Pilot Error (17 page)

Fizz located the only comfortable spot in the room. He flopped down in the corner with a heartfelt sigh on what looked to be a large pile of rags. Micki mirrored the emotion, but there was more to be done before she sat down to rest.

Keeping one eye on Luke, who was shuffling through a pile of newspapers left on the table, she crossed to the sink and turned the spigot. The water that trickled out was clear and, when she lifted up a handful for a cautious sniff, smelled fairly pure.

Luke's voice came from behind her. "Is it fresh?"

"Seems to be."

Turning to him, she just caught his expression as he shifted aside the recent newspaper with its glaring headline about his brother's helicopter crash.

"I wouldn't drink it, though," she finished, watching as his jaw tightened and he shoved away the offending mess of papers. "Not until we finish our water. Then we can purify this with the tablets I have in my pack—"

She broke off, amazed, as Luke stalked from the table and considered the back wall with a frown. Her bewilderment grew as he took one step back, and then took a running start at the wall to throw his shoulder hard against it.

"What are you doing?"

"This room isn't big enough."

"Excuse me?"

Luke didn't answer. Mystified, Micki watched as he slammed the wall again, then began pacing its length.

"Have you gone nuts, Yank? This is a heck of a time to consider enlarging the living space."

"This has to be a false wall. The room isn't as big on the inside as it looks to be on the outside." Arms crossed, he regarded it with a glare then backtracked to pick up one of the battered chairs. Seeming to choose a place at random, he used it to bestow a savage blow against the wall.

The chair practically disintegrated on impact, but not before a hole the size and shape of a door materialized. Now that it was open, she could see how its lines had blended in with the rough grain of the wood. This place was built more skillfully than it appeared.

She followed Luke to the threshold of the dark opening and called after him as he entered. "What's in there?"

"Not much." There was a muffled thud. "Ow..."

Micki hid a smile, and turned to her backpack as a peeved remark came from the depths of the darkness.

"Not much that I can see, anyway."

Muffled thumps and soft curses continued to come from the hidden space as Micki pulled her flashlight from her survival gear and crossed back to the opening. "Here, let me shed a little light on the subject."

Stepping just inside the door, she flicked on the light and swept it over the narrow room. There were several shelves, all empty, and the same scratch marks on the floor.

"Damn." Luke's gaze traveled the room with her light. "It's cleaned out, too. They didn't leave anything behind."

Prompted by the angry despair in his tone, Micki rested a hand on his arm. When he turned to her, she gave the flashlight to him.

"We'll get them, Luke, and we'll make them pay for what they did to Ray. You can count on that."

Micki held eye contact with him over the flashlight. The smile that slowly filtered into Luke's solemn expression made her suddenly aware of her slip of having used his given name. Before he could respond with either a wry comment or a patronizing putdown—or worse—she cleared her throat and moved back across to the main room.

"But first," she said, as if nothing had happened, "we've got to take care of some basic needs."

Luke followed her to the shattered door jamb. She left him leaning on the frame, wondering what he was thinking but not daring to look at his face again, and went to examine what Fizz had claimed for a bed. Gently nudging the dog aside, Micki shuffled through the pile of rags and uncovered a men's dress shirt with a large tear down its right sleeve. Closer examination brought a smile. As suspected, it bore the label of a pricey New York designer, but considering they were up against counterfeiters, it was a sure bet the garment wasn't genuine.

"Look, they left us dry clothes." She fired the shirt at him, trying hard to be the Micki he knew. Being cooped up with Luke Hardigan was starting to rattle her almost as much as the lightning. "There has to be something we can wear."

Next she unearthed a men's gray jogging suit that sported name brand patches already unraveling from the pants, and a hole in the collar seam of the shirt. The cheap imitations hadn't even survived long enough to make it to their intended store.

Micki stood with the jogging suit, despite Fizz's reproachful gaze for stealing a good portion of his bed. "If you look through there," she told Luke with a nod at the remaining pile, "I bet you can find something stunning to go with that shirt."

Luke snorted, but moved to examine the rejected clothes. Despite herself, Micki glanced at his back as he squatted to rifle the pile, his muscles well-defined and moving enticingly under his soaked shirt. His rummaging scored a pair of men's jeans with an obvious flaw running down the left leg of the denim.

Although Luke seemed unaware of her as he held them in front of himself for a test fit, Micki turned away, unable—or unwilling—to put a tag on the sensations he was evoking inside her.

"And after we dress for dinner," she babbled distractedly, "we take care of the really important stuff. Dinner itself."

"Dinner? What sort of dinner?" He sounded so hopeful that it made her smile with genuine amusement.

"Military-style rations—MREs. I ordered them from a military supply catalog for just this sort of occasion."

"Always the survivor?"

"You got it."

"Great, I'm starving."

Snagging the flashlight from his hand, Micki headed toward the hidden room they had discovered. "Not so fast. First, I'm going to change." She spoke to Fizz as she passed him. "If he peeks, boy, rip his leg off, okay?"

Looking obliging, Fizz settled down on the remainder of the discarded clothing pile, facing the doorway.

Smiling at the long-suffering glance of innocence she got from Luke, she ducked into what passed for privacy... and a chance to examine those mysterious dogtags in her pocket.

***

Darkness cloaked the silent aircraft that roosted in the hangar beyond the glass-walled office. The rain was a loud and constant roar on the tin roof, broken only by the intermittent presence of thunder and lightning.

Dirk let himself in Micki's office with the key he had copied years ago. It fit the lock on her office door as perfectly as his other copied key fit the door to her trailer. He sat at her desk, turned on the lamp, and immediately scowled at the paper chaos. How did she ever keep anything straight?

Not that he had time to reprimand her sloppiness now; there would be time to correct that bad habit, and others, once they were married. The bogus loading graph he had shown to Reynolds had bought him maybe twenty minutes, maybe less. He had claimed the cargo plane that they intended to fly to Bermuda was so tail heavy that they would never make it off the ground. The numbers he'd put on his graph confirmed it. To rectify this, he'd said, relying on pilot jargon to cloud the issue, some of the heavier crates would have to be repositioned closer to the C-46's center of gravity to change the payload moments.

Although suspicious, Reynolds trusted Dirk's proficiency as an ex-Marine pilot, and had reluctantly barked orders to the men. Or maybe it was simply because he would be riding shotgun in the cockpit and wasn't taking any chances. Feeling smug with his victory, Dirk had left with a casual comment that he was going for a bite to eat, and then had jumped in his work truck to drive straight across the tarmac to Micki's office. Now he was gambling that the storm would strengthen to a point where it would genuinely compromise a safe takeoff that evening.

Clearing a spot on the desk, he flipped open the tan-covered business ledger. Before he departed for Bermuda and a luxurious retirement with his new bride-to-be, Dirk meant to find out exactly what was on the pages Luke Hardigan had copied from Micki's ledger. While he was at it, he would also make sure there were no other loose ends left behind to incriminate himself, his employer, or Micki in the trafficking of counterfeit goods.

Flipping through the last few ledger pages made him swear softly. In all likelihood, Hardigan had copied evidence of fuel receipts and shipping payments for all the trips Micki had made to the distribution shop in Miami. When matched with the destinations and dates in her flight log book, photocopies or not, it would be enough to get the ball rolling in a Federal indictment.

Dirk had to find Micki and get those copies back, or there were going to be some nagging complications left behind after they departed US soil. He had to destroy the paper trail and cover his tracks.

Disgusted, he flipped the ledger closed and surveyed the papers and forms littering the desk. There was nothing else of any real importance there—just the legitimate paperwork of
Jacinto Scenic Flights,
which tomorrow would be nonexistent. Hardigan had zeroed in on the things that Dirk hadn't wanted him to find, a prime clue that the self-styled tourist wasn't all that he claimed.

Where the hell was he, and what was he doing with Micki?

With a jealous growl, Dirk's arm swept the clutter off the desktop. As paper gently rained down around him, he stared at the notebook computer that his temper had revealed underneath. He conducted all business transactions for Dominic Van Allen on a computer identical to it. The portable hard drive that documented every scrap of merchandise received and distributed in the past three years was packed securely in the soft-sided attaché by his feet. Another computer, secreted away in a private study in Bermuda, would eventually give up the information for Van Allen's use alone.

If only Micki had started using the laptop like he'd wanted her to. Then he could have gotten into her files via the internet and a backdoor password whenever he wanted, as easily as he could gain access to her home and work space with his duplicate keys.

She would never have known.

Hell, Micki was so computer illiterate that he could have set himself up as a registered user and logged in right under her nose. A little doctoring here and there, and then they would both have been in the clear. Instead, that snoop Hardigan was in possession of some very sensitive information.

Pausing, Dirk recalled the fight they had about it last week, when he'd tried to tempt Micki into the 21st century with a brand new tablet PC. He had tried to sell it as not as cumbersome as the laptop, and really, really easy to learn to use. He'd even put a tasteless hot-pink leather cover on it, hoping she would find it more feminine and therefore more appealing.

Micki had been so pig-headed about the modernization of her record keeping that she had almost thrown the tablet back at him in point blank refusal. Her old man had run the business with a ledger and file cabinet, and what was good enough for him was good enough for her. Dirk was just glad that 'dear old dad' had head-on'd a semi before he'd met his daughter. He could just imagine all the times he would have butted heads with The Colonel otherwise.

Damn. Right about now, Dirk could have throttled Micki for being so... loyal. Things were going to change once she was back in his arms and back under his control. He was going to squash that independent streak of hers for good. Micki Jacinto would do as he told her—or else.

Lighting a cigarette, Dirk drew on it deeply to calm his temper and then parked it on the edge of the desk. Swiveling the chair toward the file cabinet, it didn't take him long to unearth the tablet PC from the spillover of papers on top. Opening the gaudy hot-pink cover, his expert gaze skimmed over the darkened screen. There wasn't a single smudge or fingerprint on it; it had never been turned on, not even out of mild curiosity.

Well, she'd be more amenable to it when that was all he allowed her to have for social interaction, he thought sourly as he swung back to the desk. Then she would grow to love it, just like she would grow to love him again.

Dirk was just fitting the tablet into the attaché with his laptop and USB hard drive when the telephone by his elbow rang, loud and shrill against the din of the storm overhead. Distracted, his gaze strayed to it as he counted off six rings before the answering machine picked up and Micki's familiar voice filled the room.

"You've reached
Jacinto Scenic Flights.
If you'd like to charter a flight, or a courier run, please leave your name and number and I'll return your call as quickly as possible."

There was a pause long enough for Dirk to begin to turn away impatiently. He didn't need to listen to a tourist ramble out a long message about flight times, tour questions and cost. But the southwestern drawl that interrupted the silence drew him up short.

"Micki, hey. Give me a call."

Dirk scowled. It was Tex Mason, Coast Guard pilot and all round Good Guy. Not to mention the bastard who had the hots for his woman.

"We missed you at
The Sandpiper
and—" Abruptly the cowboy turned flyboy seemed to think better of what he was going to say and changed tack. "It's around twenty hundred Friday night. Just give me a quick call and check in, okay?"

The message ended and Dirk growled softly. They were supposed to have been out of Marathon before anyone missed Micki. Now that plan was obviously shot to hell. Perfect. Just perfect. He was going to have to do something quick to salvage this.