Flirting with Disaster

by Jane Graves

Way over.

  As Dave was transporting Frank to the psych ward at Tolosa Medical Center, he kept picturing him sailing over that wall, his coat ballooning up behind him, his tie quivering in the wind, falling like a hawk taking a nosedive—right up to the moment when he wasn’t falling anymore. Then somebody would have cleaned up the mess and everyone would have patted Dave on the back and told him that of course he’d done everything he could. That you couldn’t win them all. Better luck next time.

  “It was no big deal,” Dave said to John. “He had no intention of jumping.”

  “Bullshit,” John said. “You can never tell. You think you’re dealing with rational people, but they’re not rational. Not even close. Saw a cop talking a woman down once who swore she wasn’t going to jump. He almost had his hands on her when she shifted gears and took a dive.” He snapped his fingers. “Just like that.”

  Thank you, John, for making me feel so much better.

  Dave drained his first beer, wondering how many more he’d have to drink before it took the edge off the way he felt right now. All he wanted to do was shove what had happened today to the back of his mind and pretend it had never happened.

  “You said Ashley had a problem,” Alex said. “What’s up with that?”

  Dave sighed heavily. “It’s nothing. Some kid on the playground smacked her with a swing.”

  “So tell her to smack him back,” Alex said.

  “She sat down in the corner of the playground and cried.”

  “Well, that’s not going to cut it,” John said. “She needs to learn not to take any crap. Once the other kids know she’ll stand up for herself, they won’t bother her anymore.”

  “Come on, John. Can you really see Ashley hauling off and belting another kid?”

  His brothers looked down at their beers.

  Timidity was an unheard of characteristic in the DeMarco family, and it worried Dave that it seemed to dominate Ashley’s personality. Then again, Ashley took after her mother far more than she took after him. She had none of the dark ruggedness of the DeMarco family, her face instead reflecting the tender features of her mother: sandy blond hair, brows fanning out in a gentle arch, ivory skin, delicate mouth. Even though Carla had been dead over four years now, barely a moment passed when he looked at his daughter that he didn’t see his wife’s face.

  That night four years ago, Carla’s car had sailed through the guardrail and off an icy bridge, plunging nose-first twenty feet down into the vast darkness of the frigid water below. What Dave had never told his brothers, never told anyone, was exactly what her death had done to him, and how he could live to be a thousand and still he wouldn’t be able to put that night out of his mind.

  “Maybe I need to go out on that playground,” Dave said. “Grab the kid by the collar. Have a word with him.”

  “Yeah, and then his father’s attorney will have a word with you,” Alex said. “It’s one thing for Ashley to beat up on a kid. It’s another thing for her father to do the job.”

  “You’re a cop,” John said. “I can see the headlines now.”

  “Let her fight her own battles,” Alex said. “Eventually she’ll learn to kick some ass.”

  “Not that you can’t teach her a move or two,” John said, then turned to Alex. “But excuse me. If a boy hurts a girl, it’s not his ass that needs kicking.”

  Dave shook his head with disgust. “Great. Next I’ll be stashing a grenade in her Barbie lunch box, just in case something really big goes down.”

  “Barbie,” John said, rolling his eyes. “Jesus, Dave. There’s half your problem right there. Give her a role model with puffy blond hair and thirty-eight double-D boobs. I’ll bet she takes all kinds of crap off Ken.”

  “A doll is not a role model.”

  “So get her a mother.”

  So get her a mother. As if it were that easy. “Yeah. I’ll pick one up tomorrow on my way home from the station.”

  “At least date once in a while. When’s the last time you even went out? You can’t buy a thing if you don’t go shopping.”

  He expected those kinds of questions from his sister, Sandy. That his brothers were starting in on him, too, told him his dateless status had reached crisis proportions.

  “How long has it been since you got up close and personal with a woman?” Alex asked. “Maybe that would improve your disposition.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with my disposition.”

  “Why don’t you let Ashley stay with Renee and me one night?” John said. “That way you can invite a woman over. You know. Have a little privacy.”

  Privacy. Right. He might as well plaster a sign on his front door in big red letters: DAVE’S FINALLY GETTING SOME—DO NOT DISTURB. As if his family didn’t already stick their noses into every other aspect of his life, they were moving in to take a ringside seat around his bed, too.

  “I’ll pass on that,” Dave said. “But you know, the second I decide I want the whole world to know I’m getting laid, you’ll be the first one I call.”

  “Hey, just trying to help, little brother.”

  His family. By the time they got through helping him, he really did need help.

  Dave tried to turn his attention back to the game, but all at once he was struck by a monumental case of envy for what his brothers had that he didn’t. Their wives moved in symbiosis with them, filling in their blanks. Renee was a calming influence over John, arresting his sometimes hotheaded nature, while Val was the only woman on earth who could kick Alex’s ass and leave him with a smile on his face. Not that they didn’t fight once in a while. Both couples could go at it like the WWF on a Saturday night. But their love for each other was never in question, and Dave wondered every day how he’d ended up the odd man out.

  So get her a mother.

  Everything came right back around to that, because, you know, after four years, he really ought to be getting on with things. After all, he’d taken Carla’s death so well. That was Dave. He always made the best of things. Stuff rolled right off him, and then he moved on.

  Yeah. Right.

  There had been a time in his life when he’d felt sure of everything, but with every year that had passed since Carla’s death he’d become more and more certain that he had no control over anything. Where Ashley was concerned, all he wanted to do was love and protect her, but sometimes he felt as if he was doing a really shitty job of being Mom and Dad all rolled into one. Hell, if he didn’t have a clue what to do about her kindergarten playground problems, what was he going to do when things really got tough?

  He knew what it was like to grow up without a mother. His had died when he was only six. So for Ashley’s sake, he knew he needed to be thinking seriously about getting married again. And if he did, he would just keep on wearing that mask that said he had it all under control, that life was just wonderful, that he’d weathered the storm of his wife’s death and gone on to find love and happiness a second time.

  But he would always know the truth.

  The Mavericks tied it up by halftime. During a news break, Dave pulled a ten from his wallet. It was time for him to hit the road.

  “Hey, Dave!” John said. “Is that who I think it is?”

  Dave turned his gaze back to the television. A cable news anchor was saying something about a plane crash. Something about the pilot being killed.

  Then a photo flashed on the screen.

  Dave froze, feeling as if the blood had thickened in his veins, slowing to a crawl, making him unable to move a muscle. Stabbed by recognition, long-buried emotion burst to the surface, and only by swallowing hard and grasping the edge of the table with tense fingers was he able to keep his face impassive.

  “That’s her, isn’t it?” John asked. “Lisa Merrick?”

  “Yeah,” Dave said on a hushed breath. “It’s her.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw John and Alex gauging his reaction, but he couldn’t tear his gaze away. After all this time, he was astonished to see Lisa’s face
and even more astonished that she looked nearly the same as she had in high school—strong features, short red-gold hair in a tangled, windblown style, and searing green eyes that radiated raw passion. In the dark of night sometimes he still thought about her, and when he did, this was the face he saw.

  Beside Lisa’s photo was one of a forty-something man, Dr. Adam Decker, who was with her at the time the plane went down. Then the report quoted Dr. Robert Douglas, who was the administrator of an organization that flew doctors into a remote area of Mexico to provide health care at a free clinic. He told reporters that on a volunteer mission Lisa took off near the town of Santa Rios yesterday evening, then crashed into a river. They didn’t know the cause of the accident. There was speculation that the bodies might never be recovered.

  “So Lisa Merrick became a pilot for a humanitarian organization?” John said. “Holy shit. Can you believe that?”

  Yes. He could. John thought it was unbelievable only because he hadn’t known her like Dave had. Nobody had. It didn’t matter that she was a girl from the wrong side of the tracks, who apparently had nothing but a dead-end life ahead of her. All that mattered was that she’d wanted out of her situation. She’d wanted desperately to be a pilot, and it looked as if she’d accomplished that. She’d yanked herself up out of that quagmire loosely referred to as a family, gone after what she wanted, and gotten it. He felt a rush of admiration for what she’d accomplished. She’d lived her dream.

  And now she was dead.

  “Hey, Dave,” Alex said. “Are you all right?”

  Dave continued to stare at the screen.

  “I guess it’s kind of a shock,” Alex said. “I mean, I know how you felt about her—”

  “You don’t have a clue how I felt about her.”

  Dave’s relationship to Lisa had been a mystery to his brothers in high school. The physical attraction part they’d understood. After all, Lisa Merrick had been a well-endowed girl who dressed provocatively, who’d been the subject of more locker-room talk than any other girl in Tolosa South history. But trying to explain to John and Alex that he saw something in Lisa beyond her bad-girl reputation had been a losing proposition.

  “So how did you feel about her?” Alex asked. “What really happened between you and Lisa Merrick?”

  Dave gave his brother an icy stare. “I told you what happened. Nothing.”

  “Yeah, that’s what you said back then. But this is now.”

  “Are you asking me if I slept with her?”

  “You wouldn’t have been the first guy to,” John said. “Or the second.”

  “Or the tenth,” Alex added.

  “I was engaged to Carla! Do you really think I’d do that?”

  “I can’t imagine that you would,” Alex said. “But I know what Lisa Merrick was like. Once she had a guy in her sights, it was all but over.”

  Dave leaned in and skewered his brother with an angry glare. “Look, Alex. I know what you thought of her. What everybody thought of her. But there was more to Lisa than you or anybody else ever knew. I don’t expect you to understand that. But I do expect you to respect the fact that she’s dead and shut the hell up about her.” He shoved his chair back and stood up. “I’ve got to go.”

  “Aw, come on, Dave,” John said. “We didn’t mean to piss you off. Will you just sit down?”

  Dave tossed another ten down on the table. “You guys have another beer on me. It appears you’ve got a lot more speculating to do.”

  Over his brothers’ protests, he turned and walked out of the bar. By the time he reached his car, he felt a little shaky. He got into the driver’s seat, closed the door, then stopped and leaned his head against the headrest, closing his eyes. Seeing Lisa’s face on that television screen had awakened something hot and intense inside him, a reminder of the passion that had once oozed from her like hot lava.

  She’s dead. Lisa is dead.

  The next hour passed in a daze. He picked up Ashley and brought her home, thinking he ought to have another word with her about standing up for herself with the swing smacker, but he couldn’t think of a single useful thing to say. He gave her a bath, then tucked her and her stuffed rabbit into bed.

  Pulling up a pillow, Dave sat down on the bed beside her, leaning against the headboard. She slid a bedtime book off her nightstand. Fortunately, she knew Stellaluna by heart and ended up reading it to him, so he could pretend to be listening when he couldn’t have focused on the story if his life depended on it.

  Ashley’s voice was little more than white noise to him as the minutes passed. All he could think about was Lisa’s plane going into that river in the Mexican wilderness and the tragic loss of a life that had clearly held more potential than even he’d been able to imagine. And he couldn’t help wondering whether she’d forgotten him the moment they’d parted or carried his memory around inside her for the past eleven years, just as he’d carried hers.

  Dave heard the phone ring in the kitchen. He turned to Ashley. “Back in a minute, honey. Flopsy can hold the place, okay?”

  Dave grabbed one of her rabbit’s floppy ears, laid it across the page, and closed the book. Ashley smiled up at him. He patted her on the arm, then rose from her bed, went down the hall to the kitchen, and caught the phone on the fourth ring.

  “Hello?”

  He heard a woman’s voice. Soft. Grainy. Almost a whisper. “Dave?”

  He pressed the phone more tightly to his ear. “Yes?”

  “This is Lisa Merrick.”

  chapter two

  For a few stunned moments, Dave’s brain refused to engage. “What did you say?”

  “Lisa Merrick.”

  Dave was speechless. All kinds of thoughts flew through his mind, none of them making any sense at all. Somebody had to be yanking him around. Big-time. Lisa Merrick was dead. That news report tonight hadn’t left any room for interpretation.

  “Look,” he said sharply. “I don’t know who this is, but it’s not Lisa Merrick. It can’t be. She’s—”

  “In the shop at school,” she said on a harsh breath. “Three days before graduation—”

  “Stop.”

  Dave felt a bone-deep sense of dread well up inside him. Either Lisa had told somebody what had happened that day and that person was playing one hell of a nasty joke, or . . .

  Or this really was Lisa.

  In that moment, he felt an irrational jolt of alarm that people who believed in ghosts might not be deluded after all.

  “Where are you?” he asked. “What happened?”

  “I’m in Mexico.” Her voice sounded weak, disembodied. “My plane crashed.”

  “I know. There was a TV news report. That doctor, Robert Douglas, reported that you’re dead.”

  “That’s what he told everybody? That I died in the crash?”

  “Yes. He said your plane went down right after takeoff. You need to call him. Tell him you’re okay.”

  “No! I can’t do that!”

  “Why not?”

  “Because he’s the one who tried to kill me!”

  Dave snapped to attention, a sinister shiver running all the way down his spine. “Wait a minute. Kill you? What do you mean? How?”

  “My plane going down wasn’t an accident,” she said, a heavy, hushed quality to her voice. “It was sabotage. He thinks he killed me. And if he finds me now and realizes he failed, I’m dead.”

  “Where are you exactly?”

  “Santa Rios. A couple hundred miles southeast of Monterrey.”

  Dave fumbled through a kitchen drawer for a pencil and scribbled the information on a pad beside the telephone.

  “Lisa, listen to me. If you think somebody’s out to kill you, you need to go to the authorities. Tell them what you suspect. Tell them—”

  “No!”

  “It’s the only way. If you’re in danger—”

  “Don’t you understand?” she said, panic lacing her voice. “They’re in on it! The sheriff, probably, and God knows who else!”


  Dave froze in utter disbelief. “Are you telling me there’s a conspiracy to kill you?”

  “Yes! Because I know about the counterfeit drugs! Robert Douglas is manufacturing them around here somewhere. Somehow he knew I found them, because he sabotaged my plane when I tried to take them back across the border. And then there were the men who came to make sure I died in the crash. The ones with the machine guns!”

  “Machine guns?”

  “My plane was hung up on the side of a ravine. They thought I was still in it, but I’d gotten out and moved to a ledge beside it. Then they shot at it. Over and over. It fell into the river. I fell, too, because I was still close to the plane. After I hit the water, I made it to the bank. Then I walked, oh, God, so far. All last night and all day today. I don’t know how many miles. Finally I made it back to Santa Rios, to this phone—”

  “Hold on. Slow down. Drugs? Machine guns? You’re not making any sense.”

  “I’m telling you they’re after me. They could be anywhere right now—I just don’t know. If they see me, they’ll kill me. Do you understand? They’ll kill me!”

  “You have to tell somebody down there what’s happened to you. Find somebody—”

  “No! I have no way of knowing who’s in on it and who isn’t! Robert Douglas for sure, but who else? I just don’t know!”

  None of this made any sense at all. It sounded like the ramblings of an insane woman. He’d heard conspiracy theories before, but this was ridiculous.

  “Oh, God,” she said with a weary breath. “My head . . . My head hurts so much. . . .”

  “Your head? What happened?”

  “I hit it on something when I crashed . . . the control panel maybe. . . .”

  All at once, Dave understood. She sounded delirious. Delusional. She could have crawled away from the crash alive without anyone knowing it, trying not to be seen because of a head injury that had altered her cognition and induced paranoia. She was afraid, yes. But it could very well be that the thing she was afraid of existed only inside her mind.

  He needed to find out exactly where she was, then get in touch with the law enforcement in Santa Rios or maybe even the doctor who thought she was dead. Get somebody down there to find her and get her to a hospital.