AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He hadn’t really lied to Brynn when she’d asked where he lived. The rental was more a storage unit for his few belongings than it was a residence. As often as not, he was far from there, sleeping in a cheap motel or in the back room of an FBO until somebody needed a pilot on short notice.
Like tonight.
His eyes were drawn again to Brynn. She was talking, making small gestures. She reached up and looped a hank of hair behind her ear. As she listened to the deputy’s next question, her teeth tugged at the corner of her lower lip, like she was nervous. Like she was lying.
“Address?”
Rawlins’s question brought Rye back. He provided Rawlins with the address of his apartment. The deputy added it to his notepad. “After you crashed, what happened?”
Rye explained how he’d managed to get out of the airplane. “I was trying to figure out which way back to t
he road when Dr. O’Neal showed up.” Leaving out how sneakily she’d acted when she found the plane, he related the rest.
“We got to her car, discovered the damage to the wheel, had no choice but to walk here. Found Brady White. That’s it. Just like I told you at the start. That’s everything I know. So can we wrap this up?”
But Rawlins wasn’t finished with him. “You said you were on the radio with Brady. What was his last transmission?”
“He asked if I was nervous.”
“About what?”
Rye smiled.
“What’s funny?”
“That’s what I came back to Brady with. My exact words. He was asking if I was nervous about the landing. I indicated I wasn’t. He said I was due a couple of beers. That’s the last I heard from him. I transmitted that I saw the runway lights, but he didn’t respond.”
“Why do you think?”
“I think because he’d been knocked cold. The radio wasn’t on when Dr. O’Neal and I got here. I checked.”
Rawlins said, “Okay,” but not in a way that sounded like it was okay.
He then went through a series of routine questions: Had Rye seen any other persons or vehicles; had he touched or disturbed anything; did it appear to him that anything had been disturbed; had Brady White said anything? He answered no to all.
The older deputy came back and reported to Rawlins. “Mallett here checks out. That Dash character went nuts when I told him about his plane, but I calmed him down. He’s emailing you the flight plan that Mallett filed, along with the paperwork on his cargo.”
Rawlins pulled out his phone. As he accessed his email, he said to Rye, “Why didn’t you give me all this?”
“You didn’t ask for it.”
Rawlins scrolled through the documents and stopped on the air bill. “Under client’s name it says Dr. Lambert.”
“I assumed that’s who Dr. O’Neal was till she told me different.”
“She came on Dr. Lambert’s behalf?”
Brynn had said to him that she’d come in Dr. Lambert’s place. There was a fine distinction between in his place and on his behalf. But Rye nodded in response to the deputy’s question, because when you didn’t have a freaking clue how to answer, a nonverbal reply was the safest.
“Black metal box,” the deputy said, still reading from the shipping form attached to the email. “Doesn’t say what’s in it.”
Rye gave another shrug. “Like I told you.”
The deputy closed out the email and slid his phone back into the pocket of his puffy jacket. “You and Dr. O’Neal know each other before tonight?”
“No.”
Rawlins tilted his chin down in apparent doubt.
