Triple Exposure

by Colleen Thompson

  “I didn’t do a damned thing.”

  “And she just happened to tell you all about her plans?” Zeke challenged. “You helped her sabotage that glider, didn’t you?”

  “What else is she planning?” Castillo asked darkly. “She got any more ideas about taking out Rachel, since she didn’t run her off the first crack?”

  Shaken by the thought, Zeke looked at Simonton, who continued staring resolutely at the lonely blue flower.

  But Zeke couldn’t take the waiting, couldn’t stand the thought that even now, Lili might be planning some way to hurt Rachel. “Answer him, goddamn you.”

  From the airport not far south of them, he heard the rising drone of a plane’s takeoff.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  O human race, born to fly upward, wherefore at a little wind dost thou so fall?

  —Dante Alighieri,

  from The Divine Comedy, Purgatorio, Canto XII

  As the sailplane gained altitude, Rachel marveled. Not at the familiar landscape that fell away beneath her, nor at the eternal stretch of blue sky. What really got her was the unexpected discovery that Lili Vega had amazing taste in music.

  Rachel turned up the volume, allowed the majestic strains of Aaron Copeland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man” to fill the earphones. Allowed the swell of sound to illuminate the tawny desert plain, to make it new to her again.

  Make it new. The thought billowed upward like a thermal, bubbled into prayer. Make me new again and whole. Untouched and unscarred. Unbroken, clean and strong enough …

  Her photograph of Zeke filled her mind, the frozen image melting into recollections of his movements as he worked. The bliss burning sunlike through his clouded eyes after they’d made love.

  Strong enough to let him go …

  Satisfied with her altitude, she radioed her intention before releasing the tether of the towrope. With a click, it peeled away, and Lili curved around and started her descent. Rachel caught a fleeting glimpse of her face, its expression hidden by the shadow of her cap’s bill. The last Rachel saw of her was the gleam of sunlight off a wing as the Piper Pawnee spiraled downward toward its landing. As the drone of the tow plane’s engine fell away, Rachel found herself at 3,500 feet, blissfully alone save for the steady rush of wind.

  The sheriff allowed Zeke to drive his pickup the short distance to the airport, “On the condition you don’t go and try some jackass move like running.”

  He’d said this with a pointed look at the boxes piled in the truck’s bed. But Zeke had given his word and followed Castillo’s SUV, where Simonton had been placed in the backseat in cuffs.

  Zeke was surprised Castillo hadn’t locked him back there, too. Maybe the sheriff was granting him a little leeway because of his concern for Rachel. Or maybe—still suspicious but uncertain—he was allowing Zeke enough rope to thoroughly hang himself.

  Zeke didn’t give a damn about his reasons. All he wanted was to see Lili Vega locked up so he could assure Rachel she was safe. But as he and the sheriff both climbed out of their vehicles, Zeke saw no sign of any of the Copelands, though Walter’s truck was parked close to the hangar. Lili’s yellow hatchback was there, too, along with Bobby Bauer’s big Ford, though Bobby, who was working on a small plane, was the only one in evidence.

  Dread hollowed Zeke’s stomach, a sick premonition that he’d caught Simonton too late.

  The sheriff took off his Western hat and waved it at Bobby. “Mind coming over?” he called.

  By the time Bobby drove over in the golf cart, the towplane had zipped in for a landing. Zeke craned back his neck, looking for a glider.

  Bobby seemed confused and more than a little concerned. “What’s going on? Is something wrong?”

  “We’re looking for Lili,” Castillo told him. “Have some questions for her.”

  “Where’s Rachel?” Zeke asked, unable to silence his anxiety.

  “Lili’s right there.” Bobby pointed to the towplane, where she was climbing out. “And Rachel’s flying. She just went up. You need me to radio her to come in?”

  Lili trotted over, looking more curious than worried. “What’s up, Harlan?”

  Zeke wondered at her use of his first name. Was he still the same philandering bastard he’d been years before?

  “Have to take you to my office, Lili.” Regret weighed down the sheriff’s voice. “Got some questions that need answering.”

  “Questions about what?” she asked, her dark gaze darting from Zeke to Bobby and then back to the sheriff. She rubbed her hands together, over and over, like a child washing. “I didn’t—if somebody’s wife’s said anything about me—”

  “It’s nothing to do with anybody’s wife,” Castillo assured her. “More to do with Gideon Simonton—Sy, he says they call him. Got him back there in my vehicle. He’s had some things to say about your involvement with the crash of Rachel Copeland’s glider on March sixth.”

  As Lili’s face went blank and drained of color, Zeke noticed a second reaction, more surprising than the first. A jerk of Bobby Bauer’s head when the name Simonton was mentioned. A stepping back as he turned toward the sheriff’s SUV and reached for something in his pocket.

  With two steps, Zeke launched himself at the man, catching him squarely from behind and knocking a compact, flat-sided pistol out of his hand as both men tumbled down.

  “It’s Bauer,” Zeke shouted at the sheriff. “It’s Bauer. Get his gun.”

  Pinned facedown, Bauer ground out, “Goddammit, let Gid out of there. Let my brother go. And get off of me—I have to help Gid.”

  Zeke moved aside, still pressing down the man’s hands, as Castillo cuffed him. They hauled the pilot to his feet.

  “Gideon Simonton’s your brother?” Castillo demanded.

  Bauer’s eyes were wild. “You can’t lock him in a cage. Can’t. He almost burned to death in—if I hadn’t got him out through the window…He wasn’t—he wasn’t like the others. He was—He didn’t—he never hurt me the way they did. He brought me food down there. And water. And he never called me Bastard.”

  “Bobby?” Emotion contorted Lili’s prettiness. “What the hell is going on? And who’s Gideon?”

  “Don’t lock Gid up,” begged Bauer. “I’ll tell you everything if you don’t lock him in there. It was Gid’s wife made the phone calls, and he helped me with—I was the one messed with the canopy. I just wanted—”

  “You sabotaged that glider?” Lili charged forward, slapping at him until Castillo pushed her back. Even then, she thrust forward, screaming, “You could have killed Walt’s daughter—after everything he’s done for you? You ungrateful bastard. And you two schemed to blame me, didn’t you? If somebody got caught, just blame the little wetback bar-bitch, was that how it went?”

  “Back off,” Castillo told her. “Back the hell off now. We’ve got ’im. And I didn’t buy that story, Lili. I swear, I never believed you’d—”

  “Go to hell, Harlan.”

  “Somebody call Rachel,” Zeke broke in. “Somebody get her down here, make sure she’s all right.”

  Rachel sucked in a deep breath at the sight of an unwelcome passenger. Striped with yellow-and-black warning, it bounced angrily against the clear canopy. Swallowing her discomfort, she told herself, It’s no big deal. If I don’t bother it, it won’t bother—

  She ripped off the headphones as she noticed a second, then a third bee zipping through the tight space. Then she heard the buzzing, loud and angry, beneath her seat.

  That was when she realized that her friend, the suddenly-so-generous Lili Vega, had arranged for her to die.

  Before anyone could call her, the squawk of Bauer’s radio interrupted. From one of his pockets, static crackled and a frantic female voice cried, “Trying to land—won’t make it to the airport.’ Bout a mile southwest—Bobby, come and find me. Hurry. I’m hurt and I’ll need help.”

  While Zeke turned to scan the sky, Castillo pulled the radio from Bauer’s pocket, keyed it, shouted, “Rachel?
It’s the sheriff. Where exactly are you?”

  After a delay followed by silence, he pushed the radio toward Lili. “Did I do this right? You call her. Find out where exactly she is, what’s the medical emerg—”

  A roaring in Zeke’s head drowned out the conversation. Instead, he grabbed Bauer. “What the hell did you do? What did you do to that sailplane?”

  The man’s head bobbed back and forth, as a child rocks to seek its comfort. “She didn’t deserve it. Draining Walter’s money, draining away his health—Didn’t do a damned thing to deserve a business we’d worked to build all these years. A business Gid and I could run together like we—”

  “I don’t give a damn about that. Tell me, or I swear, I’m going to knock those teeth right down your—”

  “Damn it, settle down.” Castillo grabbed an arm and hauled him backward with surprising strength for a man of his height. “You’re not helping. Lili—can you raise her?”

  “Rachel? It’s me, Lili. Answer.”

  But nothing came back except static, while Zeke, Lili, and the sheriff all stared toward the blank horizon.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  But psychoanalysis has taught that the dead—a dead parent, for example—can be more alive for us, more powerful, more scary, than the living. It is the question of ghosts.

  —Jacques Derrida,

  quoted in the New York Times Magazine, January 23,

  1994

  Three stings, four. As another pierced her eyelid, Rachel filled the cockpit with her screams.

  She fought the need to swat, fought to concentrate on getting down to earth alive—and out of this hell—as fast as possible. Using both dizzying spirals and her airbrakes, she dropped altitude. But disoriented by her pain and terror, she realized too late that she was well off from the airport and too low to do anything but make an emergency landing where she was.

  She’d attempted calling Bobby, but another bee had nailed her—the side of her neck this time—and now the ground’s upward rush made her forget the radio. Just focus on the landing, she ordered herself as she fought to level the wings, to slow her meteoric descent. Do that, and you can freak out later. Do that, and there’ll be a later.

  In the background, she heard Lili—that crazy bitch—calling her, but Rachel tuned out the sound, tuned out everything to reach a place beyond the pain, the rage and panic. To reach past her instinctive desire to pop the canopy to bail out and instead latch onto whatever skill and courage she could grab.

  As the ground flew toward her, a last, defiant thought blasted through awareness: I am Walter Copeland’s daughter. I will not die this way.

  “Take the plane and find her,” Castillo told Lili. “Circle where you see her and I’ll follow.”

  As Lili raced back toward the towplane, he told Zeke, “You go ahead in your truck. I’ll be there soon as I secure Bauer in the back with Simonton and call for help.”

  “An ambulance.” Zeke was already climbing in his pickup as he said it. “Don’t forget an ambulance for Rachel.”

  “Trying to land—won’t make it to the airport.” With her desperation screaming through his mind, he had to fight the fear that she’d come down hard enough to smash the fragile carapace that was her only protection. Instead, he forced himself to focus on the direction she had given—about a mile southwest—and think where this might put her and where he might cut over or find a vantage point to look around.

  “Hurry,” she’d told Bobby. “I’m hurt and I’ll need help.”

  Hurt how, if she had not yet landed? Was it possible, Zeke wondered, that he’d misunderstood her, that she’d already been on the ground when she had called? He mashed the gas pedal, not caring that a box of tools in the pickup’s bed had spilled, creating a clattering racket just behind him.

  Much to Rachel’s shock, she survived the landing, though the little glider bounced jarringly on its wheels and bumped along the weedy plain. It had barely stopped when she flipped open the canopy and dove out onto the sandy scrape.

  Another sting—the damned bees clearly didn’t appreciate the rough landing—had her standing to reclose the canopy and trap as many as she could inside. Apparently, she caught most by surprise, for after a few minutes, she’d either swatted (costing her another sting on the palm), outrun, or exhausted the rage of the last few.

  Some twenty yards from the glider, Rachel staggered to a stop with her entire body shaking, her breath coming in ragged gasps, and pain radiating from what felt like every bit of flesh at once. God alone knew how many stings she’d suffered. Had it been a dozen? Fifteen? More?

  With her right eye swollen shut already, she wondered if the allergy shots she’d taken through her twenties would save her. But as her thinking clouded, she couldn’t remember whether bees had been among the problems treated. Didn’t know if it would matter, if, allergy shots or not, she had taken too much venom.

  Overwhelmed by the adrenaline still screaming through her veins, she wiped her bleeding nose, then dropped to curl onto her side and tremble among the yellow grasses. Should call someone, she thought, but a pat down of her pockets told her she had lost her cell phone—probably in the glider. And there was no way in hell she was lifting that canopy for another round with the furious bees.

  At least start walking toward the airport. See if you can flag down Bobby’s pickup. She remembered spotting a dirt ranch road fairly close by as she’d landed but knew that her scant directions might not be much help in finding her.

  But when Rachel tried to rise, she couldn’t coordinate her movements, and when she tried to lift her head, a black wave of fatigue rolled her back down.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Revenge, at first though sweet,

  Bitter ere long back on itself recoils.

  —John Milton,

  Paradise Lost, Book IX

  Light flashed in Zeke’s rearview mirror as an SUV made a U-turn on the highway behind him. Ignoring it, he braked abruptly, then took the curve of a dirt ranch road so fast that he thought for one, wild second that he was sure to overturn. Recovering, he picked up speed and rattled over a cattle guard, an open grate that livestock would not cross.

  Peering upward, he scanned the sky for the towplane but saw only puffs of cloud. “Find her, find her, Lili. Where the hell are you?”

  He caught sight of the small plane about a quarter mile away. Had he turned in too soon? Should he have taken the next road? But he saw no indication Lili had yet found anything, so he continued on his course, frantically scanning left and right as he bumped over the rutted road.

  His rearview mirror showed a puff of rising dust. Castillo must have followed, also betting that this ranch road would be the closest to the site.

  The crash site. His mind conjured images from the days when he’d watched TV. Fiery wreckage, the staccato pulse of red lights, bodies being carried out on stretchers. His rational mind knew that gliders carried no fuel; there would be no smoke, no explosion. But the thought that it was Rachel out here somewhere, his Rachel, short-circuited all logic.

  If I find you in one piece, I’ll be damned if I let go.

  A bright flash drew his eye—light gleaming off a turning plane’s wing. Lili, circling low above a spot off to his right. Praying his old rattletrap of a truck would make it, he cranked the wheel and drove into the ragged grass to cut straight toward the spot.

  The first sound to penetrate was the bawling of a calf for its mother, followed by the rumbling of a small plane’s engine. Distant sounds, receding sounds. Noise that faded into the background static of the black void of her awareness.

  Some passage of time. A few seconds? A few hours? No way to know before another sound cut through. Hard, metal slam—a door, perhaps? Sharp, urgent call. Familiar, though, and reassuring.

  Rachel knew that voice. She knew it, even if she could not find her own to respond.

  “Rachel. Rachel, answer me,” he called.

  Zeke was calling. Or was he? She had been dream
ing, she realized, nightmare images of Kyle. The feel of her sweat-slick palm tight on the gun’s butt. The slide of her finger against the trigger.

  And the single shot that saved her. A shot she was finished regretting. Finished, because otherwise, what was the point of surviving?

  But as she roused, those images receded. Leaving only the sound of Zeke’s voice. No nightmare, no dream, but real and solid. Here, by whatever miracle ordained it.

  So answer him, ordered her unwieldy brain. Yet her tongue lay so thick in her mouth, she could scarcely breathe around it. Her limbs twitched, but purposeful movement was beyond her.

  Still, she heard his voice, his panic marking his progress as he raced toward the sailplane, instead of the spot where she lay, half-hidden by spring grasses. Toward the sailplane, where bees awaited, buzzing fury as they bounced around the closed cockpit. Panic slicing through her, she barely registered the approach of another vehicle, another door thrown open.

  “Don’t open it,” she tried to warn Zeke, a muffled slur of sound she could barely hear herself. Just turn around. Turn around and find me. I’m right here, if you’ll only look around…

  “What—what the hell?” she heard him ask. “Wha—Rachel! Where the hell are you?”

  “Here,” she grunted, fighting to open at least one eye and putting everything she had into that one word. Still, it came out muddled. Quiet. A sound lost beneath the call of some bird, the hiss of wind blown through the scant vegetation.

  “Rachel? Is that—” Zeke asked, followed by, “Who the hell are—?”

  A single gunshot shattered her hopes. A detonation amplified by her remembered shock, the sickening horror of the recoil. Anticipation of the hot rain of blood and brain that would—but somehow didn’t—spatter her skin.

  Because this was no flashback, no memory dragged forth from the past by terror. For it was Zeke she heard yelping in astonishment and pain and thumping hard against the fragile glider. The desert breeze brought her a bitter gift of gun smoke, its acrid stench enough to jerk her free from her stupor, from her past, as it sent fresh adrenaline gushing through her.