Candice turned back to me and said, “Are you against planes in general or just that one?”
“Just that one.”
Looking to Harrison, she said, “See ya,” and pivoted with me to walk back to Blass’s car, where luckily he was still parked. Opening the front passenger door, Candice asked, “Can we trouble you for a ride to the airport?”
“We’re at the airport,” Blass said, and I could see his head pivoting back and forth from Candice to Harrison, who stood angrily with his hands on his hips in the same spot we’d left him.
“I know,” Candice said patiently. “But we’re looking for the one with bigger planes.”
At this point Harrison shook his head and turned away from us. We were on our own. “Sure,” Blass finally said. “Hop in.”
I called Dutch the moment our nice, big commercial jet came to a stop on the tarmac at Detroit Metro. “We just landed,” I said wearily. I’d explained to him as we waited to see if we could get on a flight out of Milwaukee that I’d had a really bad feeling about flying in the charter plane, and Candice and I had decided to fly commercial instead. “Can you come give us a lift?”
“Uh . . . no,” he said, and I could hear the tension in his voice and lots of commotion in the background.
“Why? What’s up?” I said.
“I don’t know how to tell you this,” Dutch said, “but Harrison’s plane went off the grid somewhere over Lake Michigan.”
“What do you mean, ‘went off the grid’?” I asked in alarm.
“It went off the radar, babe. We think the plane crashed.”
Chapter Ten
Candice and I arrived by taxi at the FBI offices as soon as we could, and by the time we got there, we’d learned that the plane Harrison and Ed were in had been spotted near an old airstrip just off the Michigan coastline, and rescue teams had already been dispatched.
I’d told Candice in the cab that I felt that Harrison was still alive, but Ed’s energy felt very grave. I reiterated this to Dutch when I saw him, and I barely got the words out before he yanked me into his chest and hugged me fiercely. “Thank God you didn’t get on that plane,” he whispered.
Candice too looked a little rattled, and I had the sense that the close call was affecting everyone else a lot more than it was me. Even Gaston seemed anxious. “Why didn’t that idiot listen to you?” he asked me when word came that EMTs were on the scene and Harrison was alive but unconscious.
“He’s not such a big fan of mine,” I replied. “Plus, I didn’t know the plane was going to crash. I just knew it gave me the willies to think about getting on it again.”
Gaston sighed and I thought he was going to say something else, but at that moment there was more information coming in about the crash. Ed had coded at the scene and paramedics were trying to revive him. My heart thumped hard in my chest as I willed him to pull through. Minutes ticked by as Dutch paced back and forth with his cell phone stuck to his ear while he waited for more word to come in.
Finally after ten long, agonizing minutes he reported that they had a weak pulse on Ed and were en route to the hospital in Pentwater, twenty-five miles away from the crash site.
Much of the rest of the evening was spent waiting for updates, which were slow to come in. But we did hear enough to be able to piece a few things together. Just as they had the Michigan coastline in sight, Ed told Harrison that he was feeling very dizzy and nauseated, and was unable to focus. Feeling like something of a medical emergency might be unfolding, he’d given a very quick lesson to Harrison about handling the plane and what to do in case he became incapacitated, and then he’d suddenly blacked out. Harrison had somehow managed to keep the nose of the plane level, but he’d been too focused on aiming for an old abandoned airstrip that Ed had pointed out to try to radio for help. He’d attempted a landing, hoping that he could help Ed when he got the plane down, but it had been more difficult than he’d imagined and the plane’s wing had clipped a tree, sending it tumbling after touchdown.
It was a miracle they’d both managed to survive, as we also received a picture of the crash site. I’d taken a look at Dutch’s face as the image flashed across the computer screen. He’d turned ashen and reached for my hand. “I’m okay,” I told him. “Really.”
But poor Ed wasn’t so lucky. The doctors determined that he’d suffered a major heart attack, and he was scheduled for surgery as soon as they could stabilize him enough to take a chance with the operation. Sadly, I didn’t have a great feeling about his chances and the next morning we woke up to learn that he’d gone into cardiac arrest on the table and hadn’t survived.
On three hours’ sleep Dutch was determined to head to the west side of the state and visit his boss in the hospital. I went with him as much for moral support as to make sure he stayed awake during the trip.
We found Harrison grumbling at a nurse on the second floor of the Memorial Medical Center. As the nurse came out of the room, she looked like she liked him about as much as the rest of us. I gave her a sympathetic smile and Dutch and I knocked at the door. “Good morning, sir,” Dutch said cordially.
“Agent Rivers!” Harrison said in surprise.
I followed after Dutch into the room and nearly came up short. The right side of Harrison’s face was scratched and puffy and his right eye was nearly swollen shut. His right arm was in a sling and a cast had been secured around his hand and lower arm. His breathing seemed a little labored and I could tell he was in no small amount of discomfort, but as his good eye swiveled over to me, I could see he was even more surprised that I’d come too. “Ms. Cooper,” he said. “What brings you here?”
It was my turn to be surprised. “Dutch and I wanted to come and see how you were doing, sir.”
Harrison’s expression was unreadable—but that might have been due to the swelling of his face. His sentiment became clear, however, when he said, “I thought you were here to predict another disaster.”
Dutch visibly stiffened, but I’d been hanging out with Harrison long enough to know he was capable of being an ass, so his comment didn’t rattle me any more than usual. I forced myself to laugh and turn it into a joke instead. “How about if I just predict your speedy recovery?”
The corner of Harrison’s mouth lifted, but it looked more like a grimace and his attention swiveled back to Dutch. “I suppose Gaston’s going to make you the lead now that I’m out of commission for a few days?”
Dutch kept his cool and didn’t take the bait. “There’s been no discussion on that front, sir.”
Harrison didn’t look like he believed him, but he didn’t say anything more on the topic. “I heard about Ed,” he said after an uncomfortable pause.
“We’re very sorry, sir,” I said, and I meant it.
Harrison’s eye focused on his bedsheet. The uncomfortable silence returned, but then Harrison said, “Will you stick with the case, Ms. Cooper?”
Again I was surprised, but I answered him immediately. “As long as the FBI finds value in my participation, I’ll contribute where I can.”
“Good,” he whispered so softly that I barely caught the word. Dutch’s cell phone rang and he turned to the corner of the room to answer it. I moved closer to Harrison’s bedside and asked, “Can I get you anything?”
“I’m fine,” he assured me. “Thank you.” Then he seemed to notice that Candice wasn’t with me. “Where’s your partner?”
“She had some details to work out with her grandmother’s estate attorney. She told me to tell you to get well soon, though.”
This made Harrison chuckle and I couldn’t understand what he found so funny. “I’ll bet she did,” he said with chagrin. “And I’ll bet she can’t wait to rub my nose in it the next time she sees me.”
“Rub your nose in what, exactly, sir?”
“That I got on the plane,” he said simply.
My jaw dropped. “Agent Harrison,” I said deliberately, “if you hadn’t gotten on that plane, Ed would most definitely have died. The fact that he w
as given a chance at all was because you stuck by him and managed without any sort of training and barely any instruction to land the plane! As I understand it, before he went into surgery, he was conscious and his whole family was with him. You gave them their one and only chance to say good-bye to him. They would have missed that opportunity entirely if you hadn’t gotten on the plane, sir.”
Harrison regarded me for a long minute before Dutch came to stand next to me and offered him the phone. “It’s the SAC, sir. He would like to speak with you.”
Harrison took the phone, and Dutch and I moved out into the hallway to give him some privacy. He called us back a few minutes later. “I was right. Gaston has assigned temporary charge of the case over to you, Agent Rivers. I have been told by the doctors here that I can be discharged as soon as tomorrow and with a day or two of rest I can be back on the assignment by Monday.”
“Yes, sir,” said Dutch. “I’d be happy to step in until you’re well enough to come back on full-time.”
“You will of course keep me up-to-date at all times?” Harrison asked, but there was something about his look that suggested he was having a really hard time letting go of the case, even temporarily.
“Of course, sir.”
“I would also appreciate it if Ms. Cooper and Ms. Fusco took a step back at this point, Agent Rivers.”
Again my jaw dropped. That was out of left field. “But I thought you wanted us to remain on the case?” I said.
“I do,” Agent Harrison replied. “But my concern is that the lines between you and Agent Rivers will be too blurred for him to work within protocol. I would appreciate it if you waited until I was back in charge before you joined us again, so that I can maintain a proper atmosphere.”
I opened my mouth to protest, but Dutch squeezed my hand and said quickly, “Of course, sir.”
We then said our good-byes and left Harrison to battle another nurse who passed us on our way out. When we got into the car again, I turned to Dutch and demanded, “Why’d you cave?”
“Because he’s right, Edgar.”
“What do you mean, he’s right?” I shot back. “He’s not right! He’s never right!”
Dutch grinned as he turned the car out of the parking lot. “Maybe he’s not always right,” he conceded, “but this time I have to agree with him.”
“Why exactly?”
“Because politically it wouldn’t look good for me to have my girlfriend too deep into a case that I was in charge of,” he said. When I furrowed my brow at him, he explained, “By putting me in charge of this case, Gaston has stepped on all the toes of the other members of the task force. I haven’t been in on it from the beginning, and there are definitely other more-seasoned veterans that clearly should have been in line ahead of me, like Blass, or Albright. They’re going to be pissed off when they find out they not only have to bring me up to speed but report to me for the next seventy-two hours.”
“Yeah, but what does that have to do with me?” I asked.
“Everyone knows we’re a couple,” Dutch said. “Which is why Gaston was careful to keep me out of it in the beginning. He didn’t want there to be any appearance of impropriety, and honestly, he probably also thought about protecting me politically should this thing go south—just like you and Candice told him when you guys last met. If things go bad and you and Candice are still on board, I’d definitely be the first person thrown under the bus.”
“Do you think he advised Harrison to tell me to step away for a little while?”
“He could have,” Dutch conceded. “In fact, he probably did.”
“So if everyone is going to be pissed that you’re the temporary head of the investigation, and if it’s politically risky to you, why move you into that spot at all?”
“Because Gaston needs someone he can trust to head the investigation. This case is personal to him. He and Representative Lovelace go way back. He knows I’ll keep him in the loop and keep the level of intensity up on the case.” Dutch was silent for a minute before he added, “And it’s a short window anyway. He knows Harrison is going to push himself to recover as fast as possible, so I won’t be needed longer than a few days, and then he can bring you and Candice officially back on board.”
“So what are we supposed to do in the meantime?” I asked.
“What did you two do when you were taken off the case before?”
“We went behind Harrison’s back and worked the case on our own,” I admitted.
“Well,” Dutch said with another smile, “I of course have to tell you that the bureau would frown on that, but as long as it didn’t directly interfere with our investigation, we certainly couldn’t prevent you from doing what you wanted.”
I shot him a satisfied smile as I sat back in my seat, understanding that the entire course of all this maneuvering had likely been engineered by Gaston, who was quickly becoming a genius in my eyes. The man knew that if he put anyone other than Dutch in charge, I’d probably be underutilized until Harrison came back on the case, and I had no doubt I would have been. None of the other agents besides Dutch would likely be willing to trust my instincts. So he’d set me free until Harrison came back, and by putting Dutch in charge, he had an agent he could count on to let him know what was going on at every turn; plus he could count on Candice and I to continue to work the case and leak our findings to Dutch. He also likely knew that Harrison would want to come back quickly rather than have a green agent unfamiliar with the case in charge. And now, after the plane crash that I’d all but predicted, Harrison might never doubt my instincts again.
In the meantime, I reasoned, Candice and I needed to work this case, and work it hard. I looked at the clock on the dash. We’d be home in a little more than three hours, which still gave us time for a really good powwow.
Later that night my partner and I were munching on pizza and drawing on a large whiteboard in her office. We had a good little flowchart going as we talked through the case and decided on our next move. “As I see it,” Candice said, eyeing two boxes at the far right of the whiteboard, “we can either continue to follow Leslie’s trail or we can take a chance and follow up with Michael Derby.”
“It’s a tough call,” I said, glancing at the picture on the table in front of me of Leslie Coyle. “I know she’s still alive, but there’s this awful energy surrounding her. It feels completely unstable and I don’t think she can take her surroundings much longer.” I gave an involuntary shiver as I felt out her energy, and I knew that wherever she was, it wasn’t a place I ever wanted to go.
“What I don’t understand,” Candice mused, “is why she’s been treated so differently from Bianca and Kyle.”
“You mean why she’s been kept alive and the other two were murdered fairly quickly?”
“Yes,” said Candice.
I shrugged. I had no idea. “Maybe the killer likes her,” I said. “Maybe he’s toying with her or torturing her. Maybe he’s just a sick son of a bitch who’s not ready to get rid of her yet.”
Candice’s eye moved to the photo on the table too and then she lit up. “Abs!” she said. “Do you think Leslie is at her old vacation spot, like Kyle and Bianca?”
I looked at the picture again, this time with intensity as I focused my radar on it. The response surprised me. “No,” I said after a minute. “She’s somewhere with a lot of concrete. It’s not the wilderness, and it feels belowground.”
“Belowground?”
I nodded. “Like the basement level of a large building.”
Candice considered me for a long minute. “It’s your call, Abs,” she said, pointing to the two boxes labeled MICHAEL DERBY and LESLIE COYLE.
It was a really hard decision. I knew Leslie was in more immediate danger, but there was something urgent around Michael Derby too. We needed to talk to him, and we needed to talk to him soon. With a growl of frustration I reached for Candice’s desk phone, punching in a number as fast as my finger could move. “Hey,” I said when Dutch answered the line.
“I know I’ve been asked to stay out of this, but there’s a small lead I want you to consider looking into.”
“I’m listening,” he said.
“I think that Leslie Coyle is being held in the basement of a building. There’s a ton of concrete around her, and I don’t know how large that would make the building, but it seems big and open on the inside. Also, there’s a lot of clutter nearby.”
“What do you mean, clutter?”
My eyes were closed as I focused hard on trying to describe what was in my head. “It’s weird,” I said. “It’s not really like there’s junk or anything other than chairs. There’s just a lot of chairs. . . .” My voice trailed off as I followed that thread.
Dutch arrived at it one nanosecond before I did. “Like a stadium?” he asked. “There’s a lot of concrete in a stadium and it’s large and open with a whole lot of chairs.”
“You know,” I said, “that really might be it, Dutch!”
“And you’re certain she’s still alive?” he asked me.
I opened my eyes and glanced at Leslie’s picture again. “Yes. But I could also tell you that I don’t know that she has a lot of time. I’d give her a week to ten days. And there’s something awful surrounding her too. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s slowly torturing her,” I whispered. “You guys need to hurry.”
“I’m on it,” he said. “Thanks, doll.”
After hanging up with Dutch, I turned back to Candice. “That’s settled,” I said.
Candice drew a big circle around Michael Derby’s name. “Road trip, to Illinois, tomorrow at six a.m. sharp.”
Candice arrived at my house at one minute to six a.m. looking very tired. “Want me to drive?” I asked when I took in the pinched corners of her eyes.
“That’d be good,” she said, moving out of the driver’s seat. “I want to do a little more research on Derby anyway.”
I slid into the driver’s side and after Candice had settled herself into the passenger seat, we were off. “What part of Illinois are we aiming for?” I asked.
Candice motioned to the dashboard navigation system. “Just outside Chicago,” she said as she pulled out her iPhone and began dabbing at the screen. “I’ve already plugged in the coordinates. All you have to do is follow the path it lays out for you.”