Tailspin

by Sandra Brown

  “Which direction did they go?”

  “To the right.”

  “South.”

  He blinked. “I guess.”

  Rawlins persisted. “What kind of black car?”

  “Didn’t notice the make, but it was new. Wheels were shiny chrome. Flashy.”

  “Mercedes sedan,” Wilson announced, surprising Rawlins, who turned to him for elaboration.

  “They were at the café,” Wilson said. “Got there shortly after the doctor and me. They parked across the street, but I noticed the car.” He gave Rawlins a description of the two men. “I remember thinking the car had to belong to the big guy. Clothes were wrinkled, but quality.”

  “What about the other one?”

  “He was dressed in a dark suit, too, but he’d have looked more at home in a gangsta hoodie.”

  “What did they do when they came in?”

  “Took a booth. Ate breakfast. Didn’t talk much or show any interest in her or me.”

  “What about her? Did she react when she saw them?”

  “No. In fact, her back was to them till we went to the door and said goodbye.”

  “But that’s where and when she brushed you off,” Rawlins said.

  Wilson extended his hand to the desk clerk. “Give me the key to that cabin.”

  The attendant fished around in a cluttered drawer and produced a key with a cardboard tag that had the number ten on it. Wilson took it from him. He and Rawlins headed for the door.

  “Can I come?”

  “No,” the deputies chorused.

  The towels in the bathroom were still damp. The bed and pillows had been lain on. Other than that, there was nothing in the cabin cluing them to where Brynn O’Neal and Rye Mallett had gone, nothing identifying the two men they’d left with.

  “I don’t suppose you got that Mercedes’s license plate number.”

  Wilson shook his head with chagrin. “Not even a partial.”

  Rawlins headed for the open cabin door. “Well, lucky for us the café got burglarized last spring.”

  Wilson caught his chain of thought and hurried to catch up. “The café has a security camera.”

  “Installed the week after the break-in.” Rawlins walked toward his SUV.

  Wilson slowed down only long enough to retrieve Marlene White’s key fob from under the rock where Mallett had told her it would be. Wilson had offered to drive the car back for her and park it in the hospital lot. “I’ll leave the key for her at the admissions desk,” he told Rawlins. “Pick me up out front.”

  “On the way, I’ll call the owner of the café and tell him to meet us there. I want to see his security camera video.”

  “He won’t like it. It’s Thanksgiving.”

  “I don’t care if it’s the Second Coming. Brady is still in ICU, condition guarded. Rye Mallett and Dr. O’Neal might have made nice with Marlene, but they still have a lot to answer for.”

  3:03 p.m.

  “I knew we shouldn’t have trusted her to go alone,” Delores said. “I told Nate as much. This proves my instinct was right.” She reached for the crystal stem at her place setting and raised the glass of wine to Richard.

  They toasted and drank.

  The traditional Thanksgiving meal was being served to them in their formal dining room. They were having it midday in anticipation of the eventful evening. The senator sat at the head of the long table, Delores adjacent to him on his right. They had dressed for the occasion to keep up appearances of normalcy, if only for their housekeeper-cook.

  Minutes before they were due in the dining room, they had received the call from Goliad that they had been nervously awaiting. For the most part, the news had been good. Dr. O’Neal had been located.

  However, the circumstances in which she’d been found had sent Delores into orbit. She was still circling.

  “What could possibly have induced her to have a rendezvous while the clock is ticking down?” She punctuated the words by stabbing her fork into a slice of turkey breast meat.

  “Animal magnetism?”

  Her fork clattered against the china plate. “How can you joke about it, Richard? Although the way Goliad has described this pilot, it does sound as though he’s still evolving.”

  He smiled. “I doubt he’s that low, or Dr. O’Neal wouldn’t have found him attractive.”

  “I don’t care if he’s been named Sexiest Man Alive, what could have possessed her?” She ignored her plate of food and followed the progress of her fingertip around the embossed pattern on the tablecloth. “I hope it was only sex that kept her away for so long. It all sounds very fishy, like she and this pilot have teamed up.

  “That business about the receipt sounds like utter nonsense. You’re a senator. Have you ever heard of an FAA regulation to that effect?” Without waiting for Richard’s answer, she threw her linen napkin onto the table and stood up. “I’ll have someone in your office look it up.”

  “Delores, sit down.”

  His imperative tone halted her. She looked at him with surprised affront.

  “Dr. O’Neal is a young, healthy, and independent woman. She wanted to go to bed with the man. Stop making something monumental of it.” He spoke in a measured and reasonable voice, which had much more impact than a rant. It suggested anger barely contained, a fragile control over his temper.

  Delores slapped her hand over the center of her chest. “Well, forgive me if saving your life is monumentally important to me.”

  He took a deep, steadying breath. “I apologize for using such a strident tone with you. We’re both on edge.” He stood and held her chair. “Please, Del. Let’s finish our meal.”

  She sat and resumed eating, but her passivity didn’t last for long. “And Nate,” she said his name with disdain. “He hadn’t even noticed that his colleague was hours overdue.”

  He had failed to return their repeated calls, and when he finally had, it was to tell them that he’d received a text from Brynn just before eight o’clock, saying that she would be leaving Howardville soon. He reminded them that he’d been up all night. Thinking all was well, he’d turned off his phone and had gone to bed to nap.

  He apologized profusely for his lack of vigilance and was greatly relieved to hear that Brynn was being escorted back by men in their employ. He was waiting for her at his office.

  Delores said, “Nate was appalled to learn what she’d been doing during those lost hours and promised to take up the matter with her.”

  “Will he revoke privileges, do you think? Or ground her?” Richard asked, keeping a straight face.

  “More joking?”

  “I just don’t see this as the end of the world. Goliad has the situation in hand.”

  She murmured in agreement.

  Richard eyed her keenly. “But?”

  She stared into the near distance, then set her cutlery on her plate, her food barely touched. “I don’t want to leave anything to chance, or to anyone unreliable, as Dr. O’Neal has proven herself to be. It’s up to us, you and me, to make this work.”

  Realizing there was more to what she had to say, Richard leaned back in his chair and patted his lap. She came around and sat in it. In a wifely manner, she adjusted the Windsor knot of his necktie.

  “I’ve had an idea,” she said. “It’s rather audacious. Don’t say no until you’ve heard me out.”

  “I’m intrigued. What do you have in mind, darling?”

  Chapter 15

  4:12 p.m.

  When they left the cabin, Goliad offered to place the black box in the trunk of the Mercedes, but Rye had insisted on it riding in the back seat with him. It was on the floorboard between his feet. His flight bag was in his lap. Snug in the pocket of his jacket was his nine-millimeter. Sans clip. At Goliad’s insistence.

  As Rye reluctantly surrendered the clip, Goliad had told him that as soon as Dr. Lambert signed off on the delivery of the box, Rye would get his bullets back.

  He hadn’t specified how.

 
Rye hadn’t been fooled into thinking that Goliad believed the tale he’d spun about needing Lambert’s signature on the receipt. Goliad had brought him along only because he hadn’t known what else to do with him. But after the drug was delivered to Lambert, Rye would be expendable. Possibly, so would Brynn. He tried not to let on that he was aware of that.

  Riding with his head resting on the back of the seat, eyes closed, he pretended to be dozing, but he was wide awake and acutely aware of every movement made by the others in the car.

  In the passenger seat, Timmy fidgeted as though bugs under his skin were trying to work their way out.

  Goliad maintained a speed just below the limit, kept both hands on the wheel, eyes on the road, except occasionally when he looked at Rye in the rearview mirror.

  He was a seasoned pro. Too intelligent to let his temper dictate his actions. There was a quiet dignity about him. He would kill Rye if need be, but he wouldn’t do it with gusto as Timmy would.

  Different styles, equally lethal, accountable to their employers, the unnamed mister and missus, one of whom was the patient. Rye wondered who they were to be able to trace cell phones and have people, like this pair, doing their dirty work.

  Was Nathan Lambert another of their puppets? Or was Lambert pulling the strings? Brynn had described him as a genius, but that wasn’t necessarily an endorsement. A lot of geniuses were madmen who used their brilliance as justification for committing atrocities.

  But whether Nate Lambert was a saint or sinner, immediately after handing the box over to him, Rye needed to get the hell out of there.

  His dilemma was achieving that, while at the same time getting payback for Dash and Brady White, whom he had intentionally avoided mentioning in the cabin standoff. If he’d tipped his hand about the revenge he sought, bloodshed probably couldn’t have been avoided.

  He needed a plan of action. But how could he formulate one when he wouldn’t know what kind of situation he was walking into until he was already in it? He didn’t even know the specifics of their destination. They could be on their way to a penthouse or a dump ground. He had to be prepared for anything.

  And what about Brynn?

  He still didn’t know what role she was playing in this fucked-up drama.

  Being apprehensive of Goliad and Timmy, she had gone along with his rigmarole about the receipt, sounding just hacked enough to be convincing. But that didn’t mean there was blind trust between the two of them. Was what she’d told him about GX-42 just another in a series of lies and half-truths?

  A miracle drug with a short shelf life? Really, Brynn?

  If that was true, and said drug was destined for a patient whose days were numbered without it, and Brynn was delivering it with more than twenty-four hours padding, which was exactly what she’d been desperate to do, then why wasn’t she chatty and bubbly with anticipation of soon achieving her goal?

  Instead, she’d been silent and forlorn ever since their departure from the cabin.

  They hadn’t been given an opportunity to speak alone, and, dammit, he needed to know what was going on with her. He stopped pretending to doze and looked over at her. She was looking out the car window at Atlanta’s skyline, which had appeared on the horizon, visible but blurred by fog.

  She seemed about as excited to see it as a lifer approaching Alcatraz.

  Her posture was rigid with tension. Her hands were in her lap, clasped in a death grip. He reached across the seat and cupped his hand over them. Jumping like she’d been shot, she turned to him. Their eyes locked. They didn’t say anything. Couldn’t.

  Nor could he account for her expression of stark desperation.

  She knew something that he didn’t. Frustrated by his inability to crack her reticence, he pressed his fingers around her clasped hands as though to squeeze truthful information from her.

  Then, startling everyone, his cell phone rang.

  Timmy turned his head, his vulpine face appearing in the space between the two front seats. Goliad’s unblinking eyes met Rye’s in the rearview mirror. “Answer it,” he said.

  Rye took the phone from his jacket pocket and saw that the caller was Dash. He clicked on. “Here.”

  “Where’s here?”

  “Coming into Atlanta.”

  “That’s good. You finagled a ride?”

  “In a manner of speaking.”

  “Did you talk to the FAA?”

  “Monday at the earliest.”

  “Figured.”

  “I may have to go back up there to get pictures. Couldn’t today.”

  “We’ll work around it. You had any sleep?”

  “Not much.”

  “Get some more. You fly tomorrow night. I took the liberty of booking you a room. I’ll text you where.”

  “Okay.”

  “Don’t be in a rush to thank me or anything.”

  Dash paused as though waiting for him to respond, but he had a listening audience that Dash didn’t know about, so he didn’t say anything.

  After heaving a long-suffering sigh, Dash continued, “I also got you a seat on a cheapo commercial carrier that’ll get you back here.”

  “What time?”

  “Little after nine. Unless you’re delayed.”

  “There’s still fog.”

  “Yeah, but not like what it was. It’s clearing from the west. ATL is scheduled to reopen within the hour, but the airlines will be playing catch-up, and until they do, it’ll be the end of civilization as we know it, which is why the room wasn’t easy to come by. Had to use my platinum card.”

  “If flights are that backed up, why don’t I just charter and fly myself?”

  “No budget for that. You don’t make it, Rye, I’ll have to send somebody else.”

  Rye looked over at Brynn, who was staring at the back of Timmy’s seat, unmoving and unmoved, seemingly uninterested. “I’ll make it,” he told Dash.

  “Assuming you do, get over here as soon as you land. I’ll have one of the nineties on the step.”

  “Copilot?”

  “Do you want one?”

  “No.”

  “I knew that without asking.”

  “What’s the cargo?”

  “Pallets of leather. A furniture manufacturer is out of Roman Red, and they want it yesterday.”

  “Where?”

  “Portland.”

  “Maine may still be socked in tomorrow.”

  “Not Maine. Oregon. Clear as a bell out there. Well, except for the rain, but what are you going to do? It’s Oregon.”

  “Right.”

  “What’s the matter with you?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I thought you’d be happy. You sound like your puppy just died.”

  “I’m beat, that’s all. Ready to get horizontal.”

  “I’ll text you the hotel info.”

  “Thanks for rustling up the job. I’ll get back to you in the a.m.” He clicked off and dropped the phone into his pocket. “How much farther?” he asked, addressing the question to the pair of eyes in the rearview mirror.

  “Not much.”

  “You’re a fountain of information.”

  Rye had flown through Atlanta more times than he could count. He knew it from the air, was well acquainted with the main airport and all the FBOs in the area, but he wasn’t that familiar with the freeway system.

  He tried to keep track of the route Goliad took, but when he steered the Mercedes into the unattended parking garage of a multistory office building, Rye knew that he would have trouble finding his way back to a major thoroughfare. Even if he had a car, which he didn’t.

  And even if he got out of here alive, which was questionable. Not that he feared death. In fact, he flirted with it, courted it, dared it on a daily basis. He just didn’t want his death to be at the hands of a lowlife like Timmy.

  He wasn’t afraid of dying. He was only afraid of dying ignobly.

  Goliad drove up two ramps of the garage and pulled into a space on the third lev
el, which was the top one. He cut the engine and turned to address Brynn. “Text him. Tell him we’re here.”

  She did as instructed. Without waiting for a reply to the text, Goliad opened the driver’s door and got out. Timmy did likewise on the passenger side. Brynn got out. Rye was the last to alight, his bag shouldered, the box secured between his other arm and his torso.

  “I’ve never been here before,” Goliad said to Brynn. “Lead the way.”

  She made brief eye contact with Rye as she walked past him and toward a single elevator. It took forever to arrive. While they waited, no one said anything, although Timmy was cracking his knuckles and whistling softly through his teeth.

  They crowded into the small enclosure. Brynn punched the button for the fifth floor. They rode up; the door slid open. As they stepped from the cubicle, Brynn motioned them to the left. A man was standing in an open doorway where the lushly carpeted and richly paneled hallway came to a dead end.

  At his first glimpse of Nate Lambert, Rye decided he didn’t like his looks any better than he’d liked his phone voice. Men that skinny and pale shouldn’t shave their heads or wear trousers that narrow in the leg and cropped at the ankle. Even someone as untutored in fashion as Rye could’ve told him that.

  The four of them filed down the hall, Brynn in the lead, Rye behind her, Goliad and Timmy bringing up the rear. Lambert acknowledged the two heavies with a nod. He spotted the box under Rye’s arm, and it held his attention for several seconds. Then, as they got closer to him, he focused on Brynn.

  “So glad you could make it, Dr. O’Neal.”

  She fired a volley back. “It hasn’t been a fun day for me either, Nate.”

  “That’s not what I heard.” He looked Rye over, his distaste apparent. “This is the dashing bush pilot you found irresistible?”

  Brynn drew herself up to her full height but didn’t honor the insult with a comeback, demonstrating a hell of a lot more class than Lambert. For all his nattiness, he was an asshole.

  Rye stepped forward, coming even with Brynn. “You want this box, or what?” He whipped the receipt from his back jeans pocket and extended it, still folded, to Lambert.