Hotshot (15 page)

Tension ratcheted, clouding his vision. As much as he wanted to be airborne pronto, he knew these steps were about more than safety. He needed this ritual, here in the craft, even if for sixty seconds, to get his head in the game and relegate everything else—especially Shay—to the back of his mind.

With each call from Jimmy, Vince fell into the rhythm, sliding into the zone.

Jimmy moved on to, “Engine start checklist.”

He checked the radio frequency and keyed the mic. “Burke Ground Pilatus niner-six-eight-foxtrot-uniform, Charlie Row, Spot Four starting engines.”

The radio crackled, “Copy foxtrot-uniform, call when ready to taxi.”

“Prop.”

Vince peered over the nose. “Prop clear.” Some things didn’t change, even after a hundred years of flying. He moved his head over to the open window and yelled, “Clear.”

He pushed the starter switch, and the big turboprop on the nose spun to life. They cleaned up a few minutes more of call and response and readied to taxi.

Jimmy read back the instructions to the controller and scanned the right side of the airplane. “Clear right.”

“Cleared left,” Vince answered then advanced the throttles and started the aircraft moving.

He tapped the brakes for a check then eased off with a minuscule lurch forward. Routine. Ritual. Block out all else.

Jimmy dialed up their second radio to the automated terminal information service frequency for the latest weather. He jotted some info down on his kneeboard and checked the takeoff data. “Takeoff data looks good. About a three-thousand-foot roll.”

Vince braked to a stop just short of the runway. “Burke Tower, Pilatus niner-six-eight-foxtrot-uniform number one with information bravo, ready for takeoff.”

“Foxtrot-uniform on takeoff hold runway heading until three thousand feet,” the tower responded, continuing with the takeoff instructions, which Jimmy repeated back.

Ready to ride.

His body hummed louder than the plane in anticipation. He applied power and turned onto the runway. He nudged the rudder pedals and nosed the aircraft onto the centerline. He moved the throttle forward, and the aircraft rapidly accelerated. Jimmy watched the instruments, while Vince handled the airplane.

Vince pulled the yoke back, and they slipped into the air. “Gear.”

Jimmy pulled up the gear handle. “Gear in transit. Gear up, lights out.”

The night sky stretched ahead with a sickle moon and blanket of stars. Hell yeah, hogs and planes. Nothing like flying along the road or the clouds. Nothing except sex with Shay?

Head back in the game, moron.

He circled through the departure and received clearance to the area they were going to snoop. Flying at 9,500 feet, lights off and in the dark, no one would even notice them from the ground. Jimmy cleared out of the copilot seat and moved to the rear to turn on the snooper equipment. The machine would scan the preset cell phone numbers gathered by Smooth and Berg.

“Damn,” Jimmy grumbled into the headset, “none in use. They just couldn’t make this easy for us, could they?”

“I guess it was too much to hope for that we would immediately hook onto the signal of someone spilling their guts.”

More waiting. For how long? Usually he would welcome the extra flight hours, but tonight he wanted answers.

Cloning the kid’s cell phone allowed them to retrieve codes from the phone and ID who the person was speaking to. After grabbing the cloning data, it was a piece of cake to listen in, just like tuning a radio or planting a bug. They shared the valuable technology with the Feds for tracking paths of mob transactions and with the CIA to follow a terrorist path until they had a picture of the group being monitored.

All well and good if someone was actually talking.

Jimmy tweaked the tuner on the listening device. Still nothing but silence. “Remember back when you and I were testing the snooper and hooked into the boss’s phone instead of the one we had set up to test?”

Vince grinned at the memory. “Scanlon sure was torqued, but it was well worth it to find out his wife called him Big Stallion.”

“Still cracks me up thinking about his face when he walked into the room, and everyone started snorting like a horse. Classic.”

Their squadron commander had doled out payback by putting the two of them on every flight with a middle-of-the-night show time for three months. Then Scanlon’s wife had died, and the boss stopped joking.

Jimmy shifted in his seat. “What’s the scoop with you and your babe, Big Stallion, Jr.?”

Vince keyed in new navigation points to the computer system. “Broken record, my brother.”

“You’re not going to get away with that ‘just friends’ story anymore.” Leaning toward the front, he jabbed a thumb at Vince’s neck.

Vince glanced down. A hickey at thirty-four? He’d been like a teenager so into the moment, into her, he’d lost control.

A smile tugged at his face. And he wouldn’t change a second of it.

His smile faded. Would Shay agree? He would just have to persuade her that they could not go back to the way things were.

“I’m also not into locker room talk.”

“She’s that important?”

Shay always had been, in her own way. Even when she torqued him off, made him want to run for the hills—or make love to her against a door—he never forgot her. Shay left a large and lasting impression.

So how would he reconcile who she was? Who her father was? Who his dad was? He didn’t know how to put the pieces all together and wished this flight would crank up so he had less time for ruminating and more time for acting.

Jimmy reached across and knocked him on his bald head. “You’re overthinking.”

No shit. “Ah, stupid me.” He thunked his forehead. “I should have just consulted my Magic 8 Ball. But I keep getting, ‘Reply hazy, try again.’ ”

“Hmmm, I get the sense it’s saying ‘Better not tell you now.’ Sometimes we guys just aren’t ready to accept what we already know deep down is going to happen.”

“Did you get a degree in Magic 8 Ball psychology during those two weeks of leave you took to hang out with Chloe?”

“That’s me. Captain Sensitivity.”

His headset filled with a ringing sound. A phone call.

His gut clenched. Finally. “Here we go. He’s making a call. Heads up in the hangar, Berg and Smooth.”

“Roger,” both men responded over the headset.

Four phone chimes in, the sound stopped.

“Hello?” a deep male voice answered.

“Hey, dude, it’s me,” the teen responded.

Vince worked to place either of the voices but came up blank. Maybe Shay would know if they replayed it for her. He blocked thoughts of her and focused on the moment, gathering as much data as possible.

“Are you on a throwaway phone?” the adult male said low.

“Of course.”

The kid had lied, because they knew full well this phone had been used before. Interesting.

Had he done it to save money, the arrogance of youth assuming the odds were for him? Not that it mattered. The kid’s carelessness was their gain.

“So,” the deeper voice came on again. “Make this quick. I’ve got work piled up on my desk.”

Someone who worked at five in the morning? And for that matter, what was any teen doing up this early? All the ones he knew slept until noon in the summer. He tuned out thoughts and tuned in his ears.

“I know who she’s banging, and it’s not good.”

“Were you careful?”

“Duh, of course.”

Vince sat up straighter. They couldn’t be talking about Shay sleeping with him. No way had her location been outed—much less what they’d been doing. That would mean a security breach of horrific proportions. He forced his attention back to flying the plane. It would be too easy to get sucked into the content of the conversation.

Jimmy fiddled with the control screen and keyed up the secure link to Berg and Smooth back in the hanger. “Sounds like their call is going to be quick. Do you guys have what you need so we can get a flyover look of this kid?”

A short hiss sounded in his headset telling him the encryption was synced up. “We got it,” Smooth answered. “Finishing the trace. Sending you coordinates now.”

“Received,” Jimmy answered, affirming the coordinates had popped up on the screen. Jimmy punched some buttons to point the surveillance cameras. “The kid’s call is coming from about three miles behind us, Vince. Come around to heading zero-eight-five. While you do that, we’ll try to get a lock on who he’s speaking to.”

“Wilco, in the turn.” Halfway through the turn, the camera locked in on a park in the middle of the city.

The rest of the phone discussion sounded benign enough, something about changing their meeting place—leaving the mall?—then the man signaled an end to the conversation. “Hang tough, kid. We’re in the homestretch. You just have to make it to tomorrow afternoon. Prove yourself, and you know the payback will be worth it.”

The line disconnected.

Tomorrow. The date for the congressional hearing. Vince’s fists tightened around the yoke. They needed to find that little prick who was terrorizing people—terrorizing Shay—just for some payoff or payback.

Jimmy zoomed the image, Vince’s smaller screen up front giving him a bird’s-eye view of their first look at the caller, pulling the cell phone away from his ear. Or at least it looked like a male.

Whoever it was wore a hooded sweatshirt, leaving little of his face clear. Damn that breeze blowing in off Erie. They could have used a boiler night.

Or maybe the person didn’t want to be identified?

Vince pushed some buttons to stream the video back to the hangar where Berg and Smooth could use editing software to capture still photos of the caller. Hopefully they’d caught enough to run a facial recognition program and check against a database maintained by the Feds.

The airwaves crackled before Berg droned, “We’re getting good data down here. Working photos now.”

A successful mission. Photos of their person of interest and a new cell phone to monitor. They could start building a picture of the network of plotters.

Vince leaned back in the seat to revel in the success. He looked up and out the windshield.

“Holy shit!”

FOURTEEN

Vince stared through the windscreen right up the ass of what appeared to be a huge buzzard.

He violently broke left just as the swooping bird seemed destined to become a permanent part of the Pilatus. Which might have been funny, except a bird to the windscreen at this speed was the same as taking a cannonball hit.

Still diving left, he ducked his head and braced for the impact, the noise . . . and heard nothing but the hum of radio wave static. He peeked out with one eye and saw only starry night sky cut by the first finger rays of sunrise.

“What the fuck?” echoed not over his headset but from right behind his ear.

He glanced back to see Jimmy crumpled up against the back of his seat.

“Sorry about that, old buddy.” Vince leveled the wings. “The buzzard must have been on an FAA clearance. He was fricking huge.”

“Yeah, yeah, buzzard, shmuzzard. Let me know if you need a real pilot.” Jimmy settled back into his seat at the snooper screen. “Ya know, Buzzard might not be such a bad call sign for you.”

“Vapor, Hotshot, Buzzard, it’s all the same to me, as long as I land at the end of the day.” What would have happened to this investigation, to Shay, if he’d crashed? He’d never worried beyond the weight of the mission before.

“I thought for sure I had one that would piss you off. You take all the fun out of razzing.”

“I live to please.” Vince leveled out the plane and checked panel readings. “All set to shut down back there?”

“Hold on a second,” Jimmy answered, humor gone. “I think I’ve got something. Swing back around for a sweep over the park.”

“Wilco.” Vince banked right, eyes out for that buzzard, although it was more likely the bird died from a heart attack. “What do you have there?”

“Almost got it . . . I’m fine-tuning. Damn,” he hissed. “Take a look at your screen. We’re gonna need to call for backup.”

What now? Vince looked down, snapped back in his seat. The kid in the dark hoodie sprinted through the park, running full-out from three attackers with machetes.

Shay had always known to be careful in her work, but never before had she felt like she had a huge bull’s-eye on her back.

Stepping out of protective custody for this parent meeting at the community center was scary, even with security from the FBI. Plus she had the added watchful eye of Officer Jaworski’s finest because of the bomb threat.

Canceling her presentation scared her more, though, because she knew what could happen to these kids if she gave up. Vince would be speaking at a start-up meeting for a new Civil Air Patrol squadron, a part of her plan for bringing order to this corner of Cleveland. She’d never thought to adopt any of her old man’s tactics in her own life, but maybe remembering some of the public good her dad had done would help her forgive him for checking out on fatherhood.

She searched the crowd for Vince. He was already a half hour late. She’d stalled as long as she could. Much longer, and she would need to cobble some kind of talk together with Eli. She found him still in a back corner chatting with a decked-out young mom.

Too bad Angeline couldn’t have joined them, but according to her husband, the stress from the bombing had taken a serious toll on her blood pressure, so they were both camped out in front of the TV indulging in nonstop sports network.

She checked her wristwatch. If Vince didn’t show soon, she feared the crowd would get restless and leave. Many of them were on a lunch break from work. Others worked the night shift and were giving up sleep.

He’d called an hour ago to say he needed to talk with her about something important. Something he couldn’t discuss over the phone. But he still hadn’t arrived from whatever work had called him away last night.

After they’d had sex against a door.

She’d never been so glad for an interruption as she was when her cell phone rang.
Chicken.
Yep, that was her, but didn’t she have enough on her plate right now? She was entitled to pull a Scarlett O’Hara and worry about it tomorrow. These kids needed her undivided attention. And if she kept making excuses long enough, she might actually convince herself she wasn’t running from the intensity of being with Vince for the first time.

A hand cupped her shoulder. She jumped, then looked back.

Vince crowded close to her from behind, hot and bulky and intimately familiar. “Look out for spiders, and watch what you say.”

Spiders? Her eyes went wide. His friends were piloting their surveillance insects in here. Now. Her skin itched worse than if the real things had been crawling up her leg.

He tugged his day planner from under his arm and pulled out a grainy black-and-white photo. “Do you recognize this person?”

She squinted. A sweatshirt with the hood up obscured most of the face. Was the listening spider recording her now? Could the eyes on the other end see how her body hummed with awareness from standing beside Vince? “I can’t see enough of the face to be sure.”

Vince pulled another photo sheet from beneath it with a series of smaller snapshots scrolled out like movie frames. The cumulative picture coalesced in her mind.

“That’s Brody.” She glanced up sharply.

“The professor-type kid from the Mercenaries, right? Is Brody’s family here?”

Oh, God, what had he done? “Why do you want to know?”

“Later.” He nodded toward the wall where a tiny spider crawled along the edges of a bulletin board. “Can you answer my question please?”

“His grandmother is over there”—she pointed to the last row of chairs—“wearing a purple shirt, sitting by the water cooler. That’s Webber’s mom beside her.”

“They’re friends?” He edged closer to the spider. Feeding information?

“Neighbors.” She hated being kept in the dark, but she had to trust him. Strange how she trusted him so totally when it came to her teens but couldn’t relax her fears when it came to her heart. “They take different shifts on the city road work crew so one of them is always around for the kids. Is it him?”

Brody? Her caller? The bomber. It didn’t gel for her, but she should know better than to rule anything out when it came to these kids.

“Shhh. Not now. I need you to watch the adults and note anything that seems strange for our friends.” He planted his hand on the wall beside the silvery arachnid. “I should present my part of the talk now.”

She scanned the room, her eyes snagging on twitchy Officer Jaworski, who never let go of his nightstick.

“Who’s that with Jaworski?” She pointed to the young man in a sharp suit standing with the cop in the back of the room. Another undercover guard? Maybe. But maybe not. It seemed to her anything out of the ordinary should be noted for the folks on the other end of the eight-legged listening device. “I’ve never seen him here before.”

Vince cocked his head to the side. “Oh, that’s the congressional aide from California getting the lay of land. He came to the meet and greet. I ran into him in the parking lot checking out my Ducati with Eli.”

“I must have missed him. I wish Eli would have mentioned that.” She made note of the California aide for future reference in her quest to put her agenda forward. A personal appearance from the political staff boded well, and she intended to make the most of it by speaking to him before he left. “Let’s get things rolling.”

She stepped to the front of the room. She would have to trust that the metal detector they’d installed at the door after the bomb threat had kept any guns and knives out of the building. “If you’ll all return to your seats, we’ll continue on with the second half of our program.”

The crowd shuffled around, jockeying for seats, a good showing of maybe a couple dozen parents, most of whom seemed genuinely concerned. Except for the one flirting with Eli. The young mom had more bling than interest in the meeting, perhaps somebody too caught up in the successful lifestyle she thought gangbanging could bring.

Focus. Breathe.
Shay gripped the podium. “We appreciate your interest and participation in the process. As you already know, things have reached a critical point for the youth in our neighborhood. They’ve moved beyond beat downs and drive-by shootings to planting bombs. Obviously, everyone on staff here feels deeply for the safety of your children.”

She trained her eyes on the crowd to keep from looking over too often at the spider. Or Vince. Or that freaking young mom who was now digging in her designer purse and punching numbers into her cell phone. “We want you to understand we know this isn’t easy. These kids are tough. Some of them are dangerous. Some of them are hurting. I hear them, and I understand, because I was there. I suffered from a litany of teenage issues, even flirting with crime.”

The mom with her too-perfect nose and what looked like an overdone boob job brought the cell phone to her ear.

Rage swelled deep, pushing up her throat and demanding release. Before she realized the words were forming, they tumbled out of her mouth. “I emotionally hit the wall and tried to take my own life.”

She stole a moment to catch her breath and keep her eyes steadfastly off Vince until she could tamp down her anger. Still, Shay could feel Vince’s presence growing, emotion swelling from him. Maybe it hadn’t been fair to spring it on him this way. Okay, it definitely wasn’t fair.

And she needed to get her brain in gear again rather than stand around like an idiot. Time to improvise. “I survived only because my parents found me in time. I got a second chance, thank God. We need to find a way to give our youth a second chance.”

She risked a glance at Vince, currently studying her through squinted eyes.

“Here with us this afternoon is someone from my old neighborhood who found his second chance through a new group, a new gang if you will, the type of positive option we would like to implement here. But I’ll let him tell you about that. Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming Major Vince Deluca, a pilot in the U.S. Air Force and a combat veteran.”

She gave him a wide berth to take the podium, not sure of him or herself. Didn’t they have enough to worry about just staying alive? She grasped her wrist, twisting the wide green polka-dot watchband around and around over her faded scar.

Searching the room for those clues to collect, she realized it wasn’t just anger at the mother pimped out on the drug-dealing lifestyle who pissed her off. It felt like the whole neighborhood was boiling over in a pressure cooker, ready to blow. Everything was coming to a head, from suicide calls to the FBI’s presence in town.

Would Brody call her again? Was he out to get her or seriously thinking of taking his own life because of what the gang was forcing him to do?

A part of her balked at the phone tapping that she knew would happen from now on, but they weren’t breaking any laws, and people’s lives were at stake.

Vince stepped in front of the podium, no barriers between him and his audience. “The Civil Air Patrol is an all-volunteer organization with an air force affiliation. The uniforms are almost the same, as is the ranking system. The opportunities kick butt. It’s not just about learning how to march. Teens will have the chance to participate in everything from learning to fly to search-and-rescue missions.”

He paused, leaning back against the podium and crossing his biker boots at the heels. “You can tell by my appearance I’m not your run-of-the-mill clean-cut guy.”

Laughter rippled through the crowd, taking the tension down a notch.

“I was a member of a motorcycle gang as a teenager—not the good kind, either. I did things that should have landed me in jail. If not for Shay Bassett’s father and his openness to taking on hellions like myself, I
would
be in jail. Instead, by seventeen I was on board a flight that located a missing father and child who’d gone off the road in a snowstorm. Today, I pilot multimillion-dollar aircraft. There isn’t an easy quick fix here. But I’m sure glad no one gave up on me.”

He reached for the glass of water beside him and took a long swallow before continuing, “I could ramble on for hours about how freaking cool my job is, but I imagine my time is better spent answering questions you may have about Civil Air Patrol and my own journey off the streets.”

Shay scanned the crowd, while mumbling a litany of observations for the surveillance device. She watched the parents, listening to their questions and watching their reactions. Some interested. Some skeptical. A few frowning with outright disapproval. For that matter, the young mother with the bling and boob job had just left the building, making her wonder why these parents couldn’t be more supportive.

Could one of these adults be involved?

She’d just assumed an older teen, a high-ranking member in one of the gangs, was calling the shots to increase power and establish dominance over other gangs. The possibility that one of these parents could be orchestrating their own child’s life into crime shouldn’t surprise her, but it did. She could only think of one reason why an authority figure would get involved in this juvenile level of violence.

Money.

Her eyes gravitated to Brody’s grandmother sitting with his sister. Lord knows they didn’t look like they were rolling in any surprise windfalls, but many got sucked into the criminal activity before realizing that gangs rarely brought much to anyone other than those at the very top of the chain.