Tailspin

by Sandra Brown

  “They had no idea we were there, ma’am. Tracking them on foot, we could’ve given ourselves away. It wouldn’t have been a smart move.”

  Knowing how thin she was on patience, he used as few words as possible to adequately describe how bad conditions were. “You think it’s bad in Atlanta, it’s worse up here. If we came up on them accidentally in this fog and there was an…encounter…this could get botched real easy.”

  “It could’ve got messy,” Timmy said, speaking for the first time. “Because he was packing.”

  “What’s he talking about, Goliad?”

  “The pilot was armed. You, we, nobody took him into account. He wasn’t even supposed to be in the picture.”

  “Why would we have taken him into account? We didn’t know he would crash!”

  “True. There was no predicting that.” Goliad shot an angry glance toward Timmy, who squirmed in his seat.

  “You say he was armed?” she asked.

  “Pocket pistol. Nine-millimeter. He’s not a regular pilot. Looked worse for wear, and not because of the crash.”

  She didn’t say anything for a while, thinking it over, Goliad guessed.

  He said, “The plane going down was a setback, but the box survived it, and the doctor has it. Only a little time has been lost. We’ll catch up with her at the airport.”

  Timmy opened his mouth, but Goliad gave a forbidding shake of his head, silencing him before he spoke.

  She was saying, “Need I remind you that every minute counts?”

  “We know, ma’am.”

  “The next time you call, I want to hear that you have the doctor in tow, with the box, and that you’re on your way back to Atlanta. Is that understood?”

  “Loud and clear.”

  “Good. I’m hanging up now. I suggest that you start immediately making up for lost time. I must go explain to my husband that you’ve been delayed. He won’t be happy. I’m certainly not. I advise you both not to fail us.” With that, she ended the call.

  Timmy whistled. “She burns hot, don’t she? Bet she fucks like—”

  Goliad’s arm sliced across the console of the car and clotheslined Timmy’s neck. “Remember who you’re talking about.” He pressed his arm against Timmy’s windpipe hard enough to make him wheeze. “Playing with your new laser,” he sneered. “This isn’t a game, you idiot.”

  Slowly he released the pressure on Timmy’s throat and resettled himself behind the steering wheel. Out of the corner of his eye, he stayed aware of where Timmy put his hands. His right was rubbing his throat. Goliad half expected him to produce one of his blades with his left.

  But he was gulping air and swallowing noisily. When he had his wind back, he croaked, “I was only joking.”

  “Wasn’t funny. You work for them. Show respect for both, or this is your last detail.”

  “Okay, okay,” Timmy mumbled. “So what now?”

  Goliad started the car. “We go to the airstrip, be waiting for them when they get there.”

  “That’s plan B?”

  “That’s plan B.”

  “You think the lady doctor will go along with us shouldering in on her?”

  “She will once we tell her that we’ve been dispatched by Mrs. Hunt, personally. We’ll tell her that Mrs. Hunt was concerned for her, driving up here alone in the fog. Mrs. Hunt sent us to make sure she has a safe trip back.”

  “She’ll buy that?”

  “She’ll probably call and confirm.”

  “What if she still doesn’t like it?”

  “Let’s wait and see what happens.”

  “What about the pilot?”

  “Wait and see.” He looked over at the younger man. “We’re up shit creek. What are you grinning for?”

  Timmy giggled. “‘Wait and see’ means I might get to kill somebody after all.”

  Chapter 4

  2:32 a.m.

  A freight dog. That’s what they call you.”

  “That’s one of the nice things,” Rye said.

  After abandoning the plane, they had trekked through dense forest, made more challenging by the fog. However, they reached the doctor’s no-frills sedan without mishap or getting lost…only to be met there with another problem.

  Rye had been about to get into the passenger seat when he noticed that the right front fender had collided with a fence post set in concrete. That side of the hood was buckled, but worse, the wheel was bent up under the chassis. He swore.

  “What’s the matter?”

  He looked at her across the roof of the car. “Don’t bother getting in. We’re not going anywhere in this.”

  She’d walked around the rear end to join him on the passenger side and surveyed the damage with dismay. “I didn’t realize I’d hit it.”

  “How could you not realize it?”

  As exasperated as he, she fired back. “Something awful must’ve distracted me. Like a propeller in my windshield.”

  Cursing under his breath, he’d gone around her and set out on foot. She hurried to catch up before he disappeared into the fog.

  Within a few minutes, they’d reached the turnoff she had missed earlier. A sign pointed them toward the Howardville County Airfield. The road leading to it was bumpy, narrow, and enshrouded in fog. They stayed in the middle of it to avoid veering off into the ditches on either side.

  He set a brisk pace. His companion had become a bit winded, her breaths escaping as puffs of vapor. But she hadn’t once complained or lagged behind. He supposed her mention of a freight dog was an attempt to make conversation, but he didn’t follow up on it. His thoughts were too focused on how he was going to deal with Brady White.

  Why would the asshole offer to scare up a beer or two for him, then blind him with a laser beam?

  Like drones, the more sophisticated, powerful, obtainable, and affordable lasers had become, the more of a hazard they posed to pilots and by extension the aviation industry. He’d read harrowing accounts from both private and commercial pilots who, hit by one, had narrowly avoided an accident. Many feared that it was only a matter of time before someone with a laser, either a terrorist or a prankster, caused a catastrophic crash.

  Rye was well aware of the threat. He’d just never expected it to happen to him. It had. He’d come to within feet of killing the doctor, and, with just a bit more momentum when he hit that tree, his crash could have been fatal.

  But, unless he caught that son of a bitch red-handed with the laser, he couldn’t prove it existed. If he called the cops and filed a formal complaint, it would be Rye’s word against White’s. Stalemate. A waste of time. A hassle that would keep him grounded for at least a few days.

  Besides, he would rather skip getting local law enforcement involved and mete out White’s punishment himself.

  He would have to include the laser in his accident report to the FAA. It was the responsible thing to do. He would do so with reluctance, however. Agents would be all over him, asking questions, forcing him to fill out countless, time-consuming forms.

  On the upside: No damage had been done to property on the ground. Even the tree was still standing. No one had been injured. No one had died. The lack of casualties would minimize the amount of red tape.

  The downside: Without proof of the laser, his claim might be discounted as a lie to save face. In which case, he would have to suck it up and let the accident be attributed to pilot error.

  That was the most galling aspect of this whole damn thing, and reason enough to pound the living daylights out of Brady White.

  “The slang term escaped me earlier.”

  The comment pulled Rye out of his angry musing. “Sorry?”

  “Freight dog. It just now came to me where I first heard it.”

  Because of the exertion, the doctor had pushed back the hood of her coat. Light from their combined flashlights limned her profile. He wondered how he could have mistaken her for a man, even from a distance and in darkness and fog. Maybe the laser had done more damage to his eyes tha
n he’d thought. Because there was nothing manly about her. She was pure female.

  Although he hadn’t encouraged her to expand on the topic, she did. “Several years ago I went on a Caribbean getaway with a couple of girlfriends. One afternoon it started raining hard enough to drive us off the beach and into the bar.”

  “As good an excuse as any.” His droll remark caused her to smile. Her lips sure as hell weren’t masculine.

  “These guys were gathered around a table,” she went on. “Five or six of them, getting drunk and loud and rowdy, talking about airplanes and flying.”

  “Which island?”

  She named the island, and Rye named the bar.

  “You know it?”

  “There’s one near every airfield in the world.”

  “Where pilots go?”

  “Gotta pass the time between flights somewhere.”

  “Well, they noticed us and…” She made a rolling motion with her right hand.

  He nodded in perfect understanding of what she meant by the gesture. “They sprung for a round, and invited themselves to join you, and you said okay.”

  “We had to be polite.”

  He gave her a look, and she laughed softly.

  “A couple of them were really cute. Anyway, one was wearing a t-shirt with a freight dog logo on it. My friend asked what that was about, and they explained the kind of air cargo piloting they did. As the afternoon progressed, stories of their escapades got raunchier and less credible, all about their maverick lifestyle and derring-do. I guess they wanted to impress us.”

  “They wanted to get laid.”

  She gave him a quick look, which caused her to stumble.

  Out of reflex, Rye took her arm in a steadying hand, and, before he could stop himself, asked, “Did they?”

  She reclaimed her arm, turned her eyes downward, and picked up her pace. “Not by me.”

  He snuffled. “No surprise there. You strike me as a lady who’s hard to impress.”

  “I am, but what makes you think so?”

  “Nothing in particular. I just figure you’re too smart to be taken in by bullshit.”

  “Was it bullshit? Doesn’t your breed of pilot fly rickety airplanes, in any kind of weather, no matter how bad, at all hours of the night, at a moment’s notice, having had little or no sleep?”

  “The planes aren’t always rickety, and sometimes the weather’s perfect. But that’s a fairly accurate job description.”

  “Certainly a fair description in regard to tonight.”

  “Conditions tonight were bad. But I would’ve made it fine if it hadn’t been for—”

  “Hadn’t been for what?”

  He tucked his chin into the raised collar of his jacket. “This damn fog.”

  She looked at him with keen perception. “That wasn’t what you were going to say.” When he didn’t contradict her, she said, “I haven’t earned your trust yet?”

  Not by a long shot, he thought. But he said, “Just wondering what’s going on with you, that’s all.”

  “Nothing’s going on with me.”

  “Oh, you go traipsing around in the woods alone every night at about this time.”

  “No,” she said, dragging the word out. “Only when I witness an airplane crash.”

  “Would you have come looking for the crash site if you hadn’t been after the box?”

  “Of course.”

  His derisive chuckle expressed his doubt. “What’s in it?”

  “Why do you keep asking?”

  “Why don’t you answer?”

  “Do you interrogate all your clients this way, Mr. Mallett?”

  “Just the dodgy ones.”

  “There’s nothing dodgy about me.”

  “Only everything.”

  Initially, when she’d arrived on the scene so soon following the crash, he’d thought she might have had something to do with bringing down the plane. He no longer thought so. She wanted that damn box too bad. Since he’d handed it over to her, she’d kept a tight hold on it.

  But something was out of joint. She could deny it till her shapely chest ran out of breath, but she had crept into that clearing and approached the airplane in a covert manner, and not because she was afraid it would ignite.

  Of course he didn’t really care what the box contained. Let it be her secret. So long as it didn’t affect him, he didn’t care if the Hope diamond had been heisted and she was the fence. His participation ended as soon as they signed off on the paperwork, and he got his pound of flesh from Brady White. Then it was finis, and he was out of there.

  “Is Rye short for something?” she asked.

  “No. Just Rye.”

  “I’ve never known anybody named that.” After a pause, she said, “Not that you asked, but my name is Brynn.”

  “Brynn? Never knew anybody named that, either.”

  “Very dodgy name.” Again she gave him that smile, and he admitted to himself that if he’d been killing a rainy afternoon in an island bar, he’d have covered her drinks in the hope of covering her. Without a stitch between them.

  “You’re staying here overnight, I guess.”

  He dragged his thoughts away from the tantalizing prospect of seeing her naked amid damp sheets. “I planned to bunk in the plane, fly back in the morning.”

  “Sleep in the plane?”

  “Sometimes it’s the only option, so I’m used to it. But now?” He raised a shoulder.

  “What will you do tomorrow?”

  “Depends on what the FAA agent decides. If he passes on an on-site investigation, Dash, that’s the guy who sent me here, will—”

  “Dash-It-All.”

  “Right. He may want me to stay here and babysit the plane until he can get an insurance adjuster on it. But I doubt he’ll have me hang around for however long that’ll take.”

  “Why?”

  “He’ll want me flying. More than likely, he’ll send me to pick up another payload.”

  “Where?”

  “Could be anywhere. Tulsa. Trinidad.”

  “You’ll just…go?”

  “I’ll just go.”

  She thought on that for a time. “How long have you worked for him?”

  “I don’t. I freelance. But Dash uses me a lot.”

  “You must like each other.”

  He huffed. “Not a bit. We’re just used to each other.”

  “Do you live in Columbus?”

  He shook his head. “That was just the last place I lighted.”

  “So where is home?”

  “The last place I lighted.”

  Obviously that wasn’t the answer she’d expected, and it subdued her for another minute or more. Then, “It’s Thanksgiving.”

  “So I’m told.”

  “You don’t have any plans?”

  He turned his head aside and looked through the fog beyond his right shoulder. Plans had been made for him. He hadn’t accepted. “No.”

  “You’ll spend the day alone?”

  “More than likely.”

  “Maybe your friend Dash will get you back to Columbus so you can celebrate—”

  “Look.” He came to an abrupt stop and turned to her. She stopped and faced him. “Dash isn’t my friend and won’t give a damn how I spend my Thanksgiving, any more than I care how he’ll spend his. I know you’re just trying to make friendly conversation to fill an awkward silence between strangers, but I’m not big on friendly conversation, and I don’t find silences awkward. In fact I like silences and prefer strangers.

  “So stop asking me personal questions, okay? A few minutes from now, we’ll go our separate ways and never see each other again. You got your whatever.” He indicated the box she held under her arm against her rib cage. “I’ll get paid for delivering it, I’ll give you a receipt. With that, our business will be concluded. Over. So I don’t need to know anything about you and your life, and you sure as hell don’t need to know anything about mine.”

  He felt her seething an
ger as she turned away and resumed walking—more like marching—toward the airfield’s office, which had materialized in the fog. The brick building was small, squat, square, and had little to recommend it. Its only two windows were in front and overlooked the landing strip, a windsock, and a pair of antiquated fuel pumps. Through the fog, Rye also made out the semicircular shape of a Quonset hut hangar nearby.

  The runway lights blinked through the gloom. The light coming from the windows of the office was faint, as though its source was in a back room. A pickup truck was parked between the office and the hangar, indicating that the manager was still there.

  Brynn approached the office with an angry energy that matched Rye’s. Then she stopped and turned back to him. “When I set out from Atlanta tonight, I knew the round trip would be difficult, but, thanks to you, I’ve had more of an adventure than I bargained for, including the near loss of my life. Furthermore, you’ve delayed my return trip when time is of the essence.

  “You never even apologized for almost crashing your plane into me, or for any of the other objectionable things you’ve said and done. I don’t give a rat’s ass about you or your life, Mr. Mallett. As soon as I sign off on your paperwork—forget a gratuity—you’ll be rid of me, and I’ll be well rid of you. I can’t wait to start never seeing you again.”

  She pivoted on her heel and continued walking toward the building.

  The putdown was deserved, of course. He couldn’t say exactly why she’d gotten under his skin, but she had. It was an itch he had to terminate. So he’d reset barriers and reestablished boundaries, and he’d achieved that by behaving like a complete jerk.

  It had worked to ward her off. She wasn’t smiling anymore, wasn’t drawing his attention to her pouty lower lip, wasn’t inspiring fantasies of slippery sex during a tropical rainstorm.

  All way too enticing. He couldn’t get away from her fast enough.

  By the time she reached the office door and pushed it open, he had caught up with her, then bumped into her when she came to a dead stop.

  A man sat slumped over a desk, his head lying on it.

  Shock rooted him and Brynn in place, but only for a second. Rye pushed her out of his way and rushed over to the desk. Brynn hesitated only long enough to set the black box on a chair and switch on the overhead fluorescent lights.