chapter thirteen

Two hours later, Dave and Lisa took off from a commuter airport in Monterrey in a tiny single-engine four-passenger plane. Dave wasn’t altogether thrilled about flying in an aircraft so small, but the day was bright and clear and the plane was comfortable and Lisa certainly seemed to know what she was doing. In spite of the fact that she still wore his shirt, which was several sizes too large for her, she sat with the confident bearing of a person who was born to be in a pilot’s seat. As the city of Monterrey fell away beneath them and they climbed toward the clouds, he felt how much she loved to fly. Exhilaration seemed to ooze right out of her.

“This is the first time you’ve flown since your crash,” he said. “Any problem with that?”

“Nope.”

“Confidence still there?”

“Why not? It wasn’t my screwup. Give me a flyable plane, and I’ll keep it aloft. Give me one with water in its fuel tanks, and there’s not much I can do.”

“That’s how they sabotaged you?”

“That’s sure what it felt like. The engine cut out until I swapped the fuel tanks. It was okay for a while, then cut out again. Eventually I had no engine at all. I didn’t see water on the preflight, but if they’d tinted it blue, I wouldn’t have.”

“That’s pretty insidious.”

“It’s Robert Douglas, through and through.” She turned to face him. “So, Dave. Ever fly in a private plane before?”

“Nope. This is a first.” He looked around, then pointed to the stick beside her. “Is that the throttle?”

“Right. Push to increase power; pull back to decrease.”

She showed him the various gauges—altimeter, fuel, oil pressure, heading and airspeed indicators, and about ten others he couldn’t keep track of.

“And here are the flaps,” she said. “They allow you to stay aloft at slower speeds for landing. And the yoke,” she said, patting her hands against the thing that looked like a steering wheel, “is to bring the nose of the plane up or down. Push it forward to tip the nose down, and pull back to bring the nose up. But not too far, or you’ll stall.”

“Stall? What’s that?”

Without a word, she eased the yoke back, tipping the nose of the plane up.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

She kept pulling back. The nose kept rising. Soon Dave felt as if they were climbing the first hill on a roller coaster, and he’d always been able to do without roller coasters.

“Lisa?”

She pulled back more. The plane climbed through a low bank of clouds. Then Dave felt a slight shudder. “Uh . . . Lisa?”

The shuddering intensified. They kept climbing. All at once an alarm went off, a deafening booop, booop, booop noise that Dave translated as: We’re going to die.

“Lisa. This can’t be good.”

She continued to climb.

“Lisa!”

Still they were climbing, with the plane at an even sharper angle than before and the alarm still wailing. Dave held his breath, closing his fingers around the seat in a death grip. My God. You knew she was impulsive. You didn’t know she had a death wish.

Then she pulled back the tiniest bit more, and all at once it was as if they’d hit the top of that roller coaster. There was a momentary feeling of floating. Then the plane’s nose tilted down hard, and they were falling.

“Holy shit!” Dave clutched the door beside him, his stomach soaring right up between his ears in a nauseating rush. As the plane plummeted through the clear blue sky, he was sure he was on the verge of drawing his last breath.

“Lisa!” he shouted. “What’s happening? Lisa! ”

She reached for the throttle and pushed it forward. The plane’s engine vroomed, and they pulled out of the dive and leveled out from the gut-wrenching drop in a huge parabolic swoop.

After a moment, they resumed flying as they had before, with everything calm and sedate and blessedly removed from the jaws of death. It took Dave a good ten-count to pry his fingers away from the door and relax the expression of sheer panic that had frozen onto his face.

He turned to Lisa. “What the hell was that?”

“A stall.” She looked at him innocently. “You asked what one was, didn’t you?”

“Did I ask you to demonstrate it?”

“No,” she said. “That was a bonus.”

“That was dangerous as hell!”

“Nope. Not dangerous at all. Well, I suppose it could be if the plane was a little too close to the ground. You’ve got to watch it on landing. Go too slow with the nose too high, and it’s all over. At greater angles, the wing produces less lift and more drag. The more drag, the slower the speed, so the wing gives even less lift. Pretty soon you’re not flying anymore.”

“Hence the nosedive.”

“Exactly.”

Dave let out a long breath. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Lisa, but I’m not exactly one to engage in thrill-seeking behavior.”

She flashed him a smile, apparently thinking she was quite the humorist. “Maybe you need to expand your horizons a little.”

“I just want to keep from crashing into the horizon.”

“Not a problem. Just settle back and enjoy the ride.”

“Which was exactly what I was doing before you put this thing on red alert.”

“Yeah. It really got the old blood rushing, didn’t it?”

There was nothing about this woman that didn’t get his blood rushing. Absolutely nothing.

But now, in the aftermath of adrenaline shooting through every molecule in his body, he’d relaxed into a pleasant kind of state where his awareness felt heightened—colors seemed brighter, sounds sharper, and he swore he could smell the peach shampoo that Lisa had used this morning drifting across the cockpit. In the past couple of days, in spite of everything that had happened, or maybe because of it, he felt more alive than he had in a very long time.

“So do you do that to the doctors you fly into Santa Rios?”

“No. I figured if I scared the hell out of them they might not come back.”

“So what led you to fly for a humanitarian organization, anyway?”

“Adam was the one who recruited me. He was my gynecologist, and he hit me up during my annual exam. He told me it wasn’t often he got a woman with a pilot’s license in a compromising position, one who just might be crazy enough to fly a handful of doctors seven hundred miles into the middle of nowhere. I thanked him for the left-handed compliment and started to get up. He grabbed my feet and told me he wasn’t going to let me out of the stirrups until I said yes.”

Dave grinned. “I thought I had power as a cop. Maybe I need to consider gynecology.”

She smiled. “You know, I might not have let any other man live long enough to get those words out of his mouth. But Adam . . .” She shook her head. “I don’t know. There was something about him. I’d always thought that all doctors were egotistical snobs, but I liked him from the beginning. These days most women would rather go to a woman gynecologist, which has hurt some of the male ones. But Adam had patients lined up around the block. And you should have seen him at the clinic. His patients loved him, and little kids hung on him like fleas on a dog.” She paused. “Listen to me,” she said quietly. “I’m talking about him in the past tense.”

“We don’t know for sure that he’s dead, Lisa. We don’t know what happened to him.”

“Yes, we do,” she said. “Robert got to him. I know he did. But I don’t know how he could hurt Adam. He’s one of the few people I’ve ever met who was really good at heart, and that bastard killed him. Just like he tried to kill me.”

“Adam must have really been a good friend.”

She glanced at him, and he was surprised to see tears welling up in her eyes. “The truth? Maybe my best friend.”

Her best friend? He knew she was worried about Adam but didn’t realize just how far that concern went. “You didn’t tell me you were so close to him.”

She swiped the back of her hand across her eyes. “I know.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know,” she said helplessly. “I just . . . I guess I was afraid of this.”

“Of what?”

“Falling apart.” She sniffed and wiped her eyes again. “I can’t do this,” she said, tightening her grip on the yoke. “I’ve got a plane to fly here.”

“You and Adam,” Dave said. “Were you ever . . . ?”

She glanced at him as if she didn’t understand, then shook her head. “N-no. It was nothing like that. It was just . . . he was like a brother, I guess. Or how a brother should be.”

“Almost like family.”

“Yeah. He was. I even spent a couple of holidays with him and his sister’s family in San Antonio. They were such nice people.” Her eyes dropped closed. “Oh, God. I can only imagine how his sister feels right now. And she thinks he died in an accident. She needs to know the truth about that. But I guess I’m not sure exactly what the truth is.”

Dave reached across the tiny cockpit and took Lisa’s hand in his. She clung to it tightly.

“I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m doing this,” she said.

“Because he was someone you cared about.”

Lisa closed her eyes, her jaw tight, and he could tell she was trying desperately not to cry.

“You okay?”

“Yes. Of course.”

Closing her eyes, she drew herself up with a deep breath, then slowly let it out. When she opened her eyes again, her tears were under control.

“It’s just a fact of life I need to accept,” she told Dave, slipping her hand away from his. “People come. People go.”

“Don’t make light of it. You loved him.”

“Yes, and sometimes I think it’s just not worth it.”

“Would you have traded not knowing him just to spare yourself the heartbreak of losing him?”

“I don’t know. I only know how I feel now.” She turned to him. “Is it worth loving somebody, even if he can be ripped away from you in the blink of an eye?”

“Yes. Of course it is.”

“So is that how you felt when Carla was killed?”

Dave physically recoiled at the mention of Carla’s name. “I felt a lot of things when Carla was killed. And I don’t want to talk about any of it.”

“Yeah, that’s pretty much what you told me last night.”

He felt her gaze on him, and suddenly the cockpit of this plane felt way too small.

“You must have loved her a lot,” Lisa said.

Dave’s jaw tightened involuntarily. “Of course I did.”

“Everyone said you were the perfect couple.” She paused. “I remember being so jealous of her in high school.”

“You? Jealous of Carla?”

“Of course. Everybody liked her. She was pretty. She was popular. All the guys wanted girls like her.” She paused. “Including you.”

He stared out the windshield, his heart beating wildly, memories flooding inside him that he wished would disappear forever. “Sometimes things aren’t always what they seem to be.”

She gave him a sideways glance, and he could see the questioning look on her face. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that Carla and I had our problems just like everyone else.”

“Like what?”

He was silent.

“You don’t want to talk about it.”

Yes. He did. He wanted to tell her everything about their marriage. All of it. But most of all, he wanted to tell her about the night Carla died—what he’d thought, how he’d felt, every dark, horrible detail. God, he wanted to shout it. But he’d never voiced any of that. Not once. To anyone. How was he supposed to explain something that he could barely acknowledge even to himself?

“Never mind,” Lisa said, turning away. “It’s just as well. It’s really none of my business.”

“Lisa—”

“No. Really. I mean, who am I, anyway? Somebody who popped into your life for a few days and is going to be popping right back out of it? Why would you want to spill your guts to me?”

“That’s not it.”

“Then what is it?”

What was it? Maybe it was the fact that she had no idea who she was talking to. Her image of him was so skewed that she’d probably never believe the truth. But she wasn’t the only one. His friends, his family, his coworkers—not one of them understood what was inside his head. Not one.

“You think I’m a pretty nice guy, don’t you?”

Lisa shrugged. “Of course you are.”

“Think again.”

She looked at him with surprise. “Sorry. You’ve lost me.”

“A few days ago on the job,” he said, “do you know what I did?”

“What?”

He stared straight ahead. “There was a guy sitting on a highway overpass, threatening to commit suicide. I asked him what the hell he thought he was doing sitting on that goddamned bridge, screwing up traffic and making life hell for half the cops and paramedics in the city.” He paused. “Then I told him to go ahead and jump.”

Lisa turned to him, blinking with surprise. “You what?”

“You heard me. I said every word of that, and more. At that moment, I didn’t give a good goddamn if that man lived or died.” He turned to her. “So what do you think of me now? Am I still Mr. Nice Guy?”

He could tell she was stunned, but she held her gaze steady. “Why did you say those things?”

“Because I can’t stand dealing with helpless, needy people looking for attention who expect me to solve all their problems. That’s why.”

“You solved mine. How do you feel about that?”

The difference was so radical that he couldn’t believe she was even asking that question. He saw nothing but a tremendously capable woman who had a setback but leapt right back on her feet the moment he gave her a hand up.

“You’re not helpless and needy,” he told her.

“I was two nights ago.”

“Temporary situation. Big difference.”

“How do you know the guy on the bridge wasn’t going through a temporary situation?”

“I know. Believe me.”

“Yeah. I guess you’ve seen a lot of that as a cop. So what happened? Was the guy okay?”

“Yeah. I pulled him back.”

“Did he really want to kill himself?”

“Probably not.”

“You’ve got years of experience. You knew that guy wasn’t really going to do it. And you’ve had years of frustration, too, I’m sure, so you blew off a little steam. Quit beating yourself up about it.”

“It was more than blowing off a little steam.”

“Sorry. I’m going to need a little more convincing than that. Anyone who drops everything and travels seven hundred miles into the middle of nowhere to help me makes it to the top of my Nice Guy list every time.”

If only she knew. If only she knew that what happened on that bridge was only a symptom of what had been eating away at him for the past four years.

No. Not four years.

Eleven years.

“Damn,” Lisa said, checking her watch. “I’ve got to radio U.S. Customs and let them know we’re coming into the country, or I could get hit with a hell of a fine.”

“You have to do that?”

“It’s protocol. But it means that the customs officers will be there shortly after we land.”

Good. And that was exactly what they wanted. The drugs were in Lisa’s backpack in one of the rear seats of the plane. Dave wanted to have them close at hand to surrender just as soon as the plane landed. After he and Lisa told their story, there was no doubt that an investigation would ensue that would take Robert Douglas down and send him to prison for a very long time.

Thirty minutes later, Dave saw the city of San Antonio stretching out in the distance. Lisa radioed the tower at the commuter airport, and a few minutes later she was bringing the plane in. Dave looked down to realize that he’d grasped his knees so hard his knuckles had turned white.

Lisa turned to him. “Landing make you nervous?”

“Just watch where you’re going, okay?”

She laughed softly.

“And none of that stall stuff.”

“You sure? I could pull up a little—”

“Lisa!”

“Take it easy, Dave,” she said with a smile. “Everything’s under control.”

He breathed deeply, gritting his teeth as the plane descended. Seconds later, she set it down on the runway so lightly that he barely felt the bump. He let out the breath he’d been holding.

“You’re pretty good at that.”

“Practice makes perfect.”

Lisa slowed the plane, then turned it ninety degrees, and they taxied toward the terminal. Once there, she brought it to a halt. The moment she turned off the engine, Dave saw three men striding purposefully toward the plane.

“Customs agents?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Lisa said, suddenly coming to attention.

“Three of them?” Dave said. “Is that normal?”

“Nope,” Lisa said, her eyes wide with suspicion as they approached. “And usually they don’t just hop right out here. You’ve got to wait a bit on them. Something’s up.”

One of the agents headed around the plane to Lisa’s door. The other two came to Dave’s.

The drugs. Damn. He had to get those drugs in hand before he met the agents. He quickly reached to the backseat.

“Freeze!”

Dave swung back around and looked out the passenger window, shocked as hell to be staring down the barrel of a gun.

“Step out of the plane!” the agent shouted. “Both of you!”

Holy shit. What the hell was going on here?

“Dave?” Lisa said, panic lacing her voice. “What do we do?”

“We’ve got no choice. Just do as they say.”

“The drugs—”

“I can’t get to them. They’ll think I’m reaching for a weapon.”

“But if they find them before we give them up—”

“Say nothing. Do you hear me? Let me handle this.”

“Out of the plane now!” the agent shouted.

Dave unlocked his door and stepped out. The moment his feet hit the ground, the agent spun him around. “Hands on the plane!”

Dave started to pull his wallet from his hip pocket, then reminded himself that a move like that would be interpreted as a threat. He’d be facedown on the ground before he knew what hit him. Instead he held up his palms and tried to speak calmly.

“I’m a police officer. My ID is in my wallet.”

“I told you to put your hands on the plane!”

He turned and rested his palms against the plane. The agent frisked him, extracted his wallet, then pulled his hands behind his back and clipped cuffs on. Looking through the windows of the plane to the other side, he could see Lisa undergoing the same treatment.

Dave turned back around. The agent flipped open Dave’s wallet and stared at his badge with surprise. “You really are a cop?”

“Yes. Tolosa PD. Listen to me. There’s something you need to—”

“Hey, Stevens!”

The agent turned his baffled gaze to the door of the plane, and for the first time Dave saw that while he was being frisked and cuffed the third agent had climbed inside. He’d pulled their bags from the backseat, and he was unzipping Lisa’s backpack.

No. No!

Dave was stunned. There wasn’t a way on earth that man could possibly know what it contained. No way. But any second now he was going to find out.

The magnitude of what was getting ready to happen struck Dave like a hammer blow, but there was nothing he could do to stop it. He started to shout, to say something, anything to keep the man from pulling those drugs out of the bag. But he was standing there in handcuffs. At this point, would they ever believe the truth?

A second later, the agent extracted the bag of tiny blue pills, holding them up with a small but triumphant smile.

“Bingo.”