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“Next worst thing. I’m done there.”
“That altercation, that’s all this deputy has on you?”
“I swear.”
After a significant pause, Dash said, “Not to his way of thinking.”
Rye had never heard Dash speak in such a solemn tone. “What’s his way of thinking?”
“He didn’t lay it out, but he dropped hints.”
“Like?”
“Like the condition of the man from the airstrip has been downgraded from guarded to serious.”
Rye groaned. “Brain bleed?”
“Wilson said his heart’s gone wonky.”
“How bad?”
“They don’t know yet. But Wilson wants to talk to you again.”
“As a material witness or a culprit?”
“Didn’t say, but he threw out the word ‘manslaughter’ and let it hover.”
Rye rubbed his brow. “What else?”
“He dropped a bombshell of a name on me.”
“Let me guess. Senator Richard Hunt.”
In a gruff and angry undertone, Dash said, “What the fuck, Rye? You couldn’t make an enemy who has a little less clout?”
“It’s too long a story to tell now, Dash, and it has nothing to do with me except that the shitheads who wrecked your plane and tried to scrub me are on Hunt’s payroll.”
“What’s a senator got against you?”
“Wasn’t about me. It was about the cargo.”
“Wilson kept referring to that black box. What’s with that?”
“You won’t hear it from me.”
“Then you’ll never climb into another of my cockpits!”
“Until tomorrow.”
He could hear Dash’s fuming breathing, the squishy chomping on his cigar, but by the time he spoke again, he’d calmed down a bit. “What about her?”
He could only be referring to Brynn. “Nothing about her, all right?” Dash waited him out. Rye glanced at the elevator, then added softly, “I’m done there, too.”
Dash didn’t say anything, and when the silence became uncomfortable, Rye yielded and spoke first. He asked if he was still booked on the flight to Columbus the following evening. Dash confirmed that and asked Rye what he intended to do in the meantime.
“Wilson and Rawlins—that’s his partner—don’t have anything on me, but they could delay me getting out of here tomorrow night. I’ll stay under the radar until my flight. I need the bunk time anyway.”
“How long’s it been?”
