Redstone Ever After

by Justine Davis

  “Knock it off, Romeo,” Brown Shirt snapped.

  “Hey,” Pinky countered, “chances are she could be on our side.” Our side? Tess wondered.

  “She’s stuck working for the bastard.”

  “I believe,” she said, affecting a disinterested tone, “Mr. Redstone’s parents were married long before he was born.”

  Pinky looked blank. “Huh?”

  Brown Shirt rolled his eyes. Tess noted the impatience in both his voice and body language; if there was already trouble in the ranks, perhaps they could use that, too. She flicked a quick glance at Josh. Those intense gray eyes, always at odds with his laid-back, sometimes even lazy seeming demeanor, were sharply focused, and she knew his prodigious mind was racing even faster than her own.

  “Just fix the damned thing, and fast,” Brown Shirt said to Josh. His gaze flicked briefly to Tess. “Don’t want big man Redstone taking it out on us little guys.”

  “So you’ve been working for him for a while?” Josh asked, hitting just the right note of casual query.

  “Don’t have to to know they’re all alike, those big CEO’s. Now get to it, will you?”

  Tess frowned inwardly. What was this, some kind of protest mounted by idiots too blind to honestly find out who they were targeting? Didn’t they realize they were dealing with a man who would—and had—send the troops out for the lowliest employee just as quickly as for one of his executives? She had assumed money was the goal, but now—

  “Heard any system alarms go off?”

  Josh’s question was aimed at her, and she yanked herself out of ponderings there was no time for now. Motivation didn’t matter at the moment, the reality of the situation did.

  Josh was barely a foot away now. She saw his gaze flick for a split second to the armed men. “Pinky and Brown Shirt,” she muttered, so lowly only he could hear. She saw one corner of his mouth lift for another fraction of a second as he registered the insulting nicknames.

  “Not yet,” she answered in a calm, normal tone, as if he really were that mechanic, and understanding he’d really been asking if she’d been able to set off the duress alarms yet. Another Draven insistence. Although the best method was the computer hookup, where more details could be sent. There were also triggers in the cockpit, the main stateroom and especially the head; almost anyone taken hostage, Draven had explained, could convince their captors they needed to use the head.

  Of course, if Draven had his way, there would be Redstone Security on every flight his boss took. And for the first time Tess, who had always treasured flight time alone with Josh, wished the man had acceded to his security chief’s request.

  “You got the computer on?” Josh asked.

  “Not yet,” Tess answered again.

  “Computer?” Brown Shirt frowned. “What do you need the computer for?”

  “Diagnostics,” Josh said blandly. “Have to find out where the problem is.”

  “Do it without.”

  “Impossible. That’s where the schematics are.”

  “The what?” asked Pinky.

  Brown Shirt ignored him. “Bull. What did they do before computers?”

  “Before computers, electrical systems were much simpler,” Josh said. “Even on airplanes.” Then, with a perfect rendition of a merely puzzled man and a glance at Tess, he asked, “What’s the problem? Is the system down?”

  “Redstone doesn’t want anyone going online from here,” Brown Shirt answered.

  Josh didn’t turn a shaggy hair at the disrespect in the man’s words and tone.

  “I don’t need to go online. The schematics are right there on the onboard computer.”

  Tess wondered if he was having trouble keeping the drawl out of his voice. It was pointed out in every article that had ever been written about him, it seemed, mentioning how it often lulled people into thinking he was slow or stupid, that he had somehow stumbled into his good fortune and wealth, or acquired it on the backs of others. But people who made those assumptions soon learned that they had sadly underestimated him on all counts. Usually too late. And even these apparently uninformed assailants might put it together if they heard that drawl.

  Fortunately, those articles almost always used the formal portrait of a clean-cut Josh that he had reluctantly sat for several years ago. He’d sworn he would never do it again, saying that people were one day going to be surprised when they met him and found out he was ninety-five, because he’d still be using that portrait. The portrait he looked nothing like right now, not with his bearded jaw and shaggy, tousled hair. But then, he’d always said, “We’re selling Redstone value, not me.”

  Brown Shirt looked as if he were having a terrible time making a decision. Tess wasn’t sure if that was good for them or not.

  “Besides,” Josh said after a moment of studying Brown Shirt’s expression, “I don’t work for Redstone, anyway. He can’t order me around like he does everyone else.”

  “That’s Mr. Redstone to you,” Tess said, struck with a sudden inspiration. And again Josh got her intent instantly.

  “Yeah, yeah,” he said, as if bored with it all. “I know, he’s the big wheel. Big deal.”

  Brown Shirt smiled. And decided. “You do the computer,” he said, gesturing at Josh. “And you,” he said to Tess, in a much different tone, “back off. Don’t even get near it.”

  Josh shrugged as if he hadn’t noticed the change at all. As if their attitude toward her was to be expected. He walked toward the glossy rosewood desk that held the sleek-looking computer setup.

  “Hey!” Pinky, who had been quiet for a while, broke his silence. “Hey, he’s the guy in the photo!”

  Tess’s breath caught. Her mind raced, figuring they had only seconds to deal with this.

  “What?” Brown Shirt wheeled to look at his partner.

  “He’s the guy in the picture,” Pinky said, pointing at the frame fastened to the wall over the desk.

  Josh glanced up at the picture, shrugging as if he’d seen it a hundred times. As, indeed, he had. “Yeah,” he said, tone absent, unimpressed as he turned back to the computer. “That was the maiden flight of this bird. Guess he didn’t have much faith in it, wanted a mechanic along.”

  He’d hit just the right note of indifference and matched Brown Shirt’s own undertone of disrespect; Tess saw it register on Brown Shirt’s face. She didn’t dare look at Josh as they waited to see if it was all going to fall apart here and now.

  Brown Shirt studied the picture for a long, silent moment. Josh looked as if he were thinking of saying more; she hoped he wouldn’t, because “Michael” wouldn’t.

  Even as she thought it, he clearly reached the same conclusion, because he glanced at her and threw out a diversion instead.

  “Boss is really on a rampage, huh?”

  Tess recovered quickly, relieved. She shrugged. “He gets that way. You know how it is. You don’t expect somebody in his position to be kind, generous or go way beyond the call for his people.”

  All of which Josh was and did, and if these clowns had done their homework they’d have known that. And for just an instant as he looked at her, she saw acknowledgment of the compliment she’d just indirectly paid him. Not that it wasn’t anything she hadn’t said to him directly before; he knew quite well she thought the world of him.

  He just didn’t know she was in love with him, and had been for a very long time.

  Chapter 4

  Josh was in a difficult place. He’d put together his crack security team to protect Redstone around the world, and to help any Redstone employee who needed it. And led by Draven they’d done a stellar job, all of them. They were ever ready to mobilize at a moment’s notice.

  He’d just never wanted to have to mobilize them for himself.

  He sat there, studying the complex wiring diagram as if he were truly seeking the nonexistent electrical problem. He hadn’t yet keyed in the signal that would do just that—mobilize Redstone Security. Once he did, unless that signal was can
celed within five minutes, that was it, there would be no calling them off. John Draven wouldn’t stop until it was over, and over his way.

  But it was what might happen in between that bothered Josh. He’d heard often enough from his people that they’d walk through fire for him. The declarations always made him uncomfortable; he didn’t see himself as they did, and his answer was usually something awkward like “Just give me your best work.” That’s the principle Redstone was built on; hire the best, then get out of their way. He’d always believed in it. And that included, perhaps most especially, Redstone Security. And they were the best. Draven had done the near-impossible, built a private security force that had the respect and cooperation of their public counterparts around the world.

  But he didn’t want them, or anyone, risking themselves for him. And if he sent that duress code, that was inevitably going to happen.

  He hit a few keys that did nothing, then the one that paged the diagram downward; he wanted them used to him occasionally typing. The more information he could send in that signal, the better.

  If he sent it at all.

  “Get us some food,” Brown Shirt—the perfect name for him, Josh had thought when Tess had whispered it—suddenly ordered with a gesture at her. A gesture that parted his jacket enough for Josh to see the blocky, bulky pistol jammed in his waistband. Not a holster, like a pro.

  “Excuse me?” Tess said, as if she hadn’t heard him right.

  “Food,” he repeated. “It’s what you do, isn’t it, serve passengers? This fancy plane must have food.”

  A realization belatedly clicked into place for him. They had no idea they were talking to the pilot of this plane. That, he thought, smothering the unexpected urge to smile, would cost them.

  “Why, of course,” Tess said sweetly. Too sweetly. “What can I get you? Caviar? Pâté?”

  Pinky snorted. And again Josh had to fight a smile; fish eggs and liver had never been high on his list of what to stock on the Redstone fleet. But he also wished Tess would stop baiting them; the bottom line was still that they were armed and he—for the moment at least—was not.

  That gave him pause. Tess was the smartest, quickest person he’d ever known, even St. John took longer than she did to assess a situation. But she had the razor-sharp quickness of a good pilot who dealt with rapidly changing conditions on a regular basis. And she also never spoke carelessly or heedlessly.

  Which meant she’d chosen her words specifically, with purpose.

  To confirm they had no idea who they had here? To show him they were, for all their blustering, totally unprepared at best, or inept at worst?

  Josh smothered a grimace. If there was anything worse than inept, unprepared people with guns, he couldn’t think offhand what it was.

  And he knew he would send that code. Because it wasn’t just him here. It was Tess. She’d been through too much pain in life already. She deserved the best possible chance to get out of this unscathed. That meant they needed the best possible help.

  And that meant Redstone Security.

  “And pull up those steps until your boss gets here,” Brown Shirt added as Tess continued to stare at him. “No sense allowing anybody else to stumble in here.”

  And realizing you’re here, Josh thought.

  Tess did as ordered, then moved toward the galley, as if she really were that flight attendant they apparently thought her. That was something he’d never gone for, either; if you were on board a Redstone plane at all, you knew where the food was and were at home enough to get it yourself. There was the occasional business-meeting flight where someone would take over the prep chores, but it was as likely to be he himself as anyone else.

  Brown Shirt was hovering, looking at the complex schematic on the screen. Josh typed again, the useless combo, then the page down key.

  “You understand that crap?”

  Actually, he did. He’d designed the plane, after all. “It’s my job,” he said.

  A little too sharp there, Redstone, he thought. So he adopted a friendly tone that would have been appropriate if they really had been Redstone people and he the private mechanic.

  “Lot of wiring, even on a plane this small.”

  “It is small,” Brown Shirt agreed. “I would have thought a big shot like Redstone would use a bigger one.”

  That was it, he thought. That was what Tess had wanted to tell him. That these men were working on perceptions, not reality. They had expectations, stereotypical ones, about the head of an enterprise the size of Redstone. And he wasn’t meeting them.

  “Efficiency,” Josh said as he went through the fake sequence again, as if it took a dozen keystrokes instead of one to simply page down in the complicated diagram. “Square cube law.”

  “Square what?”

  “Square cube law,” Josh said absently, as if he were engrossed in the diagram. “Double the size of a plane, you quadruple its weight.”

  “Huh?” Brown Shirt grunted.

  “Weight’s important.” He made his voice as much of a drone as he could. “The wings need a specific air speed to make enough lift, and a heavier airplane takes longer to get to that speed. And more runway, so you’re limited to fields that can handle that. Then when you’re airborne, a heavier plane flies slower than a lighter one at the same power, so if you want to maintain the same speed, it takes more power, and thus fuel.”

  “Yeah, right,” Brown Shirt muttered, clearly, and just as Josh had hoped, bored.

  “Then of course there’s landing with a heavy airplane. Kinetic energy and all. Mass is mass, and that plane only stops when you—”

  “I get it,” Brown Shirt said, backing away before Josh could inundate him with more. Josh doubted he did, in fact, get it, but he didn’t care as long as the man’s attention was turned elsewhere.

  The moment the man’s attention was on Tess coming back with something on a tray, he hit the unique button that activated the direct connection to security. Then he typed in the real sequence Draven had developed long ago. Signed it with his middle name. He didn’t have to send it; it had gone live from the moment he’d activated the direct link.

  He noted the time on his battered yet still accurate aviator’s watch he’d strapped on after the trek. It had been given to him all those years ago by Mac McClaren on the occasion of the first flight of the Hawk I. Seeing that Brown Shirt was still focused on the sandwiches Tess had brought, he activated the elapsed time feature. Then he went back to the diagram, thinking he would stall until they started to get suspicious.

  That, unfortunately, didn’t take long.

  “What are you doing? What’s taking so long?” Pinky asked, a slightly whiny note in his voice as he spoke around a mouthful of ham sandwich. He gulped down a swallow of the bottled water he held in his other hand as he hovered over Josh, peering at the screen. With the movement, Josh caught a glimpse of a semiautomatic pistol digging into the man’s too generous belly, confirming his guess that they were both armed.

  “Verifying,” Josh said. “Wouldn’t want to cut the wrong wire and have your altimeter not work.”

  Pinky’s face scrunched up slightly. “What’s an altim—what you said do?”

  “Tells you how high you are so you don’t slam into the side of one of these mountains.”

  The man paled slightly. Swallowed. “Oh.”

  Pinky retreated, apparently not liking being reminded of the grim possibilities of flight. Josh wondered if they planned on letting them get airborne. Or maybe the plan was that this whole thing was to be conducted on the ground.

  Or maybe they didn’t really have a plan at all.

  Josh sneaked a look at his watch; less than a minute and a half to go now. Brown Shirt glanced his way, as if checking his progress.

  He decided he’d pushed his luck as far as he could just now. He hit the keys that would blank out the screen, as if he’d shut down the system. A couple of small LED lights still glowed, but he hoped they either wouldn’t notice, or wouldn’t
realize it meant the system was still on. The screen would only reactivate at the proper command, from here or from Redstone Security, not simply the touch of a key.

  But the webcams and microphones would still be live.

  Josh pushed the keyboard back into its cubby, bumping the edge of the monitor as if by accident in the process, turning it slightly more toward the main cabin. It would help if they had a wider view. There were three other cams on the plane, and they could all be accessed from outside by security. Draven was nothing if not thorough.

  It was as he made that move that he noticed a magazine that had slid to the floor between the desk and the side of the plane. Automatically, he reached toward it to pick it up.

  Tess coughed. He glanced at her. Caught the briefest flick of her eyes. And stopped, abruptly remembering that it was likely the business magazine she’d brought on board on the flight up here, to show him the article that had just been done on the breadth of Redstone’s Research and Development division. The quick-thinking Tess had likely made sure that magazine had vanished; his picture, that formal head shot, had been on the cover. And even though he looked little like it now, Tess had obviously decided not to tempt fate.

  Which left only the photograph on the opposite bulkhead. But for safety it was bolted to the wall, so there wasn’t much to be done about that one. And it appeared they’d believed Tess’s clever feint, and thought him simply a mechanic Redstone had hired both in that picture and here and now.

  He stood up. Brown Shirt wheeled around, half a sandwich in his left hand, his right still free for his weapon. So he wasn’t completely stupid, Josh thought.

  “Looks like the problem’s in the cockpit. I’ll need to open up the floor in there.”

  Brown Shirt frowned. “How long is this going to take?”

  “Won’t know until I get in there. You in a hurry?” He used the comment as excuse to glance at his watch.

  “Redstone will be. You know those CEO types.”

  “Yeah,” Josh said. The seconds rolled by. Josh adopted an expression of concentration as he watched the time tick by, as if he were truly trying to come up with the answer to Brown Shirt’s question.