Tailspin

by Sandra Brown

  “I’ve told you a dozen times, I don’t know. You’ll have to get that from her.”

  “Good idea.”

  The deputy stood up and motioned Rye toward the door.

  4:42 a.m.

  Under duress, Brynn surrendered to Wilson the cell number of her colleague, Dr. Nathan Lambert.

  She and Nate Lambert had worked together on various cases for the past several years. Both were specialists in their field, but Nate had ten more years’ experience, and he flaunted it. He had a publicist who booked him for lectures and a publisher who was waiting for a book.

  He’d made a name for himself, and his notoriety was such that he could now hand-select his patients, and he did. Many were among the rich and famous who checked into the hospital under aliases. Paradoxically, Nate had a penchant for name-dropping.

  Wilson placed the call. Despite the hour, Nate answered immediately, as though he’d had the phone already at his ear. Wilson identified himself, and Nate’s first words were, “Oh, God, no. Has something happened to Dr. O’Neal?”

  “I’m here.” She said it loudly enough for him to hear her through the speaker.

  “Brynn, are you all right?”

  “I’m fine. But my situation isn’t. It’s been an eventful night, and that’s putting it mildly.”

  “Were you able to meet the plane?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thank God.” Brynn detected the vast relief in his voice and envisioned him running his hand over his marble-slick head, which he shaved with scrupulous timeliness. He said, “When I didn’t hear from you, I got worried and checked with the contact in Columbus. Dash, I think it is? He assured me that the plane was on its way.”

  “You must have spoken with him before he was notified of the crash.”

  “The plane crashed?”

  Wilson made a hand gesture that granted her permission to relate the consequential events that had taken place since she’d left Atlanta. Nate responded to each revelation with a shocked silence or sudden intake of breath, but he listened without interrupting her. She explained the circumstances concisely but comprehensively. When she finished the tale, she ended by reassuring him that the black box was in her possession and intact.

  “Still sealed?” he asked.

  “And padlocked.”

  “Wonderful.” Then, after a brief pause, he asked with characteristic curtness, “So, what’s the problem?”

  Wilson jumped in ahead of her. “The problem, Dr. Lambert, is the juxtaposition of the two incidents. We’re investigating the attack on Mr. White, and need to ascertain if it’s connected in any way to the contents of this box.”

  “How could it be?”

  “Precisely.” Brynn gave Wilson a pointed look. “I haven’t disclosed anything that would compromise our patient’s privacy. But my stance on that has put me in a standoff with the investigators.”

  The door was pushed open, and Rawlins walked in. The limited space didn’t allow for Rye Mallett to come all the way into the room, so he lingered on the threshold. During their brief face-off on the staircase, she’d seen that his eyes were green. They homed in on her now.

  He looked perturbed and smug at the same time. She supposed he was annoyed over having been detained, smug over being vindicated when Brady White’s altercation with a customer had come to light. When she’d overheard Wilson’s phone conversation with Rawlins about it, she’d experienced a moment of smugness herself.

  Until Wilson had remained insistent that she open the box.

  “We have Dr. Lambert on the phone,” Wilson told the newcomers.

  For her colleague’s benefit, she said, “Nate, we’ve been joined by Deputy Rawlins and the pilot of the plane, Mr. Mallett.”

  “Mr. Mallett,” Nate said, “you have my deepest and most sincere gratitude for agreeing to fly tonight. I regret your accident and the damage done to your airplane. But I’m very glad you weren’t injured or worse.”

  Rye replied with a laconic thanks.

  Dr. Lambert then said, “Gentlemen, Brynn’s detention is costing us valuable time which our patient cannot afford.”

  “I’ve tried to convey the urgency of the situation,” she said, “but they have their own agenda.”

  “Agenda,” Nate repeated, scoffing. He disdained anyone who tried to cramp his genius. “Am I to understand that the holdup is the matter of what’s inside the box?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “Well then, Brynn, as long as our patient isn’t named, and the container doesn’t remain open for too long, accommodate them.”

  4:53 a.m.

  For as long as Rye had been standing in the open doorway, he’d been gauging Brynn’s reactions to what was going on. He’d noted each response, voluntary and subconscious. He’d marked each blink, muscle twitch, everything.

  So when Dr. Lambert agreed to reveal what was inside the box, he saw the fractional widening of her eyes. He was aware of the hitch in her breath and her difficulty swallowing.

  But those physical reactions probably went unnoticed by the deputies, because she recovered so quickly. “It’s supposed to be kept airtight.”

  “Understood, Brynn.” The doctor addressed her in a clipped and condescending tone that made Rye dislike him for no other reason than that he sounded like an arrogant asshole. “But there appears to be no help for it. They’ve got their detective work; we’ve got our seriously ill patient. The sooner we appease them, the sooner we can resume trying to save a life.”

  She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “All right. But I don’t have the combination to the lock.”

  “Take me off speaker.”

  With a glance, she consulted Wilson, who nonverbally consulted Rawlins, who gave a brusque nod. He said, “I want to see what’s inside.”

  Wilson took his phone off speaker and handed it to Brynn, then pushed the box across his desk to within her reach. She put the phone to her ear. “I’m ready.”

  The lock was a five-dial combination padlock. When the numbers were lined up according to her colleague’s instructions, Brynn tugged open the metal ring. She looked at Wilson and Rawlins in turn. “Please reconsider. Exposure to air could contaminate—”

  Rawlins didn’t let her finish. He raised the lid himself.

  Even from his vantage point, Rye could see inside the box. The interior was lined with black formed foam, even the lid. Four tightly sealed cylinders filled corresponding spaces cut into the foam. Vials of blood. All labeled.

  “It’s open,” Brynn said into the phone. She listened for several seconds, then switched the phone back onto speaker and set it on the desk. “At Dr. Lambert’s request,” she told the deputies. “Go ahead, Nate.”

  “Dr. O’Neal and I specialize in hematologic malignancies. Blood cancers. We have a patient with an extremely rare form. The patient has undergone aggressive rounds of radiation and chemotherapy, to no avail. The only hope for survival is an allogeneic stem cell or cord blood transplant. But therein lies the problem. HLA matching. Human leukocyte antigens. These cell markers…”

  Rye tuned him out and watched Brynn. While her pompous colleague waxed eloquent about CBUs and GVHDs, she stood with arms crossed over her middle, her lips rolled inside and compressed so tightly, they had gone colorless.

  “What you’re looking at, gentlemen, are blood samples taken from four different possible donors after a lengthy and extremely discouraging search. But we won’t know if any is an acceptable match of our patient’s HLA type until they’re tested, and Dr. O’Neal and I want to do our own testing. Not that we mistrust the labs we use, but our patient is a high-profile public figure who insists on confidentiality, and, of course, we would like to get it right.” On that droll note, he paused for breath.

  “The samples are time-sensitive, and the testing is intricate because there’s no margin for error. Meanwhile, the patient’s time is running short. A donor must be found, and the necessary steps preceding a transplant begun. Soon.

&
nbsp; “This should explain to you the immediacy of the situation, as well as Dr. O’Neal’s efforts to preserve the integrity of the blood samples, and to protect the patient’s identity, dignity, and privacy. Any more questions?”

  Wilson dragged his hand down his tired-looking face, over his mouth and chin, then said, “Thank you, Dr. Lambert.” He reached over and closed the lid on the box.

  Lambert didn’t acknowledge the thanks. He said, “Brynn, to prevent contamination or compromise—and let’s hope to God none has occurred—please reseal the box and get it here with all due speed. Since your car is out of commission, how do you plan to get back to Atlanta?”

  She picked up the phone, switched it off speaker, and said, “Finding transportation is the next order of business.” For several moments, she held Rye’s stare, then turned her head aside.

  Rye’s view of her was suddenly blocked by Rawlins’s hard-boiled mug. “Come back to my office. Soon as you sign a statement, you’ll be free to go.”

  Chapter 8

  5:10 a.m.

  And they’re still in there. Nobody’s gone in or come out since the deputies took the two of them into the building.”

  Delores Hunt had listened with mounting impatience as Goliad updated her on the circumstances. “How long ago was that?”

  “Little over an hour.”

  Delores lit a cigarette and blew the smoke toward the open French door to prevent Richard from catching a whiff, which he had a knack for doing even through walls. He hated it when she smoked. She only did so when she was extremely agitated. If he caught her at it now, puffing in frustration while she paced the width of the sitting room, he would know that something had gone terribly awry.

  The last time she’d gone into the bedroom to see about him, he had begrudgingly agreed to change into pajamas and go to bed. The last series of radiation treatments had left him weakened and easy to tire, but neither he nor she had acknowledged that his former robustness was waning.

  He had been quarrelsome and fretful because there had been no further communication from Goliad, and they remained in the dark as to when they could expect Dr. O’Neal back in Atlanta.

  His edginess would escalate to full-blown rage if he knew there had been another delay, the cause for which Delores couldn’t explain to him because she didn’t know it.

  She had calmed him by admitting that there had been a glitch or two, but she’d attributed them to the ghastly weather and assured him that she, Dr. Lambert, and Goliad were on top of the situation.

  She only wished that were the case.

  Their lives had been turned upside down six months ago when Richard had been diagnosed with a cancer that neither of them had ever heard of. They had consulted Dr. Nate Lambert, a specialist of renown, but also a man known to them through social connections.

  His god complex was barely tolerable, but it had its uses. With Nate’s intercession, Richard’s treatments had begun immediately and had been administered under a cloak of absolute secrecy. Not even their most trustworthy staff members knew that Richard was ill, Goliad being the single exception. No one else must know. It most certainly must be kept from the media.

  Thousands of people were diagnosed with terminal cancer every day. They didn’t make national news.

  Senator Richard Hunt would.

  “An hour, you say?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Give or take,” Goliad replied.

  Fidgety with irritation, Delores assessed this new and disquieting information.

  “I don’t understand why so many officers converged on the airfield office. Were they investigating the crash? Why have Dr. O’Neal and the pilot been taken to the sheriff’s office? In short, Goliad, what the hell is going on up there? What haven’t you told me?”

  After several portentous seconds, he said, “Timmy went a little overboard.”

  She picked up her lighter and clicked it a few times, watching the flame in a sort of self-induced hypnosis. “Explain that statement, please.”

  “He was fooling around with a laser.”

  “Excuse me?”

  In his stolid manner that often made her want to scream with impatience, Goliad talked her through the sequence of events. “Once we got back to the airfield office—”

  “Yes, yes. So you said, it was crawling with cops. Knowing that Dr. O’Neal and the pilot would find the man, why didn’t you intercept them before they got there, as I remember telling you to do? Fog. That was your excuse.”

  “Fog was definitely a factor. I had to find a place to turn around. They couldn’t have beat us by much.”

  “But they did. And now they’re being questioned by police.” She resumed pacing. “If this airfield man survives, can he identify you?”

  “No. We came in behind him.”

  She wanted to ask why they hadn’t just killed him. That would have left her with one less thing to worry about. She said, “I sent you up there on a simple errand. Keep your eye on Dr. O’Neal and make certain she delivers that box to us. All you’ve succeeded in doing so far is to invite the sheriff’s office to our party.”

  Goliad was wise enough not to contradict her.

  “Do you even know where the box is now?”

  “One of the deputies was carrying it when they went into the sheriff’s department.”

  “Christ.” Delores lit another cigarette. “You’re there now?”

  “Right across the street, with a view of the door where they went in.”

  “Two men in a car surveilling the sheriff’s office? Won’t that arouse suspicion?”

  “I don’t think there’s any danger of that. Looks like only a few officers are on duty. The streets are deserted.”

  “All right. Keep your eyes glued to that building. They can’t detain Dr. O’Neal forever. She didn’t assault anyone.”

  “I doubt they’ll suspect it of her. They might the pilot, though. If he thought the guy at the airfield was the one with the laser, he’d have a motive for attacking him.”

  “All the better for us,” she said. “If the police think he’s the culprit, they’ll hold him. If they release him, he’ll have a plane crash to deal with. Either way, he’s not our problem. Dr. O’Neal is. Stay on her tail, Goliad. If it looks like she’s— Oh, Nate is calling in. Failure is not an option, Goliad.”

  Giving him no time to respond, she clicked off, then took several deep breaths before switching over to the incoming call. “Nate! I’ve been trying to reach you for hours. Where the hell is Dr. O’Neal? She should have been back well before now. Richard is frantic.”

  “Calm down, Delores. I just got off the phone with Brynn, who explained why she’s been delayed. She was met with some difficulties.”

  “What kind of difficulties?”

  She feigned ignorance about the happenings in Howardville. Nate Lambert was a brilliant physician. He was not a trusted confidant. Their inner circle consisted only of Richard and herself. They hadn’t told Nate that Goliad had been sent to ensure Dr. O’Neal’s timely return.

  She listened as he naïvely described the hazards his colleague had encountered, beginning with the plane crash.

  “You told us this company was reliable.”

  “I told you the company was the most reliable I could find that would agree to fly last night.”

  When Nate finished with his tale, Delores said, “I had a bad feeling that something untoward would happen if Dr. O’Neal went alone. Someone should have gone with her. Better yet, she shouldn’t have been going at all. You should have. I’m on record as having told you so.”

  “Noted,” Nate said. “But I didn’t want to spoil my dinner plans and trek to the wilderness. You don’t know Brynn as well as I do. She’s capable and levelheaded. She’s handled a mercurial situation with aplomb. She was remarkably unflustered when I spoke to her. Of course she was reluctant to open the box, but—”

  “What?” This time Delores’s astonishment was genuine. “She opened the box?”

  “We really
weren’t given a choice. Those backwoods detectives were stiff-necked about it. Compliance was the only way to get Brynn out of there sooner rather than later.”

  “But—”

  “It’s fine, Delores. I had given explicit packing instructions, and it was done to my specifications.”

  “Richard’s name—?”

  “Brynn safeguarded it.”

  “Thank God.”

  “She has to sign off on her statement about the airfield incident. Once that’s done, the unfortunate matter will be over.”

  “You’re positive they’re releasing her?”

  “Forthwith. Fiasco averted,” he said with annoying cheer. “We’re back on track.”

  “What about the time this has cost us?”

  “Only a few hours. Stop worrying.”

  “Easier said.”

  “How is Richard?”

  “He’s sleeping, but as soon as he wakes up, he’ll want an explanation as to why she’s not back and when we can expect her.”

  “Brynn is making arrangements to return as soon as possible. It’s up to you how much of this to tell Richard.”

  “Don’t leave me dangling, Nate. Keep me updated.”

  After disconnecting, Delores texted Goliad that Dr. O’Neal had been cleared by the sheriff’s department. When she leaves there, stay on her! He texted back a check mark.

  Fiasco averted. Indeed. No matter how meticulously one planned, one still had to rely on others. The vagaries and failings of others drove Delores mad.

  She took a deep drag on her cigarette and blew the plume of smoke toward the French door. Then, sensing movement in the room, she turned.

  Richard stood on the threshold of the bedroom. Wearing only pajama bottoms, his appearance was incongruous with his combative stance. He didn’t look weak and infirm now. His voice had lost none of its vibrato. “Stop shielding me, Delores. I’m not a child, and I’m not helpless. Yet. I demand to know—now: What has gone wrong?”

  Chapter 9

  6:37 a.m.