Low Pressure

“You’re richer tonight than—”

“I want a straight answer. Did you know about her book?”

“Book?”

“A book. You know, like people read.”

“Does it have pictures?”

“No.”

“Then I didn’t know about it.”

Dent searched Gall’s eyes, which were rheumy but free of deceit. “I’ll kill you later. Right now, I’m ready to put up my airplane and call it a day.”

While he was going about it, Bellamy and Gall conducted their business in the hangar office. But he kept an eye on them, and, as she came out of the hangar, he placed himself directly in her path.

Stiffly, she said, “Thank you.”

He wasn’t about to let her getaway be that easy. “I may not use words like ‘expunge,’ but I know how to fly. I’m a good pilot. You had no reason to be scared.”

Not quite meeting his gaze, she said, “I wasn’t afraid of the flying.”

Chapter 3

Together Dent and Gall got the airplane into the hangar. Dent climbed back in to retrieve his sunglasses and iPad, and spotted the copy of Low Pressure lying in the seat Bellamy had occupied. “Son of a bitch.” He grabbed the book and, as soon as he cleared the door of his airplane, made a beeline for his Vette.

Gall turned away from the noisily humming refrigerator, a six-pack of Bud in his hand. “I thought we’d crack a couple of—Where are you going?”

“After her.”

“What do you mean, after her?”

Dent got into the driver’s seat and started the engine, but when he would have pulled the door closed, Gall was there, the six-pack in one hand, his other braced against the open car door. “Don’t go borrowing trouble, Ace.”

“Oh that’s funny. You’re the one who set me up with them.”

“I was wrong.”

“You think?” He gave the door a tug. “Let go.”

“Why’re you going after her?”

“She left her book behind. I’m going to return it.”

He yanked hard on the door and Gall released it. “You should leave it alone.”

Dent didn’t acknowledge the warning. He shoved the Vette into first gear and peeled out of the hangar. He knew the road well, which was fortunate, because while he drove with one hand, he used his other to wrestle his wallet from his back pocket, fish the check from it, and, after reading the address, accessed a GPS app on his iPad. In a matter of minutes he had a map to her place.

Georgetown, not quite thirty miles north of Austin, was known for its Victorian-era architecture. Its town square and tree-lined residential streets boasted structures with gingerbread trim.

Bellamy lived in one such house. It sat in a grove of pecan trees and had a deep veranda that ran the width of the house. Dent parked at the curb and, taking the book with him, followed a flower-bordered path to the steps leading up to the porch. He took them two at a time and reached past a potted Boston fern to ring the doorbell.

Then he saw that the front door stood ajar. He knocked. “Hello?” He heard a noise, but it wasn’t an acknowledgment. “Hello? Bellamy?” As fast as he’d been driving, she couldn’t have been that far ahead of him. “Hello?”

She appeared in the wedge between the door frame and the door, and it looked to him like she was depending on it for support. Her eyes were wide and watery, and her face was pale, bringing into stark contrast a sprinkling of freckles across her nose and cheeks that he hadn’t noticed before.

She licked her lips. “What are you doing here?”