Protecting The Boss. Beverly Long

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ became rigid. Her eyes... Was that panic? Distress?

      “What?” he said, looking around. He felt open and exposed and motioned for her to get closer to the building.

      She held up a hand. He could tell that she was starting the message again. And at the end, she drew in a deep breath. “Well, that wasn’t the car rental company,” she said finally. “At least I assume not,” she added, and then laughed with what sounded like nervousness.

      “Who was it?” he asked.

      “I don’t know,” she said.

      “What was it about?” He could feel his patience rapidly evaporate. He was worried about her. Her face had lost all color. “Maybe we should go back inside,” he said.

      “Sure.” She unlocked the door. Held it so that he could pull their luggage in. Then she leaned up against a wall. She was very still. Very quiet. She was staring straight ahead.

      “I’d like to help,” he said. “But you’re not making it easy.”

      She nodded, as if in a trance. “That was a message from someone claiming to have information about the plane crash that killed my parents.” She looked up at him. “Yes, my parents were killed in a small plane crash. Sort of like your dad. And I probably should have said something last night when we were talking about your dad. But their crash was different. They weren’t flying the plane. They were the only passengers.”

      He wasn’t going to tell her that he’d known about their deaths. “What about the pilot?” he asked.

      She shook her head. “He survived the crash.”

      She spoke so slowly, so distinctly, that he could almost hear a drumbeat between each word. “So he was able to tell you what happened.”

      “Not really.”

      They weren’t getting anywhere quickly. “Can you tell me what you do know about the crash?”

      “It was a clear day. They’d been flying in the morning and had taken a break over the lunch hour. The crash happened shortly after they took off in the afternoon. Witnesses said they were banking for a turn and suddenly the plane went nose-down. They were able to issue a Mayday call but this was a small airport, with no air traffic operators on duty. The distress call was picked up by a regional airport but by the time help could be summoned, the plane had already crashed. The NTSB found no evidence of mechanical malfunction, although—” she paused “—I’m not sure how they could have. The plane was ripped apart.”

      He knew what that plane had looked like. Probably had been a debris field that stretched for hundreds of feet.

      “The finding was pilot error,” she said.

      That was generally the finding if there were no mechanical issues. “What did the pilot have to say about that?”

      “Not much. He couldn’t dispute the findings. He suffered a serious head injury, along with other very serious injuries, and has never been able to provide much detail.”

      None of what she was telling him was super surprising. Commercial aircraft almost never crashed but with smaller airplanes, those in the general aviation category, it was a different story. There were plane crashes literally every week and, unfortunately, way too many fatalities. And more times than not, the reason was pilot error. It was no different than a guy who might miscalculate how slick a wet Vegas street was and slam into the back of a line of stopped cars. Pilots, many with limited time in the air, made bad decisions, generally as a result of not being familiar with the plane, the terrain they were flying over, the weather conditions, or the airport they were landing at or taking off from.

      “And now somebody is calling to tell you that there is more information. Can I hear the message?”

      “I guess.” She picked up the phone. Put it on speaker. Played the message.

      It was a man’s voice. He spoke quietly, as if there might be the potential that he’d be overheard. There was no obvious regional or ethnic accent. “Your parents were killed. It wasn’t an accident. You better wake up and start smelling the roses.”

      “Play it again,” Seth said.

      She did.

      “Again,” he prompted, thinking he might have picked up a little background noise the second time.

      “No,” she said. “We’ve heard it enough. The words aren’t going to change.”

      He didn’t want to push her. She looked very fragile. “You don’t recognize the caller’s voice?” he asked.

      She shook her head.

      “Is it possible that it’s the pilot? You said he had head injuries. Maybe he’s... I don’t know, maybe he’s delusional.”

      “It’s not the pilot,” she said.

      “How can you know that for sure?” he asked. It was the most likely person to have information about the crash. The only person who had been there.

      “I would recognize his voice,” she said.

      “Are you sure?”

      “I would think so,” she said. “Given that I almost married him.”

       Chapter 5

      Seth scratched his head. “Come again?” he said.

      She sighed. She so rarely ever talked to anyone about this. “We were engaged. At the time of the accident.”

      “How old were you?”

      “Twenty. We’d been dating since I was seventeen.”

      “But suddenly you had responsibility for Abigail.”

      “She was fourteen. It was devastating for her.”

      “You’d lost your parents, too. And your fiancé was flying the plane. Couldn’t have been a walk in the park for you, either.”

      She said nothing.

      “So what happened between you and...the guy?”

      “He recovered. A couple surgeries, so much physical therapy. But he was young and healthy and he worked really, really hard.”

      “Who ended the relationship?”

      It was a very personal question but she wasn’t surprised. She got the feeling that Seth considered very few topics as off-limits. “I did.”

      “Because you couldn’t forgive him?” he said.

      “Sort of,” she said, looking at her shoes. “Not for the crash. That was an accident. He adored my parents.”

      “What then?” he asked.

      “I couldn’t СКАЧАТЬ