chapter XII
Boise, Idaho, present day
HARRY, AFTER WAITING DAYS for the confluence of various circumstances after the demise of one Gretchen Reid, sat on a plane at the Boise airport, waiting for departure. The man next to him was having a conversation on his cell phone. It sickened him that people felt the need to parade all that weakness, all that idiotic vanity, in public. Sure, the conversations were one-sided, but they were also usually louder than ambient noise, and disturbing for their disjointedness. Harry ground his teeth as the man prattled on.
“Yes, dear.” A pause. “Honey, you’re okay. Honest injun. Are you enjoying your time with your sister?” Another pause.
Harry wanted to vomit. Either that or rip the man’s phone away from his hand and beat him senseless with it. Mercilessly, the conversation continued.
“Of course. And how about you?” A pause again. “Oh, I’m just waiting for the pushback so we can get underway here.”
Pushback, Harry thought. I’ll give you pushback.
“And I’ll miss you. Well, it’s only the civilized parts of Africa…. Yeah! Of course…. Always.”
Why must I endure all this nonsense? Harry thought. Why couldn’t I just kill the man in his own house? He reflected on that. It would have been…less convenient. Orders were orders anyway. He understood rationally that it would be better to wait until Cape Town. It would look better. But emotionally he wasn’t sure how much more he would be able to stand.
“I love you.” The man in the seat next to Harry ended the call.
Thank you, Harry thought. Perhaps now my day will improve. But the man turned to face him directly, as if he had been reading all the hostility Harry had been broadcasting. Harry twisted in his seat, shrinking back from the man as he squared his shoulders and looked at his face.
“Let’s not pretend we don’t know each other, Harry.”
This is not good. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” was all he could say in response. Deflect this…
The man lowered his voice and leaned in. “Oh, come on, Harry, let’s not pretend anymore. I know all about it.”
Harry chortled. “About what?” His body language communicated his distaste and contempt for the very idea.
The man lowered his voice still more. “About agent Gretchen Reid. And how you killed her.”
Harry arched his eyebrows. “Oh, really? And here I thought you were going to be another boring dull stupid lazy mark.”
“Not hardly,” said the man, looking away and taking a sip of bottled water. “Not hardly. Why do you think I booked my ticket for this flight specifically?”
“Oh, my. This is getting good. But I’m afraid it’s a chicken-and-egg debate on that score, my friend.”
“What, you booked first?”
“So say some.” Harry changed the subject. “So. Off to rescue our daughter, are we?” He gave a wickedly recumbent chuckle that would have weakened the knees of lesser men.
“Harry, I wouldn’t tell you any more about my Airel if you held a gun to my head.”
“That can be arranged.”
“Tell you what, Harry—if I can presume to call you by your Christian name…?” Harry flinched. It made Airel’s father smile ever so slightly. “How about this: how about when we refuel at Twin Cities, you don’t move a muscle. How about when we change planes at Schipol in Amsterdam you behave like a good little boy or I’ll splatter your guts across all those pricey cheese wheels in the duty-free. How about we pretend to be pals, okay?”
“And why,” Harry couldn’t help but laugh in his face, “why should I not kill you here and now?” Oops. Harry hoped he didn’t say that too loudly. “And for that matter, why wouldn’t you do the same, here and now?”
“Because, Harry. It’s just not reasonably possible. Those idiot pretend mall cops with the TSA badges. FAA protocol. The Federal Air Marshall sitting in 17 D. The Boise PD. Ada County Sheriff. The fact that the door to the jetway is now closed and we’re stuck on this tin can for the duration whether it’s convenient for us or not. And then there’s the question of your orders…”
Harry muttered strong curses under his thin veneer of cool. He gave a petulant little exhalation through his nostrils, scoffing.
Airel’s father continued. “You want me to get to Africa. You need me to get to Africa. Unharmed. And I know it. And trust me, Harry, this showdown can keep until then.”
“Okay,” Harry dismissed him casually with a wave of his hand.
“Until then we’re just fellow disciples in the tribe of…sales. On our way to the ‘convention.’”
Harry laughed cruelly. “And just what do we sell?”
“Saleable things, Harry. Today it just happens to be a few extra hours of your life. Whaddya say?”
Through gritted teeth, Harry said, “Deal,” and regretted bitterly his former audacity to have purchased a ticket on the seat next to the mark. He hadn’t counted on Airel’s father being so smart. That, he had never accounted for or even imagined.
Somewhere over North America, present day
Michael wasn’t quite sure how to broach the subject with Airel. He had been up since…well, he hadn’t really had time to sleep at all, what with…all that needed to be taken care of. The body. And the Bloodstone turning up missing. He had been a little freaked out about that until his little under-the-bridge conference with Ellie. And now Kim carried it. C’est la vie, he thought cynically.
How could he tell Airel about Kim? How would she take it? He could tell by the way she looked at him that she thought he carried the Bloodstone. But he had to tell her. As if, by Kim’s erratic behavior, it wasn’t painfully obvious to everyone by now. But somebody had to call attention to the elephant on the plane.
And there was no time like the present. “Airel, can I talk with you?”
“Sure,” she said.
Michael didn’t even have to look at Ellie. “Excuse me,” she said. “I’ve gotta make a trip to the loo.” She got up and walked to the back of the plane.
“That was nice of her,” Airel said.
“Yeah, she’s pretty cool.”
“So what’s up?”
He hazarded a glance at Kim, who was snoring away in her seat. “It’s about Kim.”
“Oh, don’t tell me. I know she’s been acting really weird. What’s with her?” Airel came off a little nervous. She gripped his hand tighter, as if holding on to him could bring her insane world into focus.
He looked at her. “I think you already know.”
Fear crept over her face. She was quiet for a long time, looking at her sleeping friend. Finally, she looked back at Michael. “She has it.”
He confirmed this truth.
“How long?”
“You’re not going to like this one bit,” he said. He tried to explain what Ellie had told him about destiny and choice and consequence and how it was Kim’s burden to bear because, really, she had taken it up that day on the cliff top.
And he was right. Airel didn’t like it at all.
She got up and paced the cabin, obviously fuming inside but keeping her tongue. “That’s just not right,” she finally said. “How can that be right? We can’t let her have it—we can’t do that to her! How is that fair?”
He sat and thought for a long time before answering. “You know, I don’t have an answer for you. I don’t know. What I do know is that she has accepted the burden of the Bloodstone fully now. She has bonded with it. She has chosen it over everything else.”
“But how…how does a person come to that? How could she choose that?”
“Like anything,” he shrugged. “You go far enough down the path of curiosity until you slide off. There’s no coming back from some choices.” He wanted to be careful now. “She’s already beginning to change. It’s taking her.” He paused, wanting to choose his next words very carefully. “Airel, that’s not even Kim anymore.”
She tried to stay strong, but it only lasted a few minutes. She collapsed into a pile of sobs on the seat next to him. She covered her face with her hands and wept and he held her. He knew what she wept for. It wasn’t just Kim. It was everything.
Eventually they fell asleep together, her head resting on his chest, his arms around her.
I was absolutely starving. I wasn’t quite awake yet, but I was aware of the hunger at least. There was something in the air too; a voice. It was tinny. I opened my eyes. We were on a plane. Oh, yeah. The plane. The tinny voice was the captain. Hex. That’s right.
“…cruising at Mach point eight. We’re currently slowing and on final to Ascension Island in the south Atlantic. We’ll be landing at Wideawake Airfield in ten minutes for refueling. We’ll have a layover of a few hours per Miss Ellie’s request, so you can walk around a bit and eat a meal, perhaps see the sights. It’s up to you. All the arrangements will be taken care of. Please buckle up and prepare for landing. This is the captain speaking.” The intercom clicked off.
I looked around. Michael was stirring, but he wasn’t quite up yet. Ellie sat across the way. She looked up and smiled at me. Kim was still out like a light. Boy howdy. That must have been some cocktail.
I looked out the window. All I could see was wisps of cloud and ocean. It was still daytime. How long have we been flying? Did I hear him say south Atlantic? Wowza. I couldn’t figure it out in my head, but I was sure of one thing: it had to be tomorrow already. My stomach growled.
I could feel the plane descending and slowing, and my ears popped.
As we got closer and lower, I could see quite clearly the endless sea. There was nothing else out here. It seemed like we were getting really low and I hoped there was some kind of island or land out in front of us, because it sure looked like we were getting ready to crash into the water.
Just when I started to become really alarmed, a bit of rocky shore flashed by under the wing. I was instantly relieved to find that, no, we weren’t trying to land on the open ocean. Touchdown came swiftly and gently.
Kim never stirred.
I elbowed Michael gently. “Hey. Get off me, dude.” He had draped an arm over me and was drooling on the expensive leather seat. He gave a snort and blinked his eyes and looked around. “Oh. Hi. Sorry.” He drew back his arm and sat up.
The airplane was slowing to taxi speed, and Hex meandered it over various runways to a row of big metal buildings where other planes like ours were parked.
“How long were we out?” Michael asked.
Ellie spoke up. “Fourteen hours. I guess you needed some rest, hey?”
I stretched luxuriously now that I didn’t have boyfriend draped all over me. “No doubt,” I said, peering out the window.
Hex’s voice came over the speakers again. “It’s a balmy twenty five degrees outside and the weather is perfect. Enjoy your day. This is the captain speaking.”
Did he say twenty five?! “But it looks so nice out!” I said.
“Celsius,” Ellie said.
“Oh. Duh.” I felt so stupid. “Why did I not know that?”
“Because you’ve been snogging your boyfriend for over twelve hours, girlie. Anyone else wouldn’t even know their own name.” She smiled and I felt all gooey inside again. What is it about this Ellie character?
The plane stopped and we stood. Bishop came and opened the outer door with a huge smile and the three of us got out, blinking and squinting in the bright sunshine.
“What about Kim?” I asked.
“Oh, sweetheart, she’s not going to wake for days. She’ll be fine,” Ellie said.
“Days?! Holy crap! Do we need to get her on an oxygen machine or something?” I asked, more concerned than ever.
“No, no. Trust me, girlie,” Ellie said with a serious look in her eyes. “It’s better this way.”