by Sandra Brown
From the look of things, every officer in the county had heeded the 911 call. After the first two squad cars arrived, others showed up in rapid succession. You’d think on a foggy holiday eve, cops would be busy with fender benders, DUIs, and settling disputes at the reunions of dysfunctional families.
Instead, uniformed men and women—Rye had lost count after a dozen—had crowded into the compact office of the Howardville County Airfield. It was as though the crime of the century had been committed here tonight. Good thing it hadn’t been, because they’d tromped all over the shoe prints on the floor.
In a jargon made up mostly of medical acronyms, Dr. O’Neal had given the EMTs a concise update on Brady’s condition, then relinquished him into their care. Shortly thereafter, the ambulance had left with him, still unconscious.
Now Brynn was in conversation with two men in gray uniforms that designated them as sheriff’s deputies. Because of the hubbub caused by the other people milling around but generally doing nothing constructive, Rye couldn’t catch what she was saying to the pair, but, following a lengthy monologue, she flicked her hand toward him. As one, the three turned. Rye stayed as he was, with arms and ankles crossed, seemingly indifferent to their scrutiny. One of the deputies excused himself from Brynn and his fellow officer and strolled over, notepad in hand.
“Rye Mallett?”
“That’s right.”
“Spelling?”
Rye spelled his name, and, as the officer jotted it down, he introduced himself as Deputy Don Rawlins. “What happened here tonight, Mr. Mallett?”
“Dr. O’Neal and I got here, found the guy slumped over his desk, unconscious and bleeding.”
“You a friend of his?”
“Never laid eyes on him. I’d only talked to him by radio.”
“Tell me about that.”
“I flew in from Columbus, Ohio, and was on final approach when—”
“Crummy night to be flying.”
When Rye didn’t respond, the deputy looked up at him from beneath the brim of his hat. Rye looked back and raised his eyebrows by way of asking if the deputy wanted to hear his story or not. The officer tipped his head for Rye to continue.
Disliking the deputy’s attitude, he decided to stick with the lie he’d told Brynn at the crash site. “I was on final approach when my panel lights blinked out. Just like that.” He snapped his fingers. “It was a flicker, but it came at the worst possible time. No instruments, no visual because of the fog. I was flying blind.”
“You crashed.”
In abbreviated, layman’s terms, he described the crash. “I narrowly missed the doctor’s car. It was a close call. We were both lucky. Wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been. I walked away with nothing but a bump on the head to show for it.” He pushed back his hair to show him the goose egg. The deputy looked at it with no detectable concern.
He said, “The doctor tells us your plane is banged up pretty good and not going anywhere for a while.”
“It can’t be buffed out, no.”
“She gave us the general vicinity of where it is. We’ve got officers going out to take a look.”
Rye grimaced. “I’m required to call the FAA and file an accident report. My phone was busted, and since discovering White, I haven’t had time. I need to get some pictures of the craft, as is, so tell your guys not to disturb anything.”
“I’ll tell them,” Rawlins said, but he didn’t seem in a hurry to do it. “What caused your instruments to blink out?”
“A glitch. It’s an old plane.”
Rawlins looked doubtful. “I’m no pilot, but I know this is a tough place to fly in and out of. We had a guy fly in here last year. Sunday pilot. Came in too low, clipped the power lines as he—”
“I’m not that guy.”
Rye’s curt interruption seemed to rub the deputy the wrong way. “Oh, no?”
“No.”
The lawman looked him over then gave a skeptical snort and wrote something on his pad. “What was so all-fired important that you had to fly here tonight?”
“I fly freight.” Rye didn’t think that would cut it, and it didn’t.
“For who?”
“For whoever pays me.”
“What kind of freight?”
“All kinds. Big, little, dead or alive. You name it.”
“I’d like for you to name it. What were you flying tonight?”
“That.” The deputy followed the direction of his pointing finger to the box where it still sat in the chair adjacent to the door.
“What is it?”
“Exactly what it looks like.”
Impatience evident, the deputy shifted his weight. “What’s in it, Mr. Mallett?”
“Don’t know. Didn’t ask.”
The first statement was true, the second a lie, and gauging by the deputy’s dubious expression, he knew it was. “The doctor didn’t volunteer it?”
“No.”
“Is that typical?”
“In my business, there’s no such thing as typical.”
“Who dispatched you?”
“The name of the company is Dash-It-All.” Rye gave him the contact information, and he wrote it down. “If you don’t mind,” Rye said, “I’d like to call the owner myself and be the one to break the news about his plane.”
“I do mind.”
He gave Rye a smile that Rye would’ve enjoyed wreaking havoc on. Instead, he gave an indifferent shrug and nodded down at the notepad. “You’ve got his number.”
Rawlins called over another deputy, who was older but apparently lower in the department’s pecking order. Rawlins ripped off the sheet of paper that had Dash’s phone numbers on it and gave it to the other officer. He muttered instructions to him that Rye couldn’t hear and pretended disinterest in.
Before the other deputy moved away, he said to Rawlins in an undertone, “Know who she is?” He bobbed his head toward Brynn.
Rawlins leaned back in order to see around the other deputy to where Brynn was being questioned. “Should I?”
“Wes O’Neal’s daughter.”
Rawlins’s eyes narrowed on her. “You don’t say.”
“Wasn’t sure at first, but then I heard her name. I’d see her around the department when she was just a kid. In and out of there a lot.” The older deputy withdrew, presumably to phone Dash.
Rye’s curiosity got the better of him. “Who’s Wes O’Neal?”
Rawlins said, “You’re not from around here, or you’d likely know. Where are you from, Mr. Mallett?”
“Not from around here.” Rawlins gave him a baleful look, and Rye decided that annoying him further wasn’t worth the time it would cost him. “Everywhere and nowhere. Air Force brat. We moved every couple of years, so I don’t claim a home town or even a home state.”
“Where do you live now?”
He rented an apartment in Oklahoma City only so he would have a mailing address. He had no personal attachment to the city. He’d chosen it for convenience. It was in the center of the country, making it easy to get into on his way back from somewhere and easy to get out of on his way to somewhere else.
He hadn’t really lied to Brynn when she’d asked where he lived. The rental was more a storage unit for his few belongings than it was a residence. As often as not, he was far from there, sleeping in a cheap motel or in the back room of an FBO until somebody needed a pilot on short notice.
Like tonight.
His eyes were drawn again to Brynn. She was talking, making small gestures. She reached up and looped a hank of hair behind her ear. As she listened to the deputy’s next question, her teeth tugged at the corner of her lower lip, like she was nervous. Like she was lying.
“Address?”
Rawlins’s question brought Rye back. He provided Rawlins with the address of his apartment. The deputy added it to his notepad. “After you crashed, what happened?”
Rye explained how he’d managed to get out of the airplane. “I was trying to figure out which way back to t
he road when Dr. O’Neal showed up.” Leaving out how sneakily she’d acted when she found the plane, he related the rest.
“We got to her car, discovered the damage to the wheel, had no choice but to walk here. Found Brady White. That’s it. Just like I told you at the start. That’s everything I know. So can we wrap this up?”
But Rawlins wasn’t finished with him. “You said you were on the radio with Brady. What was his last transmission?”
“He asked if I was nervous.”
“About what?”
Rye smiled.
“What’s funny?”
“That’s what I came back to Brady with. My exact words. He was asking if I was nervous about the landing. I indicated I wasn’t. He said I was due a couple of beers. That’s the last I heard from him. I transmitted that I saw the runway lights, but he didn’t respond.”
“Why do you think?”
“I think because he’d been knocked cold. The radio wasn’t on when Dr. O’Neal and I got here. I checked.”
Rawlins said, “Okay,” but not in a way that sounded like it was okay.
He then went through a series of routine questions: Had Rye seen any other persons or vehicles; had he touched or disturbed anything; did it appear to him that anything had been disturbed; had Brady White said anything? He answered no to all.
The older deputy came back and reported to Rawlins. “Mallett here checks out. That Dash character went nuts when I told him about his plane, but I calmed him down. He’s emailing you the flight plan that Mallett filed, along with the paperwork on his cargo.”
Rawlins pulled out his phone. As he accessed his email, he said to Rye, “Why didn’t you give me all this?”
“You didn’t ask for it.”
Rawlins scrolled through the documents and stopped on the air bill. “Under client’s name it says Dr. Lambert.”
“I assumed that’s who Dr. O’Neal was till she told me different.”
“She came on Dr. Lambert’s behalf?”
Brynn had said to him that she’d come in Dr. Lambert’s place. There was a fine distinction between in his place and on his behalf. But Rye nodded in response to the deputy’s question, because when you didn’t have a freaking clue how to answer, a nonverbal reply was the safest.
“Black metal box,” the deputy said, still reading from the shipping form attached to the email. “Doesn’t say what’s in it.”
Rye gave another shrug. “Like I told you.”
The deputy closed out the email and slid his phone back into the pocket of his puffy jacket. “You and Dr. O’Neal know each other before tonight?”
“No.”
Rawlins tilted his chin down in apparent doubt.
“No,” Rye repeated. “Never heard of her. Never saw her before she came walking out of the foggy woods. Didn’t even know she was a woman. When I was told the client was a Dr. Lambert, I automatically figured a man.”
“Feminists would jump all over that.”
“I’m not proud of it. I’m just telling you that’s how it was.”
The deputy tried to stare a lie out of him, but ironically that answer was the unvarnished truth, so Rye stared back and didn’t blink. Rawlins was first to back down. He used the toe of his boot to nudge the leather duffel at Rye’s feet. “What’s in the bag?”
“It’s my flight bag.”
“Not what I asked.”
“Help yourself. But there’s a nine-millimeter in there. I have a permit.”
Rawlins extended his open palm. Rye pulled his wallet from his back pocket and produced the concealed carry license. The deputy inspected it as though Rye was on a terrorist watch list, several times comparing the photo on the license to Rye’s face, then handed back the wallet, squatted down, and unzipped the bag.
He mumbled something about the contents looking like a hardware store wrapped in leather, but, right off, he located the zippered pocket with the Glock inside. He stood up with it in his hand and looked it over. “There’s a bullet chambered.”
Since he’d stated the obvious, Rye didn’t say anything.
“How come?” the deputy asked.
“Bears.”
“Bears?”
Rye hitched his thumb up toward the painting on the wall behind him. “Before I saw Dr. O’Neal’s flashlight, I heard thrashing in the woods, something coming my way. I didn’t want to come face-to-face with a bear or any other kind of predator. So I chambered a bullet just in case.”
It was a logical explanation. Which wasn’t to say that Rawlins believed a word of it. But before he could test its veracity with a follow-up question, the deputy who’d been questioning Brynn called, “Rawlins? Talk to you a sec?”
“Stay here,” he said to Rye as he moved away to join his partner.
The crowd of personnel had thinned out. Apparently they’d come to the conclusion that the crime of the century hadn’t been committed on their watch after all. Of those who remained, one was shuffling through White’s paperwork as though to determine if any of it was relevant and would shed light on who had walked in and clouted him for no apparent reason.
Another was dusting the desk for fingerprints. When his interest moved to the collector’s items on the shelf above it, and he was about to reach for the airplane model, Rye pushed away from the wall. “Hey! Don’t mess with that.”
Everyone stopped what they were doing and turned toward him. Rye looked at Rawlins, who’d been huddled with the other deputy, comparing notes. Rye said, “Whoever hit him didn’t take time to handle his stuff. Leave it alone.”
Rawlins took stock of the articles on the shelf, considered it, then shook his head at the fingerprinter. Everyone went back to what they’d been doing.
Rye resettled himself against the wall and looked toward Brynn. She, who like everyone else had turned when he admonished the man doing the fingerprinting, was regarding him curiously.
3:21 a.m.
Rye Mallett’s stare was unmoving, unblinking, and unnerving.
She would give anything to know what he’d told the deputy. Their accounts of discovering Brady White would be similar, if not word for word. But she wondered about his version of their meeting at the crash site. How much had he told, how truthful had he been, what had he left out?
Working in her favor was the man’s innate terseness and avoidance of conversation. He also had a self-proclaimed aversion to involvement. He would want this to be over and done with as soon as possible, the same as she, so she doubted he would elaborate or give the deputies anything except brief answers to direct questions.
For her part, she’d been guarded when answering the deputy’s questions, but not so evasive as to arouse suspicion.
He had asked about the scratches on her hands. She had attributed them to stumbling into a thicket while making her way through the woods in search of the plane. “When I reached it, I was so relieved to discover the pilot alive and unharmed.”
“You and Mallett know each other?”
“Not at all. He was stranded out there, and so was I. We walked here together.”
The deputy—his name was Wilson something or something Wilson—had looked over at Rye where he was being questioned. Coming back around to her, he said, “Rough-looking character.”
She’d had to agree. His stance was arrogant, his mannerisms insolent. He had a surly disposition, the reflexes of a rattlesnake, and an air of menace, which was a troublesome combination when being questioned at a crime scene by officers of the law. A more congenial attitude and friendlier aspect would’ve been beneficial to them both, but it was too late to advise him of that.
“As I said, I didn’t meet him until tonight,” she’d told Wilson. “But, honestly, I was glad to have him with me. The fog and all.”
They’d gone back and forth like that without her revealing anything of substance. She’d been relieved when they moved from her initial encounter with Rye Mallett to their finding Brady White.
“The people who attacked him left s
hoe prints. Unfortunately…” She gestured at the floor.
The tips of Wilson’s ears had turned red with embarrassment when he saw that any prints left were now smudged and useless as a means of helping to identify the perpetrators.
He’d asked a few more questions, then posed the one she’d most dreaded. “What was he delivering to you?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Sorry?”
“To tell would be a violation of my patient’s privacy.”
Wilson had studied her for a moment, then said in a lower voice, “I know your daddy, Dr. O’Neal.”
Her heart had bumped, but she’d kept her voice cool. “Do you?”
“Y’all going to spend Thanksgiving together?”
“No. I have to work tomorrow. In fact…” She’d made a grand gesture of checking her watch and, upon seeing the time, had made a small sound of distress. “I need to return to Atlanta as soon as possible, and since my car can’t be driven, I need to be making other arrangements for getting back. How much longer will this take?”
Showing no sympathy for her time crunch, he’d stuck to the subject of her father. “When did you last see Wes?”
“We haven’t had any contact in a long while. Years.”
He’d poked his tongue into his cheek and continued to search her eyes for an uncomfortable length of time, then had turned away from her and summoned his crony. “Rawlins? Talk to you for a sec?”
And now, while the two deputies conferred in whispers, she and the pilot exchanged stares, and to her supreme consternation, it had been easier to withstand Wilson’s incisive gaze than it was Rye Mallett’s.
Seen in full light, he looked no more reputable than he had when he had her pinned to the forest floor. He had a rangy build, but, as she knew from experience, he was stronger than his leanness suggested.
His dark blond hair was thick and unruly and grazed the collar of his bomber jacket. No extra flesh softened his square and well-defined jaw, but it was dusted with a scruff only slightly darker than his hair. She couldn’t tell the color of his eyes because the sockets were cast in shadow by the overhead light. But she felt the hostility they trained on her. Indeed, if looks could kill.
What bothered her most, he wore his ruggedness and hostility well.