Taking Flight (A Devereux Novel) (13 page)

As he walked away he heard
Sara’s voice. “Wait, what do you have going on with Gary?”

Derek dropped his duffel bag inside the front door
of his house. He wanted nothing more than to take a nap. It had been a tiring
day, between the training, lunch, and dealing with the aftermath of Gary’s
little game. He regretted playing the same game on his little brother so many
times, and had a newfound respect for how difficult it could be to deal with
seemingly innocuous questions in the beginning stages of a courtship.

He sank into the comforting
embrace of his
favorite
recliner, set up so the
excellent view out his rear windows spread before him. He could look at it forever,
had even thought of commissioning one of his more artistic friends to paint it
for him so he could appreciate it when he wasn’t at home.

The sun fell to the horizon,
the bloody rays spearing the clouds in simulated slaughter. It was no wonder
certain cultures had myths and traditions surrounding the omens foretold by
such a sunset.

He had a handy remote that
controlled all the blinds and lights in the house. With the press of a button,
he set the house to change from day mode to night mode, and the electronics and
automation set to work closing the blinds and turning on the lights he needed
most. Unfortunately, the rest of his problems weren’t as easy to deal with as a
setting sun.

If I lay out them one by one, maybe they won’t seem so overwhelming.

First problem was that
someone was trying to kill him. That was overwhelming
on its
own
. The second part of it was that the same people were also trying to
kill his family. If they got their way, it would look like an accident. The
attack in the alley by the club was much less subtle, but if it had been
successful then it could have looked like a mugging gone wrong. It didn’t
explain why the mysterious man hadn’t used a gun or a knife—Derek
wouldn’t be alive, if he had.

The mugger hadn’t even
spoken during the attack.

Maybe it’s because he knew I’d recognize his voice if he did.

There was only one person in
Derek’s life
who
might have it out for him enough to
attack him. Rex
Trator
. The other pilot would have
the reflexes and precision to keep up with him on the windy back roads.

Rex? He couldn’t be that good of a fighter though, could he?

Derek never willingly talked
to the man and never deigned to find out anything about him. Still, he didn’t
have the feel of a murderous mastermind.

The second problem was Sara.
She represented a major change in his life if he let things continue to grow
between them, and he still wasn’t sure if that was a good thing. She had been
open and honest with him as best as he could tell, but there was no way to be
sure. She could have connections to the people after his life.

Even if she wasn’t related
to that business, she was still a complication. If she was innocent, then she
could get caught in the crossfire and hurt, and then he wouldn’t be able to
forgive himself. Above it all, he wasn’t sure he was ready for the level of
commitment she represented, but she made him laugh and think about things in a
way he hadn’t for a long time.

His third problem was Onyx.
What should have been a big help and source of stability and advice for him
instead gave him a bad taste in his mouth. Their secrecy about even the most
basic parts of their operations struck him the wrong way, and he intended to
figure out what was going on there. He had ignored them for too long, and it
was time to do something about it.

Evan came to that realization months ago.
Derek thought he’d been
foolish, but then he’d also shrugged off his brother’s insistence they weren’t
safe. That had been proven false. The respect he held for his brother, already
high, increased beyond measure.

Derek took his phone out and
pulled up his brother’s information. It was impossible to know which time zone
Evan would be in, but dusk in California was just about the perfect timing so
long as he was still in the continent.

There was half a ring before
it picked up.

“Derek? Oh, thank God, are
you on your way yet?” Evan’s voice was harsh and rough.

“On my way? What are you
talking about, Evan?”

“What am I…? Do you not
know?” Evan asked. “Derek, Gary’s been in an accident. He’s at the hospital in
critical condition. I thought you would have heard before I did and be there
already.”

What? Gary?

“Gary’s hurt? What
happened?” Derek asked. “I saw him an hour or two ago, how could this happen?
Is he going to be okay?”

“I’m not sure yet. The
details are very fuzzy. I heard this second-hand.”

Derek’s heart dropped. Gary
was his little brother, the life he grew up protecting and championing. If
anything happened to him… He couldn’t handle it.

“Where is he?” Derek’s voice
grew rough. “I’ll get there in no time.”

~

Derek blew through the ranks
of paparazzi that waited like jackals outside the hospital doors. By the time
they recognized him in their midst, he’d passed through. He swept up to the
reception desk.

“Where is he?”

The receptionist took a
moment to look up. “Look,
hun
, if you want me to tell
you where whoever you’re looking for is, I’ll need a name. I don’t know how you
people always expect me to…” She trailed off as she caught his face. “Derek
Devereux! I’m
sorry,
your brother is in room 401B. The
elevators are just back there around the corner.”

“Thank you,” he said, making
sure she knew he meant it.

When he approached his
brother’s room, it was eerily quiet, and he didn’t know if that was a good
thing or a bad thing. If it was a bad accident, shouldn’t there be doctors in
there trying to save his brother’s life? He couldn’t imagine that would be a
quiet process.

He poked his head around the
doorframe.
Gary lay on the bed with his hands crossed over
his chest
,
face light and easy
. He could have
been sleeping, or he could have been dead.

“
Gare
?”
he asked. “Are you… there?”

His brother opened one eye
enough to peer through. “Am I here? Jesus, Derek, has your eyesight gone? I’m
literally right in front of your face.” The deadpan ended, and Gary’s face
cracked into a wide grin. “Sorry, bro, but you should have seen your face, it
was priceless.”

“Fucking hell, Gary, I might
throttle you to death. You can’t do stuff like that. You better watch yourself
the next time we spar, because after the questions you dropped at the burger
joint with Sara and this, I might show you who the true master still is.”

Gary’s fingers unlaced, and
he raised his hand in consolation. “Whoa, easy there, Derek. I was just having
fun. Besides, you can’t talk to a cripple like that, it’s not proper.”

“He’s right, you know.” A
nurse in scrubs entered the doorway behind Derek. “Gary needs his rest, and you
won’t have the chance to beat him to a pulp for some time. He won’t have a
quick recovery.”

He had almost forgotten
where they were. Gary wasn’t faking the entire thing. “What happened?”

“I fell,” Gary said. “Which
is embarrassing enough. Breaking clean through my lower leg is even worse. Talk
about an instant regret situation.”

“You mean no one did this to
you?” Derek had berated himself for not hiring security or following Gary
around himself to protect him. “It wasn’t an attack?”

His little brother rolled
his eyes. “Accidents happen, you know. I was walking along the street and I
tripped on something and sprawled down some stairs. It wouldn’t have ended too
badly, but there was a pile of scrap metal at the bottom and I fell into it. My
leg slammed against something solid and it fractured both my bones. I almost
blacked out from the pain, but my friends were right there with me and called
an ambulance. My phone disappeared, though, so I couldn’t call anyone. I didn’t
think you would make it here until you found out through the magazines.”

It was confusing. Derek had
expected to hear about an assault like his own. Was it possible Gary had just
tripped and fallen? But if it had been anything more than that, his friends
would have seen something happen. It was a big coincidence, but could it be
anything else?

“You’re sure you just
tripped? What did you trip over?” Derek asked.

“I didn’t see, to be honest.
But it could have just been me being clumsy. We had a few drinks, so it’s
possible I was less graceful than I’d like to admit.” Gary reached his hand out
to touch Derek’s arm. “Seriously. Derek. I’m
fine
. It was an accident, a goof. No big deal.”

“No big deal,” Derek
repeated. Why did it feel like it was?

“You are so hot for him, and you won’t even admit
it—that’s the sad part,” Becky said as they walked up the stairs to the
second floor of their building. “And he’s totally digging you, too. If you were
just honest with each other you could have
freakin
’
boned already. It’s driving me nuts and I won’t even get to join in!”

“Oh, come on, Becky. Some of
us don’t view sex as the end-all and be-all of a relationship, you know,” Sara
said. “Speaking of, though, what did you get Gary’s number for? Did you soften
him up to your advances during the drive to the restaurant?”

Becky stuck her tongue out
at her friend. “A lady never reveals her secrets. I’m afraid you’re just not
going to know about that one.”

“Yeah, okay,”
Sara
said. “You’ll spill the beans at the earliest possible
opportunity. You couldn’t keep a secret if your life depending on it.”

As she reached the front
door, Becky dug around for her keys, but then she stopped dead and they crashed
to the ground, fallen from nerveless fingers.

“Becky, what—?” Sara
cut herself off as she saw what had given her roommate pause.

The front door was ajar.
More than that, the deadbolt had been
torn
away from the
door frame
, as though an impossibly
strong beast had sunk its claws into the metal and ripped it away like tin
foil.

“Oh my God,” Becky said in a
breathless whisper. She pushed the door with a finger, and the portal swung
inward.

The room beyond was
devastated. The fridge had been knocked over and the contents spread across the
floor like the guts of a dying animal. The table had been overturned and broken
into pieces. Things from their bedrooms were slashed and left strewn
everywhere. Sara recognized the tattered remains of the dress she had worn the
other night.

“No, no, no!” Becky launched
into the apartment toward her room. Sara reached for her, but missed.

“Beck! We don’t know if
they’re still here!” Sara swore as her roommate charged ahead.

She grabbed a knife from the
block on the counter and held it in front of her with shaking hands as she
crept through the apartment. Wails of distress came from Becky’s room, so she
assumed it was clear. It was a small place, all the paper would pay for, so it
didn’t take long to look through and confirm they were alone. Still, she wasn’t
willing to lay the knife down yet. The door couldn’t lock any longer, and even
if it could it wouldn’t stop whoever did this.

Satisfied that at least they
were by themselves, Sara assessed the damage. The first thing she saw was her
laptop, screen smashed and electronics pulled apart. It lay on the ground, a
sad victim of the intruder’s fury.

“Oh, fuck.” Sara knelt down
to pick it up. All her notes were on that computer, and while she’d backed some
of them up to the cloud, more than a few would be lost forever if she couldn’t
recover the data. At least there were specialists for that.

When she picked up the
wretched thing, it wasn’t hard to see it was a lost cause. The hard drive had
been ripped out, and it was impossible to recover files if even the twisted
remnants weren’t available.

“Beck?” She called,
desperate for the sound of her roommate’s voice. “Talk to me.”

The sobbing grew louder.
There were a few mangled attempts at what might have been words, but she
couldn’t make sense of any of it from out in the kitchen. She went back into
her friend’s bedroom and winced.

It looked like someone had
taken all of her friend’s clothes, the product of her hard work over the past
few years, put them in a blender, and turned it on high. The floor was a
complete mess, and aside from the odd memorable piece of fabric here or there,
Sara couldn’t make sense of it at all. It held a strange beauty, like it
belonged to a modern art exhibit, but the flood of fabric would forever be
useless as clothing.

“Oh, Beck.” Sara said
nothing more. She couldn’t. What else was there to say? She simply took her
friend in her arms and held her as the crying continued.

They stood like that for a
long time, in the middle of the desolate remains of Becky’s hard work. Her sobs
slowed down, until she shuddered now and then with suppressed emotion. The
clothes had been like family to her, children she’d created out of her own
blood, sweat and tears.

“Are you going to be okay?”
It was a brutal question, but there wasn’t another good way to start the
conversation.

Becky drew back, her face
red, blotched, and tear-stained. She sniffed. “I don’t know, Sara. I mean
,
I can make more clothes. But these… these were the
blueprints of my future success. These were golden, and they could have taken
me to the top. Now, they’re just
scrap
fabric, good
for nothing except stuffing rag bags.”

“Hey, that’s not true,”
Sara
said. “You still have all the experience, the wisdom,
the learning from making those dresses and shirts. You know how to do it again,
but better this time. Don’t let this cripple your dreams.”

Her roommate gave her a
shaky grin. “Oh, cool it, Sara. You are way too confident in me. Despite my
perpetual lack of success.”

“Don’t let success be
defined by other people,” she said. “You are a success to me.”

Becky drew her in for one
more sharp
hug, and then they separated.

“What are we going to do
now? Where do we go?”

“Well,” Sara said, “I don’t
know if it’s the best idea, but I’ll call Derek and ask him if we can crash at
his place. He’s got the room, and we need something quick. It should be a lot
safer.”

“Safe. Safe sounds good
right about now.” Becky’s eyes widened as she moved past the sheer shock of the
situation and thought about what had happened. “Sara! Who did this? This wasn’t
just a B and E. This was a personal attack on
us and our
stuff
. They didn’t even steal anything. They just destroyed everything.
Someone targeted us.”

Sara wished it hadn’t come
to this point. She regretted not telling Becky the truth about the dent in
their front door. She shuddered to think what might have happened if one or
both of them had been home when the attacker come after the apartment.

“This is my fault, Beck. I’m
so sorry. It was
me and this stupid investigation
. I
know it. They made a threat before, but I hadn’t wanted to believe they would
do anything about it. I can’t believe how wrong I was.”

Becky’s eyes grew large and
round. “You knew? You knew there was a madman out there who might try to hurt
us, and you said
nothing
?”

“Beck, I’m sorry. Please,
you know that I wouldn’t do anything to put you into harm’s way. I thought I
had things under control.” Sara’s own eyes
teared
up.
The prospect of losing her friend over this was much worse than losing her
research. “Can you forgive me?”

“Call Derek,” Becky said,
her voice cold. “I won’t stay upset at you forever, but I can’t forgive you on
the spot, Sara. What if I had been home, and you had been out with Derek having
a great time, unaware it was me getting torn to shreds just like these?” She
leaned down and picked up a handful of torn fabric. She threw it in the air to
underscore her point, the bits of material fluttering to the ground. “You need
to respect me enough to tell me about something that could have killed me.
Still could, if we don’t get the hell out of here before he comes back.”

Sara lapsed into silence.
Becky was
right,
it was inexcusable to keep her in the
dark after the knife had appeared in their front door. Instead she
dialed
Derek, praying he would answer. She got concerned on
the fourth ring, but finally it connected.

“Sara?”

“Hey, Derek. Remember how we
said it was a little too soon to talk about moving in together? Can we
reconsider that?”