joking. “I’ll think about it.”

  He ruffled her hair. “Do. Dan said he would stock the refrigerator for us. Make yourself at home. The walk around won’t take long.” He stepped into the cockpit, came back with a flight log and checklist, and disappeared back down the stairs.

  Kate picked up her bag and moved to the back of the plane. She was going to have a hard time flying on a commercial aircraft after seeing this luxury. The lavatory was full cabin width, with marble counters and matching hand towels. In the drawer she found a sewing kit and small scissors and cut the tag off her new T-shirt.

  The evidence that the plane was someone’s home in the air began to be apparent as she took Dave at his word and looked around. In the cupboard next to the refrigerator was someone’s idea of snacks. Not a small bag of peanuts, but a full can of cashews, half a package of pecans and hazel nuts still in their shell waiting to be cracked. They were bracketed by a bag of Oreos and peanut M&Ms.

  A sketchpad was tucked in with the magazines, well-worn playing cards in the pocket beside the table, and three paperbacks beside a stack of CDs. There were feather pillows and blankets, even a teddy bear in the back closet. Kate smiled at the whimsical bear before closing the door. They were touches of people’s lives. Neat, orderly, but personal. Touches of Sara by the look of them.

  Kate laughed when she stumbled upon the stash of sports equipment. Besides the golf clubs, there were very well broken in baseball gloves, a couple scuffed baseballs, a Frisbee, even a Chinese box kite. She could just see Dave taking off for a weekend and flying somewhere to join friends for a game of golf. With this plane, it could easily become commonplace.

  “Been up to see the cockpit yet?”

  She turned and smiled. “Not yet.”

  “Grab us a couple cold sodas and come join me. You’ll enjoy it.”

  The electronics were not what she had expected to see based on the movies she could remember. Like the plane itself, the electronics were sleek, modern, well designed, and colorful. “Where did all the knobs and dials go?”

  Dave smiled. “I know. The dash looks like a nice piece of sound equipment, doesn’t it?”

  “Built in radar?”

  “Yes. Come on; buckle into the copilot seat. You won’t disturb anything.”

  She slid into the seat carefully, not sure she was ready to have pedals at her feet and a wheel in front of her. You could fly the plane from this seat, and it was intimidating. She carefully put her soda into a holder, fastened on the spill guard top, and quietly watched Dave methodically check settings and work down the checklist on his knee. She recognized comfortable movements that came from thousands of repetitions.

  “There are headphones behind you on the right.”

  She looked around and found them. He showed her the toggle for voice.

  She heard him speak briefly with someone over the radio, and a crewman appeared before them on the tarmac. On the signal all was clear, Dave touched one red button, then another, and the two jet engines came to life with smooth, steady power.

  He finished working down the preflight checklist, then turned the brace board on his knee and held up his hand to the crewman. He got a smile and wave toward the taxi line with the batons. “We’re all set to travel.”

  She listened as he slipped easily into the tower radio traffic. She wasn’t able to understand what was said even though she heard the words, recognized his repeat of the instructions and his acknowledgment. The plane began to roll. Fascinated, she watched him handle it with ease, his hands light on the wheel, and his feet in motion. He took it directly down the centerline of the taxiway and into the queue behind two other planes waiting to turn onto the runway and into the wind for takeoff.

  “You use your feet as well as your hands?”

  “Rudder and brakes are at your feet. Use the brakes right, and you can turn this plane on a dime.”

  Minutes later he got clearance for the runway.

  It was everything she had hoped for and yet so much more. The plane had much better speed than Kate expected, and Dave handled her with finesse, bringing the nose up and guiding the plane smoothly into a climb.

  “I filed a flight plan for us to cruise at thirty thousand feet. Airlines don’t usually fly at that altitude. We’ll head west toward Denver and be traveling with the sunset for almost an hour, depending on the cloud cover.”

  He spoke briefly with the tower and moments later reached down and retracted the landing gear. Noise inside the airplane diminished. They traveled through the first cloud bank, coming out above it. The sun was shining on the top of the clouds. “One more cloud bank, and then we’ll be leveling off.”

  Kate yawned to clear her ears as she watched the display climb through twenty-eight thousand feet.

  Dave reached down and adjusted the trim, eased forward the nose, then leveled off at thirty thousand feet. “And that’s how this baby cruises.”

  The beauty entranced her. She was looking close up at the top of clouds, not through the scratched Plexiglas windows on a commercial plane. “I can see why you love it.”

  The top of the clouds came up toward them looking like billowing cotton balls, the high altitude winds tugging wisps of white. She watched new clouds build ahead of them, exploding into the clear air as growing mushroom clouds. “What’s it like when these are thunderstorm clouds?”

  “If you’re high enough to be above the storms, they are a spectacul
ar display. Most of the lightning actually happens up in the cloud, and it will light up like a Christmas tree. The clouds will form very rapidly, shooting thousands of feet into the sky.”

  “This is already spectacular.”

  “Just wait. It gets better.”

  When the sun slipped to the right angle, the clouds suddenly became a blanket of pink below them. “Wow. Have you ever taken a picture of this?”

  “A few. But even film can’t do the breathtaking color justice.”

  “How long will this last?”

  “We’ll be able to stay in this zone of color for probably half an hour. You’ll see it paint the canopy of clouds high above us here in a few minutes.”

  Kate saw the colors of the sky in all their brilliance, from the blanket of pink, to the deep caps of red, and then the deep streaks of blue and gray as the sun slipped lower on the horizon. Dave banked them south, showing her the color gradients appearing. “If we were closer to the Rockies, you would see the snow-covered mountaintops being touched with the color as well.”

  “Has Sara ever tried to capture it on canvas?”

  Dave smiled. “A few times.”

  “Thank you for showing me this.”

  “It was my pleasure.” He brought the plane back around on a return heading.

  “Would you like to fly her? Now’s a perfect time and place for a lesson.”

  “What would I have to do?”

  “Just put your feet lightly on the pedals and your hands on the wheel. You’ll barely have to touch either to keep her on this heading. There’s no major crosswind to deal with.”

  “Are you sure you trust me with your toy?”

  Dave chuckled. “I won’t let you fall out of the sky.”

  Tentatively she reached forward to take it.

  “Good. Relax your grip a little more on the wheel; hold it like a feather you don’t want to crush.”

  It was as easy as he had described to keep it level; the plane barely seemed to move even though the readout showed them doing over three hundred knots.

  “Try a gentle turn, say about ten degrees to the right.”

  Beginning to anticipate the responsiveness, she brought the plane into a bank to the right, coming out at exactly ten degrees and holding it there.

  He chuckled. “I already see a budding perfectionist. Good. Level it out and we’ll try a climb.”

  Kate grinned and smoothly came back level. The fact his hands were comfortably folded across his chest said he either had confidence or strong nerves. Either way, she appreciated the compliment. “I think I could get to love this.”

  “Hang around, and we’ll be dancing around the sky frequently. Bring the nose up in a climb and watch how it changes your airspeed.”

  She did and easily saw the correlation. “Is this how they do a hammerhead? Go into a pure vertical climb and stall out their airspeed?”

  “Yes.”

  Growing more comfortable by the minute with the fact she was playing with a multimillion-dollar toy, Kate smiled over at him. “Show me how the rudders are used.”

  Dave grinned, scanned the skies and the radar, then took the controls and slipped the plane left. “Feel how I’m moving them?”

  She could, and she memorized the sensation. It was the same light touch as with the turns. “Yes.”

  “Try it.”

  The lessons continued until the light was totally gone, and then Dave took over, flying by instruments the remaining distance into the airport. When the plane set down with a smooth, rolling flair, Kate was already regretting they were on the ground. “That was really fun.”

  He smiled. “Don’t worry. You’ll get a second invitation.”

  He taxied from the runway back to the hangar, following the directions given by the crewman with the glowing red batons. When the engines shut down, the still quietness of the night reclaimed them.

  In the glow of the one interior light turned on, Dave completed the flight logbook and slipped it back in the map case.

  Kate unbuckled her seat belt, loath to call it a day. Dave stopped her move to slide from the seat with a gentle hand on her arm. “Kate.” She looked over at him and saw the smile. “You’ll make a great pilot. You really should keep taking lessons.”

  “You’re a good teacher.”

  “I’m also willing to work for free. How about it? Want to hire me?”

  His hesitation, so rare in him, made her smile. “You’re hired.” She wasn’t going to let an offer like that pass by.

  She watched as Dave completed his walk around the plane, speaking with the crewman. He stepped back on board for a moment, then came off carrying something white. He joined her as the crewman moved the plane into the hangar.

  “What’s this?” She was amused to realize he was carrying a pillow.

  “You’re getting some sleep on the trip back.”

  “I can’t stay up and talk?”

  He caught her hand in his. “Not tonight.”

  They walked together to the car. Kate settled with the pillow, reclining her seat back, turning so she could look at Dave. Would this be the norm for days spent with him if they did try to make a relationship work? Frustrating moments when a case had no apparent solution, tense moments when her pager went off, quiet moments ultimately relaxing together? The idea was getting easier to accept. It was hard to imagine not being with Dave in the middle of a day.

  “What are you thinking about?” Dave asked.

  “Today.”

  He glanced over and smiled. “I heard a yawn under that word.”

  “My eyes are tired.” She snuggled into the pillow. “It was a nice evening.”

  “Yes, I was thinking the same thing. Sleep, Kate.”

  Her eyes were already sliding closed. “If I don’t remember to say good night later, consider it said.”

  He chuckled lightly and brushed his hand along her cheek. “Sweet dreams.”

  Twenty-three

  Dave stopped at the bottom of the stairs and frowned, then headed down the hall toward the dining room and the smell of coffee. Kate was there, a stack of empty candy wrappers beside her, sipping a cup of coffee, studying the notes on the wall.

  “I didn’t hear you get up. How long have you been down here?”

  She looked over and smiled. “Since about 2 A.M., I guess. I’ve got something to show you.”

  She looked…pleased. He pulled out a chair, intrigued.

  “Devlon did it.”

  Where has she gone this time?

  She laughed at his skeptical look. “It’s all there.” She gestured to the wall. “I was almost right yesterday. Ashcroft is the one who started it all. But it was Devlon that helped him, not Tony.”

  Dave settled down in the chair, willing to give her room to explore ideas. She’d been up most of the night again. She probably had found something. Not what she hoped for but something. “Explain what you’ve found.”

  “Ashcroft wanted to kill Nathan because he turned him in and sent him to prison for ten years. He wanted to go after the man who turned evidence against him, Tony Sr., but since he was dead, Ashcroft had to settle for framing Tony Jr. and dragging me down instead. But Ashcroft also wanted to rebuild his drug operation, and that meant the one person he didn’t go after was his inside man at the bank.” The look that entered her eyes was one Dave had never seen before: fierce, cold, calculating. “Devlon.”

  She tapped the audit book beside her. “Ashcroft was blackmailing Tony, but Devlon moved that blackmail money to Nathan’s account so Nathan would look less than lily-white.”

  “That makes him a bomber?”

  “Yes. Because it means he was doing Ashcroft’s bidding. And the evidence suggests he had been doing it for years. With the attempt to convince Nathan to take the banks public, Devlon couldn’t afford a whiff of that becoming public.”

  She tapped the top Post-it note. She had taped up a new easel sheet and done her own Post-it notes. Dave noted her handwriting was atrocious an
d wondered if she had been filling them out while they were stuck on his wall. He buried a grin; he didn’t think he’d win points for asking.

  “Are you paying attention?”

  “Yes.”

  She frowned at him. “Pay close attention, buddy; I’ve been up for hours to figure this out.”

  “I could use some coffee if this is going to be a long explanation.”

  She handed him hers without even a comeback, and Dave started paying serious attention. She didn’t relinquish coffee easily.

  “Nathan turned Ashcroft in, got him sent to jail because of a suspicious account. Guess who brought that account to Nathan’s attention?” She tapped a note. “Devlon. He’d probably been handling Ashcroft’s drug money for years. When the auditors got too close, he covered his own back.”

  She tapped the second note. “Ashcroft gets out of jail a decade later and starts blackmailing Tony Jr., squeezing him hard enough he’s running out of money. Tony Jr. needs to get the bank to ease up, give him time, but there’s Devlon, insuring it’s going to play by the book. Tony’s looking at bankruptcy, and he can’t make the next payment. Ashcroft then moves to pressure Tony Jr. into planting the bomb.”

  “Which the evidence suggests Tony Jr. did.”

  Kate shook her head, and Dave was startled at her confidence. “Tony Jr. said no; I’m certain of it.

  She walked him through what she thought had happened. “That left Ashcroft with everything arranged, the money moved, Tony Jr. set up to take the fall, the calls made, his alibi established, the perfect opportunity to act, and no one to plant the bomb. But he’s got a card with Devlon. So he uses it. Think about it. Ashcroft had enough evidence to push Devlon into moving money around. One step further is planting the bomb in Nathan’s laptop. We know Devlon had access; he was the one using it that morning.

  “And in the end we get a classic double cross,” she continued. “Devlon doesn’t like the fact Ashcroft has him over a barrel. But it’s pretty easy for Devlon to take care of Ashcroft, he just does some fast talking and puts Nathan on the MetroAir flight as a last minute walk-on. Good-bye Ashcroft. Good-bye Nathan. Devlon has a nice alibi; he was supposed to fly to New York with Nathan until the last second change in plans. Tony Jr. looks guilty; Ashcroft who could implicate him is dead; and he walks away running First Union Group, with the prospect of the banks going public now that Nathan is no longer there to resist the idea.”