She tried to smile up at him and assumed she had failed when he took one look at her and burst out laughing. “What’s the matter, suffering from gas?” he asked, and she giggled despite her foul mood. She just couldn’t stay upset around Kevin no matter how crappy she felt. It was one of the many reasons she loved him.
“No, it’s not gas,” she said, elbowing him in the ribs. “I wouldn’t dream of trying to compete in your area of expertise.”
“Thanks. And now that you mention it…”
“Don’t even think about it,” Cait answered, wrinkling her nose. “None of these unsuspecting travelers ever did anything to you, there’s no reason to put them through that kind of torture.” She laughed now, her bad mood forgotten, at least temporarily. The line moved forward and they shoved their carry-on bags ahead with their feet.
Finally they arrived at the front of the line and trudged down the jetway into the Boeing 757. Their seats were located toward the back of the plane, the penalty for purchasing tickets only moments before a flight. Cait didn’t give a damn where they had to sit. At least they were getting the hell out of there. They moved single-file down the narrow walkway, stopping next to every row to allow passengers to load their belongings into the overhead bins. Finally they reached their allotted seats, located just north of the lavatory.
Kevin hefted the two duffel bags up to the bin. They barely fit. He struggled with the plastic door, finally slamming it down, and they slid into their seats. Cait sighed wearily. She was still so exhausted she thought she might be asleep before the airplane reached the runway. She hoped the flight attendant wouldn’t be too insulted when she slept through the entire preflight song and dance.
She squeezed Kevin’s hand and closed her eyes. And that was when her cell phone rang.
33
Milo was astonished when it took more than one fingernail to convince the old bat to part with the information. That crap she tried to sling about not having the number was total bullshit, and he knew it, yet the first nail he ripped out with his trusty pliers accomplished nothing more than establishing that the bitch possessed one hell of a strong set of lungs.
He held the fingernail in front of the broad’s eyes, dripping blood onto her lap, until she opened them and stared at it in horrified appreciation.
Then he said, “What’s the number?” and to his utter amazement she shook her head again.
“I can’t do it,” she began, her voice thick with fear and pain, and before she had completed the sentence Milo grabbed her hand again, yanking it out from under her armpit where it had only recently taken up residence. He repeated the impromptu surgical procedure he had just performed on her pointer finger, this time taking the nail from her middle digit.
Again she offered up a lusty scream and again he slapped his free hand over her mouth until she lost her enthusiasm. It took even longer this time than it had the last.
“What’s the number?”
The woman let out a groan of misery and this time just nodded.
Milo smiled. “Good girl. I’d like to remind you that this is your own fault. You could have saved yourself all that pain—not to mention saving me precious time—if you had only done what I asked at the beginning, but that’s okay. We all need to learn the hard way sometimes.” He took her by the elbow and helped her to her feet and she staggered to the trash can in the corner of the kitchen.
She reached into the bin and plucked a slip of paper off the top of the garbage with her good hand. Then she passed it to Milo, still without uttering a word besides the occasional soft moan.
He looked at it and handed it back to her. “Is this the number I asked for?”
“Yes.” The woman bent over in agony, her face chalk-white, her injured hand once again tucked away in the folds of her armpit. She refused to look at Milo, not that he cared. He was finally getting what he wanted and that was all that mattered.
He placed a finger under her chin and lifted her face until she was forced to look into his eyes. “I don’t need the fucking number,” he said. “You do. Call the little bitch and get her back here.”
Milo snapped his pliers open and shut in front of her face for effect. She reached for the telephone and began punching numbers awkwardly, holding the handset with her good hand and using her thumb to press the buttons. Her injured hand stayed out of sight.
Milo watched carefully. He didn’t think this shriveled old bitch would dare pull something stupid, like calling 911 or the local police, but you could never be too careful, and taking care was what had enabled him to stay one step ahead of the authorities with over a dozen grisly murders under his belt.
She punched the numbers faithfully into the phone and when she finished, Milo said, “I don’t care what you have to say to get that chick back here, but your life depends on your success. Don’t fuck this up or what I did to your fingers will be just the beginning. You’ll wish you were dead a hundred times before it actually happens. Do you understand me?”
The woman nodded and Milo told her to hold the telephone’s handset at an angle so he could listen in. Seconds later a tinny voice came through the receiver. “Hello?”
“Hello, Cait,” the woman began, her voice wavering and paper-thin from pain and barely controlled hysteria. “This is…” Milo held his pliers in front of her face and she continued. “This is your mother.”
“I—I know who it is,” the tinny voice said. “What’s wrong?”
Milo narrowed his eyes at her. She hesitated and then said, “Why would you think something’s wrong?”
“Well, I’m a little surprised to hear from you, given what you said earlier. You know, about never coming back and forgetting we ever met. Why are you calling me?”
“I’m so sorry.” Tears began to fall as the woman’s tenuous grip on her emotions loosened.
Milo shook his head, his eyes lasering into hers, and she took a deep breath and continued. “I—I think we have more to discuss. A lot more. Would you consider coming to see me again?”
“Of course,” the little bitch replied. “I would love that. I may not be able to make it back up here for a while, though. Money’s a little tight, you know.”
“I don’t mean some time in the future, I mean we need to talk now. Right now.”
“But Kevin and I are on our way back to Tampa. We’ve bought our tickets and we’re sitting on the airplane. We should be pushing back from the gate and taxiing for departure at any moment.”
Milo covered the phone’s mouthpiece with his hand and whispered fiercely, “You do whatever you have to do to get her here!” Then he released his grip and nodded toward the phone.
The woman’s shoulders slumped and she began to cry again, but somehow she kept her voice relatively steady. Milo hoped the bitch on the other end of the conversation couldn’t hear the pain and regret in the woman’s words. He thought the poor quality of the connection might mask it enough to be successful.
“No,” she said. “You can’t leave. Please don’t leave yet. Come here, just for the night. We’ll talk and if you still want to leave right away, you can fly back to Florida tomorrow morning. I can pay for your tickets if that’s a problem. Would that be all right?”
The young woman on the other end of the line hesitated, saying nothing. The silence continued for so long Milo began to fear the connection had been lost or that somehow she had sniffed out the danger.
At last she said, “I…uh…I suppose so.”
The little bitch was clearly suspicious but Milo was certain that once she had agreed to return, she would follow through. He knew next to nothing about her, only what he had been able to glean through a couple of intense visions, but it had been more than enough to make him recognize her unusually strong will. “Um, we’ll be there in just a little while.”
The old biddy nodded at the telephone handset as if maybe the younger one could see her.
Milo spread his hands in a go ahead gesture, and she said, “All right. I’ll see you soon
. And I’m so sorry.”
Milo ripped the telephone out of her hand and pressed the button to terminate the call. “Sorry?” he said to her. “You’re so sorry? You’d better hope you didn’t just blow it with that last little bit of stupidity, or you will be sorrier than you’ve ever been about anything in your entire miserable life.”
He replaced the handset on its charger and led the old lady to a kitchen chair, where he pushed her roughly into it and took a seat next to her. “Let’s get to know each other a bit while we wait for our guests to arrive, shall we?”
34
“That was the strangest conversation I think I’ve ever had.” Cait held her cell phone at arm’s length, staring at it like she thought it might sprout wings and attempt to fly away.
“Who was it?” Kevin asked as the big Boeing 757 jerked backward and began trundling away from the gate.
“Oh no!” Cait exclaimed, standing up in the aisle. “I’ll explain it to you later. Right now, we have to get off this plane!”
A flight attendant rushed down the aisle. She was middle-aged and harried and looked as though her patience had reached the breaking point, despite the fact the flight hadn’t even gotten off the ground yet. “Miss, you’ll have to take your seat. We’re ready for departure.”
“No, you don’t understand, you can’t depart! We have to get off the plane right now!”
“Miss, please, I’ll have to insist you sit back down. Do it now. Don’t force me to call the captain.”
Cait tried to squeeze past and the flight attendant leaned into her, grabbing her by the upper arm. Cait shook her arm free. The other passengers watched the developing altercation with a mixture of shock and resignation as it became increasingly clear the flight would not be departing anytime soon.
“That’s it,” the flight attendant snarled through gritted teeth. “I’m calling security.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Kevin said.
Cait turned in surprise to see him standing behind her, his body half in the aisle, head lowered to avoid bumping it on the overhead storage bin.
“Is that so? And who are you?” All pretense of politeness and professional courtesy were gone. It was clear the flight attendant had bypassed “harried” and was now spoiling for a confrontation.
“My name is Kevin Shaw. Officer Kevin Shaw.” He flashed his Tampa P.D. shield at the woman and continued. “This is my partner, Caitlyn Connelly. We’ve just received information critical to an ongoing investigation, and it is imperative this plane return to the gate immediately and we be permitted to disembark. I’m afraid I’ll have to insist.”
The flight attendant—her name was April, Cait could see the shiny nameplate pinned to her blouse—took a step back, clearly caught off guard by this unexpected development. By now the plane had pivoted away from the jetway and was bumping slowly along a taxiway. Cait wondered how much longer it would be before they reached the runway and accelerated smoothly into the air, forcing her to miss what might be her only chance to take advantage of her mother’s unexpected change of heart.
“Please, miss,” Kevin pushed, utilizing his authoritative law-enforcement voice, the one Cait rarely got to hear. “Every moment counts. Please advise the captain that we need to return to the gate.”
The woman took a deep breath, blowing it out hard. Cait caught the scent of cinnamon. “Lemme see that badge again,” she said.
Kevin retrieved it from his pocket and she studied it carefully. “It says Tampa police.”
“That’s right.”
“What are you doing in Boston?”
“We’re cooperating with the Boston Police Department on an investigation, and if we miss out on an arrest because you were too timid to make a decision, I’ll be sure to let the D.A. know who to thank. Let’s see…” He made a show of squinting at her name tag. “…your name is April. And your last name?”
The flight attendant gave him a frosty glare and marched down the aisle at double speed, stopping at the cockpit door and knocking. She stepped onto the flight deck and Cait could see her talking quickly, gesturing angrily back toward them.
A head swiveled around the door and looked back at them and when it did, Kevin held his badge up in response, although they were much too far away for it to be read. The captain shrugged and said something to the flight attendant and she returned, closing the door firmly behind her.
“The captain says he will be happy to return and allow you to disembark.” She emphasized the word “he,” doing her best to make it clear she disagreed with the decision. “Please take your seats and stay in them until we’ve come to a complete stop at the gate.”
She turned her back on them without another word and marched back up the aisle, refusing to acknowledge the “Thank you” Cait lobbed at her as she retreated.
Moments later the plane made a left turn, followed a quickly by another left. Cait began to relax as it became clear they really were returning to the terminal.
Kevin whispered, “What the hell is going on here?”
Cait squeezed his arm and said softly, “Wow, you were awesome!”
“Let’s see if you still think so when the TSA and the Boston police surround us and stick their guns up our asses when we get off this big tin can.”
“Do you really think the police will be waiting for us?”
Kevin shrugged. “I don’t know. They take airplane disturbances very seriously since 9/11, but the captain seemed pretty cool, and he’s the one in charge, thank God. If it were April the Airline Nazi, we’d definitely be screwed. We’ll just have to wait and see. Now, could you please explain to me why we’re risking imprisonment to return to the very place you couldn’t wait to leave not twenty minutes ago?”
“That was my mother on the phone before.”
“Yeah, I figured that much out on my own. What did she say to you?”
“She wants to see me again.”
“And?”
“And nothing. She changed her mind for some reason and wants to see me right away.”
Kevin stared at her long and hard and she felt her face begin to redden. “What?” she asked defensively.
“Why would she do that?”
“What do you mean, ‘why?’ I’m her child and she wants to see me. Isn’t that enough?”
“It would have been enough if we hadn’t gone through one of the more painful meetings I’ve ever attended earlier today. The kiss-off she gave us as we were leaving sounded pretty clear—and pretty permanent—to me.”
Cait said, “But you were the one who said she might change her mind given a little time.”
“Sure I did, and I meant it. But by ‘a little time,’ I was talking about months or even years, not a few hours.” Kevin glanced out the small window next to him. In the distance the Boston skyline moved slowly past.
Cait watched him without speaking as the airplane taxied slowly up to the same jetway they had left just a few minutes before. Finally she said, “Something’s bothering you. What is it?”
He turned his attention back to her, his intense blue eyes clouded with concern. “I don’t know, exactly,” he answered. “But something’s not right.”
It seemed to take forever to get off the damn airplane once they had nosed into the terminal. Cait had expected to leap out of her seat and hurry out the door the moment they stopped moving. Their unscheduled return to the gate had meant the flight would depart at least fifteen or twenty minutes late, so she assumed it would be in the airline’s best interest to move things along.
Her assumption was wrong. The plane rolled to a stop and Cait rose immediately, but the harried flight attendant rushed down the aisle before she could take two steps. “There’s no one available inside the terminal to operate the motorized jetway,” the woman said, smug satisfaction written all over her face. “You’ll just have to take your seat again until dispatch can send someone over.”
The unscheduled detour had annoyed most of the passengers in addition to the no
w-maddeningly polite flight attendant, and the next few minutes passed uncomfortably slowly, as all around them people muttered under their breath, leveled hard stares, and shook their heads in frustration.
At last they were allowed to leave. They walked off the airplane and into the otherwise empty tunnel leading back into the terminal building, passing the flight crew without acknowledgment, not that Cait cared.
She could feel Kevin’s body tensing as they approached the mouth of the jetway tunnel. He had put his career on the line to convince the captain to return to the gate by claiming to be working with Boston PD and identifying Cait as his partner. If the police really were waiting for them to exit, as he had said they might be, a call to Tampa would undoubtedly follow and the ruse would be discovered. What would happen then, Cait didn’t know, but she suspected it would not be pleasant, particularly for Kevin.
But the boarding area was quiet. The only people at the gate were a youngish man and woman, college kids perhaps, dozing side by side on two of the hard plastic chairs, clearly waiting out a long layover. Cait turned left and began the long walk through the terminal building with Kevin a step behind. He was deep in thought, still clearly bothered by Virginia Ayers’s sudden change of heart and the resulting strange phone call.
Cait didn’t see the problem. People changed their minds all the time, especially where momentous, life-altering events were concerned. She had put herself in her mother’s shoes for a moment while sitting on the airplane and quickly realized getting contacted out of the blue by your long-lost daughter after three full decades would certainly have to qualify as life-altering.
She slowed to allow Kevin to catch up and they walked side by side, not talking, each lost in their own thoughts. Outside the terminal they hailed a cab and climbed into the backseat, settling in for the ride back to Everett and their second meeting with Cait’s mother in two days.
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