Taking Flight (A Devereux Novel)

by Whiskey, D. G.

  Crap!

  Derek applauded as the game of Roego drew to a stunning conclusion. Even Jeff, the game’s creator, shook his head in delight. “Wow, Rachel, I’m honestly flabbergasted. I never would have thought of using your horse like that. Absolutely brilliant. This is going to change my thinking about the optimal strategy.”

  Rachel beamed. “Thanks, Jeff. I had the idea last week, but didn’t have the opportunity to put it into use. It turned out even better than I’d expected!”

  The players shared a drink, as was customary, and then rehashed the more interesting parts of the game. Derek listened for a moment, but when he turned to engage Sara in conversation he realized she wasn’t back from the bathroom yet.

  I wonder if she’s gotten lost. The house doesn’t always make it easy on people.

  He found her in the library, engrossed in a book on the opposite corner of the room from his desk. He couldn’t remember if he had left anything important out on the cherry wood desk, but he doubted it.

  “Ah,” he said. “Why did I get the impression you were a big reader?”

  She flashed that engaging smile at him, her white teeth glimmering in the soft light of the library. It had no external walls in order to protect the older and more valuable books from the damaging ultraviolet rays in sunlight. “Well, I guess I’m not the typical airhead that makes their home in this city, so maybe that had something to do with it.”

  “Well said.” He ducked his head to read the cover of the book she had taken off the shelf. “Oh, you’re a fan of Nietzsche? Now that is surprising. I had you pegged as more of a romance or thriller reader.”

  She looked at the book in her hands as though it was the first time she was seeing it. “Ah, yes, you had gotten me right the first time. I grabbed this to see if I was missing out on anything.”

  He grinned. It would be too enjoyable poking fun at her if she got flustered so easily. “And? What’s your verdict?”

  The book snapped shut, and she put it back in its home nestled amongst its friends. “Not for me. How did the game go? Is it still on?”

  “Oh, no, it wrapped up in spectacular fashion. A masterful victory by Rachel—I’m sure they’ll be discussing the ramifications all night and what this means to the game balancing. Jeff is intent bringing it to market in the next few months, you see. I’ll be financing the launch, since I believe in the product.”

  “Really? That’s generous of you. Something of a venture capitalist, are you?” She leaned against the bookshelf and stood on one foot, crossing the other over onto its toe. It was a cute stance.

  “Something like that,” he said. “How about you? I know nothing about you other than you are not a fan of Nietzsche. Are you an up and coming actress? Model?” She cocked her head to the side, a small smile tugging playfully at the corners of her lips. “No, you don’t seem like the type. Maybe… agent?”

  “Afraid you’re barking up the wrong tree,” Sara said. “I’m a journalist, in town to investigate the chronic homeless problem Los Angeles.”

  “Journalist, eh?” Derek felt his shoulders lift just a little. It was a rule among his brothers—they allowed nothing to compromise the secrecy of their past. They had all the cooperation they needed from the company and the government, but that didn’t prevent them from letting things slip themselves. “And you’re in town to look into the homeless problem? That’s quite the topic. I’m interested to hear your take on things. How do you like the job?”

  “I love it!” Sara’s face lit up. “Being an investigative journalist was everything I wanted to be when I was younger. I fought so hard for it and finally saw success a few years ago. I even won an award for an article I had written on the plight of the poorest class of Americans.”

  “Congratulations.” Derek let himself relax a little more. It was unlikely a journalist of such high caliber was here to dig up dirt on him. The tabloids constantly sent enterprising young women after him, but Sara wasn’t the type. “That’s fascinating, and obviously connected with the homeless here in the city. What have you worked on in the past couple of years?”

  He hadn’t expected the response he got from the question. Sara staggered backward a little as though he had struck her.

  “Whoa! I’m sorry, are you okay?” He reached out to her, but held back at the last moment in case it made things worse.

  She pushed herself upright with what appeared to be tremendous effort. Her eyes remained cast to the side and filled with a sorrow that touched Derek deeply. It was more heart-wrenching than anything he had ever witnessed in person. Real emotion was rare to find in this city of fake smiles and plastic faces.

  “No, I’m sorry. It’s been a long time, I shouldn’t react like this anymore.” She grimaced and took a deep breath. “To be honest, I haven’t written a damn thing in the past two years. I… was engaged. And I loved him very much, but then he died.” She tried to say more, but her voice choked up and tears came to her eyes. She waved at her face in frustration. “Ah, damn! I shouldn’t be telling you this. We just met.”

  Derek closed the final distance between them and put his arm around her. She put her forehead on his shoulder and he held her for a moment while her body shook. “It’s okay, Sara. You had a big loss in your past, I get that. I had my own a couple years ago when my father died. I doubt it was as harsh as yours, but I’m not over it, either.”

  She looked up at him, her eyes wide and open. “Your father died? What about your mom? She must have been devastated.”

  He shook his head. “No, she passed away long ago, when my little brother was born. My father threw himself into work and we rarely saw him after that. Until he committed suicide two years ago, and then it was too late.”

  They stood in silence for a little while, arms wrapped around each other, supporting and comforting. Sara murmured from where her head had nestled into his shoulder. “What did your father do?”

  Derek laughed. “Well, he was a programmer, originally. Beyond that, we never knew. He never talked about his work with us, and like I said he barely spent time with us. It was just us four brothers growing up, raising each other, trying to get away with whatever we could under the watchful eyes of our nannies. Evan was our surrogate—he’s only two years older than I am, but he always seemed so much more mature than the rest of us.”

  “Wow, that is so different from everything I know,” Sara said. “I had two sisters, and my parents are still alive, back in Chicago. Although I haven’t seen much of them since the accident. Haven’t seen much of anyone, actually.”

  The hurt and pain was still easy to hear in her voice. But there was also a hint of self-reproach, as though she was upset for distancing herself from everyone she cared about.

  “That must be very difficult to deal with,” Derek murmured. “At least I had my brothers to draw on, and I didn’t know my father as well as most do.”

  Sara drew in a deep, shaking breath, and let it go as though forcing painful memories to leave her body. “I’ve decided it’s time to move on. As much as I can, anyway. I can’t spend the rest of my life wallowing in self-pity.”

  Derek admired the strength it would take to shake off something like what Sara had been through. He tried to think of anything in his life he loved so much that he couldn’t do anything for years after it was gone. Maybe if all my brothers died at once. His thoughts flashed to Evan’s visit and the warnings he’d given Derek. What are the odds of that happening? Evan is just a little jumpy.

  “I’m sorry, I’ve gotten your shirt all wet,” Sara said, lifting her face from his should and looking up at him. “My eyes do this leaking thing sometimes when I’m sad.”

  He laughed. “A leak implies they’re broken, but there’s nothing wrong with your eyes. They’re gorgeous.”

  Her mouth was inches away. He couldn’t resist any longer.

  Their lips met in a soft kiss. Sara’s lips were warm, welcoming, and a little salty from the tears that had fallen on the pink skin.

/>   Before it could go any further, Derek pulled back just out of reach. Sara made a small, frustrated sound in the back of her throat, and he smiled.

  “You’re distraught, and I’m dwelling on deep thoughts I’ve been putting aside. It wouldn’t be right to take anything more from you. Yet.”

  She drew back herself and opened her eyes. Her face held such a plaintive expression that he couldn’t help but chuckle, especially when she asked, “Are you sure?”

  “I think so.” He loosened his arms and stood back. “I enjoyed that, and it helped to talk about this. Maybe we can do more of both another day.”

  She smiled back at him. “I would like that.”

  “Shall we go rejoin the party?” He held out his hand to her.

  “Let’s.”

  “Argh!” Sara threw her banana peel against the wall—it hit and fell to the ground with a faint plop.

  The rest of the party had gone well—she had made friends and ingratiated herself with Derek’s crew. Her decision to use her real name and profession, while potentially putting Derek on guard against any deep questioning, turned out to be a great choice when a couple of his friends had recognized her and co-opted her to talk about several of her articles for much of the night.

  It had been gratifying, but also lessened the time she could talk with Derek or interview his friends. She had ended the night with only two useful pieces of information: that his father had died, and presumably left him and his brothers the owners of the Onyx Company.

  That alone was much more than she’d begun with, but the information had been useless so far. As far as the world at large appeared to be concerned, the company didn’t exist. And that spawned a whole new series of good questions, but not a lot of good answers.

  “How the hell can a company post a profit of four billion dollars in a quarter and not even legally exist?” she muttered. “There’s no record of them anywhere!”

  It made no sense. A company that large must employ thousands upon thousands of people. Even the most strict and binding non-disclosure agreement in the world couldn’t compel that many people to remain silent about such a big secret.

  Sara had redrawn the company’s logo from the letter in Derek’s library from memory, and she wasn’t able to find anything that way, either. She was running it through image search software to see if that had any results, but she didn’t have high hopes. It was so difficult for computers to recognize shapes and pictures that it was a huge shot in the dark.

  To her surprise, when she got back from picking up Chinese food, the search had returned a news article. “Military accident injures Gulf War veteran.”

  An accident at a military testing ground in Arizona was hushed by the base and no explanation given. We have obtained a picture of the debris that landed in Mrs. Kenwick’s backyard. Mrs. Kenwick lives just beside the base, and she says the explosion she heard yesterday was unlike anything she had ever heard before.

  “It was just a really loud bang, like the start of a war over there,” she said. “The glass in the house shook and dust rained down from the ceiling. It was like we were having an earthquake.”

  As you can see, the debris is just a piece of metal with illegible writing on it. The base did confirm that there was an injury in the accident and that the injured was Gulf War veteran Chad Hunter. Hunter was rushed to the hospital, and we have been told that doctors were forced to amputate one of his arms. He has survived and is in critical condition for the time being.

  Military. That did not increase Sara’s odds of discovering any deep truths related to the case. It was one realm she steadfastly refused to delve into when choosing her investigations. Not because there wasn’t valuable information the public should know about, but because it was a brutal climate filled with money, politics, and power struggles—less in the forces themselves than the military-industrial complex that depended on it.

  Either way, it was a piece of advice Michael had suggested and she took to heart. His advice was like gold to her, and it had never led her astray.

  It was time to call Ron and try to weasel her way out of this entire sordid adventure. She would regret not pursuing Derek further, but she was under no illusion that she wasn’t just the new flavor of the week to him. When a man could have countless numbers of actresses and supermodels, even several at the same time, a woman like her stood no chance of capturing his attention long-term.

  It’s not like I’m ready for romance. I mean, the other night felt good. Really good. But I can’t betray Michael’s memory like that. He had been everything to her, and two years was not enough to repair the hole in her heart where he still lingered.

  Ron got straight to the point. “Tell me you’ve solved it.”

  “Jesus, Ron, it’s been a week. Relax. A proper investigation takes months or even years—you know that. I know you came from the tabloid world, but you’ve been around the block a few times.”

  “I don’t have time for years, Flight. I was brought in to produce immediate results. You know the definite of ‘immediate?’ It’s not months from now, I’ll tell you that much.” He sounded even more stressed than usual. Sara wondered how much he had riding on her investigation of Derek. It could very well be the crown jewel of his strategy to turn the paper’s fortunes around. A deep, immersive story about America’s favorite brothers and how their rise to wealth and fame had been orchestrated… she could see how that would sell copies.

  “Look, Ron, I’ve got bad news. This will get solved slowly, or not at all. There just isn’t enough to go on here. Derek is a fortress, and the only leads I’ve been able to get have gone cold before they even started.” She tried to put as much sincerity into her voice as she could.

  “Are you trying to tell me that there’s no story there?”

  She hesitated. She hated lying, and the truth was the story might be even bigger than Ron dreamed. Four rich brothers, a dead father, a shadowy corporation with no record of its existence? It indicated a huge cover-up, and there was no way the government wasn’t a part of it. There were too many holes in the public record when it came to the Devereux’s and their company.

  “I don’t know, Ron. Maybe it’s just a stunt. You know, some reality show trying to dupe the world to set up a huge unveiling. Or maybe it’s entirely mundane. I’m just telling you, there’s no way I could get anything to you with any kind of speed. Let me work on something else. There’s a great research topic here, the sheer number of homeless and what is being done about it. I could stay and do a great piece on that, get it to you within a few weeks, ready for publication.”

  The only response was the loud chewing of gum. She held her cell phone away from her ear, her nose wrinkled with disgust.

  “Ron? You get that?”

  “Look, Flight. I don’t like you. You aren’t my style of reporter. I’m not saying you’re garbage—you’ve got an award, or whatever. But I need you to get me the real story behind Derek Devereux, and I need you to do it quickly. The bottom line is you’ll get me that story by the end of the month, or else you’re fired.”

  “Whoa, Ron, that’s not possible!”

  A blank tone met her words. The bastard had hung up on her.

  The intense rush of blood to his head after he leveled out of the dive was almost overwhelming, and it spiked his adrenaline in a way nothing else could. Derek twisted his plane through the obstacle course, weaving in and out of the tall cones made of fabric and filled with air to keep them in place. Up and down had virtually no meaning to his body—gravity was no longer his master.

  It made him feel strong, empowered. Dominant. The rush he got from flying his aerobatic plane was something he hadn’t even known he’d craved his whole life until the first time he’d done it. Once he’d experienced it, he was hooked. When he learned there was a league where he could compete against others to be the fastest, most precise pilot, he hadn’t hesitated a second before he’d joined up, even before he’d known it was mostly a group of the wealthy and elit
e.

  When he finished his run, he returned to the ground, albeit reluctantly. Walking around on his own two feet felt mundane after the thrill of flying in ways most people never dreamt of.

  He had invested in his own hangar at the airport and was the only one to have access. Most of the other pilots only flew their planes, but he watched all maintenance with a careful eye and exacting standard, and did the regular care himself. Even before Evan’s warning, he knew flying was his biggest vulnerability. As much as he pretended his brother’s warnings didn’t faze him, he had no desire to splatter on the ground because someone got in and sabotaged his plane.

  As he locked up, he squinted into the setting sun to see someone walking toward him.

  “Ah, Tom, how are you doing this evening?” he asked.

  The airport controller was a genial older man, approaching his seventies but still sharp in the tower. “About as good as these old bones will let me be. You had a couple great runs today.”

  Tom had always been familiar with all the pilots. Money wasn’t a measure of worth in his eyes, all that mattered was how one conducted himself in the air.

  “Thanks, Tom. I don’t know if you heard, but Rex and I have a bit of an unfriendly wager on the first race of the season. I’m not too worried, but I don’t want to eat my words.” Derek had scheduled a few more practices than usual before the race. He was confident, but didn’t want to let that confidence err into cockiness.

  The older man chewed on his lip a little. “I shouldn’t be telling you this, Derek, but Rex changed something about his plane. I’m not sure exactly what he’s done, but he’s flying like you wouldn’t believe in practice over the past couple of months. The tightest runs I’ve ever seen, and that’s saying something considering how much you’ve always owned the course.”