Tailspin(54)

He looked at his watch. “Now?”

“I know, right? I predicted it would take several days to fix.”

“Have them park it and leave the keys under the mat.”

“There’s paperwork. You know what that’s like,” she said and gave a light laugh. “I’ll run down and see to it.”

“Come right back. We’ll be leaving on a moment’s notice.”

She acknowledged that. As soon as she pulled the door shut behind her, she sprinted down the hall and, knowing how slow the elevator was, took the stairs to the first level of the parking garage, where she had a reserved space with her name stenciled on the wall above it.

The space was empty except for Rye, who was looking mean and mad and bloody.

5:22 p.m.



As Brynn rushed toward him, she exclaimed, “What happened to your hand?”

“That fucking punk.”

“Timmy?”

“He got the worst of it.”

“You fought with him? I thought you’d left.”

“Well, I didn’t.”

Rye had watched from several blocks away as the black Mercedes left the parking garage. When it passed his observation point, he saw that Goliad was driving and Timmy was slumped against the passenger door.

By all appearances, they were done for the night. But Rye wouldn’t have put it past Goliad to circle back. Following the fight, he might have gotten orders regarding Rye.

He’d given them five minutes, which had seemed interminable. They didn’t return. On his walk back to the garage, he booked an Uber car. When it arrived, he gave the driver an extra twenty to wait and texted Brynn. He’d taken a risk by hanging around, but he figured that she would rush right down when he dropped her mystery patient’s name, and she had.

“Does it hurt?”

She would have taken his hand, but he kept it out of her reach. “No.” Then, “A little.”

Timmy’s knife had made a neat slice across each of the first knuckles of his left hand. The blood wasn’t coagulating as rapidly as it should because he’d been repeatedly flexing his fingers, then contracting them into a fist. “To keep them from getting stiff,” he said to Brynn, who was watching him do it. “I’ve got to be able to grip the yoke. I’m flying tomorrow.”

“I heard. You should put something on them. My office is on the fourth floor. We could go up—”

“Forget it.” He secured her biceps and steered her toward the exit. “Who are the Hunts?”

She dug her heels in and jerked her arm free. “Where did you hear their name?”

“Your dickhead colleague let it slip. Hunt. That’s the deep pockets behind this drug smuggling operation?”

She held her tongue.

“Nothing? No? Okay, I gave you one last chance. From here out, you’re on your own. Remember, I gave you fair warning.”

He left her standing there and walked away. He was almost to the exit, and beginning to think she’d called his bluff, when she ran after him.

Short of breath, she asked, “Warned me of what? Where are you going?”

He kept walking. “The nearest police precinct. I don’t want my ass hauled to jail when the rest of you go.”

“Wait!”

He stopped and turned, looming over her. “You were going to steal that box for yourself up there in Howardville. Then everything that could go wrong did. You played me, you played the deputies, but ultimately, you were given no choice except to go along with the goons Hunt sent and deliver the box to Lambert.”

She didn’t respond, but he took her silence as affirmation of all he’d said.

“Is it even a drug, Brynn?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“GX—”

“Yes. Yes! Everything I told you about it.”

“Okay. Is the patient Mr. Hunt or Mrs.?”

“Mister.”

“And he’s—”

“Desperate.”

“He’ll die without it.”

“One can hope that with treatment—”

“Skip the bedside manner. Will he die?”

She gave curt nod.

“So why didn’t you want Lambert to have the medicine?”

She said nothing.

“Brynn? Why? Why were you planning to steal it?”

She made a small, defeated sound and pushed back her hair. “What difference does it make now? Nate’s got it. As you said, everybody’s happy.”

“Everybody but you.” He stayed as he was, holding her stare, then took her arm and propelled her toward the street.

Again, she put on the brakes. “I told Nate I would be right back.”

“You won’t be.”

He continued nudging her out the exit. On the street, the fog was noticeably thinner, but the temperature was much colder. It had started to rain. He hurried her toward the Uber car idling at the curb, opened the rear door, and motioned her in.

“I can’t walk out on him now, Rye. We’re doing the procedure tonight.”

“The stuff doesn’t go bad till tomorrow night.”

“They don’t want to wait. If I disappear again, they’ll panic.”

“Oh, we wouldn’t want to start a panic, would we? I can prevent that right now by going back up to the fifth floor and spilling my guts to Lambert. He’ll probably be as curious as I am to hear why you were trying to keep that life-sustaining drug out of his soft, pasty hands.”