"If you toss me my crutches, I might be able to help you find whatever you're looking for."
Joanna groaned and stood up. She couldn't wait to see his face when he discovered that the view he'd been enjoying belonged to none other than Mother Time.
Max Brody owns a down-on-its luck airstrip in central New Jersey. He has no wife, no kids, no money, and no prospects. When his old friend (and PAX legend) Ryder O'Neal shows up one afternoon and asks for five years of his life, Max figures he has nothing to lose.
Kelly Madison has spent most of her life bailing her ne'er-do-well superstar father out of trouble. This time, however, Sean Ryan has unwittingly become involved in a terrorist plot that threatens millions of innocent people.
PAX has waited five years to bring down the terrorists. Max, in his alias as a Brazilian billionaire, must get close to Kelly so she can lead the ultra-secret organization to her missing father, who just may be the last best hope to prevent a global tragedy.
But not even PAX figured on Max and Kelly falling in love -- or falling deeper into danger that could bring the world to its knees…
A FINE MADNESS
The PAX Series - Book 3
Chapter One
Central New Jersey - then
Max Brody was thirty-one years old and all he had to his name was a rundown piece of property in Millstone, New Jersey that passed as Brody's Airport and Flight School, enrollment, zero.
No wife.
No kids.
No lover.
Not even a dog to call his own.
Some people might call him a bum.
Max Brody would be the last person on earth to disagree.
He'd set his goals nice and low and that was exactly where he intended to keep them.
Taking school kids on aerial tours over Princeton University and carting male menopausal professors with egos bigger than their bankbooks on sky-diving jaunts was about as challenging as he wanted life to get.
If there was anything he'd learned along the way, it was that when it came to challenges he wasn't the man to call on.
That's exactly what he told Ryder O'Neal when his old Air Force buddy showed up at the air field that Monday morning in July with the most insane proposition Max had ever heard.
And that's exactly what he told Ryder O'Neal on Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday.
By Friday night, however, Max's resistance was getting lower, thanks to Ryder's persistence and the booze at Pedro's Pub on Route 1 across from Quakerbridge Mall.
"Why me?" he asked, rum-soaked and wary. "Why not someone else?"An actor. A diplomat. The out-of-work stock broker tending bar--anyone else would be a better choice.
"Because you'll leave no traces." O'Neal was nothing if not blunt. "We can pluck you out of this life and install you in another one without causing a ripple."
Max motioned for another rum. "I sound pathetic," he mumbled into his glass. "I'm expendable."
"Not to us," Ryder said quietly. "You're exactly what we need."
It had been a long time since Max Brody thought of himself as exactly what anybody needed that he didn't bother to ask who "we" were.
O'Neal knew just what buttons to push. For the past four days, Max had been strapped in the front seat of an emotional roller coaster and he had the feeling the final stomach-churning drop was yet to come.
Ryder called up memories of that long-ago time that were never far from the surface, and those memories did a damn good job of reminding Max of all the failures he'd spent half his life running away from.
What Ryder was offering him was escape on a grand scale.
Escape he'd spent the last thirteen years looking for."I need an answer, Max," said Ryder after the bartender deposited another round. "What I'm offering you is a second chance. Not too many people get an opportunity like that."
"Who needs second chances?" Max said with a shrug. "I'm one of the lucky ones--not everyone can live up to low expectations."
He wanted nothing and nothing was exactly what he had. Why rock the boat at this late date?
"Why don't you hear me out?" Ryder persisted.
Max eyed his friend's expensive slacks, the glittering Rolex on his wrist, the unmistakable sheen of success. The only thing he recognized from the tough midwestern kid he used to know was the shock of unruly hair that defied taming.
"Why bother? We're not even in the same league." He gestured toward his friend's left wrist. "I could live for a year on what you paid for that damned watch."
"You can have things like this, Max. You can have more than you ever dreamed."
"Yeah, right," Max said with a short laugh. "And all I have to give up is my immortal soul. Well, forget it." The watch was perfectly crafted grown-up toy that would be as out of place on Max's wrist as a diamond bracelet or a lace cuff. "I'll stick with my Seiko."
"You wouldn't have to if you'd hear me out."
"I already heard you out. You want five years out of my life. Forget it."
"You haven't heard why."
"I don't give a damn why."
"You're scared, aren't you, Brody?"
"The hell I am."
Ryder leaned back in his chair. "Bull. You've been down so long, you wouldn't recognize opportunity if it kicked you in the butt. I say you're scared."
Max had been called names by more intimidating types than Ryder O'Neal and laughed in their faces. Why the hell wasn't he laughing now?
"Shut up, O'Neal," he said, his voice deadly calm.
"I say you don't have the guts of a house plant."
Max's fingers tightened around his glass. "I'd knock it off if I were you," he warned.
"I say you'd rather rot in that--"
"Cool it, O'Neal."
"--monstrosity you call--"
"I'm warnin' you. One more word..."
"--a flight school that you'd--"A muscle in Max's jaw worked furiously and he pushed his chair away from the table. "You want to settle this outside, O'Neal?"
Ryder, eyes glittering, stood up and tossed a twenty dollar bill down on the table.
"Fair fight," he said, following Max out into the parking lot.
"Bare hands," said Max.
"No karate."
"No aikido."
Ryder shrugged out of his fancy jacket and draped it over the hood of his vintage T-Bird. "No rabbit punches."
Max glared at him. "You got my word on it."
Ryder turned and suddenly the years dropped away and Max was eighteen again.
"Okay," Max said as the adrenaline started pumping. "Let's mix it up."
#
When Max came to, he was stretched out on the front seat of the T-Bird with a shaker of Margaritas pressed against his jaw.
"I never saw it coming," he mumbled through the red haze of pain. "When did you learn that trick, O'Neal?"
Ryder, who kept drifting in and out of his field of vision, managed to sound both contrite and triumphant. "About the same time you developed that glass jaw, Brody."
Max groaned as the some salt seeped into a small cut on his cheek. "You couldn't bring me a rum and soda?"
Ryder's laugh gave him a headache. "In this life, pal, we take what we can get."
Suddenly the implications of his undignified position became crystal clear.
"I lost the bet, didn't I?"
"That you did, friend."
"You sound smug, O'Neal."
"Sorry about that."
"You don't sound sorry."
"I'm doing the best I can."
"Now what happens?" Max managed around the rapid swelling along his jawline. "Do you wave your magic wand and play fairy godmother?"
"Talk like that can get you in trouble, Brody."
"Come on, O'Neal. If I'm going to give up five years of my life, the least you can do is give me some answers."
And so Ryder O'Neal did exactly that and when he was finished Max had forgotten about the busted jaw and the hangover he was sure to have in the morning and the fact that hi
s former best friend had beaten hell out of him."That's the story," Ryder said at last. "What do you think?"
Max thought about his flight school.
He thought about his two room apartment with the peeling paint and busted air conditioner and the rent payments that seemed to come around faster than Moonlighting reruns.
And he also thought about the last time he and Ryder O'Neal had worked together in those stinking jungles of Vietnam.
"I think it's a hell of a lot better than digging foxholes," he said.
Ryder grinned and extended his hand. "Welcome aboard, Max."
Max switched the Margarita to his left hand and extended his right. "Goodbye, Max Brody," he said.
And hello Maximilian Steel.
#
Manhattan - the same day
The battered Yellow Cab came to a rolling halt in front of The Green Shamrock at the corner of Tenth and West 44th.
"You sure you wanna go in here, girlie?" asked the grandfatherly driver. "This ain't the kinda place I'd like to see my daughter, I'll tell you that."
Kelly Ryan had been in worse places than The Green Shamrock but she doubted the driver would believe her. In the past two years, her father's escapades had taken her up and down the Eastern seaboard to places that made this dive look like Lutece.
"Look," she said, leaning forward in her seat, "just wait for me, okay? That's all I ask."
"Yeah, sure, I'll wait," said the cabbie, fingering the twenty she'd just handed him. "It's just I don't like seein' a beautiful girl like you go into a sleaze joint like this. If you don't mind me askin', miss, what're you lookin' for in there anyway?"
"My father," said Kelly, stepping out of the cab. "I'm looking for my father."
She didn't wait around long enough to see the look on the driver's face. She didn't need to. She'd seen that look time and again on a thousand different faces each time she went to Sean's rescue.
The inside of the The Green Shamrock was just what she'd come to expect over the years Crowded. Smoky. Stinking of whiskey and sweat and anger.
The kind of place Sean Ryan unerringly sought time and again.
She knew she looked hopelessly out of place in her silk wrap dress and her spotless white pumps and she did her best to ignore the wolf whistles and howls of approval that followed her progress toward the bar itself.
Please, let him be ready to leave, she thought. No histrionic speeches fueled by Irish coffee and forgotten dreams. No sad decline over a pint of draft.
And, oh please God, no reporters. Above everything else, no reporters to see the pathetic decline of Sean Ryan, matinee idol of the Sixties.
Fool of the Eighties.
The bartender, a beefy man with hands the size of catchers' gloves, watched her approach and she thought she detected a faint look of pity on his ruddy face.
"Excuse me," she said, leaning over the counter to be heard over the din, "I'm here to take my father home."
The man's bloodshot eyes filled with sympathy and it was all she could do to keep from screaming.
"Is he here?" she continued. "He's a shade under six feet tall, silvery-blonde hair, a slight--"
"Yeah, he's here, little lady," the bartender said, sliding a beer down the counter to a customer. "Ran himself up one hell of a tab, too." He chuckled and poured himself a beer from the tap. "Gotta tell your old man to quit sayin' 'It's on the house.' Gets pretty expensive."
"I'll tell him." She opened her purse and fished out her wallet. "How much do I owe you?"
The bartender rolled his eyes toward the ceiling and she watched him tap his fingers against the bar as if it were an adding machine. "Two hundred twenty-six dollars."
Her stomach knotted in rebellion. "That's ridiculous! It's only ten p.m."
"I only call it like I see it, lady. It's a hundred twenty-six for booze and a hundred dollars for the broken window."
Her heart sank to her shinbones. "He broke a window?" Sean was many things; violent was not usually one of them.
"The hard way," said the bartender. "Pat O'Rourke pushed his head through it."
"My God! Is he all right?"
"Your old man's got a noggin like iron," the bartender said, grinning as if that were an attribute to be proud of. "A couple of scratches...nothin' to get all steamed up about."
She checked her wallet. Two hundred fifteen dollars and change. God only knew what the taxi would come to--she could almost hear the meter clicking from here.
Two hundred fifteen dollars would go a long way toward paying the rent on her new office or her secretary's salary but she doubted the bartender was interested in seeing that Madison Dynamics got off to a flying start.
Blessing her modeling days for the smile she was able to call up from nowhere, she plunged right in. "Sir," she began, "I know you'll understand that this development was quite unexpected for me. Would you be amenable to one hundred fifty in cash and the rest in a personal check?"
The bartender looked decidedly disgruntled. "Bad checks make me real angry, little lady."The smile faded and she switched to her Queen Elizabeth glower. "My checks do not bounce." Not lately, at least. "If you prefer, you can hold the check and I'll return with cash tomorrow. It's your choice."
"What the hell?" he said after the longest moment of her life. "You got an honest face." He stuck a toothpick in his mouth and gave her what was probably his best smile. "Besides, if you can't give Sean Ryan's kid a break, who can you help?"
She was all out of answers at that moment and she merely shrugged and wrote out the check to Cash. Being Sean Ryan's "kid" was growing harder every day.
"My father," she said, slipping the bartender the cash and the check. "I have a cab waiting outside."
The bartender motioned for her to wait there and he disappeared into a room marked "Private." Moments later he emerged with a stinking drunk Sean Ryan slung over his shoulders like the most elegantly dressed sack of potatoes in the western hemisphere. Black tie. Polished dress shoes. A gorgeous white silk scarf tossed casually around his neck.
He might be on his way to hell but he intended to go in style.
"Tell me where you want him," the bartender said."Don't tempt me," Kelly muttered, leading him out toward the cab at the sidewalk. "Back seat, if you will."
The cabbie's eyes widened and Kelly knew the secret was out.
"That's Captain Blood," he said, swiveling around one hundred-eighty degrees to get a better look at Sean's matinee idol face. "He did the Errol Flynn remake. I seen it a million times."
Kelly nodded curtly. Captain Blood. The Masked Raider. Every grand and heroic figure historical fact and fiction had to offer had been stamped with the Ryan trademark. On screen he was bigger than life. The golden boy: stronger, faster, wild and wicked and wonderful.Every man's idol.
Every woman's secret fantasy.
But the man snoring next to her was the man behind the myth, the father she'd grown up with.
The father she loved.
She gave the cabbie her address then sat back.
There'd be time enough for anger later.
Right now she had to get Captain Blood sobered up.
#
It was a documented fact that New York City streets had more potholes per square foot than any other city in the world and it seemed to Sean Ryan that the cab driver managed to bump his way through each and every one of them on his way to Kelly's apartment.
Oh, he had a head on him, all right, and it was going to be getting a whole lot worse before it got better. That was the trouble with drinking cheap liquor--the hangovers were so much meaner.
He considered briefly the possibility of not drinking as a means of avoiding wicked hangovers but that seemed too rash a decision to make lying face down in the back seat of a Yellow Cab. This would take some fairly concentrated thinking and at the moment all he could concentrate on was keeping his dinner down.
She was a good daughter, Kelly was. A better daughter than he deserved, more than likely. God knew,
he'd been too busy getting married and divorced and remarried again to give her the attention she needed growing up.
Hell, he'd even listened to Wife #3 and shipped her off to that tony Swiss boarding school when she turned thirteen rather than put up a fight to keep her with him.
"I can't keep taking you from movie set to movie set," he'd rationalized to his crying little girl. "You need an education, Kelly, not a trip to fantasy land with me."
The easy way out.
Sean Ryan had taken it every time.
Tears and all, his Kelly went off to Switzerland a little girl who loved him and came back a woman who didn't like him very much at all.
He thought back on the last twenty-nine years of her life and he couldn't blame her one bit. He'd been an absentee father, an occasional breadwinner, and not the greatest role model to come down the pike.
Yet when the chips were down it was Kelly he called and, to his constant amazement, it was Kelly who always showed up.
But if the truth came out, he'd lose her forever and Sean knew he would do anything--anything--to keep that from happening.
No matter what the cost.
No matter how high the consequences.
Ten years ago it had seemed a perfect solution to problems that threatened to devour him. A crime, perhaps, but a victimless one.
Just the simple passing of information from one interested party to another.
But that had been a different decade--and he was now a different man. Kelly was carving a place for herself in the world and the responsibilities of fatherhood preyed less heavily upon his mind. In the age of computers and FAX machines and electronic libraries of information that could dance on the head of a pin and still leave room for a host of cherubs, couriers like Sean Ryan were passe.
How unfortunate his superiors did not see fit to look at it that way.
"It's so simple," said one, eyes glittering with greed. "Just a matter of choice."
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