by Dale Mayer
She grinned. “Hold that thought. We have things to do, places to go, people to visit today, but tonight …” She left that thought hanging.
“Message received,” he said regretfully. “But don’t think I’ll forget that last bit.”
Once he was dressed, they walked downstairs and checked out. Then, with their overnight bags packed into the vehicle, he asked, “Do you want to walk?”
She nodded. “The parking down there will be terrible.”
Arms looped together, they walked several blocks toward the beach. She couldn’t help analyzing the wind, the sky and the weather. “It’ll be a beautiful day. At the moment it seems like the air is completely still.”
“Which is a good thing for the competitors, I presume?”
“Actually it’s the opposite. The winds give us an awful lot more we can do. If it’s still, sure, but we’re down to the equipment then. When there’s wind, then we can do magic.”
“Magic? I like the sound of that.”
“We’ll have to go up again,” she said. “Have you done any paragliding since we were up together?”
He shook his head. “I haven’t had any time.”
“Exactly. I’ve been a little busy myself,” she said with a laugh.
At the beach she led the way through the gathering crowd of sun-seekers and competition attendees to a small coffee shop at the end of the beach. It was just far enough away from the main traffic that she hoped it wouldn’t be too busy. It was plenty busy, but they still snagged a small table. They sat and enjoyed a good breakfast and coffee. Then, armed with coffee to go, they headed back outside.
They walked along the beach until they had to cross the road because of all the barricades erected to stop people from getting too close. She smiled at some of the people here, and, with Tanner at her side, they crossed over and took a detour around. “It’s odd being on this side,” she commented.
“I imagine.”
She noticed his gaze was always searching, always moving. “What are you looking for?”
“Well, that truck from last night would be nice,” he said. “Other than that, anything that feels wrong.”
“Such as?”
“Somebody else who might want to attack you.”
“Makes no sense to attack me at all, and I don’t know what the hell it would have to do with the other attacks. I thought we were here more because of my brother’s accident.”
“Your brother’s accident and your accidents and any connections between them.”
Up ahead she thought she saw Tom from her old job. But he wasn’t looking at her. Instead he was walking, his head bowed, his collar pulled high, his gaze staring down. She frowned. “I wonder where he’s going.”
Tanner followed her gaze. “Good question. If he’s trying to hide, he’s doing a good job of it. I almost didn’t recognize him.”
“Right.”
At his urging they fell into step behind Tom and kept an eye on him. At a large crowd of people ahead, he skirted around the back and then stepped up beside someone. She studied the other man and said, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen him before.”
As they watched, an envelope was passed between them. She straightened indignantly. Tanner patted her shoulder. “It looks bad, but it could be any number of things, including a drug deal.”
She frowned and calmed down slightly. “I still want to have a talk with him.”
“Well, you might, but you’ll only get a chance after my turn at him.” His voice was hard.
She turned and glared at him. He dropped a kiss on her nose.
Then their world exploded as a vehicle slammed into them.
She was lifted and flung to the grass, crying out in shock. Cries all around them rang out as people rushed to help her. Because she’d landed on the grass—and the vehicle hadn’t had much momentum because of so many people milling about—she was okay. But she couldn’t see Tanner. She made her way to her feet with the assistance of several people. She stood there shaky for a long moment and cried out, “Tanner? Are you okay?”
He appeared at her side, his face furious.
She realized he was short of breath. “Did you chase after it?”
He nodded and wrapped her in his arms. “It was the same truck from last night.”
“Did you see who was driving it?”
He shook his head. “But I got the license plate number.”
She leaned back. “How long will it take to get the owner’s name?”
“Mason is on it already.”
“Do you guys get access to stuff like that? Isn’t that secret?”
He shook his head. “The DMV database has it all. And, if Mason can’t get it, we have plenty of friends in law enforcement who can.”
She glanced around at everybody standing nearby, making sure she and Tanner were still okay. She thanked several people and took several tentative steps.
Tanner studied her walking pattern. “Your ankle?”
“It’s a little tender,” she said. “I don’t think it’s major.”
He led her to a bench and helped her sit down. Then he walked back over to the crowd, and, while she watched, he spoke to several people and wrote something down on a notepad. When he returned, she looked up at him in confusion. “What was that all about?”
“Names and addresses, contact information for witnesses of the accident.”
That kept her quiet as she thought about him having the presence of mind to do that while she sat here, still in shock.
Just then a young man came toward them. “I saw what happened,” he said. “I work over at the coffee shop. You guys were just in there and lost your coffee, so I brought you two more. Please sit and relax.”
And, with a brief smile, he took off, not even giving her a chance to thank him. She laughed. “Well, this certainly shows us another side of humanity, doesn’t it?”
He smiled and nodded. “That was nice of him.”
At his concerned look, she smiled. “I really am okay.” She gave her legs a bit of a shake. “It was just the shock of being upended and finding myself suddenly on my back on the grass.”
“And yet, we’re both here. Thank heavens,” he said with a chuckle, giving her a gentle hug. “Maybe we can have a talk with Rog, give him a warning, make sure he takes extra care to go over his equipment, see if we recognize any of the same people around the place. Do we need to stay right through to the end, to the last run?”
“We probably should.” She took several sips of her coffee. “I wouldn’t mind getting closer to where everybody is. If we head that way”—she pointed—“we should find a place to sit down and to relax until things get started.”
With him at her side, the two made their way. She felt a little rougher than she expected. By the time they got to a bench close to the proceedings, she plunked down with relief. “You don’t realize just how much an incident like that can wipe you out.” She drained the last of her coffee and tossed the empty cup into the garbage can. He did the same. Together on the bench, she said, “I feel woozy. Maybe I landed harder than I thought.”
He twisted and looked at her, his hand going to her forehead. “Did you hit your head? Are you okay?”
She stared at him, feeling her energy drifting away. “What’s happening to us? I didn’t think so.”
He turned to look around them. “We’re in trouble,” he managed to choke out. He pulled out his phone, and, as she watched, he typed in a short word and pressed Send.
“What … was that?”
“A code word for … help.” But even as he tried to get the last word out of his mouth, his head lolled to the side, and slowly he slumped over.
It took a moment for her to understand what was going on, and then she slowly fell to the side too.
Dimly, in the back of her mind, she realized people had grabbed her, lifting her, carrying her away, but the world was spinning around her. She couldn’t fight. She couldn’t struggle. As the gentle words in her e
ar whispered, “Calm down. You’re fine,” she sagged in relief and let the unconsciousness take her.
*
Tanner woke up abruptly. It took him all of ten seconds to understand he was in a van, rattling around in the back. It only took a couple more seconds to realize he was not only tied up but that Wynn was tied up beside him. Instantly he became alert, his mind searching for answers, realizing they’d been drugged and kidnapped. The back of the van they were in was empty but for the two of them. It wasn’t the truck that kept trying to hit them, so obviously another vehicle had been brought in to kidnap them.
He had managed to get off his Help message, so he could only hope his friends were coming to the rescue. It was still daylight. Good. He hadn’t been out that long. He could barely see up to the front seat where both the driver and a passenger were. Tanner rolled over ever-so-slightly and whispered to Wynn, “Wake up.”
A soft moan came from her. With his mouth against her ear, he whispered, “We’ve been kidnapped. I need you to wake up. I need you to wake up now.”
Her eyes fluttered open. She twisted slightly and looked at him, and he nodded. He motioned toward the front of the van. She was moving very little. She twisted enough to look up at the front, but they could only see the back of the driver and the passenger. She glanced around, but there wasn’t much for her to see since the van was empty except for some gear and tools. She looked over at him in horror. They weren’t gagged, but they knew not to bring any attention to themselves or risk getting them both in more trouble. She whispered, “Who?”
He shook his head.
“Where are we?”
Again he shook his head. The question of why was in her gaze, but he had no answer for that either.
The van took a turnoff then and climbed. She opened her eyes wider as if understanding the route.
He frowned.
She whispered, “We’re climbing. I bet we’re going paragliding.”
He stared at her. “Do you think they are taking us to the competition launch point?” Although why they would, he didn’t know.
She shrugged and twisted her hands, tied behind her back, trying to get free.
As he watched, she folded her body up small and tight and managed to get her arms around her butt, over her feet, so they were in front of her. She lay back down, both of them still waiting to see if their actions had been noted.
In the front seat was a little conversation and some music, but nobody in the front seat seemed to care what they did, or didn’t hear them, now moving around in the back of the van.
She stared at the knots around her wrists, her fingers working them. He knew he couldn’t manage the same maneuvers she had, but he studied her knots and then realized how they worked. He leaned over and, with his teeth, unraveled hers. It took a lot of effort and a lot of muscle, but he had no trouble finally untying her.
With her hands free, he whispered, “Get your legs.”
When she got her feet untied, the van took another turn and headed up an even steeper road. He rolled to his side, and she went to work on his hands, also tied behind his back. It took her a lot longer because the knots were tighter, but finally she managed it.
Just in time because he could feel the vehicle slowing as it rose to the top. He quickly untied his ankles.
He didn’t think anybody involved in this mess had plans he would be happy about. He took a look out the van’s rear window and saw they were cresting a hilltop. Quickly he opened the back door, pulling her out with him. He heard the shouts from the guys in the front seat, but Tanner didn’t care and took off running, pulling Wynn with him.
Up ahead he saw several paragliders already stretched out and stopped. He motioned at them and said, “What the hell?”
He backed up, but a warning shot fired over his head had him freezing. He turned, pulled her into his arms, and saw the passenger holding a gun on them. “Tom, I presume?”
His face twisted. “You piece of shit,” he snapped. “You don’t get to know my name.”
“Kirk and Tom. Loser sons of Charlie, part owner of the paragliding school that just fired Wynn. Assholes that.”
Tom shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. You won’t live long enough to do anything about it.”
“What the hell are you doing, Tom?” Wynn cried out. “You kidnapped us.”
He nodded. “And now I’m going to kill you. Unlike before, I’ll make sure you die. No way you should have survived last time.”
Tanner froze. “You’re the one who sabotaged her rig?”
“Of course I did. And her brother’s.” He laughed. “Todd and Miss Snot Nose here think they are better than everybody. Both needed to be brought down to earth like the rest of us.” He laughed at his own joke.
“What’s the point of us having another accident then?” she asked in confusion. “What purpose would that serve?”
“You’re sniffing around all the accidents in the competition. Don’t you realize how rigged this competition is? We get to choose who wins and who loses. It’s got nothing to do with skill. You always thought you were so good because you won. And because your brother won. But that’s bullshit. We let you win. There’s a group of us, and my dad has been involved since the beginning. Now me and Kirk are a part of it too,” he said. “I was way better in the sky than you any day.”
At that, Tanner smiled. “So you’re really jealous, huh? Because you weren’t good enough? You weren’t good enough to make it pro like Todd and Wynn were? Did you see us walking on the street last night and couldn’t stop your jealousy from taking over and had a try at running us over?”
“I was good enough,” Tom said with a snarl. “I just didn’t want to go any further. Too much effort. Not when it was all rigged anyway. And I might have lost my temper last night in my truck, but, if I’d wanted to kill you then, I could have.”
Tanner glanced down at Wynn, who stared at Tom. “Why the gun?”
“Just in case. But I can hardly shoot you, can I?” he said with a smirk. “At least not unless your body is so badly damaged from the emergency landing that they won’t give a shit, and they’ll put down the cause of death due to the crash when you smashed into the ground.”
“So you didn’t expect her to live through the last event? Were you also the one who broke into her house?”
“No. That was Kirk. We were looking for her designs. We told our father we had better designs than they did. But of course our designs weren’t quite as good because we didn’t come from the same background and the same history. So we were going to steal them and make them ours. Our father would at least let us move up in the family business, maybe hand it over to us finally, like he promised all those years ago. But we couldn’t find her latest designs.” Anger raged through him. “But, once you’re gone, we’ll take care of Todd. That’ll be a break-and-enter that went bad, and we’ll take the computers so we don’t have to rush to get the information we want before we’re caught.” He motioned with the gun. “Get over to the paragliders.”
Tanner led her to them. “Are they rigged to crash?”
“Maybe, maybe not. If you’re lucky, you’ll survive this crash. If you don’t cooperate, I’ll shoot you both dead. It’ll be a murder-suicide then. I’ll find a different way to dispose of your body. I could just throw you over the cliff and toss the gun too. It won’t make any difference. I’ll have wiped it clean.”
Tanner swore inside because that was too often the case anyway. He looked at the paragliders. “And what did you do to these?”
“Rigged them both of course. Would have taken care of your reserve chute but, of course, you’re too good to want to fly with that extra weight,” he said. “We will paraglide along with you, witnesses to your terrible accident,” he said with a laugh. “We’ll make sure you go down. No matter which way it happens, you’re going down.”
Tanner looked at Wynn; her face was pale, but she was calm, even if her bottom lip trembled.
“So you really want to ki
ll me? Then you’ll kill my brother, just for some designs?”
“Not just for some designs. To take you down. Your ego was too big after we let you win. These competitions got nothing to do with how good you are. They are all about the sponsors and who wants to help you be what.”
“This has nothing to do with the competition. It’s all because I turned you down, didn’t want to go out on a date with you, isn’t it? Because I liked hanging out with your brother instead?”
His face flushed red. “Get the hell over to the paragliders. You want your little boy toy, whatever he is? Well, he’s going down with you. Hopefully getting laid was worth dying for.”
His brother finally came out of the van then, a gun in his hand, as he walked nearer and directed Tanner to a particular glider and then pointed Wynn to hers.
“So, Kirk, you’re totally okay with a double murder too, huh?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Gear up.”
Angrily she picked up her designated harness and strapped it on. Tanner had already geared up himself. The other two parachutes and the paragliders were for Kirk and Tom.
Under their kidnappers’ orders to jump, Tanner took a final breath, called out to her and said, “You know it’ll be okay, right?”
She turned and smiled at him. “It will be what it is.” And she leaped off the cliff.
He watched her tilt her face up to the wind, possibly accepting this was her last flight, and he had to admire her for having so much guts.
With the men pushing him, he jumped off the cliff behind her. He expected a bullet in his back at any time.
There was a lot of wind picking up. He watched as Wynn caught a thermal and rose up higher. He caught one himself. Caught on that turret of air, they both rose. He twisted to look behind him to see the brothers in the air as well.
She glanced at Tanner, a worried smile on her lips. He could see she’d been busy checking out the rigging. He wanted to make sure she was ever-so-slightly above him, so he could help catch her. He didn’t have any expectations that another rescue like the last one would work here, but he’d do what he could. Of course, there was no guarantee they wouldn’t sabotage both of them midair. As he caught sight of her pack, he frowned. Why the hell did this one have a T on it? He glanced over at her and called out, “What letter was on your glider?”
