J. Black - The Survivors Club

But who would do that?

Michael said, “You think Jaimie’d be capable of something like that? Just shooting the shit out of someone?”

Brayden shrugged. Brayden was the champion shrugger of the world. She never committed to anything. As a lawyer, she could tie you in knots. She was, in many ways, the closest you could get to their father. Their patriarch. She didn’t have his mean streak, but she had the confounding part right down.

Michael said, “She took the dog.”

“What dog?”

“Hanley’s dog. She took it as a prize.”

“You mean, like the spoils of war?”

“Exactly. She’s trying to pass it off as a dog she just found.”

He let that lie out there. Jaimie had always been the weakest link. She was really not to be trusted. But Michael wondered if Brayden was to be trusted, either.

Suddenly, he wondered if she was seeing someone. He didn’t care about her love life, but he didn’t want any complications. “You know not to tell anyone.”

Brayden stared at her daughter playing in the pool, then turned her round face to him, the sweet little housewife face. “Michael, you can be a real asshole, do you know that?”

She put on her sunglasses again. Brayden looked better with them on. Her face was such a dumpling, but sunglasses made her look richer. Richer and more attractive.

“They’re still investigating his death,” he said. “I get the impression they don’t think it was an accident.”

She shrugged.

“Brayden, you didn’t have anything to do with that, did you? His death?”

“Me? No. Why would you say that, Michael?”

He had no reason, except that she was the most secretive, the most unreadable of all of them. “You never met him?”

“Not that I’m aware of.”

He’d have to take her word for it. She was such a good liar you could never really tell, never get a baseline with her.

Brayden kept her eyes on the pool. “You think Jaimie killed that old man?”

“I wouldn’t put it past her. The question is, what do we do about it?”

Brayden left soon afterward.

Michael stared at the pool. Was everything going to hell, or was it just his imagination? He’d heard nothing more about Alec Sheppard. Maybe Sheppard had already flown back to Houston. It had been close, very close, but he was pretty sure there was little to link him to Houston except that one moment where he’d pointed the finger gun at Sheppard.

But he went back through it anyway.

He’d laid the trap for Sheppard beautifully. A word to the girl at the computer in the rigger’s loft at SkyDive Arizona, where he himself used to jump. “My friend Alec Sheppard’s supposed to meet me here, but I’m worried that the expiration date on his reserve pack is coming up and I really hope he can make the jump with me. I’d hate to miss him.”

Every 120 days the reserve had to be repacked—it was a safety issue.

The gum-chewing girl at the computer looked at the manifest and confirmed that Sheppard had to have his reserve chute repacked before the end of March.

“Damn it! I wanted to surprise him. You know where he’s going?”

She looked again. “Looks like he’s jumping in Houston next week.”

“He hasn’t repacked?”

“Nope, not yet.”

Michael gave her his best crestfallen look. “Guess he’s not meeting me here.”

“Guess not.”

And so Michael flew out to Houston the week before Sheppard was due to jump. He knew what kind of rig Sheppard had—he’d chatted up his friends and learned he had a red and blue-green Javelin. He was almost certain of the date Sheppard would have it repacked—the same day he’d jump.

Michael stayed in Houston. He kept tabs on Sheppard, surveilled him, and on the day he followed Sheppard to the jump center, he’d even confirmed the rig as he watched Sheppard walk it out to the car. Blue-green Javelin with red patches.

He brought in his own reserve to be repacked, then hung around the loft where the riggers were. Parachutes were laid out all over the floor.

It was the perfect setup, because the repacked reserve chutes were all lined up against the wall near the door—the only place for them. Nobody wanted jumpers traipsing on the chutes stretched out all over the floor. Casually Michael asked the rigger if anyone would mind if he looked at that Javelin over there while his rig was repacked. He pointed in the general direction of the packs stacked against the wall.

No problema.

As luck would have it, there was only one red and blue-green Javelin. He’d had a half hour to forty-five minutes for his rig to be repacked, but he didn’t need more than ten—if that.

It was a done deal.

There had been only one mistake.

He should never have shot that finger gun at Sheppard.

Sheppard had jumped with a friend, a jumpmaster at the center. When the jumpmaster saw Sheppard going down fast, he’d cut loose from his own parachute and gone down after him, tackling him to slow his descent. He’d been able to reach where Sheppard couldn’t, digging into Sheppard’s rig and managing to release the pin to the reserve canopy. Michael saw it all, saw the jumpmaster roll out into a backflip and away, before pulling his own reserve.

They’d both drifted down, tragedy averted.

Like a cat, Alec Sheppard landed on his feet.

Seven lives left.

And then there was Steve Barkman, Sheppard’s buddy. Michael vaguely remembered making small talk with him and his mother, the judge, at a fund-raiser—they’d shared a table.

Barkman had left a voice message for him weeks ago. Michael had no idea why Barkman would contact him, and at the time he was heading out for a trip and didn’t bother to return the call.

The message had been strange enough that Michael had made some inquiries about Barkman through a third party, some people with Pima County Sheriff’s. While Barkman’s job wasn’t important in the scheme of things, the people Michael talked to thought he’d make a good cop. One of them even called him savvy and smart. He couldn’t understand why Barkman didn’t just apply to the academy. He’d wondered aloud if Barkman might have been a licensed investigator.

In light of what Michael had learned about Barkman’s friendship with Alec Sheppard, the call made sense. Barkman had left a message to the effect that he had “something important to discuss, of a personal nature.”

Maybe Barkman wanted to shake him down.

But Barkman was dead. The only thing that mattered now: What did Barkman tell Sheppard ?

His phone sounded. It was Jaimie.

She was crying so hard at first he couldn’t understand her. “Someone took Adele!”

His first thought was Alec Sheppard. “Tell me what happened.”

She told him how she’d come back from the airport and gone to bed early, how she woke up and Adele was gone. “I’ve been looking for her everywhere. Maybe she’s trapped somewhere. I just went into town and put up posters.”

Michael closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “What name did you use?”

“Bandit.”

“Does she come to ‘Bandit?’”

“I don’t know. She hasn’t been here that long.”

Michael could feel the dread building up inside him. Could it really be Sheppard? He was the only one he could think of who would be capable. You just looked into his eyes and you could see the toughness there. One of the reasons Michael had wanted him. Wanted to notch his belt with him, make the kill. The reason he went.

Face it: the reason he had shot the finger gun at him. It was a visceral thing, almost atavistic. He wanted to dominate him. He wanted to see him die.