Tailspin(104)

“I’ll be careful.” Goliad extended his hand.

Startling them all, a door opened a short distance away, and a housekeeper pushed a rattling cart into the corridor. In a singsong voice, she wished them a cheerful good morning.

Taking Goliad completely off guard, and shocking the hell out of Rye, Brynn went around Goliad and walked briskly toward the woman in the pink uniform. “I’m so glad you arrived when you did. We used all our towels last night. May I please have some extras?”

Without waiting for a response, Brynn lifted several from the stack on the cart and then broke into a sprint. Both Goliad and Rye charged after her, but Goliad had a ten-foot head start.

The housekeeper flattened herself against the wall in fright. As Goliad passed her, he one-handedly hauled her cart into the middle of the hallway. Running full out, Rye barreled into it, knocking it over and scattering everything it carried. He hurdled piles of fresh laundry and rolls of toilet tissue.

Brynn’s intention had probably been to take the fire stairs, but just as she drew even with the elevator, the bell above it dinged. She heaved the stack of towels toward Goliad. He batted them down, stumbled over them, kicked them aside as he chased after her.

The elevator doors opened. Brynn stepped in. Goliad, pistol held close to his side and out of sight, got in behind her. Rye put on a burst of speed and slipped in between the two closing doors.

He crowded in behind Goliad to make room for himself, because there were five other people in the elevator: a silver-haired couple looking annoyed for having been herded to the back; two teenage girls wearing earbuds and staring into their phones; a heavyset man in shorts and flip-flops.

Affably, he bellowed to the newcomers, “Morning, folks. Headed down to the buffet? The biscuits and gravy are tops. Grits, too.”

The teenagers continued to peck on their phones without looking up. The older couple smiled politely, but neither spoke. Brynn was on Rye’s left, huddled in the corner of the elevator, as though trying to go unnoticed. She didn’t speak. Rye thought she might have been holding her breath.

Goliad turned around to face out. Rye had kept his back to the door, so he and Goliad were now eye to eye. With everyone else in the cubicle unaware, Rye poked the short barrel of his pocket pistol into Goliad’s stomach. The man’s eyes registered surprise, and his abs contracted, but he didn’t react so that anyone else would notice.

Rye whispered, “I was just fooling about the clip.” During the chase down the hallway, he’d managed to retrieve his pistol from the pocket of his bomber jacket. Last night he’d loaded it with the spare clip he carried in his flight bag.

Given the close quarters, there was no way he could verbally communicate with Brynn. He couldn’t have advised her anyway, because he had no idea what Goliad planned to do when the elevator doors opened. Raise his gun hand and commence a shootout? That seemed unlikely, but Rye couldn’t dismiss the possibility.

Brynn had forced Goliad’s hand. He had proposed a peaceful settlement where nobody got hurt. But it had to be clear to him now that she wasn’t going to surrender the GX-42 without a fight.

Whatever Goliad did, Rye would have only seconds in which to process it and react correctly, or people could die. But years of pilot training had taught him to do just that.

Goliad’s method of problem-solving was more stolid.

Giving Rye the advantage here.

He hoped.

The elevator stopped. The double doors behind him began to open. Brynn once again seized an opportunity. Wraithlike, she slipped around behind Rye and cleared the doors before they had even opened all the way.

“She wants those biscuits while they’re hot,” the flip-flop man said around a booming laugh.

Rye pretended that Brynn had pushed against him on her way out. He fell forward into Goliad, throwing him off balance. “Sorry, man.” The apology was for the benefit of the others in the elevator, but he jabbed Goliad’s middle with his pistol for emphasis before whipping around and running after Brynn.

Rather than trying to navigate the crowded lobby, she’d headed down the long corridor that came to a dead end at the side door they’d been using. When she reached it, she looked back to ensure that Rye was behind her before she pushed through the door to the outside. By the time Rye got to the door, he saw her through the glass, splashing across the parking lot in a mad dash toward Wes’s car.

His relief was short-lived.

Before he could depress the bar to let himself out, Goliad caught up to him, grabbed him by the collar of his jacket, hurled him against the wall, then landed a punch in Rye’s diaphragm that robbed him of breath. It also hurt like bloody hell, but not as bad as a bullet would have. Goliad still didn’t want a firefight, especially not after a terrorized housekeeper had witnessed their race down the hallway.

But bare hands could be just as deadly as guns if one knew how to apply them. Goliad outweighed and outmuscled him. Rye couldn’t bring him down. Not in a fistfight, not by swapping swings. So he folded his arms across his midsection and, with a grunt of pain, bent double.

Then he came up beneath Goliad’s chin with his head. Goliad’s teeth clacked, his head snapped back, and when he brought it upright, Rye’s hands were folded around his pistol, the short barrel pressed up against the soft underside of Goliad’s jaw.

Rye wheezed, “Drop the gun.”

Goliad’s weapon landed with a dull thud on the carpet near their feet.