Sandra Brown - Low Pressure

Since they’d left, smaller planes had come and gone from the airfield. Through the binoculars, Ray had watched the old man going about his work, filling fuel tanks, situating chocks when a plane taxied in, chewing the fat with the pilots before waving them off. Then he would disappear into the hangar. Ray figured he was repairing the damage done to Dent’s plane, and the thought of that never failed to make him smile.

His boss continued to call periodically. His voice-mail messages had gotten nastier. Screw him , Ray thought. He was beyond answering to somebody, to anybody. He was a man with a mission, a man to be reckoned with, like the heroes in his favorite movies.

His hand absently strayed to his left biceps, where he kneaded the tissue that still caused him occasional pain. Beneath the dripping fangs of the tattooed snake the skin was ropy with scars. His whole left side, from shoulder to ankle, had been severely injured in the car wreck.

The worst of the damage had been done to his left arm. It had been pulverized in the accident, and then further disfigured by all the surgeries required to make it useable. It probably would have been cut off if not for a vascular surgeon who’d wanted to use Ray as a guinea pig.

As soon as the last skin graft had healed well enough to endure the tattooing needle, Ray had covered the scars with the snake. It had taken several sessions because the scarring was extensive and the snake was an elaborate and intricate pattern, each detailed scale a thing of beauty unto itself.

But the agony he’d suffered in the hospital, and during all the months of physical therapy, and the pain of getting the tattoo, had been nothing compared to the mental anguish he’d suffered over missing his brother’s trial. He hadn’t been there for Allen when Allen had needed him most.

His older brother had been the only person in his life Ray had ever loved, because, remarkably, Allen had loved him. Ray was ugly, and he didn’t have a very winning personality, but Allen had seen past his faults.

They hadn’t known their father. Their mother had been meaner than sin, and when she died, the two brothers had stayed drunk for a week, not out of grief, but in celebration. After putting her in the ground, it was just the two of them, but Allen hadn’t seemed to mind taking over the parental role.

He’d been a constant source of encouragement, telling Ray that he was okay, that there were a lot of people uglier than him, that he might not be book smart, but he was street smart, and that, in Allen’s estimation, was the better kind of smarts to have.

Allen made him feel good about himself.

After repeating twelfth grade, Ray finally earned a high school diploma, and Allen helped him get a job doing the same thing he did: driving a delivery truck for Lyston Electronics. Things had been going great for them. They had actually looked forward to the Memorial Day barbecue.

It had started out being the blowout party they’d anticipated and had only turned tragic when Allen began messing around with that Lyston skank. Her pansy of a stepbrother had delivered her invitation to dance, and fatefully Allen had accepted. Up to that point in her book, Bellamy Price had described the day to a T.

But she’d made out like Allen had approached Susan first, not the other way around. She’d led thousands of readers to believe that he’d taken her into the woods, tried to rape her, and then killed her when she resisted.

But Allen had told him he’d left her very much alive and laughing at him, and if Allen had said it, then that was what had happened.

If it hadn’t been for the car wreck, Ray would have testified in court that he’d met Allen as he was making his way through the woods back to the pavilion. He would have sworn it on the Bible. But it would’ve been a lie.

It wasn’t until after the tornado had ripped through the state park that the two of them had reunited. Ray had staggered back to their car and had fallen to his knees in relief when he saw that Allen, too, had survived by taking cover under the Mustang they’d worked on together to restore. Other vehicles had been sucked up into the funnel and dropped great distances away. Others had been twisted and mangled so they’d looked like wads of tinfoil. But their car had survived, and so had Allen.

He’d had tears on his face when he pulled Ray into a hug tight enough to squeeze the breath out of him. He was so glad to see him alive and whole he’d pounded him on the back till it hurt. Ray hadn’t minded.

“Where the hell have you been, little brother?”

“L-looking for you.”

That’s the way it had gone down, but when Moody showed up and alleged that Ray had killed that girl, Ray told him, steadfastly, that when they left the woods, together , they’d left with her laughter ringing in their ears.

The jury never heard that from him. Allen was convicted.

No one had cared when he got killed except for Ray, who’d blubbered like a baby when he was told. At his brother’s grave, he’d sworn vengeance. Not, however, on the unidentified prisoner who’d shoved that shiv into Allen’s back, but on the people who’d put Allen in that place.

However, Ray soon learned that vengeance wasn’t that easily achieved.

The Lystons were seemingly untouchable. They were wealthy and well protected, and after a few clumsy attempts to get close to them, Ray got scared off.

He had the same problem with Rupe Collier. The guy was a media magnet, always standing in the spotlight.

Dale Moody disappeared.

Over time, as years went by, to Ray’s everlasting shame, his resolve had weakened.

Then Susan’s sister had written that book, and Ray’s hatred had crystallized, becoming pure and diamond-hard again. He focused it on her. She was the worst of the lot. She hadn’t even had the decency to include in her book how badly and unjustly Allen had died.

Ray wouldn’t stand for it. An eye for an eye. She had to die.

He was up to the task of taking her life. He’d been making himself ready since the day he got word of Allen’s death. Defying the odds the doctors had given him, he’d done everything humanly possible to restore his arm to full capacity. Ignoring the pain, he’d worked long hours with weights and stretching bands, doing everything and anything that would recondition and strengthen the muscles and tendons. And, by God, those years of training and patience had paid off. He was older, smarter, and better conditioned than he’d been before that car wreck.

He glanced at the western horizon. It would be sunset soon. Then dark. The airstrip was an isolated place, where something terrible could befall a person alone after the sun went down.

Bellamy and Dent were skipping off anytime they took a mind to, making it hard for Ray to plan.

No problem. He had come up with an idea that would get them to stay put for a coupla days. Which would be more than enough time.

Bellamy was astonished to learn the extent of Rupert Collier’s treachery. “He arranged for a car wreck that almost killed two people? I thought he was nothing except an egotistical buffoon, a laughable caricature of the used-car salesman.”

“That’s what he wants everybody to think,” Moody said. “He’s so obnoxious he’s disarming.”

“It won’t work with me,” Dent said. “I can’t wait to talk to this asshole who wanted to plant a pair of panties in my house.”

“You won’t get anywhere,” Moody said. “He’s laid his groundwork. Underground work, more like it. For every one of his schemes, he’s got a steel safety net. He’s protected himself so well the CIA couldn’t get to him.”

Reluctantly Bellamy acknowledged that the man wielded some kind of power. “How does he get people to go along with him?”