Dead Run (2 page)

“Yeah. No problem. Can we move?”

To their credit, they did hustle their asses, leading the way through a complex maze of backdoor corridors until they reached Gate 57 where, by now, flight DL67 was boarding. Taylor strode quickly through the waiting area, scanning the seats and lines of bored passengers. There was no sign of Hinault.

He began studying body types and facial structure. If Hinault was Helloco, he was one cool and clever customer, so Taylor was putting no trick in the book past him.

The airline agent behind the customer service station spoke into the microphone. “Will passenger Yannick Hinault please report to the customer service desk? Passenger Yannick Hinault, please report to the customer service desk.”

Taylor moved to the edge of the waiting area and watched for anyone trying to slip away. No one came to the desk, and no one showed any interest in missing their flight.

Taylor swore inwardly. He turned to the milling security officers. The Great Pumpkin raised his arms in a
beats me
gesture.

Seriously?

Seriously?

Taylor took a couple of angry paces. What now? Nine passenger terminals connected by a U-shaped two-level roadway. Los Angeles International Airport was one of the largest airports in the world.

He checked his iPhone. He was going to miss his flight.
Shit
. Where the hell did they even s—

“
Uncle Taylor
.” Skinny arms wrapped around Taylor’s waist. Taylor spun around.

A dark-haired boy of eight or so was smiling up at him in delight. Taylor experienced one of those worlds-colliding moments as he belatedly recognized his eight-year-old nephew, Jamie.

“What are you doing here?”

He must have sounded pretty sharp because Jamie’s face fell and he turned scarlet, suddenly aware of the armed and uniformed men surrounding him. He let go of Taylor and retreated.

Taylor spotted his sister, Tara, approaching. She carried her younger son Jase on her hip, and she was staring at Taylor as though an eyesore had appeared on her horizon. Looping an arm around Jamie, she pulled him close.

“Taylor? What’s going on?”

Taylor said at the same moment, “Are you on this flight?”

“We’re meeting James in Paris. What’s happening? Is there a problem?” Her gaze traveled from Taylor to the phalanx of security officers behind him.

James MacDonald, Tara’s husband, was an executive for Geo-Gulf Oil, one of the companies owned by Taylor’s and Tara’s stepfather. James worked and lived a large part of the year in Bahrain. Tara and the boys traveled back and forth from California.

“I don’t know if there’s a problem or not,” Taylor told her.

“You don’t
know
?”

That was the trouble being the youngest child. No matter how old you got, how good you were at your job, or what a well-known badass you turned out to be, you were always the nutty kid brother to your siblings.

Other passengers were watching them suspiciously. Taylor led Tara to the side. “I think they’re going to cancel the flight, but if they don’t, don’t get on that plane.”

“
Cancel the flight
?”

Taylor winced. Tara would never make a poker player.

“
Why
? What’s wrong?”

“Probably nothing. But just…I don’t want to take any chances.”

Jase reached out and tried to grab Tara’s hoop earring. She automatically shifted him to the other hip. “Taylor, you can’t just drop a bomb like that and not expect any questions.”

At the word
bomb
, a collective shudder went through the security people who were now watching brother and sister as much as the general boarding area.

Tara glanced back at them, did a double take, and turned to Taylor. She’d lost color. Her arms instinctively tightened around Jase. “Oh my God.”

Taylor said quickly, “Nothing’s been confirmed. Not even close. I’m probably way off base here. But let’s not take any chances.”

Tara stared at him. “You don’t think you’re wrong.”

He admitted wearily, “I have no idea if I’m wrong. All I know for sure is I just missed my own flight.”

“Where are you flying to?”

“Paris.”

“You’re kidding.”

He shook his head. “Different flight.”

Tara bit her lip, gazing at the crowded lounge area where the restless passengers were now beginning to openly share their irritation at the delay. “Maybe your guy took the other flight?”

Taylor shook his head. “He can’t have boarded another Delta flight using that name. He’s been flagged. Or…at least…”

“What?” Tara was watching him closely.

Taylor shook his head again. “I’m not sure. It’s a long shot. I’ve got to go talk to these cowboys. Just wait here. They’ve got instructions to hold the plane.”

“For how long?”

“For however long it takes. They’re telling me no luggage was checked, so it’s probably fine. Even so, don’t board this flight.”

“What are you
talking
about, don’t board this flight? We can’t just waste these tickets. Do you have any idea how expensive it will be to try to—”

He wasn’t listening.

Was it possible that Hinault or Helloco or whoever this guy was had made him in the check-in queue?

If so, would Helloco have a backup plan? What would that backup plan be?

Will was always telling Taylor what a devious bastard he was. Okay, what would another devious bastard do in this situation? Assuming—and it was a big assumption, after all—that Taylor’s imagination wasn’t running away with him and that he had really seen Yann Helloco.

The more he thought about it, the more doubtful it seemed. The coincidence of the similar names and destination—Paris notwithstanding.

“We need to do a full sweep of the airport,” Taylor told the Great Pumpkin.

The Great Pumpkin laughed.

“I’m not kidding around. We need to conduct a full search of all the airport terminals.”

“If you’re not kidding, then I want whatever the hell it is you’re smoking. We can’t authorize that kind of operation based on your say-so. There are
procedures
. There are
channels
.”

“Fine. Let’s initiate whatever those procedures are through whatever channels necessary.”

The other man stared at him for a long, grim moment. “Have it your way. But you better be right.”

* * *

He was not right.

“Better safe than sorry, sir,” Taylor said to Assistant Field Office Director Cooper when he was summoned, forty-five minutes later, to the phone in Security. It was what Will would have said, for sure, in the same position. Not that Will would have gotten himself into the same position.

“That’s true, MacAllister,” Cooper replied. “Provided we’re talking about pool safety or learning to use the crosswalk. It’s not true when we’re talking about the hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of dollars it would have cost to mount a full-scale search of the LAX and ground all those flights you wanted grounded. I’ve got the FAA and TSA and Homeland Security all screaming for your head on a platter. I’m tempted to give it to them.”

It was difficult, very difficult, to substitute the things he really wanted to say for a restrained, “I’m sorry, sir. I had to make a judgment call.”

“
Judgment
is the last word you should be using, MacAllister. You’re not even sure it was Helloco. The odds are you did
not
see Helloco. “

Taylor held his tongue. Cooper was right.

“By rights I ought to cancel your leave and drag you back here for a full inquiry, but as you clearly
need
this vacation time, we’ll postpone till your return.”

Taylor struggled within himself. “Thank you, sir.”

Cooper hung up. Loudly.

* * *

“Better safe than sorry,” Tara reassured him before she boarded her own much-delayed flight. “You did the right thing.”

Taylor nodded. He ruffled Jamie’s hair. “Be good, sport.”

Jamie beamed up at him, adoring once more. It was not a generally shared view.

Hinault’s flight was the one plane that had been held. Every piece of luggage in its cargo hold had been searched, but nothing had been found. Every piece of luggage matched perfectly to another irate passenger complaining about missed connections and lost hotel reservations and blown business meetings and the general inconvenience.

In fairness, Taylor had also missed his flight, and although the consensus was that he had done the only possible thing in reporting his suspicions, he could feel his lack of popularity in the apathetic effort to get him rebooked.

When he found out the next flight to Paris was not until midnight, he had to fight the urge to punch something. Ideally Yannick Hinault, but Hinault seemed to have vanished into thin air.

After he watched Tara’s plane depart, Taylor found a pay phone and dialed the number of the US Embassy in Paris. Before the call went through, he remembered the time difference. It would be one o’clock in the morning. Saturday morning at that. He disconnected and redialed Will’s apartment from memory. He’d be waking Will out of a sound sleep to tell him the whole story and admit that his overzealousness had cost them a full day together.

The phone rang on the other end with a perky jangle that sounded peculiarly French. The receiver picked up on the second ring, and a crisp male American accent that was definitely not Will’s said, “Hello?”

Chapter Two

“Hey, Will. Phone for you.”

David Bradley’s voice floated clearly through the bathroom door. Will opened the door, toweling his wet hair.

“At this hour?”

There was a suggestion of a delay before David said, “I think it’s your…partner.”

Shit.

Will glanced at the bedroom clock. What the hell was Taylor doing phoning when he should be in a plane winging over the Atlantic Ocean? And why the hell had David picked that phone up?

He resisted the impulse to spell all that out. It wasn’t David’s fault that Taylor, supremely confident in most areas, had a disconcerting insecurity where Naval Lieutenant Commander David Bradley was concerned.

He went through to the front room and picked up the phone.

“Brandt here.”

“It’s me.”

It was funny how even after all this time, his heart gave a little kick at the sound of Taylor’s husky voice. Like a turbo boost. They’d been friends and partners for three years before unexpectedly—on Will’s part, anyway—realizing that somehow along the way, affection had turned to love. “Where are you?”

He was expecting the next comment to be a question about David, though he hoped Taylor wouldn’t recognize the voice as Bradley’s given he’d only heard it a couple of times. Even so, Taylor was probably wondering why there was a guy in Will’s apartment at one in the a.m.

But Taylor surprised him. “LAX.”

“Why? Why aren’t you on your way here?”

“I missed my flight.”

Will swore. “Don’t tell me that bastard Cooper canceled your leave again?”

“No. I screwed this up myself.” Taylor proceeded to tell him about believing he’d spotted geriatric terrorist Yann Helloco from an article in
American Cop.

When Will could wedge a word in, he asked, “Who the hell is Yann Helloco?” Anyone but Taylor and he’d figure the guy was putting in too much overtime, but if Taylor thought he’d ID’d this silver panther, that was good enough for Will.

Although he kind of wished Taylor hadn’t had to go quite so Dudley Do-Right on their vacation time.

“Back in the sixties he was a member of the FLB. The
Front de Libération de la Bretagne
. You’d know them as the Liberation Front of Brittany.”

“No, I wouldn’t. I’ve never heard of them. The sixties? Are you kidding? I’ve got plenty to keep me busy with current affairs.”

“They were called the smiling terrorists.”

“I’m sure. I’m sure they left their victims laughing in the aisles.” Will hated terrorists. Period.

“Their attacks were symbolic. No one was to be killed or injured, but then in the seventies Helloco and a few others broke and formed Finistère. Finistère didn’t have the same attitude about nonviolence.”

Eleven months and he’s missed his goddamned plane, and for some reason he’s talking to me about terrorism in the 1960s.

Will did his best to swallow his exasperation as Taylor tersely briefed him on Finistère’s background and their greatest “statement,” which was apparently the bombing of a Parisian museum and its collection of irreplaceable paintings by Jacques-Louis David.

Pronounced Dah-veed, but it reminded Will that Bradley was sitting on the sofa sipping his drink and trying not to listen in on Will’s conversation.

He opened his mouth to address the inevitable question before Taylor had to, but Taylor was telling him—clipped tone revealing that this was the tough part—about how the plane had been delayed but no bomb had turned up and there had been no sign of Helloco.

Ouch
. Taylor didn’t say so, but he’d have gotten short shrift from everyone involved when this mythical bad guy failed to materialize. Reading between the lines: Taylor had exceeded his authority in spectacular fashion and was going to have to pay the price for his failed gamble. The line between hero and villain could be disconcertingly fine.

Will said comfortingly, “If that guy was who you thought he was, he’s got radar. He probably pegged you for law enforcement before you ever spotted him.”

“Maybe.”

“He probably walked straight out of the airport and crawled back under whatever rock he’s been hiding beneath.”

“I guess.”

Will knew that tone of old. Taylor was going to keep worrying at this like a dog with a bone.

“No? What do you think happened?”

“I think he had a contingency plan.”

Because that was what Taylor would do, and nobody was better at thinking like a bad guy than Taylor. The fact that Will found that charming probably said something none too flattering about Will. “Such as?”

“He could have booked two flights.”