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.
Still raspy, Rye said, “Why don’t you just back off and let the kid have the drug?”
“Because she’s not who I work for.”
“Stubborn son of a bitch.”
With the hilt of his pistol, Rye rapped Goliad hard, right on the bridge of his nose, then pivoted and pushed through the door. Rain and cold air blasted him in the face, but it felt good. It cleared his head in time for him to leap backward, out of the way of an oncoming, speeding car. Wes’s car. Brynn behind the wheel.
The car skidded to a stop inches from him. In his haste to get the passenger door open, he nearly dislocated his shoulder. Brynn accelerated before he’d pulled in his right leg. Through the glass exit door, he saw Goliad down on one knee, holding a hand to his face.
Rye and Brynn didn’t speak until they were out of the parking lot, up the ramp onto the freeway, and speeding along in the outside lane. By then, Rye had almost regained his breath. “Tell me you still have it.”
“I still have it.”
“Intact?”
“Yes.”
He laid his head back and closed his eyes. “That’s what matters.”
“You matter, too. Are you in pain?”
“I’ll live.”
“Goliad?”
“Not as pretty as he used to be. He’ll need a nose job.”
“But he’s all right?”
“Nothing life-threatening, and he’ll recoup, so we’re on borrowed time. Not only him to worry about, though. All my talk about security cameras? Wasn’t crap. Our altercation won’t go unnoticed. Somebody will get the plate number on this car. Make and model, too. It could get back to Wes.” He raised his head and looked over at her. “Damn, I hate that, Brynn.”
“Believe me, he’s been in tighter spots.”
“Yeah, but I’ve never put him in one before.” He thought for a minute. “Drive to Walmart.”
“Dad’s Walmart? Why?”
“When I switched out the license plates, I put his under the carpet in the trunk. I’ll put them back on, then we’ll leave his car and let him know where it’s parked. If somebody comes looking for it, they’ll find him at work, and his car on the lot of the store.”
“Thanks for thinking of that.”
“I don’t want him to get into trouble.”
“Neither do I, but without the car, how will we get to Tennessee?”
He leaned forward and looked up through the windshield at the torrential rain and bottom-heavy, opaque clouds. “We fly.”
Chapter 32
7:20 a.m.
They exited the freeway and pulled into a self-operated car wash, which wasn’t doing any business today. Brynn pulled into one of the bays. In a matter of minutes, Rye had replaced the original plates on Wes’s car.
He was just getting back in when his cell phone rang. “Only one person has the number,” he said to Brynn as he fished the phone from the front pocket of his damp jeans. “Hey, Dash.”
“I’ve called you three times.”
“I silenced the phone after our last text so I could sleep. You’ll be glad to know I got several hours. I’ll be fresh for the flight this evening.”
“I gave the job to somebody else.”
Rye, disbelieving what Dash had just said, shot a look toward Brynn, then mumbled an excuse to her, got out of the car, and walked several yards away. There was no way Dash could know about his change of plan. He was still expecting Rye to fly on the passenger flight from ATL that evening.
“The schedule is tight, but not that tight. I told you I would make it, and I will.”
“It’s not about the schedule, Rye.” He paused. Sighed. Swore. “The FAA office in Atlanta called me at the butt crack of dawn. Seems those two deputies from Howardville wiggled their way up the chain of command and finally got to the top dog there. The upshot is that after talking to them, he’s thinking the accident report you called in yesterday morning was inaccurate and incomplete.”
“I told him I would send a full report and photos when the weather cleared. It hasn’t.”
“Yes, but you fudged on the amount of damage done to the craft and—”
“It was dark and foggy. I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face, much less accurately assess the damage.”
“No mention of a laser.”
“I didn’t want to say anything about it until I could do so without getting everybody in a tizzy.”
“He got in a tizzy when he heard that the crash had put a guy in the hospital.”
“It didn’t! The crash occurred at least a mile from where Brady White was attacked. When I called in the accident report, it hadn’t been confirmed—and still hasn’t been—that the crash and the assault on him are related.”
“Yeah, well, that isn’t washing with the FAA. And now the NTSB. Those deputies sowed seeds of doubt about the degree of your involvement in a felony. The feds want to hold a party at the crash site, and they want you to be the guest of honor.”
Fuck! “When?”