Tailspin

by Sandra Brown

  Rye bent over the man. If this was Brady White, he was two decades older than Rye had estimated, given the youthfulness in his voice. Blood from a wound behind his ear had formed a puddle on the desktop. Rye worked two fingers inside the collar of his plaid flannel shirt and pressed his carotid.

  “He’s got a pulse. Check him out.” As he stepped aside to give Brynn better access, he swung his flight bag off his shoulder and unzipped it.

  She lifted the injured man’s eyelid to look at his pupil and turned his hand over where it lay on the desk so she could get his pulse. As she felt for it, she looked up at Rye. “How did he—”

  “He didn’t. It was done to him.” He took the pistol from his bag. “Don’t touch anything else. Keep a heads-up. Yell if you hear anything outside. I’m going to take a look around.”

  “Is the gun necessary?”

  “We’ll soon know.”

  Rye carefully walked around two sets of muddy shoe prints he’d noticed on the vinyl flooring and started down a short hallway. It took him under a minute to check the three back rooms. One was little more than a closet stocked with cleaning and office supplies. There was a compact bathroom having only a commode and sink. A reception-type room was furnished with a sofa, a pair of matching chairs, and a coffee bar. Nothing was fancy or new, but everything was organized and tidy.

  He looked for a back door. There wasn’t one.

  When he returned to the main office, Brynn had the receiver of the desk phone to her ear, holding it with fingertips covered by her sleeve.

  “We assume it’s Mr. White. He has a head wound. No, we believe that it was inflicted.”

  Rye patted down the man’s pants pockets and located his wallet. In it was Brady White’s driver’s license. He held it up to Brynn, and she confirmed his identity to the 911 operator. “He’s unconscious, but his pupils are reactive.”

  As Brynn gave the dispatcher a rapid description of the situation and Brady’s condition as best she’d been able to determine it, Rye looked down at the bald spot on the crown of Brady’s head, which somehow made him appear more vulnerable than the bleeding gash.

  Rye had relished the thought of bashing this man himself. Now, he was ashamed for leaping to what was obviously a wrong conclusion about him. On the desk, beside the radio setup through which he’d been communicating with Rye, was a framed photo of Brady, a woman of similar age, two boys, and a younger girl with a missing front tooth. All were dressed in typical summer vacation clothing. Cameras and sun visors. In the background was the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum.

  Also on the desk, acting as a holder for pens and pencils, was a coffee mug decorated with a picture of the Wright brothers’ plane, aloft on the beach at Kitty Hawk. A shelf at eye level above the desk held a collection of books on aviation, an autographed picture of Chuck Yeager, and a model of the Spirit of St. Louis.

  Brady White was an aviation buff. To this guy, aiming a laser beam at a cockpit would be a mortal sin.

  “Pulse, sixty-two but thready,” Brynn was saying into the phone. “Yes, of course, but they need to hurry. Thank you.”

  She hung up and said to Rye, “The ambulance could take up to ten minutes because we’re so far out. And the fog.” She glanced toward the back rooms. “Any indication of…anything?”

  He shook his head. “Far as I can tell, nothing back there has been disturbed. Cash and credit cards are in his wallet, so it wasn’t a robbery. No back door.” He called her attention to the shoe prints. “They entered same way we did, came up behind him, probably while he was on the radio with me. They did what they came to do, turned off the radio, left.”

  “The sheriff’s office is sending deputies out to investigate.”

  He looked at his watch. “Ten minutes? Is he going to be all right?”

  “Head wounds bleed a lot even when they’re not bad, so I’m not as concerned about the blood. It’s already coagulating. But he’s probably concussed. There’s a possibility of fracture. He’ll need an X-ray and brain scan.”

  Rye dragged his hand over his mouth and chin and muttered deprecations to whoever had done this.

  Brynn looked at the footprints, one set of which was noticeably larger than the other. “No signs of a struggle. Nothing taken. What possible motive would anyone have had to just walk in here and do this?”

  Rye didn’t answer, but he was sure of one thing. Whoever had done that trick with the laser on him had also done this. No way in hell could the two incidents have occurred in an otherwise sleepy mountain town, within minutes and a mile of each other, and not be connected.

  “The 911 operator knows the family,” Brynn said. “She’s going to notify Mrs. White herself. She also sent two deputies to their house.”

  Rye’s gaze remained fixed on the family photograph on the desk. Deep inside him a vengeful anger began simmering on behalf of Brady White and his family. On behalf of Dash, too. He loved that beat-up old 182, just like he had loved that beat-up old cat.

  But as soon as those vindictive thoughts began edging their way into Rye’s mind, he cautioned himself against letting them lodge there. It wasn’t up to him to get payback for the wrong done to the Whites, or to Dash, or to anybody. He sternly reminded himself that he was responsible only to and for himself.

  Ah, but there was the hitch. He’d also been victimized by these fuckers. They had to be made to answer for trying to crash him. He was in this damn thing whether he wanted to be or not.

  Feeling the pressure of obligation settling over him, he pushed his fingers through his hair, then ran his hand around the back of his neck where tension was already collecting.

  “One of the deputies will stay with the Whites’ children.” Brynn had continued talking, unaware of the turbulent nature of his thoughts. “The other deputy will drive Mrs. White to the hospital.”

  Only half hearing her, Rye murmured, “My worst nightmare.”

  She looked at him with surprise. “Hospitals?”

  Absently, he shook his head. “Involvement.”

  Chapter 5

  2:41 a.m.

  Delores Parker Hunt entered the master bedroom and was dismayed to find her husband lying on the bed outside the covers, dressed except for his shoes. There was a pillow beneath his head, but he was wide awake.

  As she approached him, she said, “I envy your ability to relax.”

  “Relax? Hardly. I only yielded the pacing contest to you. You were doing enough for both of us, wearing a path in the carpet while wearing me out just watching you.”

  Nudging his hip with hers, she sat down on the edge of the bed. “This should rejuvenate you. Goliad called a few minutes ago.”

  “Why you and not me?”

  “He did call you. You left your phone in the sitting room. I took the liberty of answering it, knowing you would want to hear the latest right away.”

  “Well?”

  She clasped his hand and squeezed it. “The package arrived. Fog or no fog, we’ll receive it well ahead of the deadline.”

  His expression remained fixed, but his relief was evidenced by a long exhale through his nose. Only she would have detected that giveaway.

  “The doctor took delivery,” she continued. “Goliad is there to make certain she returns to Atlanta with it immediately.”

  Despite her parting shot to Goliad, she had no intention of telling Richard about the plane crash, the pilot, et cetera. These unanticipated bothers would only anger him, and she was angry enough for both of them. Seeing that he was about to say or ask something, she laid her index finger vertically against his lips. “Don’t worry.”

  “Why would I worry? What could possibly go wrong?”

  “I’ll ignore your sarcasm, if you’ll entrust me to take care of everything as you asked me to.” She laid her hand on his chest and leaned down until their faces were close. “You know I’m up to the task. I would move heaven and earth.”

  “I don’t doubt it for a moment. On my behalf, you’ve already made a pact
with the devil.”

  “No,” she said, stretching out the word, “I gave God the night off.”

  He gave her an arch look. “Del, only you would speak so cavalierly about taking over for the Almighty.”

  “Only I. And you.”

  Laughing, he said, “True enough.” He reached up and tangled his fingers in her well-maintained, streaked blond hair. “My lioness.”

  “You had better believe it, mister.” She pulled his hand to her mouth, growled against his palm, then nipped it with her teeth. “Claws, sharp teeth, and all.”

  Five minutes after being introduced to the handsome, charming, and recently divorced Richard Hunt at a charity gala, Delores had resolved to become the second Mrs. Hunt. By the end of the evening, she had abandoned her date and engaged in hot and urgent sex with Richard in the hotel elevator.

  Six months to the day of that memorable evening, they were honeymooning in the Seychelles. Every day since, Delores had devoted herself to being his fiercest advocate, adoring wife, and ardent lover. He loved and trusted her above anyone else, and she made damn sure he continued to.

  “I can retract my claws long enough to give you a back rub.”

  “Not now.”

  She placed her hands on his shoulders. “You’re tense. I feel it.”

  “Of course I’m tense. There’s a lot at stake here. For both of us, but especially for me.”

  “I don’t dispute that, Richard.”

  A vertical line appeared between his thick brows, which were threaded with gray. She smoothed it with her fingertip, but she doubted he even felt it. His mind was elsewhere. “As soon as you get an ETA from Goliad, I want to know.”

  “Naturally.”

  “What’s the new man’s name?”

  “Tommy? Timmy? Something like that.”

  “He’s qualified for this type of work?”

  “Goliad says he’s overqualified.”

  “That could be either good or bad. I don’t like having a man on the payroll that I haven’t vetted myself.” He was about to get up when she planted her hand against his chest and pressed him back against the supporting pillows.

  “You conceded the pacing contest to me, remember?”

  He resisted, but then he relented and stayed on the bed.

  “The rest will do you good,” she said.

  “I won’t rest until this is over.” In thought, he pulled on his lower lip. “Goliad shouldn’t have broken in a rookie on an errand this important. He should have taken someone he knew he could rely on.”

  “Actually, Timmy was a smart choice.”

  Richard gave her a sharp look.

  “His tenure with us is short. Although I don’t predict that anything will go wrong, if something should, we can lay the blame on the new guy who obviously didn’t appreciate or adhere to our rigid standards.”

  After a moment’s consideration, Richard gave her a canny smile. “Leaving us off the hook.” She gave him a look of prim satisfaction that made his smile widen. “Sometimes I think we share the same brain, Del.”

  “A lot of you has rubbed off on me in the past fifteen years.”

  “Sixteen last month, remember? You should.” He slipped his finger beneath the platinum chain at the base of her neck. “You’re wearing your anniversary gift.”

  A ten-carat diamond glittered against his finger. No less brilliant were the tears that welled in her eyes. “You are my gift, Richard. You.” She kissed his lips tenderly, then left the bed and started for the door.

  “Please bring me my phone.”

  “I will when Goliad calls. In the meantime, take advantage of this downtime. I’ll fret for both of us.”

  As soon as she had cleared the door and closed it softly behind her, she blinked back the recent tears and gave vent to supreme irritation. She checked the Cartier watch strapped to her wrist and cursed under her breath.

  What was keeping Goliad from calling?

  He had already been working for Richard when Delores entered the picture. The story was that Richard had found himself in need of a man to do his dirty work while keeping his own hands clean. After doing due diligence, Richard had pulled a young and hostile Goliad out of a court-mandated drug rehab program and made him an offer: If he got clean, and stayed clean, he would live lavishly and get paid handsomely to do what he’d been doing before, which, basically, amounted to being a thug.

  Following their marriage, Goliad’s loyalty to Richard had expanded to include her. He had never failed to do everything he was told to do, no matter how unsavory or illegal. But he was human, and therefore fallible, and, as Richard had alluded, this endeavor was fraught with possibilities for error.

  To a compulsive planner like Delores, even an nth degree of uncertainty was untenable. Once a decision was made, she acted on it. No second-guessing was allowed, and she was relentless.

  But people were unpredictable. Fate was fickle. Nature played tricks. Fog—for crissake, fog—had kept their private jet grounded, so it couldn’t make a short round trip to Columbus tonight. They’d been forced to rely on another plane, another pilot, and then he had crashed! Unforeseen interferences such as that made her crazy. Chain reactions could cause a simple plan to rapidly derail. She had to trust Goliad to handle the tenuous situation, but it was hard to depend on anyone except herself.

  On the end table, Richard’s cell phone vibrated. Goliad. She clicked on and said, “Tell me you’re on your way back.”

  “I’m afraid not, ma’am.”

  “What?” Her blood pressure spiked. “Why not? You were supposed to intercept the doctor when she left the airfield.”

  “We can’t go near it. The place is crawling with cops.”

  Chapter 6

  2:57 a.m.

  Using the phone on Brady White’s desk, Rye had called Atlanta Center to tell them that he was on the ground. He didn’t tell them the manner in which he’d gotten there. He’d save that for the FAA.

  Standing in the open doorway of the office, he’d looked toward the end of the runway where he would have touched down. Whoever had shone the laser at him could have been in that very spot. The angle would have been perfect.

  While waiting for the ambulance, Brynn had continued monitoring the injured man’s condition.

  She’d taken his pulse every couple of minutes and periodically checked his pupils. When she’d gently parted his thinning hair and assessed the gash, she’d gotten a groan out of him, which she’d seemed to take as a good sign, because she smiled faintly and patted his shoulder.

  Rye had left her to her doctoring and stayed out of her way by propping himself against the far wall under a paint-by-numbers portrait of a snarling bear. From this observation point, Rye had watched Brynn take off her coat and hang it alongside Brady’s on the rack just inside the door.

  She was wearing a black sweater over skinny, dark-wash jeans tucked into tall, flat-heeled black suede boots. They all looked damn good on her. Rye couldn’t help but notice and appreciate the way the garments hugged this and molded to that.

  Whenever she timed Brady’s pulse by her wristwatch, an alluring vertical dent appeared between sleek eyebrows the same dark color as her hair. By contrast, her eyes were light. Best he could tell from a safe distance, they were more gray than blue.

  Her hair hung past her shoulders, and there was a hell of a lot of it. She had a habit of absently hooking strands of it behind her ears, where they never stayed for long. Too heavy, he thought. He doubted he could gather up all her hair even using both hands. He’d like to try, though.

  No sooner had that thought popped into his mind than he questioned where it had come from. He shouldn’t be looking at her closely enough to notice the color of her eyes. Speculating on the weight of her hair, and how double-handfuls of it would feel?

  Jesus.

  And all this time, while he’d stood silently by, assessing her attributes, she’d ignored him as though he were invisible.

  But she’d been aware of him,
all right. Why else had she done everything within her power to keep from looking in his direction? Was he so bad to look at? Irritated by that thought, he decided to heckle her.

  “Hey.”

  She looked at him.

  “Did I say something to offend?”

  She opened her mouth to speak, but just then they heard the wail of approaching sirens. At the distant intersection, flashing red, blue, and white lights split off from the two-lane highway and started up the pockmarked road that he and she had walked along earlier.

  The lights created kaleidoscope patterns in the swirling fog. As they got closer, the vehicles took form: an ambulance and two police units, all running hot.

  Suddenly, Brynn whipped her head back around to him. If he could have captioned her expression in his terminology, it would have been “Oh, shit.”

  His gut clenched with foreboding. He pushed away from the wall and took a step toward her. “What?” He emphasized the t, making the word a demand.

  She wet her lips, which at any other time would have distracted him. Now, however, the nervous gesture served as a herald for something he sensed he didn’t want to hear.

  “Before they get here…” She’d stopped, swallowed. “I should clear up a misapprehension.”

  “What did I misapprehend?”

  “You assumed that I was Dr. Lambert.”

  He shot a look toward the black box, then placed his hands on his hips and glared at her. “I fuckin’ knew you weren’t legit. You’re not a doctor? Who the hell are you?”

  She cast a quick look over her shoulder. The emergency vehicles were screeching up outside. “I am a doctor. Dr. Brynn O’Neal. I came in Dr. Lambert’s place.”

  “Why?”

  “I can’t explain now.”

  His head nearly exploded with fury. “What the hell have you gotten me into, lady?”

  3:02 a.m.

  Rye had resumed his place with his back to the wall, grinding his teeth in agitation, taking in the scene, and thinking sourly that it must be a slow night in law enforcement.