Licensed for Trouble

by Susan May Warren

  Halfway down the sidewalk, though, he turned and stalked back to where she still sat in the passenger seat. She rolled the window down.

  But he didn’t have apology on his mind. “The consequence of my crimes is that I know who I really am. What I’m capable of. Unlike you, I know where I came from. I can’t break free of it, and it terrifies me, just like Max said. The only difference is, unlike Max, I know my past; I know why I need to be afraid.”

  He backed away, hands up in surrender. “You can psychoanalyze me all you want, PJ, but the bottom line is, you can’t fix me. And I can only offer you the good part of me. The part that wants to start fresh. The other part—there’s nothing for you there. Take it or leave it.” He closed his mouth, his eyes daring her to speak.

  She willed herself not to cry. But any words she had were glued to her throat.

  “Fine,” he said to her silence and stalked away.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “I’m a total idiot, Connie. I just let a perfectly good man—one I think I could even love—walk out of my life.” PJ walked the length of the sidewalk and back again, the wind chapping her cheeks, herding leaves down the gutter. The sub shop pumped out the heady fragrance of baking bread, and not far-off, a radio hip-hopped out the hood.

  She just wanted to get into her car and drive. She didn’t care where. Just anywhere to fill the thrumming ache inside. “Take it or leave it.”

  “He didn’t mean it.” Connie had resurrected her lawyer tone, and PJ pictured her in her high-rise office, just over the river, downtown, staring out on Nicollet Avenue, even though she was probably sitting on her enclosed porch in a pair of yoga pants.

  “He did mean it. He’s got black holes in his life so big he could get lost for a year inside them.”

  “He was angry. You were angry.”

  “No, I was heartbroken because, the fact is, I truly understand what it feels like to walk around under the specter of your past. And for all his ‘fresh start’ talk, he has no idea what it means.”

  On the other end, Connie said nothing.

  “What?”

  “I’m just wondering if you do, either.”

  PJ let her sister’s words find her pores, sink in, even after she hung up and went in search of lunch. Finding Windchill took her the space of half a meatball sub. The display ad, right in the middle of the yellow pages, read, Windchill Skydiving, Flying That Will Take Your Breath Away.

  Right now, her breath was so heavy in her chest, she needed something to scrape it away.

  A fresh lead.

  A call to the spunky receptionist confirmed that Windchill was in, and PJ headed out to the Windchill Skydiving base west of the Twin Cities.

  If she ever had an inclination to throw herself from unimaginable heights—which she didn’t—she might do it from one of those shiny red and white Cessnas parked in front of the domed, metal hangar of Windchill Skydiving. The sun smiled off the metal, and in the distance, airplanes puttered along the tarmac, lining up for takeoff. A ten-foot painted sign with a cheesy picture of a parachute hung over a side door.

  PJ entered the small, paneled office with a ratty sofa and a rack of jumpsuits, the walls covered in cheap photos of skydivers,. A girl who looked like she might be blown hither by the first big gust filed her nails behind the counter, her blonde hair in two neat braids.

  “Hey,” she said, looking up at PJ. “Do you have an appointment?”

  “I called earlier—I’m looking for a guy named Windchill?”

  “He’s just coming in from a flight. You wanna book a jump?”

  PJ considered the pictures on the wall, blue and yellow parachutes unfurled like kites against a greater blue canopy. “I’ll wait for Windchill.”

  The girl gestured to a long hallway. “You can wait back in the equipment room if you want.”

  PJ wandered down the paneled hallway, checking out pictures, searching for any faces that resembled Max. Mostly happy skydivers giving a thumbs-up to the photographer. But no happy Max.

  Backpacks, shoes and jackets, open soda bottles, and chip bags littered the so-called equipment room. The picture windows overlooked the expansive landing field off in the distance, and PJ watched a red canopy, no larger than a pinprick, drift from the sky. It looked at once lazy and exhilarating and terrifying.

  “Makes you want to try it, doesn’t it?”

  She turned, and a man in a blue jumpsuit, carrying an orange and yellow unfurled chute over one arm and a silver helmet in the other, stepped inside the room, shrugged out of a small backpack, set the entire mess on the sofa, and grabbed an open can of soda.

  “I don’t know. It looks . . . Yes, there’s a small part of me that wonders what it might be like. But the truth is, I’m terrified of heights, so—”

  “Don’t let that stop you. You never know what you can do if you look beyond your fears. Might find a whole new you.”

  “Right now, I’m just looking for a guy named Windchill.”

  “You found him.” He lifted his soda at her, smiling. “Wayne Chillard. But my friends—” he added a wink behind the word—“call me Windchill.”

  Windchill screamed military head to toe, from his short, razor-cut blond hair and clean-shaven skin to the solid shoulders and lean build outlined by the jumpsuit, unzipped and peeled off his shoulders to his waist. Even the way he carried himself branded him as a soldier thanks to the aura of confidence she’d begun to expect from the other various former military men in her life, without, perhaps, the tortured look in his eyes.

  And without the smile on his face in the picture with Lyle and Bekka.

  He took another swig of his drink, then set it down on a shelf and picked up his chute, shaking it out with precise, mechanical movements. “What can I do for you?”

  “My name’s PJ Sugar.” She extended her hand, and he took it, met her eyes for a moment with a cryptic smile. Then she glanced at his biceps and the absence of a tattoo leaking from his shirtsleeve. Shoot. She had clung to the flimsy hope that Windchill might have been the man arguing in the street the day of Bekka’s death. “I’m trying to track down friends of Owen McMann.”

  Windchill’s smile faded, and a ripple of something she might call fear threaded through her. So maybe she should have waited for Jeremy.

  No, she could do this. No more leaning on her boss for help. She’d managed to traverse the country for years and even nab a few bad guys over the past several months without Jeremy’s help. She could talk to Windchill.

  “Why do you want to find Owen?” He had a low voice, and she rubbed her prickled arms where it rumbled under her skin.

  “Actually, I think he might have found me. Showed up on my doorstep a couple days ago.”

  He had stretched his chute out on the floor; now he stood, concern evident in his knit brow. “You’re the one who put his picture in the paper.”

  Owen’s picture? So now Max was Owen? She swallowed back any surprise from her expression. Maybe she’d scrub any mention of Lyle Fisher. “Uh, yes.” She couldn’t believe that he’d seen the ad after only one day.

  Windchill stepped closer. “Have you lost your mind?”

  She blinked at him. Wow, she had to look way, way up. When had she shrunk? “I . . . am not sure how to answer that question.”

  He raised one eyebrow.

  “Perhaps we should start over. I’m actually on Max’s side—”

  “Who’s Max?”

  “I mean . . . Owen.” She made a face as he stared at her. “Listen, your pal Owen lost his memory.”

  “He lost his memory?”

  “Someone tried to kill him four years ago, and we’re trying to figure out who that might be. We have a couple leads, but . . . well, Owen’s a bit sketchy on his past.”

  “I wondered why he let his picture go in the paper. It’s because of you. Good job. They’ll be back to finish what they started.”

  Finish what they . . . “What are you talking about?”

  His mouth tigh
tened into a line of quiet anger. Then, “Is he going to get his memory back?”

  “We’re . . . hopeful.”

  Windchill looked past her, out the window. “Have you ever been flying?”

  PJ glanced at the chute. “Is that a prerequisite to my getting to question you?”

  “It sure is, honey. You want to talk to me about Owen, we’ll do it in the air.”

  The air. “You can’t be serious.”

  “Do you want answers?” Windchill picked up the nylon edge of his chute, tucked it under his chin, and began to straighten the lines extending from the chute to the harness.

  “Yes, but . . . can’t we do it without jumping?”

  He folded the chute in half, then spread it out on the long table. He folded it in half again. “Not if you want to know who’s after Owen and why it might have been a lousy idea to announce to the world he was still alive.”

  Uh . . .

  “I have time for one jump; then I have places to be.”

  “Fine. Only if you promise I’ll live through this.”

  “You’ll more than live.” He gave her a smile.

  She watched as he took the lines of the chute, folded them back and forth, and laid them onto the nylon. Then he folded the rest of the chute accordion style into a tiny box and set the entire thing inside the pack. He glanced at her. “Well, go grab a jumpsuit. We’re leaving in five.”

  “You do promise to tell me what you know about Owen, right?”

  “Scout’s honor,” Windchill said, pointing to the rack.

  PJ grabbed a jumpsuit and climbed in. “You’re not going to let me jump alone, are you?”

  “Why? You scared to jump alone?”

  PJ swallowed. “No. . . . Okay, that’s a lie. I’m terrified.”

  He grinned. “Honesty. I like it. Don’t worry; I’ll hook you up to me. We’ll jump tandem.” He walked over to her, holding a harness, and held it out while she climbed in it, balancing herself with a hand on his shoulder.

  She must’ve lost her mind. Or left it inside the hangar, because as she followed him out to the plane buzzing on the tarmac, something foreign stirred inside her. A breathlessness. Perhaps a longing.

  She climbed into the plane. The seats had been removed. Windchill nodded to the pilot. She sat on the floor, in front of Windchill, letting him pull her to himself. She felt him behind her, hooking on clips to her harness. “You’re not going to drop me, are you?”

  “No promises.”

  She looked back at him. He wasn’t smiling. “I really am a friend of Owen’s.”

  “I believe you.” He handed her a helmet.

  The plane lifted off. PJ watched out the window as the landing strip shrank. They rose above the outlying houses, which turned into Monopoly buildings, the cars into Matchbox. Fields patchworked the ground, the road became a thread, and she could taste her stomach. Still they climbed.

  Okay, seriously, she’d taken this investigation thing a bit too far. What would Jeremy have done? “What do you know about Owen?”

  “We jump first.”

  “What if I don’t want to?”

  “Fear is not an option.”

  “Thank you, Arnold.”

  “You ready?” Windchill reached over, opened the door. The wind took her hair, her breath, her thoughts.

  “I don’t know.” She fisted her hands around the harness straps.

  “When we jump out, I want you to put your arms out like you’re flying. Then, after we fall for a bit, you’ll pull them in and I’ll open the chute. Then we’ll talk.”

  Talk? She’d have a hard enough time breathing.

  He moved her to the edge and she tiptoed her foot to the doorway. Below her the ground looked surreal, so far. A sort of crazy adrenaline raced through her stomach, and even as she stared out at the nothing but space between her and the ground, the fear left her. Simply zipped away, like she’d already pulled the cord and let it rip free.

  “Ready?”

  She nodded.

  And then she was flying. The wind battered her ears and sucked away her breath, cold and angry. But she drank it in, her arms out.

  Flying. Like Supergirl.

  She put her legs together, spread her arms, barely aware of Windchill over her, his own arms spread wide. She might have screamed, might have whooped, but the wind ate the sound as they hurtled toward the earth. She gulped in the freedom, the exhilaration sweet on her lips.

  Flying.

  And for the space of seven seconds, she forgot who she was, who she’d been. Forgot Boone and Jeremy and Max and why she’d hurled herself from a plane. Forgot the mushroom house and Prudence Joy and even Aggie Kellogg and her mysterious benevolence.

  Flying.

  It scooped her out whole and filled her with a new breath, tingling in every pore. Tears whisked her eyes, and inside she heard a voice.

  Princess.

  It may have been Jeremy, or perhaps her own memory, but as Windchill curled her arms around her to pull the chute, the word sang inside her.

  Princess.

  The chute jerked hard, and they soared to the heavens, leaving most of her stomach below. “Wow!”

  Then everything hushed. The rushing had stopped, leaving only the whisper behind. Windchill held the parachute toggles and steered them as they descended.

  “Hang on a second.” She felt him fiddling with her clips.

  “You’re not going to drop me, right?”

  While she waited for a laugh, she looked up at him. He reassured her with a smile even as she felt her lower clips give and she dropped further into his lap. “Just trying to make it more comfortable.”

  “Did you know that Owen had a son?”

  “Yeah. He talked about him a little.”

  “So sad. He has nothing left of his father—oh, except this teddy bear, but even that came after he disappeared.”

  He grabbed the toggles again. “Did you see the kid?”

  “No, but I saw pictures. So cute. And the grandmother says he never goes anywhere without that teddy bear. So you served with Owen?”

  He steered them through the sky, toward a grassy patch that appeared not more than a splotch of color. “We were both involved in missions I can’t talk about, but a few years ago, before he disappeared, we went into Sierra Leone during the last days of the UN peacekeepers. We were there to train locals in minesweeping. It was supposed to be a low-key event, until a mine exploded. Four of our guys were hurt—Owen was one of them. He had a head injury, was flown out to Germany. They weren’t sure he was going to make it. Everything was on the down low—I think they even listed him as MIA. He’d already done a tour, even did some time in an Iraqi POW camp during the beginning of the war on terror, so they shipped him home, medical leave. Only something happened. Right after he got home, his wife was killed, and he went missing. Rumor had him as good for it, but I never believed it.”

  “Why not?” The ground hurtled toward them, houses growing chimneys, yards widening. Already, the taste of joy had begun to fade.

  “Because there were rumors of our guys taking something more than souvenirs.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like diamonds. Sierra Leone is one of the biggest diamond producers—and hotbeds for smugglers—in Africa.”

  “So you’re saying maybe Owen took the diamonds?”

  “I don’t know. But if he didn’t, he knew who did and was being shut up or even set up.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The smugglers had to get the diamonds into the States, and the military isn’t exactly loosey-goosey on security. A guy headed stateside makes a pretty good transport. Maybe he brought something home.”

  The wind took his voice. Or maybe she just sensed him waiting, as if she might fill in the gaps. She shook her head. “Not that I know of. Do you really think Owen was in on it?”

  “No . . . or at least I didn’t. You get to know guys when you trust them with your life, but then again, look at Owen and Ratche
t—they went through the fire and they hated each other.”

  “Ratchet?”

  “Yeah. Ratchet was on our squad, but he and Owen didn’t get along.”

  “Why?”

  “They knew each other from before . . . from Iraq. When they were both POWs. Something happened that neither one of them would talk about. After Owen disappeared, Ratchet dropped off the map too. I think he was hanging around, trying to figure out how Owen might have gotten those diamonds home . . . Okay, we’re going to come in soft, so hold your feet up, and we’ll land.”

  He pulled on the chute, and she felt a hiccup, then a silky landing as she skidded onto the soft grass.

  Windchill wrapped one arm around her as the chute settled with a soft puff around them. He didn’t let go of her, kept his voice soft in her ear. Still, she felt the edge of warning. “You didn’t hear any of this from me. But you watch your back, and you tell Owen—or Max or whoever—to keep an eye out for Ratchet because I have a feeling this isn’t over.”

  * * *

  “Jeremy Kane, leave a message.”

  Hmm.

  “Hey, Jeremy, I think I have a lead.”

  Um . . .

  “Jeremy, I know you’re probably still angry . . .”

  Well . . .

  “It’s me. . . . Are you still mad?”

  Okay . . .

  “Where are you? You better not be lying dead in an alley.”

  So . . .

  “Did I mention I went skydiving today?”

  Fine.

  “I’m going back to my house. See you there.”

  PJ hung up her cell phone, tossed it onto the other bucket seat, then reached out to make sure it stayed where she could get to it, just in case one of her messages actually prompted Jeremy to call back. The sun hovered over the horizon, a simmer of hot red against a pellet gray sky. She had the radio cranked up high, the windows cracked, as her Bug pulsed its way through Minneapolis toward Kellogg.

  She felt invincible. The millisecond her feet—or rather backside—touched the ground, she wanted to fly again, every cell in her body vibrating with power.

  And she had a new lead. Windchill had given her Ratchet’s real name—Randy Simonson—and she’d raced back to the office. It had taken a number of traces—apparently Randy Simonson liked to move across the tristate area. From Sioux Falls, to Des Moines, to Fargo, and finally back to Minneapolis, landing at the Golden Valley Tire and Lube.