Night Flight

by Donna Ball

  She frowned a little, surprised by how alien the woman he had described sounded to her. Had she really done all that? Was she that person?

  She said, drawing a deep breath. "I've got to get to him. I—it was a head injury, you know. He could be paralyzed or—or have permanent brain damage, or be in a coma for weeks or months, or . . ." Not come out of it at all were the words she couldn't say. Be a vegetable for the rest of his life was what she couldn't think. Or he could die tomorrow, tonight, within the hour, without ever having seen her, without giving her a chance to say goodbye. She finished firmly, “I know you’ve got your agenda, and your duty and I know you’re trying to do the best thing for me, but I’ve got to get to him. It’s as simple as that.”

  Dave said, "How old are the kids?"

  She answered after a moment, “Five. They're twins, you know. A girl and a boy. It happens that way in families sometimes, the twin gene or whatever it is." They passed at that moment through a shadow, and the chill seemed to go through her soul as she added quietly, "They must be terrified."

  "Yes," Dave agreed simply. She had not known him long, but already she knew he was not a man who wasted words on useless reassurances. "But kids are pretty resilient. They'll be okay."

  They came to a break in the trees, and until then Cathy hadn't realized how high up they were. Below them about five hundred yards was the cabin, and the lake glinting in all directions. Beyond her left shoulder were the blue-gray shoulders of mammoth mountains, and directly below, winding down in an almost endless spiral, was the road by which they had come. Cathy could see all the way to the blacktop highway, and beyond, to a cluster of rooftops that could have indicated a small town.

  She said, "Where are we?"

  "A place called Crystal Point Lake. Oregon."

  Hope leapt as she turned to him. "Then we aren't far--"

  He shifted the sack of merchandise to his other arm, and moved his gaze away. "About a hundred miles."

  She stared at him. She didn't know why she was surprised. She was naive to expect anything

  else. "That's too far. I was closer to my brother last night."

  Dave turned his eyes back to her again, quiet, regretful, but certain. He said, "You know Kreiger will be waiting for you at the hospital, don't you?"

  She swallowed hard. "No. I don't know that."

  "He knows where you're headed. If he can't cut you off before then, you can be sure he'll meet you there. Do you really want to take a chance on leading him straight to Jack? To the children?"

  God. Her throat was dry, convulsing with such suddenness she couldn't even speak the word. Even now he might have reached them, he might . . .

  Dave saw the panic rising in her eyes and he said firmly, "He's going to wait for you to surface. He's going to try to track you down, and he's going to use the route he expects you to take, the one that leads to Albany. That's why the last thing you can do is what he expects. He's not going to do anything dramatic except as a last resort; remember what he's got to lose. All we've got to do is keep him guessing, until . . ."

  "Until what?" Cathy's voice was hoarse, scratchy. Her head was spinning, her thoughts racing like rats in a maze.

  Dave didn't answer. He didn't know the answer, and the question was running through his head, over and over again, with pieces of the conversation he'd had with the chief, things that nagged at him, things he didn't understand, answers he didn't have. Until what? Until the FBI stepped in? He knew what their plan was, and he didn't like it. Until Kreiger, helpless without the information Cathy had in her head, stepped into a trap of his own making? Maybe, but Dave didn't like to stake his life on such a big maybe. Until Kreiger found them? That was more likely, and not a very appealing scenario either.

  Cathy repeated, echoing his thoughts, "Until what?" Her voice was rising toward the edge of hysteria. "Until it all just goes away? What?"

  It wasn't until that moment that Dave fully realized, or finally accepted, just how alone the two of them were. Help wasn't coming. They were completely on their own. And it was up to Dave whether they lived or died.

  He answered, "Until I figure out what to do."

  And he moved ahead of her down the hill.

  ****************************

  Chapter Fourteen

  Cathy did not go back into the cabin. She sat on the steps and stared out at the lake and wondered why, of all the torments she had endured in the past twenty-four hours, the waiting should be the hardest. And the worst was that she didn't even know what she was waiting for.

  No, the worst was the pictures that kept flashing through her mind: Ellen, held captive and tortured for the sake of information she didn't possess; the twins, ruthlessly kidnaped from the hospital at gunpoint; Jack, lying helpless with tubes in his arms and machines breathing for him . . .

  I can't stay here, she thought, over and over again. I can't.

  The screen door slammed behind her, making her jump. Dave sat down beside her, placing a paper plate of toaster pastries between them, holding the handles of two coffee mugs in the other hand. He passed one of the cups to her and nodded toward the plate. "I warmed them up. You should eat."

  Cathy knew he was right. She wasn't sure how much of the nausea that swept through her was from horror and exhaustion, and how much was simple hunger. She broke off a corner of a pastry and it tasted like cardboard in her mouth.

  She took a swallow of coffee. "It's like," she said, as matter-of-factly as she could, "God is making up for all the times he let me slip by before. Nothing really bad has ever happened to me before, you know. Now all of a sudden, everything I care about is being torn apart, taken away. It's like one of those old-time Bible plagues."

  "Job," Dave said.

  Cathy looked at him questioningly.

  "He was the character in the Bible who led a charmed life," Dave explained, "until God decided to teach him a lesson. That's where the expression ‘the trials of Job' comes from." He returned his gaze to the lake. "My wife was all the time throwing things like that into the conversation."

  Cathy dropped her gaze to the coffee cup. "I wondered."

  "What?"

  "Who the woman was who loved you."

  Dave cast a quick surprised glance in her direction, then looked back at the lake. "She was a lot better than I deserved, I can tell you that much," he said after a moment.

  "Was?"

  There was a small silence, then he sipped his coffee without looking at her. "Cancer. Eight years ago."

  "I'm sorry."

  Cathy warmed her hands around the coffee cup. Despite the ever-brightening day, there was a definite chill in the air. Or perhaps the chill came from inside her. She said quietly after a time, "What happened to him?"

  "Who?"

  "Job."

  "I don't know. But I think that's also where the expression 'curse God and die' comes from."

  Cathy glanced at him, but he wasn't smiling. She said , "I never heard that one."

  His expression was bleak and faraway. "I have."

  Cathy looked away. They drank their coffee in silence for a while.

  She broke off another corner of the pastry. "You're not eating."

  "I hate those things." But he picked one up anyway, and bit into it.

  Cathy said, "We're not leaving today, are we?"

  He waited until he finished the pastry. "Kreiger killed a civilian back at the truck stop," he said. "Maybe by accident, maybe on purpose. But it's my description on the APB. And yours. Which means we couldn't take the car, even if we switched plates."

  It took a long, long time for all of that to sink in. When it did, all Cathy could think of was how safe she had felt with him before this. There had been suspicion, there had been uncertainty, but beneath it all there had been a sense of ease, of safety. He was one of the good guys, and he was on her side. Now he was in as much trouble as she was, and there was nothing either of them could do to help the other.

  She didn't know what to say. Ther
e was nothing she could say. Dead ends, blank walls. The trap was closing. Ellen, Jack, the twins . . .

  Dave said, "Time is on our side. Kreiger has a deadline. There are two crucial factors in a drug drop: the time and the place. We know he's missing at least one of those variables, and the longer we wait—"

  "The more desperate he gets," Cathy said tightly. "Desperate enough to take the children, or Ellen. . . . Damn it, you're a cop! Is that the best plan you can think of? Isn’t there something you can do?"

  Cathy knew she had no right to take her fear and her anxiety out on him. She knew that it was because of her, and what he had done to help her, that his hands were now tied and he was as much of a fugitive as she was. She knew, too, that without him she never would have made it this far. She might not even have survived the night. But when she saw his jaw knot with impotence and frustration she didn't feel guilty for the unfairness of her accusations; she felt angry.

  "I don't know," he said in a low, deliberate tone, "where you get your ideas about cops, but this isn't a goddamn TV series. I know about taking down statements and filling out reports and sitting on twelve-hour stakeouts waiting for nothing to happen. I don't know about matching wits with a trained killer and outsmarting half the government agencies in the Pacific Northwest, so if you're expecting me to come up with a quick happy ending for this little fairy tale, let me clue you in: it's not going to happen."

  "I don't expect anything from you," she said, her voice shaking with emotion though she tried to keep it calm. "I expected someone to help me when I dialed 911, and instead you and your friend came looking to gun me down. I expected the officer who pulled me over on the freeway to listen to my story and give me some protection, but instead he arrested me and impounded my car and turned me over to the man who was trying to kill me. I even expected Kreiger to take me to my car and let me go, all because he showed me a badge—so what should I expect from you?"

  She felt the tears backing up, tears of anger and frustration and self pity, and she hated them. She glanced at the coffee cup in her hand and started to take a sip, then abruptly tossed the contents over the rail. "Besides all that, you make a lousy cup of coffee."

  She got to her feet, turning toward the cabin, not wanting to go in; but the tears were hot and thick and the emptiness inside her was so great that she had to do something.

  Then Dave said, "I know." And she could hear the smile in his voice. "Alice suffered through five anniversaries of breakfast in bed before she finally told me the same thing. I guess she didn't want to hurt my feelings."

  Cathy's shoulders slumped; she couldn't fight the tears anymore. "I can't do this anymore," she whispered.

  He stood beside her, and was quiet for a moment, giving her a chance to compose herself. Then he said , in a tone that was plain and simple and left no room for doubt, “Yes, you can. What’s more, you’ll do it as long as you have to, and you’ll do whatever you have to because there’s no one else to do it but you. I knew that much about you before I ever met you.”

  She pushed a shaky hand across her face, wiping away the dampness. She swallowed the thickness in her throat, and tried to straighten her shoulders. She couldn’t quite meet his eyes.

  She said, "I was going to leave you here last night. And today, if I could've gotten away . . ."

  He said, "I know." He thrust his hands into his pockets, squinting a little into the sun as he looked toward the lake. "I should probably say I wouldn't try to stop you, but you know I would. Our chances don't look great in any case, but they're better together." He glanced at her. “Try not to worry. The FBI will have your house under surveillance, and your family. They’re not going to let anything happen to innocent civilians.”

  “I’m an innocent civilian,” she pointed out hoarsely.

  He said nothing.

  She clenched her fists slowly. "We can't just sit here, waiting for him to find us."

  "He won't find us," Dave said firmly, "not unless one of us does something stupid. I figure a couple of days, max, before this whole thing is going to blow up in somebody's face."

  He saw the anxiety build behind her eyes, and he forestalled her next protest with a deep breath. "Meanwhile, though," he said, "I've packed the backpack and filled the canteens. Around twilight we'll start hiking toward that little town down there. We should have plenty of time to make it before dark. Then we'll find another car and drive it as far as we can. I told you I'd get you to Jack, and I will."

  The thought of another nightmarish flight through the night made Cathy feel ill, as though the very cells of her skin, sinew, and bone were rising up in protest. How could she go through that again? What choice did they have?

  She said, struck by a sudden thought that she hoped was not as desperate as it sounded, "The

  FBI. Why don't I just tell them what I know- what the man on the phone said? They know I'm not a criminal. If I cooperated, they would protect me—us."

  Dave shook his head, starting to turn away. "That's not what they want from you. Chances are they know exactly what was said on the phone. What they want is for Kreiger to find out, and walk into their trap."

  And then Dave stopped, and looked back at her, the light of a sudden speculation in his eyes.

  "What?" she insisted.

  The light faded, and he shook his head again. "Nothing. They may know what the code means, but we don't. Just letters and numbers."

  "Damn it," Cathy cried, "the man has killed at least two people! Can't they stop him? What more do they need?"

  A scrap of the morning's conversation with the chief flitted across Dave's consciousness, disturbing him; something that wasn't quite right, something he should have paid closer attention to . . . but it was gone. He gave Cathy a shrug and a bitter smile, and answered, "Just more, I guess."

  He went into the cabin and returned in a moment with the gun she had taken from Kreiger. Cathy recoiled instinctively when she saw it. In the daylight, it looked even uglier and more lethal than it had last night.

  He said, "There's a full clip, but that's the only ammunition we've got for this gun. The store

  doesn't sell it, even if I wanted to risk buying it. So we're not going to waste a lot on target practice." He removed the clip, showed it to her just as though he expected her to recognize what she was seeing, and replaced it. "Come on around back."

  He went down the steps, but Cathy hung back. He was almost around the side of the cabin before she followed.

  "I can't believe that brother of yours never taught you to shoot." Dave's voice was casual as he moved through the high, ragged grass toward a rust-stained steel trash barrel.

  "Not every man believes guns are the solution to violence," Cathy replied a little stuffily, but in her mind she was hearing Jack's voice. Sometimes you've got to be prepared for the worst.

  Dave picked out a couple of tin cans, long since scoured clean by insects, and took them over to a stump. "That's right," he said, "he's an academic. Stands to reason he'd be a pacifist. The only trouble with pacifists—like academics—is they live in a world of their own. And all that happy bullshit they're always spouting about social reform being the only answer to the crime problem doesn't have a damn thing to do with what goes on in real life." He turned from setting up the cans, a mild challenge in his eyes. "Does it?"

  Cathy frowned a little, disturbed and puzzled by the hostility she sensed beneath his words — hostility directed, for some unknown reason, at Jack. "Jack's not like that," she said. "And neither am I, if that's what you're implying."

  "Of course not. You know that your average junkie on the street is not going to be interested in listening to reason when he's got you pinned against the wall with a knife at your throat. And you know a man like Kreiger doesn't spend a lot of his evenings reading papers on social change. And your brother would want you to be safe. That's why you're going to learn how to use this weapon, am I right?"

  Cathy swallowed hard, staring at the gun in his hand. "It's no use.
You were right last night—I can't use it, not on a man, not when it counts. If I could have, I would have used it on you."

  Dave's expression was dry. "Not with the safety on, you wouldn't have—fortunately for me. And while I'm glad I was right about you last night, that's not a mistake you can afford to make again."

  She shook her head. "No. You're the policeman, you carry the guns. I don't have to — "

  "Yes, you do. Because even if you never have to fire this, you need the confidence of knowing you can." He placed the gun firmly in her hand, wrapping her fingers about it. And he held her gaze. "That's what I saw in your eyes last night—uncertainty. You don't ever want anybody else to see that, I promise you."

  Her throat was dry. "You talk as though—" She almost didn't finish. She didn't want to finish, but he was looking at her, waiting. She flexed her hand uncomfortably around the butt of the pistol. "You're making it sound like I'm going to get a chance to use this."

  He said, "That's right."

  "But a minute ago you said we were safe if we kept moving! Besides, if we stay together—"

  "What do you want me to say?" Dave replied impatiently. "Do you want me to tell you relax, that everything is going to be all right? That I'll take care of you and you don't have to be afraid? For Christ's sake, Cathy, you know better than that!"

  Cathy realized that was exactly what she wanted him to do. That was what Jack would have done, what every man she had ever known would have done. And now, when she needed to hear those meaningless platitudes most, she had to depend upon the one man whose false impressions of her courage and common sense refused to allow him to say them. She knew she should be ennobled by that, but in fact she felt hurt and lost.

  She said wearily, "I know. But I would have liked to hear it."

  Dave looked a little surprised, and then uncomfortable, though his tone softened. "Look," he said, "I hope everything's going to be all right. I promise I'll take care of you—of us—the best I can. But I can't tell you not to worry. Okay?"