Where There's Smoke

“I’ll take ten thousand now.” His voice was amazingly calm, but there were lines of strain around his lips, which moved woodenly. “We’ll negotiate the balance of what you owe me when and if we come back alive.” He turned away.

She whipped the robe from the bed and held it against her. “Key?”

He stopped on his way through the door and, after a long hesitation, turned around.

“I know why I’m doing this, but why are you?” She shook her head with misapprehension. “What changed your mind? What have you got to gain?”

“Except for a measly ten grand, absolutely nothing. The point is, like you, I haven’t got a goddamn thing to lose.”

Chapter Nineteen

“Did you love my brother?”

The question came out of nowhere.

Lara had closed her eyes, but she wasn’t dozing. She was too nervous to sleep, though her eyelids were gritty from lack of it. She hadn’t slept well for the last several days before their departure.

It had been at least a half-hour since Key and she had exchanged a word. There’d been no sound in the cockpit except the drone of the two engines. They’d left Brownsville, Texas, late that afternoon. For hours thereafter, the rugged terrain of the interior of Mexico had stretched to the horizon. After crossing the Yucatán peninsula, Key had flown out over the Pacific Ocean and made a wide U-turn. No land was yet in sight as they approached Montesangre from the sea.

There was only a sliver of moon; Key had planned their trip around the lunar cycle. He’d eliminated the lights on the wingtips of the craft. The stygian darkness was relieved only by the muted illumination of the instrument panel.

She had sensed his mounting tension as he mentally prepared for the difficult landing and hadn’t distracted him with meaningless conversation. They’d left Eden Pass at noon and flown to Brownsville, where they’d eaten. She’d had no appetite, but Key had insisted she clean her plate. “You don’t know how long it’ll be before your next meal,” he’d said.

He’d refueled the airplane, which she assumed belonged to the man in serious debt since it was a Cessna 310. As agreed, she didn’t ask. In preparation for the trip, Key had removed all but two of the five seats—in order to make room for the casket, she assumed. He’d also equipped the plane with a navigation aid radio.

“It’s called ‘loran,’ ” he explained. “I can set the latitude and longitude of the landing strip and this baby finds it for me. Can you get me the coordinates?”

Through the underground, she had obtained this vital information, but they had experienced some anxious days before it arrived. “We can’t go during a damned full moon,” Key ranted. “If your priest doesn’t come through by the twenty-fifth, we’ll have to wait another month.”

They could have waited a month, but mentally they were geared up to go. Waiting longer would have increased their stress. They had talked the topic to death. Their nerves were raw. Fortunately, barely making it under the deadline, the priest came through with the coordinates Key needed.

Behind their seats he’d stowed the duffel bags in which they’d packed a few changes of clothes and toiletries. Her doctor’s bag had been packed to capacity. Key had also brought along a camera bag carrying a 35mm camera and several lenses. If they were questioned by anyone in authority—and he assured her that wasn’t likely—they would pretend to be a couple on their way to Chichén Itzá to photograph the pyramids.

There was a hidden compartment in one of the wing lockers. He’d placed a rifle there. He’d kept the two handguns in the cockpit. She had recoiled the first time she saw the weapons.

“This one’s yours.” He held a revolver.

“I can barely lift it.”

“You’ll be able to if you have to, believe me. Grip it with both hands when you fire.”

“Randall wanted to teach me to fire a gun when we moved to Montesangre, but I didn’t want to learn.”

“You don’t have to be a good marksman with this. It’s a Magnum .357. Just point it in the general direction of your target and pull the trigger. Consider it a hand-held cannon. Whatever you shoot at, you’ll destroy or severely damage.”

She shuddered at the thought. Ignoring her aversion, he’d given her a crash course on how to fire and load the revolver.

They were as prepared as they would ever be. Now they were close to their destination. A million things could go wrong: some of them he’d shared with her, many he had probably kept to himself, she thought.

Was his unheralded question about her loving Clark his way of diverting his mind from the dangers they faced?

She turned and looked at him in profile. He hadn’t shaved in a week. “Built-in camouflage,” he’d said when she mentioned the darkening stubble. The beard only intensifi

ed his good looks, adding the dubious charm of disreputability.

“Did I love Clark?” she repeated. Facing forward again, she stared through the windshield into the unrelieved blackness. She tried not to think about this flying island of technology being all that was between her and the Pacific Ocean. To her mind, aerodynamics defied logic. The craft seemed awfully small and terribly vulnerable in this vacuum of black.

“Yes, I loved him.” She felt the sudden movement of his head as he turned to look at her. She kept her gaze forward. “That’s why his betrayal was so devastating. He threw me to the wolves and watched from the safety of his elected office while they ripped me to shreds. Not only did he fail to come to my rescue, but, by his silence, he denounced me. I wouldn’t have thought that Clark was capable of such disloyalty and cowardice.”