Page 149 of Tailspin

Rye whispered, “I was just fooling about the clip.” During the chase down the hallway, he’d managed to retrieve his pistol from the pocket of his bomber jacket. Last night he’d loaded it with the spare clip he carried in his flight bag.

Given the close quarters, there was no way he could verbally communicate with Brynn. He couldn’t have advised her anyway, because he had no idea what Goliad planned to do when the elevator doors opened. Raise his gun hand and commence a shootout? That seemed unlikely, but Rye couldn’t dismiss the possibility.

Brynn had forced Goliad’s hand. He had proposed a peaceful settlement where nobody got hurt. But it had to be clear to him now that she wasn’t going to surrender the GX-42 without a fight.

Whatever Goliad did, Rye would have only seconds in which to process it and react correctly, or people could die. But years of pilot training had taught him to do just that.

Goliad’s method of problem-solving was more stolid.

Giving Rye the advantage here.

He hoped.

The elevator stopped. The double doors behind him began to open. Brynn once again seized an opportunity. Wraithlike, she slipped around behind Rye and cleared the doors before they had even opened all the way.

“She wants those biscuits while they’re hot,” the flip-flop man said around a booming laugh.

Rye pretended that Brynn had pushed against him on her way out. He fell forward into Goliad, throwing him off balance. “Sorry, man.” The apology was for the benefit of the others in the elevator, but he jabbed Goliad’s middle with his pistol for emphasis before whipping around and running after Brynn.

Rather than trying to navigate the crowded lobby, she’d headed down the long corridor that came to a dead end at the side door they’d been using. When she reached it, she looked back to ensure that Rye was behind her before she pushed through the door to the outside. By the time Rye got to the door, he saw her through the glass, splashing across the parking lot in a mad dash toward Wes’s car.

His relief was short-lived.

Before he could depress the bar to let himself out, Goliad caught up to him, grabbed him by the collar of his jacket, hurled him against the wall, then landed a punch in Rye’s diaphragm that robbed him of breath. It also hurt like bloody hell, but not as bad as a bullet would have. Goliad still didn’t want a firefight, especially not after a terrorized housekeeper had witnessed their race down the hallway.

But bare hands could be just as deadly as guns if one knew how to apply them. Goliad outweighed and outmuscled him. Rye couldn’t bring him down. Not in a fistfight, not by swapping swings. So he folded his arms across his midsection and, with a grunt of pain, bent double.

Then he came up beneath Goliad’s chin with his head. Goliad’s teeth clacked, his head snapped back, and when he brought it upright, Rye’s hands were folded around his pistol, the short barrel pressed up against the soft underside of Goliad’s jaw.

Rye wheezed, “Drop the gun.”

Goliad’s weapon landed with a dull thud on the carpet near their feet.

Still raspy, Rye said, “Why don’t you just back off and let the kid have the drug?”

“Because she’s not who I work for.”

“Stubborn son of a bitch.”

With the hilt of his pistol, Rye rapped Goliad hard, right on the bridge of his nose, then pivoted and pushed through the door. Rain and cold air blasted him in the face, but it felt good. It cleared his head in time for him to leap backward, out of the way of an oncoming, speeding car. Wes’s car. Brynn behind the wheel.

The car skidded to a stop inches from him. In his haste to get the passenger door open, he nearly dislocated his shoulder. Brynn accelerated before he’d pulled in his right leg. Through the glass exit door, he saw Goliad down on one knee, holding a hand to his face.

Rye and Brynn didn’t speak until they were out of the parking lot, up the ramp onto the freeway, and speeding along in the outside lane. By then, Rye had almost regained his breath. “Tell me you still have it.”

“I still have it.”

“Intact?”

“Yes.”

He laid his head back and closed his eyes. “That’s what matters.”

“You matter, too. Are you in pain?”

“I’ll live.”

“Goliad?”

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