What was keeping Goliad from calling?
He had already been working for Richard when Delores entered the picture. The story was that Richard had found himself in need of a man to do his dirty work while keeping his own hands clean. After doing due diligence, Richard had pulled a young and hostile Goliad out of a court-mandated drug rehab program and made him an offer: If he got clean, and stayed clean, he would live lavishly and get paid handsomely to do what he’d been doing before, which, basically, amounted to being a thug.
Following their marriage, Goliad’s loyalty to Richard had expanded to include her. He had never failed to do everything he was told to do, no matter how unsavory or illegal. But he was human, and therefore fallible, and, as Richard had alluded, this endeavor was fraught with possibilities for error.
To a compulsive planner like Delores, even an nth degree of uncertainty was untenable. Once a decision was made, she acted on it. No second-guessing was allowed, and she was relentless.
But people were unpredictable. Fate was fickle. Nature played tricks. Fog—for crissake, fog—had kept their private jet grounded, so it couldn’t make a short round trip to Columbus tonight. They’d been forced to rely on another plane, another pilot, and then he had crashed! Unforeseen interferences such as that made her crazy. Chain reactions could cause a simple plan to rapidly derail. She had to trust Goliad to handle the tenuous situation, but it was hard to depend on anyone except herself.
On the end table, Richard’s cell phone vibrated. Goliad. She clicked on and said, “Tell me you’re on your way back.”
“I’m afraid not, ma’am.”
“What?” Her blood pressure spiked. “Why not? You were supposed to intercept the doctor when she left the airfield.”
“We can’t go near it. The place is crawling with cops.”
Chapter 6
2:57 a.m.
Using the phone on Brady White’s desk, Rye had called Atlanta Center to tell them that he was on the ground. He didn’t tell them the manner in which he’d gotten there. He’d save that for the FAA.
Standing in the open doorway of the office, he’d looked toward the end of the runway where he would have touched down. Whoever had shone the laser at him could have been in that very spot. The angle would have been perfect.
While waiting for the ambulance, Brynn had continued monitoring the injured man’s condition.
She’d taken his pulse every couple of minutes and periodically checked his pupils. When she’d gently parted his thinning hair and assessed the gash, she’d gotten a groan out of him, which she’d seemed to take as a good sign, because she smiled faintly and patted his shoulder.
Rye had left her to her doctoring and stayed out of her way by propping himself against the far wall under a paint-by-numbers portrait of a snarling bear. From this observation point, Rye had watched Brynn take off her coat and hang it alongside Brady’s on the rack just inside the door.
She was wearing a black sweater over skinny, dark-wash jeans tucked into tall, flat-heeled black suede boots. They all looked damn good on her. Rye couldn’t help but notice and appreciate the way the garments hugged this and molded to that.
Whenever she timed Brady’s pulse by her wristwatch, an alluring vertical dent appeared between sleek eyebrows the same dark color as her hair. By contrast, her eyes were light. Best he could tell from a safe distance, they were more gray than blue.
Her hair hung past her shoulders, and there was a hell of a lot of it. She had a habit of absently hooking strands of it behind her ears, where they never stayed for long. Too heavy, he thought. He doubted he could gather up all her hair even using both hands. He’d like to try, though.
No sooner had that thought popped into his mind than he questioned where it had come from. He shouldn’t be looking at her closely enough to notice the color of her eyes. Speculating on the weight of her hair, and how double-handfuls of it would feel?
Jesus.
And all this time, while he’d stood silently by, assessing her attributes, she’d ignored him as though he were invisible.
But she’d been aware of him, all right. Why else had she done everything within her power to keep from looking in his direction? Was he so bad to look at? Irritated by that thought, he decided to heckle her.
“Hey.”
She looked at him.
“Did I say something to offend?”
She opened her mouth to speak, but just then they heard the wail of approaching sirens. At the distant intersection, flashing red, blue, and white lights split off from the two-lane highway and started up the pockmarked road that he and she had walked along earlier.
The lights created kaleidoscope patterns in the swirling fog. As they got closer, the vehicles took form: an ambulance and two police units, all running hot.
Suddenly, Brynn whipped her head back around to him. If he could have captioned her expression in his terminology, it would have been “Oh, shit.”
His gut clenched with foreboding. He pushed away from the wall and took a step toward her. “What?” He emphasized the t, making the word a demand.
She wet her lips, which at any other time would have distracted him. Now, however, the nervous gesture served as a herald for something he sensed he didn’t want to hear.
“Before they get here…” She’d stopped, swallowed. “I should clear up a misapprehension.”
“What did I misapprehend?”
“You assumed that I was Dr. Lambert.”
He shot a look toward the black box, then placed his hands on his hips and glared at her. “I fuckin’ knew you weren’t legit. You’re not a doctor? Who the hell are you?”
She cast a quick look over her shoulder. The emergency vehicles were screeching up outside. “I am a doctor. Dr. Brynn O’Neal. I came in Dr. Lambert’s place.”
“Why?”
“I can’t explain now.”
His head nearly exploded with fury. “What the hell have you gotten me into, lady?”
3:02 a.m.
Rye had resumed his place with his back to the wall, grinding his teeth in agitation, taking in the scene, and thinking sourly that it must be a slow night in law enforcement.
From the look of things, every officer in the county had heeded the 911 call. After the first two squad cars arrived, others showed up in rapid succession. You’d think on a foggy holiday eve, cops would be busy with fender benders, DUIs, and settling disputes at the reunions of dysfunctional families.
Instead, uniformed men and women—Rye had lost count after a dozen—had crowded into the compact office of the Howardville County Airfield. It was as though the crime of the century had been committed here tonight. Good thing it hadn’t been, because they’d tromped all over the shoe prints on the floor.
In a jargon made up mostly of medical acronyms, Dr. O’Neal had given the EMTs a concise update on Brady’s condition, then relinquished him into their care. Shortly thereafter, the ambulance had left with him, still unconscious.
Now Brynn was in conversation with two men in gray uniforms that designated them as sheriff’s deputies. Because of the hubbub caused by the other people milling around but generally doing nothing constructive, Rye couldn’t catch what she was saying to the pair, but, following a lengthy monologue, she flicked her hand toward him. As one, the three turned. Rye stayed as he was, with arms and ankles crossed, seemingly indifferent to their scrutiny. One of the deputies excused himself from Brynn and his fellow officer and strolled over, notepad in hand.
“Rye Mallett?”
“That’s right.”
“Spelling?”
Rye spelled his name, and, as the officer jotted it down, he introduced himself as Deputy Don Rawlins. “What happened here tonight, Mr. Mallett?”
“Dr. O’Neal and I got here, found the guy slumped over his desk, unconscious and bleeding.”
“You a friend of his?”
“Never laid eyes on him. I’d only talked to him by radio.”
“Tell me about that.”
“I flew in from Columbus, Ohio, and was on final approach when—”