Tailspin

by Sandra Brown

  The doctor pulled a pair of reading glasses from the breast pocket of his shirt and put them on. He took the sheet of paper by one corner as though it were germy and made a production of shaking it out. He scanned it, then snapped his fingers repeatedly and impatiently. “Pen?”

  “Photo ID?”

  Lambert glared at him over the top of his silly glasses. “Excuse me?”

  “Photo ID,” Rye repeated.

  Steam could have been coming out of his ears, but he took a wallet from his pants pocket and showed Rye his driver’s license. “Is one sufficient? I also have several that are professionally related.”

  “One’s fine. Anybody got a pen?”

  Brynn didn’t act on the request. She stood with her arms crossed over her middle and stared at the floor. Goliad produced a ballpoint pen. Lambert snatched it from him, flattened the paper against the wall, and scrawled his name across the bottom.

  He gave the sheet to Rye, who refolded it and stuck it in his pocket, then passed the box to Lambert. “You want to open it, check the contents?”

  “The samples have already been exposed to air unnecessarily.”

  “Then that’s a no?” Rye said. “Good. Sight of blood makes me queasy.”

  Lambert tucked the box under his arm and asked with impatience, “Is that it, then?”

  “Delivered. Everybody’s happy. I’m gone.”

  As he turned away, Brynn caught the sleeve of his jacket. “Thank you.”

  Her touch, the husky intimacy with which she’d spoken the two words, elicited heat, low and central and deep. He looked down at her hand, then into her eyes, and all too aware of the onlookers, said, “Just doing my job.”

  After the slightest of hesitations, she said, “Fly safely.” Then, withdrawing her hand, she stepped around Lambert and went into the office.

  Rye turned. Right behind him were Goliad and Timmy, standing side by side. He pushed his way between them and continued on toward the elevator. He overheard Lambert say, “Thanks for your intervention, gentlemen. If you can see yourselves out? The Hunts are waiting to hear from me.” Then the office door was soundly shut.

  At the elevator, Rye punched the down button. When Goliad and Timmy joined him, he held out his hand, palm up. “I’ll take my clip now.”

  “I think I’ll keep it,” Goliad said.

  “Oh, now that’s a shocker.” Rye muttered an obscenity, then, turning away from them, said, “I’m over the two of you. I’ll take the stairs.”

  “Hey, slick, before you go…”

  Rye shoved open the door to the stairwell and looked over his shoulder at Timmy.

  He tipped his head toward the end of the hall. “On her back or hands and knees?”

  Rye left him cackling over his own wit.

  4:57 p.m.

  When the elevator door opened on the third level of the parking garage, Rye was ready with the fire extinguisher. He sprayed them with the foam, most of it aimed at their faces. “It’s not a laser, but you get the idea.”

  He threw the fire extinguisher at Timmy’s head. It connected. He howled and bent double. Rye knew he would come up with a knife in his hand.

  “Goliad, was he the laser man?”

  Goliad, clawing foam out of his eyes, nodded, spat, “Stupid little shit.”

  Rye danced backward as Timmy came stumbling blindly toward him, yelling foul epithets as he made wild arcs with a switchblade.

  “And Brady White?” Rye asked.

  Shaking foam off his hand, Goliad said, “I hit him.”

  “Then you’re next.”

  “I kept White alive. Timmy wanted to slit his throat.”

  Rye growled as he caught Timmy’s arm in mid-swing and, with momentum in his favor, propelled him backward until he came up hard against a concrete pillar. Rye hammered Timmy’s hand against it until he let go of the knife; then he delivered an uppercut to Timmy’s chin. The back of his head smacked against the unforgiving column.

  “That’s for Brady. This is for the laser and the man whose plane you wrecked.” He rammed his fist in the man’s shallow belly and swore he reached his spine. “This is for insulting Dr. O’Neal.” He backed up and put all he had into the kick to Timmy’s genitals.

  Timmy screamed, grabbed his crotch, and pitched forward onto the floor.

  By now, Goliad had drawn his weapon but held it at his side as he faced off with Rye.

  Rye motioned to the handgun. “Are you going to shoot me?”

  Goliad shook his head. “He had it coming.”

  “Thanks for not killing me in the cabin. You could have.”

  “Wasn’t the time.”

  “Should I be looking over my shoulder for you?”

  “I don’t have any orders regarding you now. Can’t promise I won’t.”

  “And Brynn?”

  He hesitated, then repeated, “Can’t promise I won’t.”

  Understanding passed between them. “Fair enough.” Rye backed away a few more steps then turned and walked quickly away.

  He didn’t start running until he reached the ramp; then he bolted and didn’t stop, not even when he reached the street. He ran full out for two blocks before realizing he was leaving a trail of blood.

  Chapter 16

  5:08 p.m.

  They’re out?”

  Nate, speaking into his cell phone, ran his hand over his head, a gesture of frustration and impatience that Brynn had seen him do hundreds of times. She now had the inane thought that perhaps he was checking it for bristle.

  He had placed the black box on his desk, within a foot of where she sat. She stared at it while Nate continued his harangue with whoever had answered the Hunts’ land line after calls to the senator’s cell phone and that of Mrs. Hunt had gone to voice mail.

  “How can they be ‘out’? They had dinner at home, correct?” The reply caused him to check his gaudy wristwatch. “Then where would they have gone? Fine, fine. Look, if they instructed you to tell anyone who called that they were not at home, I assure you they were not including me.”

  That went on for another minute or so. Brynn thought she might scream before he finally disconnected. “She swears they’re not there.”

  “Maybe they aren’t.”

  “They wouldn’t choose now to go for a Sunday drive, Brynn. Or were you thinking that maybe they went to the movies?”

  “Don’t talk down to me like that, Nate.”

  He didn’t apologize for his condescension. She doubted he’d even heard her. He was stroking his head and pacing. “I don’t understand this at all. Delores has been hounding me since that catastrophe last night. Hounding me! Calling every half hour, asking what your status was, when you would be back.”

  He paused and looked at her with contempt. “While I’m trying to keep her and Richard calm, you’re off gallivanting with that…whatever. Jesus!” He threw back his head and looked up at the ceiling as though searching for an answer to his incomprehension. “I can’t believe he can read, much less fly an airplane.”

  “He’s an Air Force Academy graduate. He flew rescue missions in Afghanistan.”

  He scoffed. “Is he also a spy for the CIA?”

  Actually, it was Wilson who’d shared with her what had shown up when they checked Rye Mallett’s background. His character profile had changed dramatically after his second tour of duty. He must have experienced something deeply affecting during his service, but she would never know what it was.

  Just doing my job.

  He’d seen it through, washed his hands of the whole ordeal, and walked away from it, as he’d said he would. One day, when a medical breakthrough was announced, he might wonder if it was connected to the pharmaceutical he’d unwittingly smuggled. More than likely he wouldn’t recall her name, but he might remember her as that woman who had complicated his life and temporarily kept him tethered to the ground when he would rather be airborne.

  Her wish never to see him again was no longer as desirous, but it was too late to rec
all it. Anyway, he was gone, and a clean break was best under the circumstances. Her focus, her sole focus, must be on the GX-42.

  Her eyes on the box, she said, “Nate? Are we doing the right thing, giving this to Richard Hunt?”

  Hearing the misgiving in her voice, he stopped pacing. “Absolutely.” Her uncertainty must have been apparent, because he rapped the top of the box with his knuckles and repeated, “Absolutely. We made our decision, Brynn.”

  “I know, but—”

  “We can’t backtrack now. It’s out of the question.”

  Still, she wondered if her colleague had ever harbored a grain of doubt; but even if he had, he would never admit it. In any case, the die was now cast. “Did you get any indication of when the Hunts would return home?”

  “The housekeeper claimed not to know. I’m to stand by, and she’ll notify me. That’s what she said. ‘Stand by.’ Can you believe it? A maid.”

  “I hope it’s not long. I’m exhausted. Is there a possibility of waiting until tomorrow?”

  “No, they’ve been emphatic. No more delays, during which shit seems to happen.” He checked his watch again.

  He was eager to do it, and not only for the Hunts’ sake. He didn’t want to postpone getting on the road to acclaim and medical superstardom. Brynn just wanted it to be done so she could stop second-guessing, vacillating, lying, and half-lying.

  Inside her coat pocket her cell phone vibrated. She took it out and saw that she had a text. The sender was identified only by a number, no name.

  The HUNTS & I want to know what your game is. Your parking space. Now.

  Her heart nearly leaped from her chest. She took a swift breath. Hearing it, Nate came around. “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing. It’s…my car. It’s been repaired. Someone from Howardville drove it here.”

  He looked at his watch. “Now?”

  “I know, right? I predicted it would take several days to fix.”

  “Have them park it and leave the keys under the mat.”

  “There’s paperwork. You know what that’s like,” she said and gave a light laugh. “I’ll run down and see to it.”

  “Come right back. We’ll be leaving on a moment’s notice.”

  She acknowledged that. As soon as she pulled the door shut behind her, she sprinted down the hall and, knowing how slow the elevator was, took the stairs to the first level of the parking garage, where she had a reserved space with her name stenciled on the wall above it.

  The space was empty except for Rye, who was looking mean and mad and bloody.

  5:22 p.m.

  As Brynn rushed toward him, she exclaimed, “What happened to your hand?”

  “That fucking punk.”

  “Timmy?”

  “He got the worst of it.”

  “You fought with him? I thought you’d left.”

  “Well, I didn’t.”

  Rye had watched from several blocks away as the black Mercedes left the parking garage. When it passed his observation point, he saw that Goliad was driving and Timmy was slumped against the passenger door.

  By all appearances, they were done for the night. But Rye wouldn’t have put it past Goliad to circle back. Following the fight, he might have gotten orders regarding Rye.

  He’d given them five minutes, which had seemed interminable. They didn’t return. On his walk back to the garage, he booked an Uber car. When it arrived, he gave the driver an extra twenty to wait and texted Brynn. He’d taken a risk by hanging around, but he figured that she would rush right down when he dropped her mystery patient’s name, and she had.

  “Does it hurt?”

  She would have taken his hand, but he kept it out of her reach. “No.” Then, “A little.”

  Timmy’s knife had made a neat slice across each of the first knuckles of his left hand. The blood wasn’t coagulating as rapidly as it should because he’d been repeatedly flexing his fingers, then contracting them into a fist. “To keep them from getting stiff,” he said to Brynn, who was watching him do it. “I’ve got to be able to grip the yoke. I’m flying tomorrow.”

  “I heard. You should put something on them. My office is on the fourth floor. We could go up—”

  “Forget it.” He secured her biceps and steered her toward the exit. “Who are the Hunts?”

  She dug her heels in and jerked her arm free. “Where did you hear their name?”

  “Your dickhead colleague let it slip. Hunt. That’s the deep pockets behind this drug smuggling operation?”

  She held her tongue.

  “Nothing? No? Okay, I gave you one last chance. From here out, you’re on your own. Remember, I gave you fair warning.”

  He left her standing there and walked away. He was almost to the exit, and beginning to think she’d called his bluff, when she ran after him.

  Short of breath, she asked, “Warned me of what? Where are you going?”

  He kept walking. “The nearest police precinct. I don’t want my ass hauled to jail when the rest of you go.”

  “Wait!”

  He stopped and turned, looming over her. “You were going to steal that box for yourself up there in Howardville. Then everything that could go wrong did. You played me, you played the deputies, but ultimately, you were given no choice except to go along with the goons Hunt sent and deliver the box to Lambert.”

  She didn’t respond, but he took her silence as affirmation of all he’d said.

  “Is it even a drug, Brynn?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “GX—”

  “Yes. Yes! Everything I told you about it.”

  “Okay. Is the patient Mr. Hunt or Mrs.?”

  “Mister.”

  “And he’s—”

  “Desperate.”

  “He’ll die without it.”

  “One can hope that with treatment—”

  “Skip the bedside manner. Will he die?”

  She gave curt nod.

  “So why didn’t you want Lambert to have the medicine?”

  She said nothing.

  “Brynn? Why? Why were you planning to steal it?”

  She made a small, defeated sound and pushed back her hair. “What difference does it make now? Nate’s got it. As you said, everybody’s happy.”

  “Everybody but you.” He stayed as he was, holding her stare, then took her arm and propelled her toward the street.

  Again, she put on the brakes. “I told Nate I would be right back.”

  “You won’t be.”

  He continued nudging her out the exit. On the street, the fog was noticeably thinner, but the temperature was much colder. It had started to rain. He hurried her toward the Uber car idling at the curb, opened the rear door, and motioned her in.

  “I can’t walk out on him now, Rye. We’re doing the procedure tonight.”

  “The stuff doesn’t go bad till tomorrow night.”

  “They don’t want to wait. If I disappear again, they’ll panic.”

  “Oh, we wouldn’t want to start a panic, would we? I can prevent that right now by going back up to the fifth floor and spilling my guts to Lambert. He’ll probably be as curious as I am to hear why you were trying to keep that life-sustaining drug out of his soft, pasty hands.”

  “What’s it to you, mister no involvement?”

  “Because without my knowledge, you made me an accomplice in your scheme. Whatever the hell it is. God only knows. I sure as hell don’t. But I’m going to find out. From you.

  “So either you and I go have a private little talk about your mountain escapade, or we go up and have a three-way with the colleague that you wanted to cheat out of his miracle cure. You decide, Brynn. You’ve got one second.”

  5:34 p.m.

  Delores shrugged the mink jacket off her shoulders and asked the chauffeur to turn down the heater. “It feels like the tropics in here.”

  The driver apologized and made an adjustment on the limo’s thermostat. Delores thanked him and raised the partition.
Privacy now secured, she smiled over at Richard. “Well?”

  “It was brilliant, Del.”

  “I thought so.”

  She deserved to gloat over the success of their afternoon project. Richard reached across the car seat and stroked her cheek. “It was an inspired idea. One I wish I could take credit for.”

  She kissed the back of his hand. “I hope it didn’t exhaust you.”

  “I’m tired. But it was worth the effort.” He took his phone from his breast pocket and turned it on. “Nate has called me four times.”

  She reactivated her own phone. “And me three. That must mean he has it.”

  “He does.” Richard gave her a campaign poster smile. “Goliad texted that Dr. O’Neal and the goods were delivered into Nate’s hands about an hour ago.”

  “Thank God.”

  “Call Nate. He’s probably apoplectic.”

  She made the call and put the phone on speaker. Nate answered immediately. “Delores, where in God’s name—”

  “Before lecturing me, wait until you hear why we were temporarily out of touch.”

  She gave him the lowdown. “It was a spur-of-the-moment thing. The only person we notified beforehand was Richard’s assistant. She’d been a little miffed at us for not doing something publicly in observance of Thanksgiving, so she jumped on the idea, scrambled, and got media there. We were seen, photographed, recorded. Richard gave a sound bite. It will be on tonight’s news.”

  “Good play!” Nate said.

  “We thought so.” She cast Richard a smug smile. “Meanwhile, you took delivery on a package for us?”

  “It’s right here. Where are you now?”

  “In the car on the way home.”

  “I’ll meet you there.”

  “Nate?” Richard said. “Is there any special preparation I should make?”

  “Yes, pour Delores a stiff drink.”

  They all laughed.

  Nate continued. “Really nothing. Get comfy. Brynn and I will put in an IV. Basically that’s all there is to it.”

  Delores said, “We don’t know how to thank you for this, Nate.”

  “Oh, I have lots of ideas for that. Maybe you could arrange for a wing of the hospital to be named after me.”