On Wings Of Deliverance

Owen Carmichael would never have been her first choice of escorts. Lord, why not somebody safe? Somebody a little less…charismatic?

Pushing open the barn door that Owen had created from the boards he’d cut out of the wall, Benny poked her head inside. She could hear the animals rustling in their stalls. She wasn’t afraid of the little goat, but the idea of getting butted in the dark didn’t appeal, either. Hopefully he was locked in a stall for the night.

If the barn had been shadowy in the daytime, it was positively Cimmerian tonight, and it smelled like…well, like a barn. A draft through the open door stirred the hay and she sneezed. Leaving the door open so the moonlight could filter in, she waited a moment until her eyes adjusted to the darkness. As hangars went, this one was on the cramped side. The nose of the plane loomed over her head to the left and she could barely discern the outline of the door panel in front of the wings.

A moment later, she had the door open and managed to lower the steps. By the glow of the interior light, she climbed into the cabin. Sliding into the pilot’s seat, she laid her head back against the soft leather back of the chair. Astonishing, this sudden feeling of being enveloped by Owen. Even more surprising was the realization that she didn’t feel threatened. Just safe.

She studied the instrument panel. Earlier in the day, she’d been too frightened to pay much attention to all those dials, knobs and switches. Clearly it would take a pretty good brain to operate a million-dollar aircraft like this. Owen liked to perpetrate a class-clown persona, but he had hidden depths. Well hidden.

She grinned to herself. Okay, the first aid kit. He said it would be in the compartment between the seats. She lifted the lid of the box, which reached to about the level of the armrests. Its interior light revealed a couple of maps, a pair of sunglasses and a spiral-bound notebook. She dumped them all in her lap to continue digging for the first aid kit.

There it was, a white metal box with the traditional red cross on top. She opened it and removed the antibiotic ointment, as well as a couple of adhesive bandages, then put the box back in the bottom of the compartment.

She examined Owen’s aviator sunglasses before returning them to the console. Expensive. Quality eyewear must be a necessity for a pilot. She started to put the remaining two items in her lap back into the console when a photograph fell out of the notebook and slipped to the floor. Sticking the maps in a niche beside Owen’s sunglasses, she reached down to pick up the picture.

She turned it over and caught her breath. “Oh, my….”

It was a snapshot taken the day of the swimming expedition. She’d let a couple of the little girls bury her feet in the sand and Owen had captured her close-up, with her head thrown back, laughing.

He was quite a good amateur photographer, and he’d shown her the other pictures he’d taken of the children that day. But she hadn’t imagined he would stick this one in a notebook and bring it all the way to Mexico.

Her heart thumped a little. Just how deeply engaged were his feelings for her?

THREE

Chief Justice of the Tennessee Supreme Court, the Honorable J. Paul Grenville III, had pulled his Harley into one of the historic roadside parks along I–20 to Memphis. He sat on a picnic table with his cell phone pressed to his ear. On his way home from Nashville for the weekend, he’d stopped to check up on a certain international project.

“What do you mean, you missed her?” In his agitation, he dropped his helmet and it went bouncing against some Confederate soldier’s headstone. Probably one of Grenville’s ancestors. He was related to half the state of Tennessee.

The voice on the other end of the cell connection surged and dropped out. What good was the North American Free Trade Agreement when you couldn’t even get a good cell connection with employees in Mexico?

“—didn’t get close enough for a clear shot,” he finally heard. “They took off, headed across the Gulf.”

“Took off? You mean in a boat?”

“No! Some big blond guy had a Cessna freight plane parked on the beach. There was a kid there, too, but he drove off in the girl’s Jeep before I got close.”

“You checked out the plane, right? Where did it go?” Grenville picked up his helmet and paced along the concrete sidewalk edging the cemetery. Briggs had been in his employ for nearly twenty years, since the days when Grenville had been on the Tennessee Court of Appeals. Briggs was methodical, thorough and ruthless. In a word, invaluable.

“Of course I did. Turns out he’s an off-duty Border Patrol agent on a supply run for some missionary outfit out of Laredo. I figure that’s where they’re heading.”

“Make sure.” Grenville mounted the bike. “Get the flight plan and intercept them when they land. It would have been a lot easier to get her before she reached the States.”

“I know.” Briggs made a disgusted noise. “She really fooled me during the interview. I thought I had the wrong woman until I poked through her stuff while she was out of the room.”

“You better get something straight right now, Briggs. This girl is young, but she is not stupid.” In fact, that had been the thing that most attracted Grenville once upon a time. “I’m counting on you to keep her from scotching this appointment.”

“You know I will, sir.”

“And Briggs—”

“Yes, sir?”

“The pilot has to go, too.”

Grenville ended the call and sat there a moment, contemplating the budding greenery in the woods behind the cemetery. He had sacrificed too much to let some little ex-hooker ruin his chances at one of the most powerful posts in the judicial branch of government.

Gustavo snored like a B-52 bomber, and Owen woke up with a crick in his neck from trying to keep his ears covered while sleeping on a tile floor with nothing but his arm for a pillow. He and Eli had camped all their lives, so roughing it wasn’t a problem. Still, he’d found himself tossing and turning all night.

The look on Bernadette’s face when she’d come in, armed with ointment and Band-Aids, would probably give him nightmares for months. Demanding to see his thumb, she’d squirted half a tube of medicine on him and nearly cut off his circulation with a bandage. Then she’d disappeared behind the curtain, where she and Señora de Oca would sleep.

He couldn’t understand her sudden agitation. After the crash landing, she seemed to have settled down, almost enjoying the impromptu bed-and-breakfast scenario. Maybe she was worrying about whoever had shot at her in Agrexco. One way or another, he was gonna have to find out what that was all about.

He sat up, stretching, and looked at the backlit dial of his watch. Not quite 5:00 a.m. and Gustavo was already gone, apparently outside tending to his animals. Maybe there would be eggs for breakfast.

There wasn’t much light yet in the dingy little living room; Mariela had unplugged the Christmas bulbs before following Benny to bed, and the sun barely glowed around the edges of the thick polyester curtains hanging in the windows. Owen had a sudden overwhelming urge to get out of this place. He’d have been happier spending the night in the plane, but leaving Benny alone wasn’t an option. Though Mariela and Gustavo de Oca seemed like nice enough people, he felt better knowing Benny was just on the other side of that curtain.

Pulling on his boots, he wondered if she’d slept well. No looking, he reminded himself as he glanced at the curtain. He quietly let himself out the kitchen door.

He walked down the hill toward the barn, intending to inspect the plane before Benny got up and around. A thorough examination revealed that, besides the holes in the fuel tanks, which he could have patched, the right wing had a long crack near the fuselage. Without the tools or materials to fix it, he felt like a surgeon diagnosing an inoperable tumor.

Getting Benny safely home in a reasonable amount of time was going to be a challenge. He didn’t have much cash, and the border was a long way off. Laying a hand on the cool steel belly of the aircraft, he spent a few minutes praying for wisdom.

Feeling immeasurably stronger, he went searching for old Gustavo and found him inside the barn, feeding the goat. The little billy gave Owen a disdainful bleat, then went back to his hay.

“Good morning, Gustavo.” Owen leaned over the top of the stall. “Thanks for your hospitality.”

“It’s nothing.” Gustavo propped his hands atop his pitchfork. “We don’t see many Americans out here, so you must excuse my rudeness yesterday. I thought you might be drug traffickers running from the law.”

Owen smiled at the irony of that remark. “Not a chance. Do you have any idea where we might get hold of a car?”

“Now that,” Gustavo said, “is a large problem. As I told the señorita last night, all I have is my truck, and my closest neighbor is twenty kilometers away. Unless—” he scratched his whiskery chin “—unless you want to ride my mule up to Poza Rica. My cousin Jorge runs a used-car lot and I’m sure he’d give you a good deal.”

Owen thought of several objections to that plan, not least of which was Benny’s desire to stay away from cities. Still, their choices were limited. “Couldn’t you drive Benny and me to Poza Rica? We’d be glad to pay you—”

But Gustavo was shaking his head. “I’m sorry, but I can’t leave right now. Lajuana is due to drop her calf. She had trouble last time.”

Having grown up around horses, Owen understood the concept of protecting one’s livestock. Still, the prospect of riding a mule twenty miles struck him as a bit over the top. “But won’t you need your mule?”

“It is only mid-March.” Gustavo shrugged. “I won’t plow for another two weeks, at least. You could leave Sunflower with Jorge. I will drive up to get him later.”

“Okay, then, how about letting us borrow your truck? I’ll pay someone to drive it back to you. The plane’s good collateral, don’t you think?”

“I need my truck.” Gustavo picked up the pitchfork and went back to work, the subject obviously closed. “If you don’t want to take Sunflower, you can walk.”

Owen glanced over his shoulder at the busted-up plane, then at the swaybacked mule, contentedly munching oats in its stall a few feet away.

Oh, how the mighty are fallen.