Chapter 5
Day 3
Later, much later, they found the energy to crawl onto the couch. Sitting with his spine wedged comfortably between the upholstered arm and cushion, Christine’s bare back snuggled against his chest, Quinn knew he could die right there a satisfied man.
The fact that one of them had left the light on in the small rest room adjoining her office only notched up his level of contentment.
She couldn’t know how enticing she looked, he thought, propped against him, her long legs twined with his, her skin still flushed and warm with the afterglow of their lovemaking. She had her head turned toward the wide window behind the desk where the first thready light of dawn seeped through. In the pale light her tousled hair looked as dark as midnight against her cheek.
“Quinn, I have a feeling something terrible is going to happen on that plane,” she said quietly.
“Yeah.” The urgency he felt to unearth Hart’s accomplice churned in his gut like acid.
“What if the request you sent to the Oklahoma City PD comes back with nothing?” Christine asked as she shifted against him. “What then?”
“I’ll figure something out.”
Thirty minutes ago, he had checked with his dispatcher—so far the results of the inquiry he’d sent to the OCPD hadn’t come back. Hart had lived in Oklahoma City for over twenty years; he and Kelly Jackson had lived there during their short marriage. Before his arrest on kidnap charges, Hart had been president of a bank. To Quinn’s way of thinking, Hart’s accomplice might have lived in Oklahoma City, or at least paid him a visit there. Quinn had faxed OCPD a list of all individuals with airfield access at Sam Houston and requested a check of the names against the PD’s misdemeanor arrests. Speeding tickets. Littering charges. Anything minor that wouldn’t show up on the national computer.
“That plane’s been sitting there for two days,” Christine said, her gaze still on the window. “The runway’s clear of debris now. Most of the rubble on the taxiway is gone. How much longer do you think Hart will wait until he takes some sort of action?”
“Not long.” Quinn slid a palm down her silky hair. “The reason I came up here last night was to tell you Hart’s drawn a line in the sand.”
She angled her head to look across her shoulder at him. “What sort of line?”
“He swears he’ll kill a marshal if he doesn’t talk to his ex by noon tomorrow.” Just saying the words had Quinn biting back frustration. “Dammit, I need to get my hands on Hart’s accomplice, take him out of the formula before then.”
Christine nodded. “Everything’s tied to Hart getting to talk to his ex-wife, isn’t it?”
“My gut tells me she’s the spark that’ll set off whatever events that follow.”
“I can’t help but think of the families of the marshals on board that plane,” Christine said after a moment. “They swore an oath to do their jobs. We both know that oath won’t give their families any comfort if Hart starts shooting.”
Quinn closed his eyes for a brief instant. When Jeff died, it hadn’t much mattered that he’d been a cop. What mattered was he was dead. “You’re right, we both know that.” He placed a soft kiss against her hair. “We both know.”
He felt a quiet shudder ripple through Christine and he could almost hear her mind clicking back into gear. Angling his head, he saw the shadows that had crept into her eyes. He had a feeling those shadows had nothing to do with the hijacking, and everything to do with him.
“Slim.” Cupping her shoulders, he shifted her around on his lap until her face was only inches from his. “Talk to me about last night.”
When she shoved a hand through her hair, the dim light glistened off her soft flesh. “I don’t know what to say to you, Quinn.”
“You could say you enjoyed the past couple of hours.”
The mouth that had so recently sent his system into overdrive curved into a tired smile. “You know I did.”
His palm grazed the small mole on her right hip. “And that you’re glad we made love.”
“I wanted it to happen.”
“Not the same.” Her warm vanilla scent clung to her skin, to the air, to his senses. “And now I imagine you’re wondering if you want it to happen again.”
Her gaze traveled to the boxes stacked in one corner of the office, lingered there. “All this has happened so fast. There’s so much going on right now, with the airport, the hijacking. You.”
He gave her a wry smile. “You cataloguing me as a disaster, Slim?”
She didn’t return his smile. “Where I’m concerned, that may be what you are.” She shook her head. “I need time, Quinn. Time to deal with things, think everything through.”
He used his thumb to stroke the line that had formed between her dark brows. He still had the taste of her in his mouth from their lovemaking. “And decide if we have a future,” he added.
Her gaze rose to meet his. “What we had in the past didn’t exactly work out.”
“My fault.”
“No. It was no one’s fault. What we felt for each other wasn’t strong enough to get us through together when Jeff died.” This time, she used both hands to shove her hair away from her face. “I was sure what we had was… I was sure nothing could come between us. I was wrong.”
“I did what I thought was best at the time.”
She nodded. “Your brother was murdered while working a job in your place. You took total blame for Jeff being in harm’s way that night. Rebecca and the girls were devastated, they needed you and you needed to be there for them. You felt you had nothing left of yourself to give to me, to us. I understand all that.”
Quinn pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and finger. Then, he had thought by distancing himself he could shield her from some of the pain, yet he had only increased her agony—and his own—by letting her go. It was so easy now, he thought. Easy to analyze actions and motives when the passage of three years had smoothed the grief, the agony. “My life took a detour to hell. I figured that was where it would stay. No way was I going to drag you there with me.”
“I loved you, Quinn. I would have gladly gone to hell and back with you.” She swallowed hard. “Now, here you are, telling me you want me back—”
“I do—”
“How do I know you’ll stay this time, Quinn? How do I know, if I let myself love you again, that you’ll always be there for me? How do I know this time will be different?”
Considering their past, she had every right to ask those questions. And he knew any assurances he made about how things would be different this time would come off sounding hollow. He eased out a breath. They could rehash the past through eternity and never know if or how their taking different actions would have altered things. At this point, that paled in importance to what lay in their future.
Considering the uncertainty he saw in her eyes, he was going to have to do some fast talking to keep her around long enough so he could convince her they had a future.
Settling his hands on her shoulders, he locked his gaze with hers. “Here’s the deal, Slim. You want to take things slow between us, fine—you set the pace. You want to keep things uncomplicated, no problem.” He would go quietly insane if that was what she chose. “You decide to see someone else while you’re making up your mind about us, I’ll handle it.” As he spoke, his fingers tightened against her bare flesh. If another man touched her, he would rip his lungs out. “Any limitations you put on us are okay, as long as there is an us.”
She blinked. “Are you serious, Buchanan?”
“Deadly.” His hands rose to cup her face. “Letting you go was the biggest mistake of my life. I want you back. I need you. I’ll do whatever it takes to make that happen.”
She lifted her hands, curled them around his wrists. “I…can’t make you any promises right now, Quinn.”
“Then I’ll make you one. For the rest of my life, I’ll be right there with you. No matter what happens. No matter where you are. I’ll be
there.”
Tears glittered in her eyes as he leaned and placed a light kiss on her forehead. “I love you, Slim. I want you to love me back. Let me into your life again. Please.”
After Quinn kissed her thoroughly and left her office, Christine spent the next four hours dealing with paperwork and phone calls. That done, she stopped by her secretary’s desk to tell Ula she would be out on the airfield and in radio contact with the tower. Christine then headed for the elevator that would take her to the airfield basement garage where she’d parked her Bronco the previous evening. In ten minutes, her operations division would begin their inspection of the runways and she wanted to observe. Once the inspection was done and the airport back in operation, the FBI’s sleek Gulfstream would be the first aircraft to set down at Sam Houston since the tornado ripped through there two days ago.
Two days. Christine’s mind reeled with thoughts of all that had happened in so short a time. She stepped off the elevator, her footsteps sounding hollow echoes against the concrete floor as she dug her car keys out of her leather tote. She didn’t have time now to analyze all the events. Didn’t want to consider the consequences of the hours she had spent in Quinn’s arms.
She hadn’t wanted to put herself in a position to be hurt again, yet she was painfully aware she was on the brink of doing just that. She caught her bottom lip between her teeth. How could she want a man so totally when she wasn’t sure she could trust him to be there for her when she needed him?
She had no answer to that question, didn’t have time to find the answer. Right now, she needed to concentrate on what was happening—and might happen—on her airfield. Carl Hart had drawn his line in the sand; by noon tomorrow he would either speak to his ex-wife, or he would kill a marshal.
And he would use the gun smuggled onto the plane to do his killing. A gun smuggled by someone working at her airport.
As she walked through the garage, dread settled in her stomach. By now, that someone had probably informed Hart that the runway and all taxiways on the opposite side of the airfield from the hijacked plane were cleared and would soon reopen. Hart would know for sure that the rubble still blocking the marshals’ plane had been left there by Taggart as a stall tactic. The hijacker’s present state of mind was anybody’s guess—no one knew what spark would motivate him to kill. So many things could go wrong, Christine thought. Carl Hart and his unknown helper had placed so many lives in harm’s way.
Unlocking the Bronco, she climbed behind the wheel. Just as she slid the key into the ignition, the passenger door swung open.
The man who bounded into the seat beside her was big. Six-four, well over two hundred pounds. His muddy brown eyes glinted beneath the bill of a baseball cap as he slammed the door behind him. “Do what I say, and maybe I won’t use this.”
Panic curled in Christine’s belly then shot up her throat as she stared into a gun’s dark, lethal barrel.
“I’ve got you, you bastard,” Quinn said through his teeth as he steered his cruiser across the tarmac toward a gleaming maintenance hangar leased to one of the airport’s fixed base operators.
Don Post had been arrested in Oklahoma City four years ago while Carl Hart lived there. Post’s arrest for drunk and disorderly after he’d refused to leave a bar at closing time was a misdemeanor, so the charge hadn’t shown up on Post’s background check returned from the National Crime Information Center. After Quinn received the information from the OCPD earlier this morning, he’d called the Oklahoma City Municipal Court, badgered a harassed-sounding clerk into digging through records she informed him were not yet computerized. Elation had stormed through him when the clerk called back a torturous hour later to advise him that one Carl Hart had posted bond for Don Post.
Quinn now had a positive connection between Hart and a man with access to the Sam Houston airfield. That man worked for the fixed base operator who had the contract to perform maintenance on the planes flown by the U.S. Marshals Service. That contract had given Post access to Flight 407, on which he’d planted the gun for his pal, Hart.
“Got you,” Quinn repeated as he braked the cruiser near the hangar’s front entrance. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the black and white patrol car he’d summoned for backup pull to a halt beside the hangar’s massive side doors. Biting back impatience, Quinn retrieved the file folder he’d grabbed as he raced out of his office. Flipping the file open, he plucked out the copy of the photo taken of Post six months prior when he’d hired on with the FBO. Quinn wanted a picture of his quarry branded into his mind before he walked into that hangar.
The photo taken for Post’s security ID was from the shoulders up; still, Quinn could tell he was a big man. Beefy—had to weigh well over two hundred pounds. The eyes that stared out from the jowly unsmiling face looked as hard as dried mud.
As Quinn studied the photo, a sudden realization crept over him. He had seen Post. On the airfield, two evenings ago. He’d worn a ball cap while he stood with two workers from the construction crew. The three men had watched Christine walk across the runway to talk to the workers’ foreman. It was Post whose gaze had followed her with a particular intensity.
Quinn muttered a curse and shouldered open the cruiser’s door. He was looking forward to meeting Don Post face to face.
“What…do you want?” Dread stormed through Christine’s system, making her voice shake like a leaf in a cold wind.
Keeping the gun pointed at her chest, the man licked his lips. “You’re going to make a phone call.”
She stared into the gun’s barrel that looked like a single black eye. Her first crazy thought was that if he had rape on his mind he wouldn’t force her to make a phone call. “Who…do you want me to call?”
“Whoever I say, bitch.”
Fear ballooned inside her, made her hands tremble so badly she clenched them in her lap. She was conscious of only two sounds: her own terrified heart pounding in her ears and the harsh rasp of the man’s breathing.
She swallowed back the terror that came from the knowledge she was trapped inside her Bronco with a man pointing a gun at her chest. She clamped her teeth over her bottom lip to keep from whimpering. Don’t feel, she ordered herself. Think. Clear your mind and think.
Her gaze darted out the windshield. The small garage was dimly lit and nearly deserted of cars. She harbored no hope that anyone would walk by and cause a distraction that would give her a chance to escape.
Stiffening her resolve, she turned her head, made herself look into his face, feeling the gun without seeing it. Beneath the brim of his ball cap, his dark gaze darted out the windshield, came back to her, then he moved in his seat, glanced out the passenger window behind him. Sweat beaded his forehead and upper lip.
She’d seen him before. On the runway two nights ago, talking to some of the construction workers. And again sitting alone at a table in the terminal restaurant the previous morning. She remembered how his hard, narrow-eyed stare had followed Taggart when the FBI agent left the restaurant.
The man used his arm to blot sweat off his forehead, forcing up the ball cap’s brim. She could almost smell the desperation emanating from him as he jerked a cell phone from his shirt pocket.
“Call the dozers.” He shoved the phone into her hand. “Order them to clear the rest of the taxiway around the plane.”
Well, now she knew the identity of Hart’s accomplice! She also knew if the bulldozers moved in without Taggart’s approval, chaos would ensue, at least for a time. Chaos that would not only clear the rest of the debris blocking the hijacked plane, but provide a distraction for whatever Hart had planned.
“The FBI won’t—”
Her words died when he crammed the gun against her temple. She winced when he angled the barrel and the sight on its end dug into her flesh.
“This whole deal was only supposed to take a couple of hours,” he grated. “That damn tornado hit and I’ve had to hang around here for days while the cops sniff around. The bastards are so close now I can
smell ’em. I got this one last thing to do, then I got someplace to go.” The barrel shoved deeper into her temple; the sight biting into her flesh sent pain grinding down her cheek. The heavy scent of gun oil cloyed in her lungs. “You don’t make the call, I’ll put the first bullet in your shoulder. You still won’t do what I say, the next slug hits your elbow. Three and four go in the knees. None of ’em’ll kill you, but the pain will be so bad you’ll wish they had.” He wiped his face on his sleeve. “You’ll be begging me to let you make the call.”
The air heaved in and out of her lungs in ragged breaths. Quinn. She almost moaned his name as everything she thought she knew about herself, her feelings suddenly shattered, crashed. She hadn’t wanted to risk, to chance her heart again. The gun jabbing into her temple made her realize she wanted all the chances she could get. And she desperately wanted to stay alive to tell Quinn she loved him. Had never stopped loving him.
“I’ll…make…the call.” The icy terror avalanching through her system sounded in her voice.
“Big surprise.”
She dragged in air. “I don’t…know the number…for the supervisor over the dozers. Don’t…have it memorized.”
The vicious oath he spat increased her trembling.
“It’s programmed into my cell phone,” she blurted. With the gun lodged against her temple she couldn’t move her head so she shifted her eyes downward toward her tote. “In there. Side pocket.”
He stared at her for long, silent moments while sweat ran down his temples, dripped off his jaw onto his dark shirt. “You better not try nothin’,” he hissed finally. Jamming a hand into her tote, he dug out the phone, tossed it into her lap.
“Make the call, bitch.”
Quinn stalked out of the hangar, a mix of anger and frustration burning inside him like a white-hot torch. For the first time since he’d hired on with the FBO six months ago, Don Post hadn’t shown up for work this morning. Hadn’t called in to explain his absence. His supervisor had been genuinely surprised when Quinn insisted on checking Post’s locker in the break room. Nothing. Post had cleared out everything.
Special Report Page 7