Robert Walker - Darkest Instinct

She read into his words that he’d also have to answer to Pete.

“ I’ll make it worth your while.”

He was instantly interested. “How much?” She drew on her best Lauren Bacall voice now. “Double your usual rate.” She saw his eyebrows twitch.

“ Phewww… wish I could. I hate turning down green, and being grounded all in the same day. now that’s a bitch. Pardon, ma’am.”

“ Then let me take it up; I’ll fly it out, return it in a few days.”

His hands shot up in a defensive gesture as if she’d pulled a gun on him. “Whoa… you’re going to take it up in this fog?”

“ I’ve flown in fog before,” she lied. “Besides, once I’m above the soup, there should be no trouble.”

“ ‘ Cept from Pete or Harvey up there in the tower. You hear those winds revving up to eighty, ninety miles an hour? You know what that does to a little bird like that modified Sandpiper out there?”

“ I’m heading due east,” she lied again.

“ Straight for where?”

“ The other coast.”

“ Must be awful important, Miss, ahhh…”

“ Little, Pamela Little, and yes, it is important, extremely.”

“ What’s your exact destination?”

“ The… the Cayman Islands.”

“ Really? That’s not exactly due east. Damn, you’d be lost in a blink up there alone. Love the Caymans myself. Haven’t been there in some time.”

“ Maybe now’s a good time? We go sharp east first, avoid the storm, get south of it and continue in southeast over Cuba.” She purposefully, rapidly blinked her lashes at him as she spoke. “That ought to get us to the Caymans sometime late today.”

Jessica could tell that he was giving it serious thought as his eyes played over her; he imagined she was propositioning him. She really wants a pilot, badly… maybe some sort of pilot groupie, he no doubt was thinking. She really didn’t have any notion whatsoever of flying out of here for the Caymans on her own.

“ Whataya say?” she prodded. She really didn’t want to have to fly out of here herself, especially not with Santiva screaming in her ear that she was a madwoman to attempt it. “Twice my usual rate?” asked Lansing, biting his inner right cheek.

“ That’s what I said.”

“ You must be in an awful hurry. You runnin’ from the law or something?”

“ Will you do it?” Let his imagination fill in the blanks, she told herself. He looked out at the fogged-in airfield. “Well, I can’t let you do it.”

“ All right, then you take me out of here.”

“ No, I can’t do it neither, much as I’d like, Miss… Little, did you say? I could lose my license; I could lose my business.”

“ Triple your usual rate.”

“ Damn…” He started to pick up the phone. Then he thought better of it, replacing it in its cradle. “How soon can you be ready?”

“ I have to make a call; you’ll have two passengers.”

“ Two?”

“ Is that a problem?”

“ Well, it means more drag… the weight, you know.”

“ Is it a problem?” she repeated. “No… no… guess not. How soon do you want to depart?” he asked again.

“ As soon as my… my friend can get here.”

Jessica, already armed with the water route that Anderson had outlined for her, thanks to Quincey’s being in contact with him, needed now only to get Eriq out here to the airfield. She telephoned the hospital, waited on hold, finally reached him and asked in a conspiratorial voice for Mr. Santivas, intentionally adding a final letter for Don Lansing’s benefit. Santivas sounded even more exotic and intriguing than Santiva.

Lansing, while remaining the other side of the desk, cocked an ear in her direction as she spoke to Eriq, hearing only Jessica’s voice. “Has the situation there changed?” she breathily questioned Eriq.

“ Yes, it has,” he surprised her. “What’s happened?”

“ Stallings is out of critical danger, and he’s fully conscious; it appears he’s going to make it, and with some rehab, he’ll be fine. They’re not so sure his eyesight will ever return, however.”

“ That’s good news; has he been able to tell you anything, anything at all? About the boat, perhaps?”

“ He’s still weak, and his eyesight is zero like I said, and his emotional state isn’t so good; he’s blaming himself for Manley’s death.”

“ So he’s not talking?”

‘ ‘ Well, I managed to make him see the light, so to speak. He gave me enough to recognize the schooner when I see it.”

“ Schooner?”

“ World class. He said it had three masts and state-of- the-art equipment, that it was fully automated so that one knowledgeable seaman alone could sail her. That even the sails could be brought down and put up by a single man. Said it was of British manufacture, made for racing, had excellent teakwood moldings all around, and that while the name and call numbers were obscured, it appeared to be the Tau Cross.’’

“ Excellent. Then we’re on our way to the Caymans.”

“ Not so fast. Something else has surfaced.”

“ I heard something about a body in Madeira Bay?” Jessica was acutely aware that her words were causing quite a stir in Don Lansing; she was either going to frighten him away or excite him into following through on the flight out of here. It all depended on what kind of man he was. “Well, it’s not a bay, actually.” Eriq was giving her a geography lesson. “It’s oceanfront, and yes, a body has been left in the bastard’s wake, a kind of present for us. She’s already been IDed as a Naples Missing Persons case.”

Jessica audibly groaned. “We’ve got to end this freak show, Eriq.”

“ You’ve got to get back here, locate the Pinellas County Coroner’s Office and do your thing. See if the body can tell you-”

“ Tell me what. Eriq? Tell me what I already know? No, I’m not coming back there. I’m flying to the Caymans within the hour.”

“ Jess, it’s not good protocol to just let the body-”

“ It’s exactly what he wants, Eriq. Don’t you see that? The body was left for us to find in order to slow us down.”

Santiva was silent for a moment at the other end. She jumped on his silence, adding, “He’s yanking our chain. That dead body is his way of trying to control our movements and to cut down on his own damned drag!” Jessica realized only now that Lansing, on hearing additional snippets of her conversation, had carefully armed himself, placing a gun in his belt. She feared that perhaps she’d gone too far with her masquerade and that Lansing had only heard the most provocative words, most out of context.

“ You’ve secured transportation?” asked Eriq.

“ I have, and I want you here ASAP. Otherwise, I do this alone.”

“ No… no. you don’t. Give me your location.”

She gave him directions and the name of the place from which they were booking the flight. “You’re in a hospital. Pick up what you need in the way of Dramamine there, and then get right over here, Eriq.” Jess, this latest victim deserves our best, as much as any of the others.”

“ Then send our best field M.E. or pathologist over there. Tampa’s got to have someone who can take over.”

“ This young woman, Jess, lived her entire life in Naples and was some sort of a queen at her high school there; she wasn’t a tourist but a resident, a towny. She loved Naples and they loved her.”

“ Eriq, trust me. If I don’t see you here in forty minutes, I’m gone, so like I said, get right over here.”

“ And you’d do it, too, wouldn’t you?” he said, but she’d already hung up, wondering if the killer had any other bodies aboard the ship which Stallings had called the Tau Cross; did the bastard plan to drag the body of yet another victim the entire distance to the Cayman Islands with him? Now Jessica stood looking across the room at Lansing, who was nervously pacing, wishing he hadn’t said yes, anxious to find out more about her-or just anxious to get out of the deal? He kept looking across at her, sizing her up, curious about her and her story-and her friend on the other end of the line. The situation seemed more shady with each passing moment. The questions were pinging about his brain like a pinball, so palpable she could almost hear them ringing, and she realized she had him exactly where she needed him to be.