Ghost days, p.14
Ghost Days, page 14
“Bargaining chip,” the first one said. “Oakhill’s going to be a lot more willing to talk if we’re keeping the missus somewhere.”
They gagged her, tied up her hands. Then they drove her to that awful place.
She didn’t want to think about the rest of that afternoon. They hadn’t hurt her any more than necessary, hadn’t done anything unseemly. But just the fact of being held prisoner in a filthy abandoned building felt like she was facing her judgement. Like the whole ordeal had nothing to do with Saul, but was instead a punishment for thinking improper thoughts, for wanting something sinful and illegal. She had taken out a pair of scissors, she’d opened them around her puppet strings, and suddenly the universe smacked her in the face.
When she got free, she just ran. No plan. No safety net. The universe had sent her a message and she’d received it loud and clear.
You are Bad and Wrong for wanting this, and if you pursue it again, you will not be as fortunate. This was a Warning.
She knew she would never be able to stay away from Erika if she stayed in Red Kite.
So instead she tried to find out how far she could run before her legs gave out.
***
She made it three thousand miles before the pain was too much. Before missing her became too awful. She couldn’t sleep. When Tuesday rolled around, she felt a physical ache being away from the airport. I should be with her. I should be kissing her right now. She sobbed and stayed in bed all day, in the shitty little hotel she’d found.
But still she tried to run. She knew alcoholics went through this same thing when they decided to stop drinking, so she told herself she just needed distance.
She dyed her hair red. Erika had never seen her with red hair, so she wouldn’t recognize her. She would be a stranger if they passed on the street. One more lane of distance between them.
It still wasn’t enough.
She dreamed of Erika.
She craved her touch.
In Quebec, facing the choice between continuing her flight into America or finding a way to Europe, she looked at her reflection in a dirty bar mirror and surrendered.
I have to go home, she told herself.
Home was Erika Garza.
And she was going to do whatever the fuck she had to do to get there and stay there.
Chapter Fifteen
Now
Loomis spoke as soon as Garza came back into the office. “There’s been a change of plans.”
Garza finished tucking her shirt into her pants. “Oh, good. I was hoping for a monkey wrench in this meticulous plan you geniuses have concocted.”
He waved the gun at her. “Careful. We decided you’re only going to be flying me to Calgary tonight. March is going to stay here with Mrs. Er-- excuse me, Miss Parrish. Just to make sure she doesn’t do anything stupid while she’s waiting to hear from you. Wouldn’t want Sergeant Elver calling his buddies in Calgary to have them snatch us up as soon as we land.”
Garza looked at Parrish, whose face was stony and expressionless. “Are you okay with me leaving you alone with this guy?”
“I can handle him,” Parrish said, gesturing with her gun.
“Okay, well. I need to get the plane ready. Fuel it up, move some things around...”
Loomis said, “Whoa, what do you mean move things around?”
“Weight distribution,” she said. “Two of us on the plane, no luggage, the plane won’t be balanced. I need to move some things around the cabin to make it more even.”
“What things?”
She sighed and shrugged. “I don’t know, man, emergency supplies, that sort of thing. It’s just standard stuff.”
Loomis still looked skeptical, but he waved her to the door. “Don’t try anything funny. We’ll be watching through this window.”
“Get ready for a thrilling show.” She looked back at Parrish one last time before she left the office. Parrish nodded once, and Garza took that as support.
She jogged across the tarmac. She remembered when she was younger, alone on a plane with Renee. They had fucked that afternoon, and Renee had worn a toy so she could... Anyway, that part wasn’t important. The important thing was that on the flight back, Garza had suddenly gotten very sleepy. Extremely sleepy, out of the blue, so tired she couldn’t keep her eyes open long enough to warn Renee she was about to fall asleep.
When she woke up, Renee was watching her from the plastic facemask connected to an oxygen tank. “Unpressurized cabin,” she’d said with a shit-eating grin. “Took you up over twelve-five and it was lights out. Sorry. It’s a bit of a hazing ritual. Don’t be mad at me, please?”
Garza climbed onto the plane and opened the emergency kit. Her supplemental oxygen tank was about the size of the fire extinguisher next to it. She took both and moved them to the forward part of the plane. Fire extinguisher behind the co-pilot seat, oxygen tank in front of hers.
“Don’t ever do that with a passenger,” Renee had warned her. “It won’t kill them, but it’s dangerous and just a dick move in general. It’s a mean prank. Don’t do it.”
Garza had promised she wouldn’t. But she had a feeling these were extenuating circumstances that Renee would have understood.
She went back to the emergency supplies and opened her kit for anything else she might be able to use. Cable ties, duct tape, scissors, blanket. She moved everything she thought might help to one of the biohazard bags and stowed it under her seat. Once she hit twelve thousand feet, she was going to have to move fast. She needed to breathe as much as Loomis did, and she was only ninety percent sure she could stay conscious long enough to get the mask on once he passed out. She had the benefit of knowing it was going to happen, to prepare for it, to feel its effects, know what they were, and fight against it. Definitely ninety percent certain.
Maybe eighty-five percent.
She decided not to think about percentages.
Once everything was situated where she wanted it, she went back to the office. She checked her watch and tried to cover her nerves with impatience.
“It’ll be the middle of the night by the time we get there, so we might as well go now.”
“Your girlfriend is in good hands.” To March, he said, “Don’t get in too much trouble without a chaperone looking over your shoulder.”
Parrish was sitting behind Garza’s desk, arms crossed. She rolled her eyes and shook her head.
Garza checked her watch again. “See you in about four hours.”
“Be safe,” Parrish said.
Loomis walked beside her as they left the office. “I got nothing against that, you know. Good-looking woman. And the red hair? Whooo, I thought she was a looker before! And you’re kind of a mannish gal, no offense. It works for you. I’m just saying. I’m not one of those fire-and-brimstone fellas when it comes to what you girls are getting up to.”
“So you’re not one of those hardcore Christian murderers?”
He laughed. “Let he who is without sin, right?”
They got onboard the plane. She took her seat, while Loomis sat in the row behind her on the passenger side.
“We’re pretty balanced, right?” he said, sounding sincerely concerned.
“Yeah, that’ll work.” She regretted that she couldn’t see him without turning her head, but it was dark enough outside to make the windscreen act like a mirror. “Just try not to move around too much.”
Loomis gestured with the gun. “I’ll make the same request of you, sweetheart.”
She grimaced and prepped for takeoff.
Once they were in the air, she said, “So this is really just about the money for you?”
“Not just this,” Loomis said. “Life. Everything. It all comes down to cold hard cash. Money can buy happiness, little girl. Or at least it can buy you enough shit to distract you from being sad. Either way. You can’t be truly happy if you’re flat-ass broke.”
“So you’d probably do anything to keep the money once you have it.”
Loomis chuckled. “Starting to get a little worried?”
“I didn’t say that,” she said. “I’m just curious about how reasonable you’re being. Considering the gun and breaking into my house in the middle of the night.”
“Well, we just got lucky there, honestly. We didn’t know Miss Parrish would be there. What a small world! And we needed you safe and sound to fly the plane. I don’t know how to fly one of these things, and March doesn’t even know how to drive a car. So we’d have been up shit creek without you. So this is what you’d call a mutually beneficial relationship. Once I’m in Calgary, I’ll never think about you again. And once the bank transfer goes through, I’ll be more than happy to erase Miss Parrish from my brain as well.”
“Even though we’ll both know where you went? And once you’re gone, what’s to stop us from going straight to Elver?”
He sighed. When he spoke again, his voice was lower, darker. “That would be a bad idea, actually. It would be best if we all forgot about tonight entirely. Don’t you think?”
“Maybe so,” she said
She glanced down at the altimeter. She nudged the plane higher, readying an excuse about better wind if Loomis noticed. It was hard to tell exactly how high they were even for her, given the dark expanse of empty fields below them. He might not even notice their altitude if he didn’t have much experience in planes. She glanced over her shoulder. He was watching her, the gun resting on his thigh.
“Nervous?”
“Hard not to be with that thing pointed at me. Maybe you could put it away while we’re in the air. It’s not like I’m going to make a break for it. Besides, even if you don’t mean to shoot me, accidents happen. We run into turbulence, you get thrown around a little bit. Gun falls out of your hand, it could put a hole in the side of the plane, and we’d both be screwed then.”
He considered that. He apparently decided she had a point, because he leaned forward and put the gun in the pocket of the seat in front of him.
“Feel better?”
“Much.”
“Just don’t hit any turbulence.”
“I’m adjusting to get out of the strong winds as we speak.”
He nodded and looked out the window as if he could see the wind passing by.
The plane crossed twelve thousand feet. She kept climbing, despite the tingling in her fingers. She watched Loomis in the mirror on her console. His eyes drooped, and his head began rolling in slow circles as if he was listening to music only he could hear. Sometimes he slumped forward only to snap back upright with a grunt. His eyes drifted shut, but he remained upright in his seat.
“Long day,” he said with a grunt, aggressively repositioning himself.
“You’re not the one who got yanked out of bed in the middle of the night.”
Garza felt like she was managing the effects of oxygen deprivation without too much effort. It was definitely harder to breathe, but she was in charge. She was in control. So she nudged it a little higher, ignoring the spacey feeling in her brain. She closed her eyes and then forced them open. Loomis’ chin had dropped down to his chest and stayed there. She would give it a little longer. She didn’t want to snap him awake and give him an adrenaline rush.
Finally, just when Garza was about to give in, his arms dropped limp out of his lap as if anchors had been tied to both wrists at the same time.
Garza grabbed the oxygen mask and slipped the elastic over her head, twisted the knob to turn it on, and took a deep gasp of the coldest, cleanest air she’d ever tasted. It was like a painless zap of lightning, immediately reviving her. She inhaled, exhaled, got her bearings back, and then she unfastened her seatbelt. The oxygen tank was portable enough that she could drag it with her while she did the next part, but that wasn’t the most terrifying thing about the next few minutes.
She closed her eyes. She prepared herself. She checked the altimeter. Twelve-six-fifty.
Then she let go of the yoke and rose from her seat, letting the plane go into a freefall.
There was no autopilot, no way to let the instruments take over for a few minutes while she did what needed to be done. She just had to let it go and hope she had time to recover and straighten up.
With the tank in one hand, she grabbed the biohazard bag and moved to kneel next to Loomis. The first thing she did was use the cable ties to secure his wrists to the arms of the chair. The plane was falling. She pulled them tight, stopping just short of digging into the skin. He grunted and murmured, his bottom lip slack. The floor was sideways and gravity was pulling her toward the front of the plane, as if trying to urge her back to her seat. She pushed his jaw shut and put a strip of tape over his mouth.
The plane was falling.
Her heart pounded. She threw the blanket over his head, then tied it in place with a loop of duct tape around his forehead and jaw. It felt like she was literally falling out of a building. The plane couldn’t be falling that fast, could it? She was sweating. She wrapped a loop of tape around his torso, pinning him to the chair. She had just torn off the tape when Loomis grunted, stiffened, and jerked at the cable ties around his wrists. He made a garbled noise behind his makeshift hood, obviously trying to work the tape off his mouth. She wrapped more tape around the outside of his hood just as an extra precaution.
Her stomach felt like it was somewhere near her knees as she retrieved his gun. Finally, gratefully, she got back into her seat. She grabbed the yoke and pulled up, bracing her feet against the floor as if she could physically get them back on course. She glanced at the altimeter and saw that they were at seven hundred feet.
Loomis shouted behind his gag.
“Sorry about that, sir,” she said, “we had a bit of an emergency situation there, but rest assured I’ve got everything under control now.”
Loomis threw himself forward, then slammed back against the seat. He rocked back and forth and, for a moment, Garza wondered if there was a real chance he might break it and get free.
“Mr. Loomis,” she said, shouting over his animal protests. “I just risked blacking out and crashing us both into the prairie. And now I have a gun. Think about what I might be willing to do to shut you up and fucking behave yourself.”
He was breathing heavily, shoulders hunched, but he stopped trying to break the chair. Even in the reflection on the windscreen she could see that he was trembling with rage.
She focused on the world outside the window and brought them around. She couldn’t go back to the airport. March would know something was wrong as soon as he saw her approaching so soon after leaving. She couldn’t risk turning Parrish into a hostage. She considered her options, shook her head, and looked back at Loomis.
“Hang on tight, buddy. I’m about to do a second stupid thing in single trip.”
She faced forward and shook her head.
“It’s a new record...”
***
Sergeant Elver opened his eyes, looked at the illuminated alarm clock on his nightstand, and wondered who in their right mind would mow their lawn at half past two in the morning.
It took him another second to realize he wasn’t hearing a lawnmower. The low, steady hum was growing louder, closer. He sat up and put his feet on the floor, trying to pinpoint a direction for the sound. Finally he got out of bed and went to the window, pushing back the curtain in time to see a small white and red plane pass by over the neighborhood. Its landing gear barely cleared the roof of his neighbor’s house.
“Jesus Christ!” he said, ducking instinctively from the low plane.
His phone rang. He crouched to retrieve his pants and pulled them on as he hurried through the house. He yanked the receiver off the hanger as he buttoned them. His brain woke up enough to recognize where he’d seen the plane before, not that he’d seen a whole lot of planes lately. There was really only one person it could’ve been. He dialed Rais’ number.
“That was Erika Garza,” he said without waiting for her to say anything. She lived north of him and he knew she would’ve been woken up by the noise as well.
“I caught the numbers on the tail.” Rais sounded energized. “Fucking thing nearly took off my chimney! What the hell is she thinking?”
“That’s the first question I’m going to ask her,” he said, hanging up on her as he went to get his uniform shirt from the closet.
Whatever her excuse, it had better be one hell of a story.
Chapter Sixteen
Garza had never thought about how wide city streets were. Her Cessna had a wingspan of about fourteen meters. Surely a two-lane street in Red Kite had to be at least that wide. How wide were cars? And there had to be space on either side of them. And a median, and sidewalks. She was fairly certain roads had to be at least fifteen meters wide. Anything less didn’t make any sense.
That’s what she told herself as she nose-dived toward Main Street. It was late enough that no one was parked in front of any businesses, thank God, but it still looked like it was going to be tight as hell.
Her heart hadn’t slowed down since she restrained Loomis. Now she had to do something she’d done hundreds of times before - fly straight and land without swerving to either side - but with real consequences if she screwed up. She was sweating. She didn’t know if she was blinking, but she doubted it. She just had to land. Easiest thing to do, Day One shit.
“Thread the needle,” she whispered to herself.
She heard sirens and caught the shine of red and blue lights on the storefronts. A moment later, a cruiser sped out from underneath the plane. He continued on, clearing a path for her in case anyone happened to be out on the road at this hour. Thankfully he was smart enough to keep going instead of stopping at the intersection.
She hoped she was able to do the same.
The plane bounced as she touched down, jostling her but not too roughly. She’d had much worse landings. She didn’t dare look to see if she was destroying the downtown storefronts, she just kept her eyes forward until the plane finally, mercifully came to a stop in front of the bank.
