Tailspin

by Sandra Brown

  That remark goaded the doctor into taking a G.I. Joe stance, which, with the shiny robe and all, was downright comical. “I’m compelled to report your coming here to the Hunts, by way of Goliad. I understand he’s your supervisor.”

  “Know what he called me?”

  “Sorry?”

  “Goliad. I overheard him talking to one of the guys who chauffeurs the Hunts around. Goliad called me a cockroach.”

  “That was certainly unkind of him.”

  “Unkind?” Timmy laughed. “Highest compliment he could’ve paid me. Know why? Because cockroaches have survived for kazillions of years because they’re adaptable.”

  The doctor didn’t say anything, just nodded.

  “Well, see, I’m adaptable.” He used both hands to point to his chest. “If a situation does an unexpected one-eighty on me, and things go to shit, I don’t look back to see what went wrong and cry over it. No. I stay cool and keep my eyes forward.” He made an arrow of his hand and aimed it ahead of him. “And—I swear, I’ve got the devil’s own luck—the turnaround usually winds up working to my benefit.”

  With a maneuver he’d mastered over years of practice, he removed the switchblade from his sleeve and flicked it open. The doctor jumped like a rabbit. Flashing him a cunning smile, Timmy calmly began flipping the knife end over end, catching it by the handle each time.

  “This brouhaha is over the lady doctor making off with the magic potion, or youth serum, or holy water, whatever it is, right?” He laughed at Lambert’s startled expression. “I can see that you, like everybody else, thought I didn’t know that, but how stupid would I have to be not to figure it out?

  “I saw the paperwork Mallett had such a hard-on for. That metal box came from some pharmaceutical lab in Ohio. All hush-hush. Two doctors competing for possession of it. And a senator frantic to get his hands on it.” He stopped the flipping and pointed the knife at Lambert. “What is it?”

  Lambert’s gaze was fixed on the switchblade. He probably couldn’t work up a spit, but he eked out, “I’m not at liberty to say.”

  Timmy held his pose for a long time, then shrugged abruptly. The doctor flinched again. “That’s okay,” Timmy said. “I probably wouldn’t understand your medical mumbo jumbo, and anyhow I don’t give a fuck what it is.

  “I just know that the Hunts want it, and want it bad. What do I want, you ask? I want to win their favor, get in good with them, suck that sugar tit that Goliad’s had to himself all these years. The way to do that? Solve the problem.”

  The doctor’s eyes shifted from the knife up to Timmy’s eyes. “How do you propose to do that?”

  “It’s so simple, it’s a mystery to me why nobody’s thought of it.” He laughed and took another swig of the whiskey.

  Chapter 28

  12:50 a.m.

  Brynn missed his weight on her, the tickle of hair against places where her body was smooth, the scent of his skin, the overall feel of him on her and inside her. The tumult was over, but she wasn’t done savoring the aftermath.

  With regret, she opened her eyes.

  Rye lay facing her, perfectly still, staring at her as though he’d been waiting for her to come out of the post-orgasmic daze in which he’d left her. He touched her neck with the tip of his index finger. “Does that hurt?”

  “No.”

  “I didn’t mean to bite that hard.”

  “You didn’t. My skin bruises if you look at it hard.”

  “Any bruises from last night when I held you to the ground?”

  “One.” She rolled toward him so he could see her back.

  He grimaced and gently stroked the spot just above her hip. “I’m sorry. I’ve been rough on you.” As though talking to himself, he added, “I’m rough on everybody.”

  “The person you were talking to on the phone earlier?”

  His eyes sharpened on her. He stopped caressing, but his sudden withdrawal was more than tactile.

  “I came out of the bathroom just as you tossed your phone onto the dresser. You seemed upset.”

  He turned onto his back. “How much did you overhear?”

  “‘Love you, too.’”

  He didn’t say anything.

  Brynn plucked at the hem of her pillowcase. “Wife?”

  “No.”

  She let go a shaky breath. “A little late for me to be asking, but I’m relieved to know I didn’t commit adultery.”

  “You’re safe on that score. In fact, you’re safe on every score.”

  He flung back the sheet and got up. Moving to the window, he checked the parking lot. “Our friend is still there.”

  The phone he’d gotten from her dad had been charging on the nightstand. He unplugged it and checked the readout. “Good to go. You’d better start calling anybody you trust with your new number.” As he made his way toward the bathroom, he scooped his jeans off the floor.

  Startled by his abruptness, Brynn sat up and held the sheet against her chest. “Are you coming back?”

  “No. I’ll keep a lookout. You want the bathroom first?”

  She gave a small shake of her head and pulled the covers up to a more modest level. “You go ahead.”

  “I won’t take long.”

  He didn’t. She’d heard the commode flush. The shower ran for about ninety seconds. Several minutes later, he came out. He was wearing his jeans; his hair was still wet. He didn’t look her in the eye. In fact, he didn’t look at her at all.

  He picked up his shirt, went to pull it on, and noticed that the sleeves were inside out. He flapped the shirt to shake loose the bunched fabric. “Why don’t you sleep for a while. If he leaves, I’ll wake you up.”

  “You should sleep, too.”

  “Heard that already. From Dash.”

  “You talked to him?”

  “Texted him while I was in the bathroom. Sent him my new phone number.”

  “Has he heard anything more from Wilson?”

  “No, and I asked.”

  “Maybe they’re responsible for the car outside.”

  “If they had tracked us here, we would know it. They wouldn’t be covert.”

  She thought so, too, which made her even more leery of the policeman outside. Wilson and Rawlins were a threat, but they were restricted to abiding by the law. The worst they could do was detain her and prevent her from getting to Violet in time.

  A corrupt lawman posed much more danger, as did Goliad and Timmy, who were lawless and would go to extremes on behalf of Richard Hunt. She only had to look at Rye’s left hand to be reminded that they could strike with violence. “You never put anything on those cuts.”

  “They’re fine.” One of the sleeves was still bedeviling him.

  “Stop fighting with that. If you won’t lie down, at least sit down.”

  “Why are you nagging me?”

  “Why are you acting like an ass?”

  He stopped wrestling with the shirt and threw it down. “Because it would be a shame to ruin a really great fuck with stupid and pointless conversation.”

  She held his stare for a moment, then rolled to her other side and tucked the covers beneath her chin. “If our cop hasn’t left within an hour, I’ll take my chances and sneak out. You’ll enjoy that. You’ll be free of me.”

  He muttered a curse. Then, “It was my mom.”

  She turned toward him. “What?”

  “That’s who you overhead me talking to.”

  Brynn came up on her elbows.

  He maintained an arrogant stance, as though spoiling for a fight. “Anything else you want to ask?”

  “Where does she live?”

  “Outside Austin. On a lakefront lot. Dad has a bass boat and goes fishing almost every day. He’s a cliché. Bores you blind with stories about the big ones that got away.”

  “How was their Thanksgiving?”

  “Good. Except for my newest nephew. He’s teething.”

  “How old is he?”

  “I don’t know, Brynn. I’ve ne
ver seen him.”

  “Why not?”

  He didn’t say anything, just gnawed the inside of his cheek. He went to the window and peeped out again, but she thought that was an excuse to turn away from her.

  “Why don’t you go home?” she asked.

  “I never know what my schedule is going to be.”

  “Does your mother fall for that excuse?”

  He came back around, his eyes angry, so she knew she’d struck a chord. However, rather than demur, she pressed. “What causes you to twitch in your sleep, Rye?”

  “Twitch?”

  “Yesterday morning in the cabin, while we napped, several times you woke me up, jerking, talking unintelligibly.”

  “Sorry. You should have nudged me.”

  “What disturbs your sleep? And why can’t you land? That is, land and stay for any length of time.”

  “I’d rather be in the air.”

  “So you’ve said. You love flying. It’s an obsession. It’s ingrained.” She paused and looked at him meaningfully. “It’s also your escape. From what?”

  He checked his wristwatch, then placed his hands on his hips. “Are we done yet?”

  “Jake told me you were a legend.”

  “Vlad the Impaler was a legend. Ted Bundy.”

  Refusing to buy into the act of indifference he was staging, she persisted. “Jake’s a liar? You didn’t fly into the worst of the shit?”

  “Stories get exaggerated. They take on a life of their own.”

  “True. But they have some substance.”

  “Believe as much or as little as you want to.”

  “I believe you could fly for anybody. So why do you fly for Dash-It-All and the like?”

  “What’s wrong with it?”

  “Nothing. But there’s little prestige.”

  “Screw prestige. I like my kind of flying.”

  “Why?”

  “Because most of the time, I can fly alone.”

  “Why do you prefer that?”

  He bent down closer to her so she wouldn’t miss his point. “I don’t have to talk to anybody.”

  “About what happened over there?”

  “Over where?”

  She just looked at him, and she outlasted him.

  He rubbed the back of his neck and tilted his head from side to side, popping the vertebrae. But that didn’t relieve the strain. Still vexed, he opened the mini bar, took out a beer, and carried it over to an easy chair near the window. He looked outside and swore softly, indicating to her that the police car was still there.

  He plopped down, yanked the pull tab, took a drink from the can. “You want to hear a nice bedtime story? Too bad. This ain’t it.”

  She sat up and raised her knees, wrapping her arms around them.

  He began with an air of boredom. “This is the story about the pilot of a C-12. Know what that is?”

  “Obviously an airplane.”

  “Military version of a King Air. They’re used for personnel and cargo transport, troop support, rescue, surveillance. They serve variable purposes, depending on which branch of the military is using them, and what for. A C-12 can be the food truck. An ambulance. Sometimes a hearse.”

  He studied the can of beer in his hand, took a drink from it. “Anyway, that particular day, two C-12s were to fly a squadron of fighter pilots, plus their commanding officer, and some support personnel, out of Bagram. They’d been there for a couple of days, attending a briefing on where some badass Taliban who needed taking out were hiding up in the Nuristan province. We were flying them back to their base.

  “Wasn’t the worst of shit by any means. Duck soup, really. Scheduled to take off at sixteen hundred, but as happens in military life, the commander’s meeting ran long, things got pushed back, so I thought I’d get some sleep while we were waiting.

  “Next thing I know, the other pilot was waking me up, saying the planes were on the tarmac, they’d been put through preflight, and a lot of traffic was coming in, so the tower was telling us to get the lead out. I grabbed my gear. ‘I’ll be there soon as I take a leak.’

  “He said, ‘They assigned me to the first ship in line. That new bird.’ He told me the squadron and commanding officer were already aboard. ‘You get the economy flight, Mallett.’ The second plane was older, not as tricked out. It was hauling light cargo and the support personnel. He gave me a mock salute on his way out. ‘You snooze, you lose.’”

  Brynn’s throat began to tighten. She folded her hands together and placed them against her lips.

  He drained the beer and set the can with deliberate care on the table at his elbow. “A sidebar here. You know how you can buy the same brand of blue jeans, same size, same style, but each pair will fit just a little different from the others until you work them in?

  “Planes are the same. Aircraft can be identical. Same model, same configuration, cockpit panel, all the same. But each plane has its quirks. I’d flown that new plane a dozen times or more. I’d turned in a squawk list to the—” He paused when he saw her puzzlement. “Oh. Squawk list. A list of those quirks I mentioned.

  “Mechanics hadn’t gotten around to checking them out, and the other pilot hadn’t seen the squawk list. He’d also never flown with the copilot, which isn’t necessary, but it helps to have some hours with the other flyer in the cockpit.”

  “I climbed into the captain’s seat of the second craft. Copilot saluted me. More smack talk about me flying the VW instead of the Rolls. The two planes taxied. The first one took off.”

  He hesitated. Took several breaths. “Soon as it got airborne at full takeoff power, I realized that he was having control problems. One of the items on my list was that new plane’s yoke. It was sticky. You had to pull back on it firmly but smoothly. Then you’d be fine.”

  He was miming the motions, pulling both fists toward his chest.

  “The pilot didn’t know that, so when he felt that minuscule amount of resistance, he panicked and overcompensated, pulled back hard. I was yelling at him through my headset, ‘Too much! Too much!’ But he nosed up too fast, too steep, went practically vertical and stalled. He couldn’t correct it.”

  Tears were stinging Brynn’s eyes, but she blinked them back without moving, not wanting to distract him from finishing.

  “What was really weird?” he said. “It was so damn graceful, the way it arced over before going into the nose dive. It was like watching an Olympiad in slow motion.” He gave a humorless laugh. “Tanks were full, of course. The fireball was spectacular.” He sat forward and put his elbows on his knees, digging his thumbs into his eye sockets.

  Brynn didn’t say anything for a time, then, “If you had been flying it, could you have corrected it?”

  He lowered his hands. “That’s the point of the story, Brynn. If I’d been flying it, there would have been nothing to correct. Thirteen people died because I nodded off.” He looked at his palms as though seeing blood on them. “I knew all those pilots. They were great guys. The best of the best. Such a fucking waste.”

  “You think the least you could have done was to die with them?”

  He raised his head and looked at her with vehemence.

  “That’s is, isn’t it?” she asked softly. “That’s the issue. You didn’t die that day.”

  “I beat the odds.”

  Nodding slowly, she said, “But if you fly long enough, often enough, in conditions that are risky enough, the odds will begin to stack against you until eventually…”

  “My number will come up.”

  Even having guessed that was his mind-set, she made a mournful sound of dismay. “You want to die?”

  “Not die,” he said, “just…just not have to live with this anymore.”

  She searched his haunted eyes. How could she respond in a way that would reverse his thinking, reset his reasoning, relieve his guilt, or console him to some extent, any extent? Nothing came to mind. “I don’t think anyone, except yourself, can help you with this, Rye.”

>   “I didn’t ask for anyone’s help. I don’t want anyone’s help.”

  “You would rather suffer alone.”

  “And not have to talk about it.”

  “That must be awfully hurtful to people who care about you.”

  “It is.”

  “Is that why you’ve shut yourself off from your family?”

  He stood up and turned his back to her. “From everybody.”

  From her, certainly. His lovemaking had been passionate. He’d whispered stirring things she had taken as sincere because he hadn’t said them to woo her. She had already been wooed. But the instant the intimacy had shifted from the physical to the emotional, he had detached himself.

  She wanted to go to him now, hold him close, and tell him how she hated that he suffered this continuous anguish. But knowing that her attempted comforting would be rebuffed, she stayed where she was.

  At the window, he said, “No change. He’s still there, and it’s still pouring. What do you want to do?”

  She looked at the clock. It was almost one-thirty. “Honestly, now that I’ve been prone, I don’t think I could endure the drive. I would be a danger to myself and anyone else on the road. I would arrive at five-thirty or thereabouts. Would it be fair to the Griffins to barge in at that hour and hit them with all this?”

  “That’s up to you. Whenever you say you’re ready, I’ll take on the guy outside to get you out of here.”

  She glanced toward the window. “He hasn’t bothered us, and no one else has come along. Why don’t we rest? Just for a few hours. I could leave at dawn, present myself at a reasonable time of morning, and still have hours to spare.”

  He looked at the bed. “I could use a nap. I can’t promise that I won’t twitch.”

  “But I promise that I won’t talk.”

  He gave her a wry smile. “Deal.” He walked over to the bed, managed the sleeves of his shirt, and pulled it on. He picked up his new phone and the card key, then switched off the bathroom light. “Go to sleep. I’ll be right back.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “To call Dash.”

  “What for?”

  “I forgot to tell him something when I texted before. Don’t let anyone in but me.”

  The door closed behind him.