The Switch (42 page)

"Single-engine," Chief continued. "Nothing fancy." "Where're you going?"

"Do you have one or don't you?" he asked, ignoring Pax’s curiosity.

"Yeah, I got one. Out back."

"Flyable?"

"You a flyer?"

Chief shot him a retiring look.

Pax shrugged. "Then it's flyable."

She still couldn't account for the unspoken animosity between the two, but it was palpable and thick. Chief asked Pax for the keys to the airplane. "I want to check it out." Pax ambled off in the direction of a glass-enclosed office. Chief turned to her. "Maybe he has a few snacks around he'll sell you. Canned drinks, anything you think you might need. Last thing you do, use the rest room. We'll have to stop to refuel, but there'll be long stretches in between."

"We're going to New Mexico, aren't we?"

Pax returned with the key and a slip of paper with the airplane's tail number printed on it. "Just outside the back door to your right. It's a nice little craft. Recently overhauled."

"Thanks."

She and Pax watched Chief wend his way through the hangar, past the airplanes and the puddles of oil and grease.

The back door banged shut behind him. Pax then turned to her. "How about that coffee?"

"No, thank you. But I could use some things for the trip. Snacks and drinks, if you have them."

He led her to a pair of vintage vending machines. "The drinks are cold, but I can't vouch for how fresh that stuff is," he said, pointing to the cellophane packages suspended on hooks inside the machine. "Can't remember when the vendor was last here to restock."

She began digging in her handbag for coins.

"Don't bother." Using a key, Pax opened the two machines. "Help yourself."

As she was making her choices, she said, "I've never flown with Chief."

"You don't have anything to worry about. He's an excellent pilot. Best instincts I ever saw."

"Were you in the military together?" "You might say."

"Before going into business for yourself, did you also work for NASA?"

He snorted at that notion. "No, ma'am. Not me." "But you two go way back?"

"Until we had our falling out." He pointed into the vending machine. "Those little pecan pies are pretty good."

"This is plenty," she told him, disappointed that he hadn't expanded on his "falling out" with Chief. What had been the cause of it? A woman? An airplane? Had there been a competition between them over who was the better pilot? Maybe Pax had been turned down for the astronaut program and was jealous that Chief had been accepted.

Considerately, Pax rummaged around for a sack and finally located one in the trash can. "Bought groceries yesterday," he explained as he loaded her selected snacks and soft drinks

into the plastic bag. "Mostly dog food. Damn dog eats like a horse."

They heard the back door open and Chief's boot heels striking the concrete as he made his way back through the cavernous hangar. "It looks okay," he said to Pax.

"Told you."

Turning to her, Chief asked if she'd been to the rest room yet. She shook her head. "Go. I've got some calls to make, then we're outta here."

"Through there." Pax pointed her toward a door. "But I gotta warn you, it's not exactly a powder room."

It wasn't. Not by a long shot. The sink and commode were water-stained. The floor was covered with greasy grime. The poster thumbtacked to the wall featured not just one naked woman, but a chorus line of them striking the same crude pose. Even cruder was the saying on the bumper sticker struck to the paper towel dispenser.

She used the toilet, then washed her face and hands with the discolored sliver of bar soap. When she took a disinterested glimpse of herself in the cracked mirror above the sink, she gasped. Dark spots dotted her face and neck. She leaned in for a closer look. Blood. Jem's blood. There were also traces of it in her hair.

Tamping down a rising panic, she took a deep breath and plunged her head beneath the faucet. The water was icy, but she held her head beneath the sputtering stream until the water ran clear, with no trace of pink.

Using paper towels, she squeezed the water from her
hai
r, then combed it as best she could with her fingers. She didn't linger to primp. Any attempt to improve her looks would be futile. She needed to start from scratch. It seemed ages since she had showered and shampooed in the truck stop motel that morning. Besides, she had none of her things. Their bags had been left behind in the clunker in the parking garage of Jem's building.

Chief was still talking on his cell phone when she came out.

He noted her wet hair but probably knew why she'd rinsed it. She ventured into the cluttered office where Pax was seated in a rolling desk chair. Bandit was standing beside it, his head on Pax's thigh. Pax was stroking the dog's head.

"I guess this is why he's no man-killer," he remarked with a fond smile for the German shepherd. "I've spoiled him rotten. Made a wuss out of him."

"You seem to have formed a partnership that works for both of you."

He motioned toward her wet hair. "I could probably rustle up a towel from somewhere around here."

"It'll dry before too long."

Her eyes roved the office, coming to rest on a photograph of Pax and a woman with the neon sign of the Golden Nugget Casino rising up behind them. "Is that Mrs. Royston?" "Girlfriend."

"Do you go to Vegas often?"

"Louisiana's closer," he said, referring to the casinos in Bossier City. "We go over there every chance we get. I shoot craps. She likes the slots." All the while he was talking, he was
watching Chief through the cloudy glass that enclosed the office. "Are y'all...?"

Following his thought, she shook her head. "He was involved with my sister."

He cocked his head in surprise. "Is that right?"

"I would've thought—" "No."

Pax grunted a noncomment. His skeptical regard was hard to stare down, so, at the risk of giving herself away, she turned aside. His question had evoked memories of the near kiss in

the back seat of the taxi. A very dangerous, very wrong, very foolish near kiss that she had very much wanted.

Their small talk ended with that discomfiting exchange.

She pretended to study a Texas state map tacked to the wall, while Pax continued to pet Bandit.

Several minutes later, Chief concluded his calls and came into the office but only as far as the threshold. He fished into his jeans pocket and came up with three one-hundred-dollar bills, which he tossed onto Pax's desk. "That's all the cash I can spare, and I don't want to put these charges on a credit card."

Finding that surprising, Pax sliced a glance at her, but she offered no explanation. Heeding Chief's request, she was leaving the talking to him. Something was out of joint here. She didn't know what, but for fear of saying the wrong thing and upsetting a delicate balance, she thought it best to say nothing.

"You know I'm good for the rest of the charges," Chief told the mechanic. "I'll pay you when I bring the plane back." "I trust you."

"I hope so, because what I'm about to say is important." He paused to make certain he had Pax's full attention. "Take your dog and your girlfriend and leave town tonight. Go to Bossier City. Vegas. Go somewhere. Just get away."

It surprised her that Chief had been eavesdropping on their conversation while he'd been on the telephone.

Pax frowned querulously. "Are you gonna tell me what the hell's going on?"

"No," Chief replied evenly. "You said you trust me. I hope you do. Don't ask questions, just do this. Leave. Immediately. Chances are real good that a couple of guys are gonna show up here in a while, and when they do, you want to be long gone."

Pax studied him a moment, then said, "I haven't seen you in years. Not a word from you. Then you drop out of freaking nowhere in the middle of the night, looking like a poster child for assault and battery, with a beautiful woman in tow, who also looks like a little worse for wear—you'll excuse me for noticing, Melina. You stomp through my place acting like God Hisself, then you rent a plane you can't pay for. Lastly, you tell me to desert my place of business and get out of town,
and I'm not allowed one little '
how come?
'
"

"No. You're not."

"Well, that's bullshit, is what that is. Tell me why I should pay any attention to one goddamn thing you say to me."

Chief wrestled with his answer, then said tightly, "Because you're my father, and I don't want to be responsible for anything bad happening to you."