by Sandra Brown
He left his knife sticking up out of Goliad’s back. It was acting as a plug. He didn’t want to have to mop up a gulf of blood when he came back later to dispose of the body.
5:35 p.m.
Nate gaped at Delores. “What do you mean, you want to do it?”
“Exactly what I said. I want to inject the drug into the IV bag.”
Richard said. “Brilliant, darling. I love that idea.”
She leaned down and kissed him lightly on the lips. “We’ve come all this way together. I want to take an active part.”
“As you should. Nate?”
“I don’t think it’s a brilliant idea at all.”
“What matters is that Richard and I do.” Not even deigning to look at Nate, she stroked her husband’s cheek.
Nate sputtered, “But you’re not medically qualified.”
“It’s not brain surgery. How hard can it be?”
“It’s not hard, but you don’t know how.”
Delores turned to him. “Do you?” she challenged. “Don’t you have nurses to take care of the menial tasks while you’re busy being stupendous you?”
“I—”
“Have you ever, over the course of your career, done this before, Nate?”
He wet his lips. “Not since I was an intern.” He glanced nervously toward the camera.
“Don’t worry about how this is going to look in your silly video,” Delores said. “We got what we needed from you, didn’t we, Richard?”
“Needed from me?” Nate asked, his voice going thin.
Richard said, “I think Delores is referring to your florid admission of breaching professional ethics.”
Nate’s jaw loosened. He opened and closed his mouth several times, without sound.
“Not that you need to worry about it getting out,” Richard continued calmly. “You were never going to leave this room with that video.”
“No. No, of course not. I didn’t intend to. I was making it for you only. And posterity.”
Delores snickered as she walked over to the camera and turned it off. “It’s superfluous now. And so are you, Nate.” She popped a pair of latex gloves from the box on the table and pulled them on. “Tell me what to do. More to the point, what not to do to screw up, and then leave me to do it.”
5:37 p.m.
Timmy returned from the kitchen alone.
Brynn’s spine stiffened. “Where’s Goliad?”
“Still in the kitchen.”
“Why?”
“He’s having a snack.” He came to stand directly in front of her.
She stood up. “I may get something to eat, too.”
He did a sidestep to block her path. “How come I get the feeling that you don’t like me?”
She assumed her haughtiest expression. “I can’t bear you, for a multitude of reasons. In fact, you make my skin crawl.”
He gave a soft whistle. “Listen to your smart-mouthin’.”
“Get out of my way.”
He shook his index finger inches from her face. “You were shagging that pilot, weren’t you?”
Before she could form another putdown, he was thrust forward with such force, Brynn had to leap out of the way to keep him from falling into her. As it was, he landed flat on his face, the thick rug saving his forehead from splitting open.
Rye, who’d sneaked up behind him and kicked him in his lower back, planted his boot on the back of Timmy’s neck, pinning him down. Leaning over him, he whispered, “If you utter a sound or move, I’ll break it. Swear to God, your skinny neck will snap like a wishbone.” Coming upright, he said, “Brynn, pat him down. Hurry.” Only then did she realize that Rye’s hands were bound behind him.
Without thinking twice about it, she dropped to her knees. Timmy looked at her out the corner of his eye, clearly terrified. He believed Rye’s threat. She believed it.
Timmy lay perfectly still as she searched his pockets. She found a knife in one.
“Check his ankles.”
A scabbard was strapped to his right one, a small knife in it.
“Cut these things off me,” Rye said.
Ordinarily, strong clippers were needed. Timmy’s knives were kept razor sharp. The first one Brynn applied cut through the tough plastic.
Rye said, “The reason he tried to crash my plane? The drug was never supposed to make it here.”
For a split second, Brynn’s eyes remained locked with Rye’s, but needing no further explanation for the moment, she ran to the double doors and burst through them.
Delores was about to uncap the vial.
“No!” Brynn lurched forward and rammed her shoulder into Delores. Knocked off balance, Delores careened against the IV pole, knocking it over and, in the process, dropping the vial.
Brynn caught it before it hit the floor.
“Give me that!” No longer beautiful and composed, Delores came at Brynn like an enraged she-cat. Brynn backpedaled away from her, quickly putting the vial behind her back and out of the other woman’s reach.
“Once the vial was opened, what were you going to do with it?” Brynn asked.
“No use lying.” Rye’s voice stopped whatever Delores was about to answer.
She spun around to find Timmy being held, his hands behind him and shoved up between his shoulder blades in Rye’s unyielding grip. Rye held one of Timmy’s own knives at his throat.
His punky arrogance had vanished. The young man’s eyes were wide, wild, mortally afraid. He squealed, “Tell him, you bitch.”
“Brynn, what are you doing?” Nate asked. “What is going on?”
Richard Hunt had stood, looking from Rye and Timmy, to his wife, to Brynn, who still clutched the vial in her fist behind her back.
Delores was the first to compose herself. She addressed Rye. “No doubt you’re Mr. Mallett. Such a pleasure to finally make your acquaintance.”
“I doubt it. Why did you have him try to crash me?”
“What a ridiculous notion.”
Rye shoved Timmy’s hands up higher between his shoulders. Brynn heard his shoulder sockets pop. Timmy hollered in pain. “You lying bitch.” Timmy rolled his eyes back toward Rye. “She paid me ten grand. She wanted the airplane to crash and burn. But it didn’t, and that started all this. Yesterday, she told me to get the drug here, no matter what, so—”
“Of course I told him that,” she said, still speaking smoothly and reasonably. But Brynn detected a tension in her phony smile. “I was making every effort to save my husband’s life.”
“Yeah?” Rye nicked Timmy’s throat, drawing blood.
That spurred Timmy to begin to babble. “She said to get it here so she could destroy the drug herself. That’s all there is of it, right? She didn’t want Hunt to get it. She said Goliad was too loyal to her husband to double-cross him. If Goliad had known what she was going to do, he would have stopped her or told her husband. So she hired me.”
Delores’s fists were clenched at her sides. “Shut up!”
Brynn, breathless with disbelief, looked at Nate. He had nothing to offer. He had backed into the wall and had one hand held over his mouth, whimpering. Richard Hunt’s gaze was trained on his wife.
In his deep, melodious voice, he said, “Delores?”
“They’re all lying, Richard.”
“Are they?” The senator was seething. “Goliad!” he shouted. “Where the hell is he?”
“Brynn.” Rye spoke her name sharply. “Out. Now!”
“Not with the drug.” Richard took a step toward her.
“Hold it, senator!” Rye said. “You touch her, and you’re gonna have a lot to explain to the media. Police are on their way here. And don’t rely on Lambert to lie for you. To save his ass, he’ll sing like a canary.”
Brynn hastily rounded the portable table, giving no regard to Nate, who whined her name as she passed him.
When she reached the open doors, Rye thrust Timmy forward and sent him sprawling at Delores’s feet. Then he banged the double do
ors shut, grabbed Brynn’s hand, and ran with her across the wide entry foyer into the formal dining room where a pair of French doors stood open.
“This is how I got in,” he said as he pulled her along behind him. “We gotta hurry. Wilson and Rawlins are on my tail.”
“Where are they?”
“Their SUV got stuck in a ditch when Rawlins was turning around to chase me down.”
“There’s more to that story.”
“Much.”
He approached the vehicle she recognized as the one that Goliad had used to transport them from the private landing strip. “Goliad,” she said. “Where is he?”
“Can’t be far,” Rye said.
“Are the keys in the truck?”
“With luck.”
The fob was in the cup holder. They scrambled in. Rye left the lights off as he sped down the lane to the main road. When he reached it, he turned right toward the landing strip.
5:44 p.m.
Timmy came unsteadily to his feet and, standing before Richard, pointed a finger at Delores. “She paid me. She didn’t want it to get to you. She said that a plane crash would look like an accident. Then when that pilot—”
“Enough!” Richard barked. “I get the picture.”
Nate was dismayed to find himself in this situation. When, where, had it all gone wrong? This was supposed to be his moment of triumph. Confounded by Delores’s deceit, he said, “You wanted it destroyed? All along? Why?”
Beneath her husband’s incendiary glare, she drew herself up, not with shame over having been found out, but with defiance. She shook back her hair. “For sixteen years, I’ve made all the important decisions. If it wasn’t for me, prodding you, pushing you, politicking for you, you would still be peddling tin houses. I was the locomotive, Richard. You were a cattle car I dragged along.
“Well, it was my turn. Publicly I would have mourned your death. ‘How horrible. He was so strong, so vital. Who could have predicted a rare blood cancer would bring him down? Mrs. Hunt is prostrate with grief.’
“That’s what they would have said.” She laughed. “But then, after the lavish funeral I would throw you, they’d be saying how brave I was to assume your place, your seat in the Senate. This is what Richard Hunt would want and expect from his widow, to take up the torch and carry on.” She smiled beatifically. “And it wouldn’t be too long before they forgot all about you.”
Following her dumbfounding monologue, Nate braced himself for Richard’s reaction, one with an impact equal to an earthquake, a lightning strike, another big bang. Therefore, it astounded him when a smile spread slowly across the senator’s face.
When he spoke, his voice didn’t rumble with righteous wrath. Rather, it was soft and laced with sympathy. “How naïve of you, Delores. Did you honestly think that I didn’t know what you had planned? If Dr. O’Neal hadn’t come in when she did and taken that vial from you, I would have. I knew what you were about.” He cast a glance toward Timmy. “Did you actually believe that I would allow you to put this urban vulture on the payroll without thoroughly vetting him myself?”
She laughed. “You were oblivious.”
“If it makes you feel better to think that,” he said with a shrug. “Every kiss, caress, tear, avowal of how much you loved me, all lies.”
“You didn’t know! You couldn’t have known.”
“You’re not nearly as good at deception as you think you are. As it turns out, I’m far superior.”
She tossed her hair again. “What difference does it make now who was the better deceiver? You can’t tell anyone about this or you incriminate yourself, just like that redneck pilot said. I have the video that proves your compliance in our little scheme. You’re not going to show it to anyone. Not when you’re so outspoken on imposing stiffer FDA regulations. Exposing this scandal would irreparably cripple your crusade.
“So,” she said, spreading her arms at her sides, “we’ll put this behind us. Our marriage will go on as before. In due time, I’m sure Nate can procure another dose of the GX-42.”
Richard looked at her with a sympathetic smile. “Impossible, darling.”
“With enough money, anything is possible.”
“It has nothing to do with money. We won’t go on as before because you’ll be dead, killed by the man who loved you.”
“You would never kill me.”
“True. But he will.”
He nodded toward the doors, which had been silently pulled open by Goliad. He stood with a pistol in hand.
Timmy gaped at him stupidly. “You’re dead.”
Goliad fired a straight shot through the center of Timmy’s forehead. He never felt it.
Delores looked at Goliad and exhaled his name in appeal.
“You have no honor.” The bullet went through her heart. She dropped.
Goliad lowered his arm. The pistol fell from his hand to the floor. “I’m sorry, sir,” he said to Richard.
The obsidian eyes that, to Nate, had always looked disturbingly lifeless did actually blink out an instant before his body collapsed. The hilt of a knife was sticking up out of his back.
5:50 p.m.
Heedless of the rain and the absence of headlights, Rye never took his foot off the accelerator between the mansion and the runway, steering with one hand, holding his cell phone to his ear with the other. He filed another flight plan. “Two souls on board.” He completed the call just as they reached the end of the landing strip.
Sheets of rain slashed against the SUV. He glanced over at Brynn. “Weather’s not ideal, but we’ll punch through it at about eight thousand feet. You okay with that?”
“Yes, just get me there. Can we make it?”
“We’ll make it.”
“In time?”
“We’ll make it,” he repeated with emphasis. “But better we do this in the dark until right before takeoff. Can you see your way to the plane?”
She could barely make out its shape in the darkness. “I’ll find it.”
“You go first,” he said. “I’m right behind you.”
She flipped up her hood, but it did her little good against the deluge. She was out of breath and shivering with cold by the time she reached the right side of the craft. Rye caught up with her there.
He went first, opened the door on the copilot’s side and got in, then heaved himself into the pilot’s seat. Brynn climbed in behind him. He reached across her to make sure the door was locked. “Buckle up.”
He put on his headset and started the engine. His hands seemed to do a dozen things at once, moving competently and assuredly. He used only the plane’s taxi light as he steered it to the far end of the runway and turned it around.
“I have clearance,” he said and looked over at Brynn. “Ready?”
“Ready.”
He flipped on the plane’s lights, used the PTT button to light the runway, then gave the plane the throttle.
A pair of headlights flashed on at the far end of the runway. The vehicle came speeding straight toward them. Rye stamped on the plane’s brakes, and, simultaneous to that, his cell phone rang. The vehicle kept coming and didn’t stop until it was twenty yards from the nose of the plane.
Swearing liberally, Rye whipped off his headset and answered his phone. “Rawlins, is that you?”
“Shut her down.”
“Not a fucking chance. Get out of my way.”
“You tampered with evidence and fled the scene of three homicides.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The bloodbath at the mansion.”
“Know nothing about a bloodbath.”
“Lambert called in a 911. Those two deputies who arrested you were the first responders. Three dead. Timmy, Mrs. Hunt, Goliad.”
“Jesus.” He looked across at Brynn, who had overheard and appeared as stunned as he.
“Lambert told them you two were there. They called us. We had a hunch where you had run off to and volunteered to stop you. I repeat. Shut her dow
n.”
“Nobody was dead when we left. That we knew of.”
“Good, you can tell the detectives that.”
“When I get back.”
“You can’t leave.”
“I’m getting Brynn to Tennessee. Tonight. Now.”
“You’re going to play chicken with me on this runway?”
“It’s not a game to me. I’m flying this drug to a dying kid.”
“I get that. But if you go, you’ll be digging yourself into real deep shit.”
“Yeah? Well, I’ve got a propeller at about the level of your thick skull. You decide who’s in deeper shit here. You or me?”
Brynn heard Wilson saying something in the background. Rawlins cursed.
“There’s not time to debate this, guys,” Rye said. “That little girl is lost if we don’t go now. Make yourselves useful. Have a police escort meet us. Brynn will text you the name of the airport.”
“Can’t let you go.”
“Hell you can’t! Say you missed us. I won’t be gone long. Soon as I drop Brynn off, I’ll fly right back. I’ll surrender myself. Undergo interrogation. Spend the night in lockup. Take a lie detector test. But for right now, get the hell out of the way.”
“How do we know you’ll be back?”
“I give you my word.”
“And I’m giving you the finger,” Rawlins shouted into the phone.
Rye sighed. “Figured that if you caught up to me, you’d be a prick, so I left something for you in the driver’s seat of that SUV. It’s your guarantee that I’ll be back.”
“What is it?”
“My pilot’s license.”
Violet
7:37 p.m.
When I saw the blue-and-white lights flashing outside my window, I thought it must be an ambulance coming to take me to the hospital because my special day with Elsa and the mayor had tired me out.
Honestly, I wish I could have watched Frozen on my new TV with Cy, and my brothers, and Mom and Dad. The mayor’s breath wasn’t nice, and Elsa didn’t sing as good as the one in the movie. But she was nice and didn’t talk about cancer and how adorable I am. If I have another special day, I hope they bring Taylor Swift or Alicia Keys.