by Emmy Grace
I giggle with her. “It really was. Nice, Dunning.” I hold up my free hand for a high five. When he leaves me hanging, I wave it at him. And I keep waving it until he relents and slaps it. “See? That wasn’t so hard, was it?”
Liam sulks out of the house like Eeyore. “I just want this case to be over. You’re enough to drive a man to drink.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” I say as I lock up behind us. We walk toward the vehicles together, stopping when Liam reaches his truck. “Well, good luck. I guess we’ll see you on the other side.”
“Oh, you’ll be seeing me for sure,” he says before ducking behind the wheel.
I shrug off his comment and continue to my car.
Regina gets in as I do and we slam our doors in unison. She glances over at me as she straps into her seat. “You’re like a hog in mud right now, aren’t you?”
“Is it that obvious?”
“No. Not at all.”
I’m not the only one good at sarcasm.
Kyle’s car is still parked outside when we reach Trivett’s Airfield. I pull up beside it and cut the engine. “Ha,” I scoff as I look over at the luxury car. “I guess airfields don’t pay that well after all.”
“What do you mean?”
“That’s an awfully nice car for a man who spends his days in a greasy shirt with his name across the chest.”
I stick my lock picking set, my flashlight, and a pair of latex gloves into my back pocket before we get out. We start off toward the administration door.
Before I make my way toward the hangar that holds CG-429, I tell Regina, “Keep him busy. Whatever you do, don’t let him leave that office until I come back and get you.”
“This is a lot of pressure, Lucky. He has a girlfriend. What if he isn’t interested? What if—”
I reach for her hand and give it a squeeze. “I’m not worried. You shouldn’t be either. You’ll think of something. I know you will. You’ve got this.”
Regina is also amazingly easy to pep talk, which is good. She often requires them before we engage in one of those “inadvisable” pursuits that Beebee and Momma despise.
“You’re right. I can do this.” She gives her boobs a hike and her hair a fluff, then plasters on her sexiest smile. She does a runway walk all the way to the door, which makes me grin. She turns back only long enough to give me a nod before she swings inside.
I give her a thumbs-up and prepare for my part.
Finding evidence.
Even though the airfield looks quiet, I still slink my way down toward hangar number six. I’m deep in Mission: Impossible mode. I move as if there are people around and eyes on me at all times.
My imagination is a very active and fertile thing.
When I reach the hangar, I scan the enormous door for a lock. I’m downright deflated when I see the electronic keypad to the right of the door. I feel like shaking my fist at the sky and screaming, “Noooooo!”
But I don’t. I can’t. I can’t panic. I can’t let this throw me off. Electronics are all fine and good, but they fail. Everyone knows they fail. That’s why fail-safes are a thing. Redundancies are put into place. There will be some sort of manual bypass around here. There has to be. I just need to find it.
Common sense finally rears its useful head and urges me to check around back. People coming and going wouldn’t always want to open that enormous door. They’d want something more manageable.
Like a back door.
I scuffle along and, when I turn the corner to the rear of the building, I’m rewarded. There, in the back of each hangar, is a regular-sized door. And the best part is, these regular doors have regular locks.
Score!
I glance left and right as I pull out my lock picking set and get to work. The lock is identical to the one on the office, which was easy to get into. Within seconds, the knob is turning and I’m slipping inside.
I creep in and let the door shut soundlessly at my back. Without outdoor light, the interior is dark. Really dark. Like pitch-black. It takes my eyes a few seconds to adjust, and even then I can only see the thin bead of daylight seeping in around the bottom of the door and around the ginormous hangar door across the way.
I’m relieved to see (and hear) that the hangar appears to be empty. I just need a few minutes on that plane.
I click on my flashlight and look around. I’m in a small office slash kitchenette. It separates the back door from the main hangar area. That’s where I need to be.
When I shine my light on the Gulfstream, I’m relieved a second time. The stairs are down. I didn’t think far enough ahead to plan how to go about getting on a plane if the stairs weren’t down. I don’t know the first thing about operating an aerial vehicle.
I walk right over and climb the stairs and step into an even darker space. Inside the plane, there is not even a hint of light outside the cone of my flashlight. It reminds me of all sorts of horror movies I’ve seen.
I hear a small noise and I whirl around, hands shaking. There is nothing there. Of course.
Dang my imagination.
I sweep the area with my flashlight once, then a second time. It’s going to be very hard to find anything with such limited light, so I head toward the cockpit. Surely there’s a switch labeled for the cabin lights. I mean, that’s just good, responsible manufacturing, right?
“Ha!” A surge of victory rushes through me when I see just such a switch. It’s all coming together. The tide is turning. Everything is going my way now. Luck is happening.
This is going to work!
I step back into the cabin, which is very well lit now, and my eyes immediately fall on a few objects that I wasn’t expecting to see.
First, there are two chests against one of the back walls. They look like coolers, but why on earth would you need big coolers on a plane? They have ice machines and refrigerators for crying out loud.
The second thing I notice is a shiny triangle under the edge of one of the seats, catching and reflecting the overhead light. I stop at it as I head toward the rear.
It’s a plastic bag. One with a whited-out space on one side, I guess to label the contents. I don’t really know. Chefs probably use them, but I’m not a good enough cook to ever want to save the leftovers.
There’s a deep crease in the plastic, as though it’s been folded in the shape of a rectangle. And there is a dent of some sort in it. Even through the thin latex of my glove, I can feel it when I rub my finger over the plastic. There are two or three more just like it, as though something sharp but not too sharp poked it. Repeatedly.
I take the plastic bag with me as I pause at object number three. A torn corner of paper. It has a purple stripe on it. I flick through my memory, trying to match it to something I’ve seen before. It looks familiar, but… I can’t place it right off.
Finally, I arrive at the chests. I open one. It’s empty inside, but for a residue of moisture. I swipe a finger down one wall and hold it up to the light. Looks like water.
I hold it up to my nose. Smells like water.
So, just ice in an ice chest. Makes common sense, of course, but I don’t want it to make common sense; I want it to make criminal sense. And it doesn’t.
At least not yet.
I roll through the facts as I turn and saunter back toward the cockpit. I twist and turn each bit of information I have, hoping they’ll fit together in a way that will have all this making sense.
I pivot and pace back to the ice chests. Open the other one. Find the same thing. Close it. Turn and walk back the way I came.
On my third round to the back, I go through the narrow door at the rear of the cabin. It’s a bathroom. And a nice one, too. It’s probably nicer than mine at the carriage house. It’s like a tiny spa, with its bamboo and chrome and a glass shower with rain head. I guess this is what it looks like to fly in style.
Nothing out of the ordinary grabs my attention, so I head back up to the front, this time pausing in the galley. It includes a
narrow countertop with a sink and overhead cabinets on one side, and microwave and fridge on the other.
I’m turning to abandon this space as well when I see a drawer that didn’t close all the way. Inside it, something metal. I grab the pull and tug it open.
And there lies an ice pick.
A wave of heat skitters down my spine. It would be too much of a coincidence to find an ice pick on a plane that is tied to a man stabbed to death with an ice pick.
I wind my fingers around the hilt of the weapon and turn. My eyes scan the interior of the plane, trying to imagine what they might’ve seen on the last voyage had I been here.
Then, one by glorious one, the odds and ends come together to make a crystal clear picture. I know what’s going on. I know the answer to the all-important question why.
Exhilarated, I whirl toward the door, ready to bolt outside and call Chief Sheriff. I run right into a person.
I scream.
Of course, I scream. I wasn’t expecting there to be anyone there. I haven’t heard a single sound.
Except for that one.
But it was nothing.
Except that it wasn’t.
Before I can react, I feel the cold tip of a gun barrel touch the underside of my chin.
“You must be Lucky,” a voice says.
And then a face comes into view.
19
A woman. I take in the blonde bob a few shades lighter than mine, the heart-shaped face a few shades prettier than mine, and the carefully manicured hand holding the gun. I never get my nails done, so it’s leagues better than mine.
“And you must be Shay,” I tell her.
She gives a low, sultry laugh. “See? You and I?” She takes the gun away from under my chin and waves it between us. “We’re proof that not all blondes are dumb.”
I’m casual despite my racing pulse. “I’ve said that for years, but no one listens.”
“They never do. People see what they want to see, what they expect to see.”
“Yeah, they do, but I like to keep ’em on their toes,” I say, backing up when she sticks the gun against my sternum and pushes. “So, ahem. Fancy running into you here.”
“I wish you’d just left all this alone. You’d have been able to prove your innocence eventually.”
“Ahhhh. That note was directed at me. It was all supposed to point to me, wasn’t it? Kyle saying that I was seeing Vickerman, the wife being led in my direction. I was your fall guy. Or girl, in this case.”
Her tawny brows shoot up. “You really are very good at this.”
I shrug. “It’s what I do.”
“What you used to do,” she clarifies. “You just couldn’t wait until we were gone, though. Just had to keep messin’…”
A chill of foreboding snakes its way down my back. “You know, you could always just tie me up somewhere so I can’t get away until you’re gone. Or take me with you and drop me off in another city.” I cringe at my choice of words. I’d hate for them to drop me off the way they dropped Martin Vickerman off. “There are always options other than murder.” I pause. “Or maybe you don’t know that. I mean, you killed Vickerman after all, didn’t you?”
“He had to go. He’d passed the expiration date on his usefulness.”
“And DeLuca? I assume his accident wasn’t really an accident?”
“Not quite.” She smiles, and it’s every bit as cold as an alligator’s smile. Almost as toothy, too. “Somehow, he figured out that Kyle and I had plans for the last shipment coming in on this plane. I couldn’t let him do anything with that information, now could I?”
“So, you two were taking out all the other players?”
“One by one. By one.”
I nod, taking it all in. “I guess I was originally one, too, right? I bet you were hoping your aim would be better when using a falling dead body as a weapon, huh?”
One slim shoulder hikes up under her designer blouse. “It’s not an exact science. The plan would work either way. I wasn’t too concerned.”
“You know, you look awfully…classy to be with a guy like Kyle. How did that happen?”
“I guess there’s no harm in telling you now since you’ll be dead soon.”
“That’s the spirit.”
She leans up against the wall that leads into the cabin, but keeps her gun trained steadily on me. I sink to the small couch across from her, praying for the opportunity to rush her. It’s either try to get the gun away from her or distract her until someone else comes along to help. And who knows how long that could be. I like my chances of getting out of this on my own. I have to. It’s that or think the worst, and that’s just not my style. That never helped anything, ever, in the history of bad things.
The key is to stay positive.
Even if you’re fairly positive you might be gonna die soon.
“So, Kyle?”
“High school sweetheart. You know the cliché. Lit up hot and fast. Crashed and burned even faster. We went our separate ways after we broke up. Made choices and mistakes and built lives away from each other, that ol’ story. But nothing ever really changed between us. Not the heart of it anyway. So when I ran into him after I started seeing Martin… Well, sparks flew and all that. You know how it goes.”
“Did you know what Vickerman was into when you met him?”
“God, no. I thought he was just a wealthy businessman. I had no idea he was involved in an operation like this.”
“So Vickerman, DeLuca, and Philbin were the only ones involved in the smuggling? In…counterfeiting?”
The last comes out as a question, because it only just now makes sense with the purple corner of paper and the plastic bag.
“You really are good at this.”
I shrug humbly. “I try.”
“Yes, they were the only ones involved. Until recently anyway.”
“Recently, as in when you and Kyle decided you wanted a piece.”
“Right again.”
“I suppose they didn’t take that too well.”
“No, they really didn’t. Philbin was the most agreeable, but I think he’s just a scared rat without the other two.”
“Sounds like he’s in the wind, though, right?”
“‘In the wind’?” Shay looks at me with humor in her bluish-green eyes. “You have this Law and Order lingo down pat, don’t you?”
“I read a lot.”
“Since we’re spilling our guts, how about you? How did you figure it out? What tipped you off?”
I tell her about the ledger with the tail letters and the word “shay,” and about the conversation I overheard. I don’t tell her that Miss Haddy was the one who gave me the Shay and Kyle connection. Miss Haddy can probably take care of herself, but I would never betray a source.
“Very good. But how did you figure out it was money?”
“I found a piece of a paper band that goes around stacks of bills. The purple with white zeroes on it gave it away.”
She doesn’t look convinced. “That’s hardly enough to be conclusive. Come on. You can do better than that.”
“Well, there was also the plastic bag, folded in the shape of a rectangle. Roughly the size and shape of a stack of bills. And the bag had some dents on it, like it had been poked with something. I assume that’s what the ice pick is for? To bust up the chunk of ice that the money is hidden inside? I bet the money is practically invisible under the white label on those bags, am I right?”
Her expression says she’s duly impressed. But probably not impressed enough not to kill me.
“Yes. Exactly. They’ve been taking counterfeit currency out of the country and having it laundered for a couple of years. Very lucrative, if I do say so myself.”
“I kinda figured.”
She tilts her head to consider me. “You’d make a great criminal, you know that?”
“I probably would.”
“We could be twins.”
“Nah, I couldn’t stomach it. My momma taught me
the difference between trash and treasure. And she made sure I knew which one I am.”
Shay’s expression melts as slow as the ice they’ve been smuggling money in. It goes from tolerance to fury in a few seconds’ time. “Maybe you’re not as smart as I gave you credit for. It’s pretty stupid to antagonize the one with the gun.”
“It would be. If you were the only one with a gun.” I flick my eyes over her shoulder and back again.
For a split second, a shadow of confusion drops down over Shay’s oddly familiar face, but then…realization dawns. The instant she gets my meaning, she jerks her head around to look behind her.
And the moment she does, I make my move.
I launch off the couch with all my strength, which will undoubtedly show up as two really sore glutes in the morning. I go after her with all my might.
I slam my shoulder into her middle at the same time that I grab her wrist and push it and the gun away from me. She lets out an oomph, which I will find oddly gratifying when I instant-replay this a million times over the next week.
We struggle. I don’t really know what it looks like from an outsider’s perspective, but I feel like I’m in a fistfight with an octopus-gorilla hybrid. This woman is surprisingly strong. And agile. And she has at least eighteen, no twenty-five hands. At one point, I think she even uses her legs to try to subdue me. Maybe she has those weird toes that are like graspers. I can’t be sure. I can’t be sure of much, actually. It’s all sort of a mash-up in my head. I only know that she pulls out a chunk of my hair at the back, she grunts like a sumo wrestler when she fights, her breath smells like bacon, and I think I may have bitten her. I sank my teeth into something fleshy that got too close to my face. I hope it was her arm.
And then…
And then…
And then I hear the sweet, sweet music of the slowest drawl this side of the Mason-Dixon line.
“I think you’d better drop your weapon there, girly.”
Clive doesn’t have to shout. Heck, he hardly even raises his voice, but we hear it. Shay doesn’t stop struggling to get the upper hand on me, though, until the cocking of the gun happens. That’s when she goes still as a statue.