Flirting with Disaster (3 page)

But he would always know the truth.

The Mavericks tied it up by halftime. During a news break, Dave pulled a ten from his wallet. It was time for him to hit the road.

“Hey, Dave!” John said. “Is that who I think it is?”

Dave turned his gaze back to the television. A cable news anchor was saying something about a plane crash. Something about the pilot being killed.

Then a photo flashed on the screen.

Dave froze, feeling as if the blood had thickened in his veins, slowing to a crawl, making him unable to move a muscle. Stabbed by recognition, long-buried emotion burst to the surface, and only by swallowing hard and grasping the edge of the table with tense fingers was he able to keep his face impassive.

“That’s her, isn’t it?” John asked. “Lisa Merrick?”

“Yeah,” Dave said on a hushed breath. “It’s her.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw John and Alex gauging his reaction, but he couldn’t tear his gaze away. After all this time, he was astonished to see Lisa’s face and even more astonished that she looked nearly the same as she had in high school—strong features, short red-gold hair in a tangled, windblown style, and searing green eyes that radiated raw passion. In the dark of night sometimes he still thought about her, and when he did, this was the face he saw.

Beside Lisa’s photo was one of a forty-something man, Dr. Adam Decker, who was with her at the time the plane went down. Then the report quoted Dr. Robert Douglas, who was the administrator of an organization that flew doctors into a remote area of Mexico to provide health care at a free clinic. He told reporters that on a volunteer mission Lisa took off near the town of Santa Rios yesterday evening, then crashed into a river. They didn’t know the cause of the accident. There was speculation that the bodies might never be recovered.

“So Lisa Merrick became a pilot for a humanitarian organization?” John said. “Holy shit. Can you believe that?”

Yes. He could. John thought it was unbelievable only because he hadn’t known her like Dave had. Nobody had. It didn’t matter that she was a girl from the wrong side of the tracks, who apparently had nothing but a dead-end life ahead of her. All that mattered was that she’d wanted out of her situation. She’d wanted desperately to be a pilot, and it looked as if she’d accomplished that. She’d yanked herself up out of that quagmire loosely referred to as a family, gone after what she wanted, and gotten it. He felt a rush of admiration for what she’d accomplished. She’d lived her dream.

And now she was dead.

“Hey, Dave,” Alex said. “Are you all right?”

Dave continued to stare at the screen.

“I guess it’s kind of a shock,” Alex said. “I mean, I know how you felt about her—”

“You don’t have a clue how I felt about her.”

Dave’s relationship to Lisa had been a mystery to his brothers in high school. The physical attraction part they’d understood. After all, Lisa Merrick had been a well-endowed girl who dressed provocatively, who’d been the subject of more locker-room talk than any other girl in Tolosa South history. But trying to explain to John and Alex that he saw something in Lisa beyond her bad-girl reputation had been a losing proposition.

“So how
did
you feel about her?” Alex asked. “What really happened between you and Lisa Merrick?”

Dave gave his brother an icy stare. “I told you what happened. Nothing.”

“Yeah, that’s what you said back then. But this is now.”

“Are you asking me if I slept with her?”

“You wouldn’t have been the first guy to,” John said. “Or the second.”

“Or the tenth,” Alex added.

“I was engaged to Carla! Do you really think I’d do that?”

“I can’t imagine that you would,” Alex said. “But I know what Lisa Merrick was like. Once she had a guy in her sights, it was all but over.”

Dave leaned in and skewered his brother with an angry glare. “Look, Alex. I know what you thought of her. What everybody thought of her. But there was more to Lisa than you or anybody else ever knew. I don’t expect you to understand that. But I do expect you to respect the fact that she’s dead and shut the hell up about her.” He shoved his chair back and stood up. “I’ve got to go.”

“Aw, come on, Dave,” John said. “We didn’t mean to piss you off. Will you just sit down?”

Dave tossed another ten down on the table. “You guys have another beer on me. It appears you’ve got a lot more speculating to do.”

Over his brothers’ protests, he turned and walked out of the bar. By the time he reached his car, he felt a little shaky. He got into the driver’s seat, closed the door, then stopped and leaned his head against the headrest, closing his eyes. Seeing Lisa’s face on that television screen had awakened something hot and intense inside him, a reminder of the passion that had once oozed from her like hot lava.

She’s dead. Lisa is dead.

The next hour passed in a daze. He picked up Ashley and brought her home, thinking he ought to have another word with her about standing up for herself with the swing smacker, but he couldn’t think of a single useful thing to say. He gave her a bath, then tucked her and her stuffed rabbit into bed.

Pulling up a pillow, Dave sat down on the bed beside her, leaning against the headboard. She slid a bedtime book off her nightstand. Fortunately, she knew
Stellaluna
by heart and ended up reading it to him, so he could pretend to be listening when he couldn’t have focused on the story if his life depended on it.

Ashley’s voice was little more than white noise to him as the minutes passed. All he could think about was Lisa’s plane going into that river in the Mexican wilderness and the tragic loss of a life that had clearly held more potential than even he’d been able to imagine. And he couldn’t help wondering whether she’d forgotten him the moment they’d parted or carried his memory around inside her for the past eleven years, just as he’d carried hers.

Dave heard the phone ring in the kitchen. He turned to Ashley. “Back in a minute, honey. Flopsy can hold the place, okay?”

Dave grabbed one of her rabbit’s floppy ears, laid it across the page, and closed the book. Ashley smiled up at him. He patted her on the arm, then rose from her bed, went down the hall to the kitchen, and caught the phone on the fourth ring.

“Hello?”

He heard a woman’s voice. Soft. Grainy. Almost a whisper. “Dave?”

He pressed the phone more tightly to his ear. “Yes?”

“This is Lisa Merrick.”

chapter two

For a few stunned moments, Dave’s brain refused to engage. “What did you say?”

“Lisa Merrick.”

Dave was speechless. All kinds of thoughts flew through his mind, none of them making any sense at all. Somebody had to be yanking him around. Big-time. Lisa Merrick was dead. That news report tonight hadn’t left any room for interpretation.

“Look,” he said sharply. “I don’t know who this is, but it’s not Lisa Merrick. It can’t be. She’s—”

“In the shop at school,” she said on a harsh breath. “Three days before graduation—”

“Stop.”

Dave felt a bone-deep sense of dread well up inside him. Either Lisa had told somebody what had happened that day and that person was playing one hell of a nasty joke, or . . .

Or this really was Lisa.

In that moment, he felt an irrational jolt of alarm that people who believed in ghosts might not be deluded after all.

“Where are you?” he asked. “What happened?”

“I’m in Mexico.” Her voice sounded weak, disembodied. “My plane crashed.”

“I know. There was a TV news report. That doctor, Robert Douglas, reported that you’re dead.”

“That’s what he told everybody? That I died in the crash?”

“Yes. He said your plane went down right after takeoff. You need to call him. Tell him you’re okay.”

“No! I can’t do that!”

“Why not?”

“Because he’s the one who tried to kill me!”

Dave snapped to attention, a sinister shiver running all the way down his spine. “Wait a minute. Kill you? What do you mean? How?”

“My plane going down wasn’t an accident,” she said, a heavy, hushed quality to her voice. “It was sabotage. He thinks he killed me. And if he finds me now and realizes he failed, I’m dead.”

“Where are you exactly?”

“Santa Rios. A couple hundred miles southeast of Monterrey.”

Dave fumbled through a kitchen drawer for a pencil and scribbled the information on a pad beside the telephone.

“Lisa, listen to me. If you think somebody’s out to kill you, you need to go to the authorities. Tell them what you suspect. Tell them—”

“No!”

“It’s the only way. If you’re in danger—”

“Don’t you understand?” she said, panic lacing her voice. “They’re in on it! The sheriff, probably, and God knows who else!”

Dave froze in utter disbelief. “Are you telling me there’s a conspiracy to kill you?”

“Yes! Because I know about the counterfeit drugs! Robert Douglas is manufacturing them around here somewhere. Somehow he knew I found them, because he sabotaged my plane when I tried to take them back across the border. And then there were the men who came to make sure I died in the crash. The ones with the machine guns!”

“Machine guns?”

“My plane was hung up on the side of a ravine. They thought I was still in it, but I’d gotten out and moved to a ledge beside it. Then they shot at it. Over and over. It fell into the river. I fell, too, because I was still close to the plane. After I hit the water, I made it to the bank. Then I walked, oh, God, so far. All last night and all day today. I don’t know how many miles. Finally I made it back to Santa Rios, to this phone—”

“Hold on. Slow down. Drugs? Machine guns? You’re not making any sense.”

“I’m telling you they’re after me. They could be anywhere right now—I just don’t know. If they see me, they’ll kill me. Do you understand? They’ll kill me!”

“You have to tell somebody down there what’s happened to you. Find somebody—”

“No! I have no way of knowing who’s in on it and who isn’t! Robert Douglas for sure, but who else? I just don’t know!”

None of this made any sense at all. It sounded like the ramblings of an insane woman. He’d heard conspiracy theories before, but this was ridiculous.

“Oh, God,” she said with a weary breath. “My head . . . My head hurts so much. . . .”

“Your head? What happened?”

“I hit it on something when I crashed . . . the control panel maybe. . . .”

All at once, Dave understood. She sounded delirious. Delusional. She could have crawled away from the crash alive without anyone knowing it, trying not to be seen because of a head injury that had altered her cognition and induced paranoia. She was afraid, yes. But it could very well be that the thing she was afraid of existed only inside her mind.

He needed to find out exactly where she was, then get in touch with the law enforcement in Santa Rios or maybe even the doctor who thought she was dead. Get somebody down there to find her and get her to a hospital.

“Lisa,” he said. “Listen to me. You need help.”

“Yes,” she said on a breath of relief. “Yes. I need help.”

“Tell me exactly where you are.”

“There’s an abandoned silver-mining camp on the road leading southeast out of Santa Rios. It’s about two miles out of town. I’m going to hide out there.”

Hide out? Jesus. She
was
delusional. He scribbled down the information.

“Listen carefully,” he said. “I’m going to send somebody. Somebody to help you. A doctor. You’ve been injured, and you need—”

“No! Aren’t you listening? The only doctor within a hundred miles wants me dead!”

How was he ever going to get through to her? “Lisa, you’ve been through a real trauma, so I understand how you might think you’re in danger, but—”

“You think I’m crazy? Is that it? I got a bump on the head and went right off the deep end?”

“No, of course not. But sometimes head injuries—”

“Damn it, I’m not crazy! Robert Douglas is out to kill me!”

“Take it easy,” he told her. “You’re going to be all right.”

“No, I’m not. I have no way out of here. I need help. I need . . .” She paused, her voice with a heavy, hushed quality. “I need you.”

Dave felt a jolt of surprise. “Me? What do you mean?”

“I need you to come here.”

“What?”

“Please.”

He paced to the extent of the phone cord, then paced back. He couldn’t believe this. Lisa Merrick was calling him with a story about smuggling and sabotage and attempted murder, and now she wanted him to come hundreds of miles to the backwoods of Mexico to foil a conspiracy to kill her?

“You told me once that if I ever needed you, I should call you.” Lisa’s voice slipped almost to a whisper. “I need you now.”

Suddenly Dave remembered. Those were the last words he’d ever spoken to her, because after what had happened between them he’d wanted to do something for her. Anything. But all he could do was make a promise for the future, tell her that if something in her life ever became insurmountable, he’d try to help her.