Justifiable (49 page)

She pushed harder.

Sheets of rain blasted through breaks in the trees. Thunder boomed overhead.

How far could Mason’s men track her?

Would the storm interfere with the bracelet’s signal? She hoped for that miracle since God had been accommodating so far.

  A jagged branch snagged the edge of her thin shorts and ripped a searing gash across her thigh. An adrenaline spike masked the pain, but her lungs begged for oxygen.

  She was an endurance runner, not a sprinter.

  At an unexpected opening in the brush, she stumbled to a stop, sucking air. Snatching the gold paperweight from between her breasts, she flipped it to the compass embedded in the top. She got her bearings during the next brilliant lightning display.

The small airfield she’d seen on a map in Mason’s office should be dead ahead.

Tucking away the compass, she started to move then jerked around at a noise.

Distant barking and howls broke through the deluge. Mason’s dogs trained by expert trackers. Between the animals and the stupid bracelet, they were on her trail. She pushed on with one thought – surely someone at the airfield would help her.

What if they knew Mason?
What if someone at the airport worked for Mason?
At the very least, he flew in there and might be a client who paid for hangar space.

“What ifs” would get her killed if she slowed down.

She ran her fingers compulsively over the band of coins strapped around her waist. Those eight rare coins were as important as her next breath.

She’d sworn once that she would
never
go to jail again. Her one and only conviction had not been her fault. The police hadn’t believed her story then.

They’d laugh in her face this time – right before they handcuffed her.

Taking Mason’s
Saint-Gauden’s Double Eagle
coins had stamped her death warrant. But they didn’t belong to Mason either. He’d stolen the rare pieces from a museum to trade for what he called a once-in-a-lifetime find. Some panel made out of amber from back in the fifteenth century.

She smiled in spite of her pain.

Mason would be empty handed when it came time to deliver the coins on Sunday.

One more way to pay that bastard back
. If she didn’t get caught by Mason or the FBI first.

The FBI should be thrilled to have the stolen coins returned, and her testimony on Mason’s international crime ring. But no one would listen to her until she could prove she had no part in the original theft.

Mason claimed he had evidence that would implicate
her
in the theft. And who would the authorities believe? A local dignitary or a nobody ex-con?

  As if someone had thrown a switch, the downpour fizzled into a steady shower. She burst through a break in the trees and slowed while her eyes adjusted, but moved forward steadily.

The ground fell away. She stumbled down a short drop into a ditch, landing on her knees. No pain because adrenaline still rushed through her, but she’d have bruises on bruises after this. She climbed up and touched pavement.

The runway
.

The good news? No fence around this airport. She scrambled to stand and drew a quaking breath. Freedom got closer by the minute.

The bays of pursuit dogs pierced the night. They were closing in.

A fence at this point might’ve had merits.

Searching past the runway, she spotted the bright glow of an open hangar a quarter of a mile away. With no time to waste, she sprinted toward the illuminated area.

Running felt good in spite of how her thigh throbbed. Blood trickled from the deep gash. Forcing her heart to pump harder only made her bleed more, but she’d survived worse.

She softened her steps as she neared the hangar then crept to the edge of the building. A tall, lanky man in mechanic’s coveralls loaded boxes into a sleek twin-prop cargo plane.

When the worker finished, he walked across the spotless floor toward a brightly lit office.

She could just make out two men on the other side of a glass door. The mechanic pushed the door open and announced the airplane was ready to go.

Angel hesitated. She’d always obeyed the law before. Now, the “slightly illegal things” she never would have done in the past just kept stacking up. Clenching her jaw against the unavoidable twinge of guilt, she made her decision.

That was the old Angel.

The new one wanted to survive and accepted that she’d never outrun those dogs on the ground.

One way or another, she was leaving on that plane.

Chapter 2

Zane peered through the dull glass office door into the pristine hangar where Hack’s man loaded the last box into Zane’s Cessna 404 Titan. He moved over to the pot of strong coffee always ready for pilots and filled his thermos.

“You ain’t listenin’, son.”

“I have to make this run,” Zane answered Hack absently, then shifted around to face the terminal manager.

“You cain’t be serious ‘bout flyin’ in this mess.”  Hack laid a dog-eared queen of spades down, completing another game of solitaire.

Oh, yeah, dead serious
. He had five days left to prove he deserved the charter contract High Vision Enterprises had up for grabs. The other two charter groups had enough equipment and personnel to cover deliveries
anywhere
in the continental US. Zane was already at a disadvantage in that he only wanted the southeastern region, but he’d impressed High Vision last week by delivering a shipment the other two carriers had turned down. This was another opportunity Zane wouldn’t pass up.

Couldn’t pass up.

Zane’s skills as a pilot had given him a reputation across the business for doing what couldn’t be done. His roster of clients had grown steadily since he’d opened for his first cargo flight. But he had other reasons for going after High Vision’s business. He had a deal on the side nobody knew about. That deal hinged on getting contracts with companies like High Vision – companies of interest to the DEA.

The money he made on the side as an undercover informant would save his baby sister’s life. He’d almost lost her to her demons once.

He’d unintentionally abandoned her when he went into the military. Not again.

“I’ll be fine,” Zane said. Genetically engineered white mice, packed in the six cases being loaded on his plane, had to arrive alive and on time. He didn’t give a rat’s ass about the mice. No pun intended. But he also didn’t plan to blow the best chance he had at cinching the deal with High Vision.

“H-o-o-wee!”  Hack raised one gray eyebrow at the weather radar on the huge, outdated CRT computer monitor to his left. The dial-up connection was deadly slow, and the animated radar loop crept across the screen. “Nobody oughta fly in a front like this. Don’t be fooled none by that little break out there. It’s a comin’ in hard.” 

Zane grunted just to give the old guy a response.

Hack shifted his bulk to lean forward, and the vinyl office chair squeaked in protest. “You hear ‘bout that fella down in Montgomery? Told his wife he
had
ta fly in that bad squall come off the Gulf. Said he’d lose his contract with Shoreline Delivery if he didn’t. They used a bag to pick up parts of that man. He was scattered plumb across Alabama.”

Zane shrugged. Life was a gamble.

Odds were no worse now than when he’d put everything on the line for his brothers in arms, which he’d do again in a minute.

It would take more than lousy weather to make him pass up a chance to get one step closer to security for him and his sister.

Everyone vied for High Vision’s business. If he didn’t meet the delivery deadline, somebody else would the next time.

“Don’t you git it?” Hack continued. “That pilot didn’t keep the contract noways. He shoulda just stayed home. If he had, he’d be alive an’ flyin’ today.”

Sure, bad weather upped the potential for a problem, but compared to Zane’s combat flight experience, making Jacksonville tonight would warrant only a little more attention than usual. Of course, his military record, training, and background appeared nowhere on the credentials for Black Jack Charters. 

And neither did his real last name, Jackson.

As Zane Black, he kept his personal life separate from work, and from the sometimes-rough characters he encountered. People who wanted him to fly cargo that was illegal at best, a danger to American citizens at worst. His alter-identity had been part of the deal he’d cut with the DEA when they’d become his partner in the charter business.

They bought the plane and set him up. He busted ass to get contracts of his own – and contracts that interested them.

Damned lucrative work that was filling up a bank account for his sister’s business scary fast.

Beyond that, doing this for his country was work he believed in. Something that made hauling around smelly vermin a little easier.

He’d flown more than his share of dangerous missions in his career as a pilot. On the last one, he’d barely walked away. In the Air Force, he’d been a respected fighter pilot instead of humping commercial cargo for a living.

But that was three years ago and this was today.

Hack’s police scanner crackled with a short conversation in law enforcement code.

“Slow night for the boys in blue,” Hack declared.

“What happened now?” Zane asked with feigned confusion over the cryptic announcements. He’d spoken 10-codes like a native language in his former life. Police agency codes were different than military, but since he’d been doing the side work for his friends in the DEA, he’d learned the police agency usage. He knew exactly what the codes squawking on that radio meant, and what had transpired.

“Got a couple hotheads havin’ at it in a beer joint parkin’ lot down the road.”

Hack’s man loading the Titan shoved the office door open and announced, “All fueled and loaded. Ready to go. You got to feed those critters if you’re late?”

Zane lifted a shoulder. “Beats me. Vision doesn’t make allowances for late. Thanks, Tyler. I’ll close it up.” He preferred to shut the cargo hatch himself and know for sure everything was buttoned up tight.

With a nod, Tyler pulled the door closed, strolled across the hangar, and disappeared into the maintenance shop.

Rain drummed against the metal roof.

“H-o-o-wee. Listen to it come down out there. You hang around and we’ll have us a couple hands o’ poker.”

Zane ignored Hack. A blur of yellow in the hangar caught his attention.

He couldn’t believe his eyes.

Had a woman just slipped into his airplane?

Was she nuts?

And where in the hell had she come from?

Zane snatched up the thermos. “Thanks for the coffee.”  He left before Hack could offer one more warning about aeronautic suicide. The last thing he needed tonight was trouble, even if it came in a long-legged package.

When he stepped outside, an odd sound carried on the swirling wind. Misting rain drifted through the haze of light beyond the hangar.

He stopped to listen.

Dogs bayed in the distance. Bobbing lights flashed near the woods at the far side of the runway. It didn’t take a detective to figure out they were hunting something – or someone.

His stowaway was sadly mistaken if she thought he’d help a fugitive.

Zane paused.

A fugitive on the run from the law would be all over Hack’s police scanner, but the only alert sent out in the last thirty minutes had been the parking lot bar brawl.

Concern tapped along his spine.

He stuck his head inside the cargo door of the Titan and scanned the secured load. The tie-down straps were cinched tight, as they should be. Hundreds of tiny toenails scratched frantically against the aerated crates. A faint putrid smell accompanied the chattering racket.

In the shadows at the rear, he spotted a bruised leg. Blood trickled from deep scratches. His vision adjusted. Two enormous, terrified, whiskey-dark eyes came into focus between a break in the crates.

  Who was she and why were they after her?

And if the police weren’t the ones chasing her, who had turned dogs loose to track her?

Amplified barks and howls echoed louder across the airfield. The bleeding leg disappeared and the two eyes ducked away. A memory crashed into him of his younger sister, battered and bleeding, in the wrong place at the wrong time.

No one had lifted a finger to help her.

Three years of buried guilt roared to the surface. He’d cursed the spineless men who’d turned deaf ears to his sister’s screams.

He’d cursed himself worse for not being there to save her.

Zane climbed inside, slammed the cargo door behind him, then tossed the thermos into a bag on the floor. He moved forward into the left seat, cranked the engines, and jerked on his headset.

As he pulled out to taxi, he passed two black Land Rovers screaming into the airport, sliding to a stop on the taxiway to his left. Out jumped five men in dark suits with bodies the size of refrigerators.