Robert Walker - Darkest Instinct

Eriq explained, “We didn’t lie back in Tampa to the tower guys.”

“ Whataya saying?”

“ We are FBI agents.”

“ Oh, Christ, you’re shitting me. Holy Mother, Pete’s going to kill me when he hears about this. I’ll be damned. How in hell’d I not see it?”

“ We’re good at what we do. But really, Don, we are really FBI, and we’re really in pursuit of the-”

“- the Night Crawler,” he finished, the light coming clear on. “Sure, why not? Story of my life. Always in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“ Mr. Lansing… Mr. Lansing…” Jessica tried to quell his concern, but he kept babbling to himself through the headphones. “I must not live right. Something I did once to my mother, maybe. God has a way of punishing even the blind and ignorant…”

“ Sorry to burst your bubble,” she weakly apologized.

“ Then one of the two stories you made up back at the airport was… was the truth?”

“ ‘ Fraid so.”

“ Damn… damn, you must think I’m some kinda fool. Hey, I want both of you to know that I’m nobody’s fool.”

Jessica realized that Lansing didn’t believe them now any more than he had on takeoff.

“ Whatever your game, I’m not interested. All’s I want is to set down in Miami and we can settle up there. Plenty of guys in Miami’ll be happy to take you on to the Caymans. Just don’t tell ‘em you’re the fuzz, all right?”

“ Miami? We’re not going to Miami,” she countered.

“ It’s on our flight pattern to the Caymans. It’s the only safe way. We attempt another way and we could get in trouble over Cuba. Trust me. Besides, like I told you, we need to stop at Miami to refuel and get in the flight path over Cuba to the Caymans, so we log where we’re going in case of problems.”

“ Do you always follow such rules to the letter?” asked a suspicious Santiva.

“ Always,” he lied.

“ Mr. Lansing, we want you to take us all the way to Grand Cayman,” Jessica pleaded. “I don’t know…”

“ We’ve offered to pay three times your normal rate,” she reminded. “Three times?” asked Santiva, whistling into the headphones.

“ Not if we’re dumped in Miami, no,” she responded.

Lansing broke down, saying, “All right, but we stop over in Miami to refuel and file a flight report, and once we touch down in Cayman, I collect my dough from you people and wave bye-bye.”

“ Agreed,” she assured him, and the cockpit grew silent now as they soared over scattered cloud cover.

“ Can’t you get us down a little lower, so we can see better?” she asked.

“ Lower means more turbulence right now,” he countered, “and your so-called hotshot FBI agent friend is already three shades of green.”

They were on a due-south tack now, coming out of the storm clouds, getting beyond the front. There was bright sunshine and gleaming blue waters ahead. “You can start bringing us down now,” she ordered.

Perhaps to test just how honest or dishonest she’d been with him, Lansing frowned and let go of the controls. “You take the controls,” he said. “Seems to me that’s what you like, being in control.”

She grabbed on to the controls almost immediately, but the plane was already in a screaming nosedive, everyone but Lansing losing his stomach to the cockpit ceiling, Eriq shouting through his headphones, freaking out while Jessica grabbed and then pulled hard on the controls, bringing the plane back under control, leveling her out, tiger stripes and all. The plane was a twin-engine Beechcraft Baron, Lansing having chosen to take it over the smaller, modified Sandpiper back in Tampa. The machine was not nearly so old as it was made to appear. Lansing, or more likely his boss, Pete, had painted the Baron to appear older and perhaps more romantic than it actually was. The seats were plush, the controls state of the art. The World War II look of the tiger stripes, the lettering of the call numbers-all a ruse to mirror what? Experienced, vintage fliers? Lansing was too young for vintage, she thought.

“ What the hell’re you trying to do, Lansing?” Jessica shouted now.

“ Wanted to see if you lied about being a pilot, too. Guess not.”

She shook her head and gave him a half smile, to which he responded by frowning. He wasn’t amused at having literally been taken for a ride. His arms were folded tightly against his chest as he watched her take the bird lower over the water.

Jessica had felt the power of the light plane the moment she’d grabbed the controls. It was a feeling like nothing else she’d ever experienced-flying. She couldn’t hold back the sense of wonder, or her smile.

Lansing, looking at her reaction as she soared ever closer to the emerald waters of the Gulf of Mexico below them, suddenly broke into laughter.

“ What’s so damned funny?” demanded Eriq from the rear. Then Jessica began to laugh. “Go ahead, enjoy yourself for a while, and buzz every damned boat you see down there for all I care,” said Lansing, “but give a thought to the fuel gauge while you’re doing it, all right?” Behind his protestations lay an understandable frustration. He didn’t know or trust them; he didn’t know what their game was; he didn’t know who they were chasing; he didn’t believe they were FBI agents in pursuit of the Night Crawler any more than he believed her Alice in Wonderland and Eriq the Wizard of Oz.

But something in his tone told Jessica that he did care. that he was worried about who they were and what they intended. “Look, reach into my bag and pull out my wallet, Mr. Lansing,” she told him.

“ What for?”

“ You’ll find my badge there.”

He looked from her to the bag that’d been jammed into a space too small for it just beside her ankle. While he went for the bag, he admired the creamy-skinned legs below the skirt she wore. He rummaged about, feeling the cold metal of a gun, which he lifted along with her wallet. “What the hell’s this?”

“ Be careful with that; it’s a Browning automatic, same gun I used to kill Matthew Matisak with in New Orleans last year.”

He looked at her as if she were mad. She wished now that she had brought along that stupid Enquirer story with her picture for this show-and-tell moment. “I really, truly am Dr. Jessica Coran, and this is Chief Eriq Santiva of the FBI.”

“ And I’m supposed to believe that?”

“ Yes, damnit, it’s the truth.”

He raised both hands to run through his hair, as if to do so might ease his consternation. But the gesture had little effect. “You now want me to believe that you… that you’re an M.D. with-”

“ An M.E. for the FBI, yes.”

“ The one who caught that heart-eating, banshee killer in New Orleans last year?”

“ One and the same,” added Eriq from the rear.

“ Same one who also cornered and killed Mad Matthew Matisak there?”

“ That would be me, yes.”

He reserved judgment as he opened her billfold and closely examined her FBI photo ID and badge. Then the light in his brain finally flickered on. “Damn, hellfire, unbelievable… here in Pete’s plane, sitting just across from me. Well, here, let me shake your hand, Dr. Coran.” He extended a hand and took hers, shaking so vigorously she had trouble holding the plane steady.

“ Then you’ve heard of me?” she unnecessarily asked.

“ Are you kidding? I mean, who hasn’t heard about you? The Eskimos? But why didn’t you just tell me who you were in the first place? I wouldn’t’ve balked a moment taking off at the airport the way I did, had I known it was you…”

Eriq grumbled through the static of his headphone upon hearing this and added, “Does that mean you won’t charge us triple?”