She fired a volley back. “It hasn’t been a fun day for me either, Nate.”

“That’s not what I heard.” He looked Rye over, his distaste apparent. “This is the dashing bush pilot you found irresistible?”

Brynn drew herself up to her full height but didn’t honor the insult with a comeback, demonstrating a hell of a lot more class than Lambert. For all his nattiness, he was an asshole.

Rye stepped forward, coming even with Brynn. “You want this box, or what?” He whipped the receipt from his back jeans pocket and extended it, still folded, to Lambert.

The doctor pulled a pair of reading glasses from the breast pocket of his shirt and put them on. He took the sheet of paper by one corner as though it were germy and made a production of shaking it out. He scanned it, then snapped his fingers repeatedly and impatiently. “Pen?”

“Photo ID?”

Lambert glared at him over the top of his silly glasses. “Excuse me?”

“Photo ID,” Rye repeated.

Steam could have been coming out of his ears, but he took a wallet from his pants pocket and showed Rye his driver’s license. “Is one sufficient? I also have several that are professionally related.”

“One’s fine. Anybody got a pen?”

Brynn didn’t act on the request. She stood with her arms crossed over her middle and stared at the floor. Goliad produced a ballpoint pen. Lambert snatched it from him, flattened the paper against the wall, and scrawled his name across the bottom.

He gave the sheet to Rye, who refolded it and stuck it in his pocket, then passed the box to Lambert. “You want to open it, check the contents?”

“The samples have already been exposed to air unnecessarily.”

“Then that’s a no?” Rye said. “Good. Sight of blood makes me queasy.”

Lambert tucked the box under his arm and asked with impatience, “Is that it, then?”

“Delivered. Everybody’s happy. I’m gone.”

As he turned away, Brynn caught the sleeve of his jacket. “Thank you.”

Her touch, the husky intimacy with which she’d spoken the two words, elicited heat, low and central and deep. He looked down at her hand, then into her eyes, and all too aware of the onlookers, said, “Just doing my job.”

After the slightest of hesitations, she said, “Fly safely.” Then, withdrawing her hand, she stepped around Lambert and went into the office.

Rye turned. Right behind him were Goliad and Timmy, standing side by side. He pushed his way between them and continued on toward the elevator. He overheard Lambert say, “Thanks for your intervention, gentlemen. If you can see yourselves out? The Hunts are waiting to hear from me.” Then the office door was soundly shut.

At the elevator, Rye punched the down button. When Goliad and Timmy joined him, he held out his hand, palm up. “I’ll take my clip now.”

“I think I’ll keep it,” Goliad said.

“Oh, now that’s a shocker.” Rye muttered an obscenity, then, turning away from them, said, “I’m over the two of you. I’ll take the stairs.”

“Hey, slick, before you go…”

Rye shoved open the door to the stairwell and looked over his shoulder at Timmy.

He tipped his head toward the end of the hall. “On her back or hands and knees?”

Rye left him cackling over his own wit.

4:57 p.m.

When the elevator door opened on the third level of the parking garage, Rye was ready with the fire extinguisher. He sprayed them with the foam, most of it aimed at their faces. “It’s not a laser, but you get the idea.”

He threw the fire extinguisher at Timmy’s head. It connected. He howled and bent double. Rye knew he would come up with a knife in his hand.

“Goliad, was he the laser man?”

Goliad, clawing foam out of his eyes, nodded, spat, “Stupid little shit.”

Rye danced backward as Timmy came stumbling blindly toward him, yelling foul epithets as he made wild arcs with a switchblade.

“And Brady White?” Rye asked.

Shaking foam off his hand, Goliad said, “I hit him.”

“Then you’re next.”

“I kept White alive. Timmy wanted to slit his throat.”

Rye growled as he caught Timmy’s arm in mid-swing and, with momentum in his favor, propelled him backward until he came up hard against a concrete pillar. Rye hammered Timmy’s hand against it until he let go of the knife; then he delivered an uppercut to Timmy’s chin. The back of his head smacked against the unforgiving column.

“That’s for Brady. This is for the laser and the man whose plane you wrecked.” He rammed his fist in the man’s shallow belly and swore he reached his spine. “This is for insulting Dr. O’Neal.” He backed up and put all he had into the kick to Timmy’s genitals.

Timmy screamed, grabbed his crotch, and pitched forward onto the floor.

By now, Goliad had drawn his weapon but held it at his side as he faced off with Rye.

Rye motioned to the handgun. “Are you going to shoot me?”

Goliad shook his head. “He had it coming.”

“Thanks for not killing me in the cabin. You could have.”

“Wasn’t the time.”

“Should I be looking over my shoulder for you?”

“I don’t have any orders regarding you now. Can’t promise I won’t.”

“And Brynn?”

He hesitated, then repeated, “Can’t promise I won’t.”

Understanding passed between them. “Fair enough.” Rye backed away a few more steps then turned and walked quickly away.

He didn’t start running until he reached the ramp; then he bolted and didn’t stop, not even when he reached the street. He ran full out for two blocks before realizing he was leaving a trail of blood.

Chapter 16

5:08 p.m.

They’re out?”

Nate, speaking into his cell phone, ran his hand over his head, a gesture of frustration and impatience that Brynn had seen him do hundreds of times. She now had the inane thought that perhaps he was checking it for bristle.

He had placed the black box on his desk, within a foot of where she sat. She stared at it while Nate continued his harangue with whoever had answered the Hunts’ land line after calls to the senator’s cell phone and that of Mrs. Hunt had gone to voice mail.

“How can they be ‘out’? They had dinner at home, correct?” The reply caused him to check his gaudy wristwatch. “Then where would they have gone? Fine, fine. Look, if they instructed you to tell anyone who called that they were not at home, I assure you they were not including me.”

That went on for another minute or so. Brynn thought she might scream before he finally disconnected. “She swears they’re not there.”

“Maybe they aren’t.”

“They wouldn’t choose now to go for a Sunday drive, Brynn. Or were you thinking that maybe they went to the movies?”

“Don’t talk down to me like that, Nate.”

He didn’t apologize for his condescension. She doubted he’d even heard her. He was stroking his head and pacing. “I don’t understand this at all. Delores has been hounding me since that catastrophe last night. Hounding me! Calling every half hour, asking what your status was, when you would be back.”

He paused and looked at her with contempt. “While I’m trying to keep her and Richard calm, you’re off gallivanting with that…whatever. Jesus!” He threw back his head and looked up at the ceiling as though searching for an answer to his incomprehension. “I can’t believe he can read, much less fly an airplane.”

“He’s an Air Force Academy graduate. He flew rescue missions in Afghanistan.”

He scoffed. “Is he also a spy for the CIA?”

Actually, it was Wilson who’d shared with her what had shown up when they checked Rye Mallett’s background. His character profile had changed dramatically after his second tour of duty. He must have experienced something deeply affecting during his service, but she would never know what it was.

Just doing my job.

He’d seen it through, washed his hands of the whole ordeal, and walked away from it, as he’d said he would. One day, when a medical breakthrough was announced, he might wonder if it was connected to the pharmaceutical he’d unwittingly smuggled. More than likely he wouldn’t recall her name, but he might remember her as that woman who had complicated his life and temporarily kept him tethered to the ground when he would rather be airborne.

Her wish never to see him again was no longer as desirous, but it was too late to recall it. Anyway, he was gone, and a clean break was best under the circumstances. Her focus, her sole focus, must be on the GX-42.

Her eyes on the box, she said, “Nate? Are we doing the right thing, giving this to Richard Hunt?”

Hearing the misgiving in her voice, he stopped pacing. “Absolutely.” Her uncertainty must have been apparent, because he rapped the top of the box with his knuckles and repeated, “Absolutely. We made our decision, Brynn.”

“I know, but—”

“We can’t backtrack now. It’s out of the question.”