That was a rare kind of mistrust of the natural, biological order of the universe.
Not that he could speak to mistrusting things at the moment.
Clutching his black leather duffel bag, Jake hurried away from the counter. Like an uncontrollable twitch, he looked over his shoulder, quickly scanning the crowd for anybody who looked like they could kill him. The only person glaring at him was a little old lady who seemed happy to glare at anyone. He stood for a moment, watching the people nearby. Everyone moved past with no concern for him, so he ducked into a long line of phone booths. He retrieved his credit card and paused, flipping it through his fingers. Was it wise to use a credit card? Could they trace it?
Maybe. But only to this airport. And if they were intent on killing him, they probably knew that information already.
But they could get her phone number. Jake closed his eyes, trying to think it through. That could be easily attained too. If they wanted it, they probably already had it. Taking a deep breath, he glanced outside the booth and then unfolded the small piece of paper he kept in his jacket pocket. He swiped the card, punched in the international code, and dialed.
It took several long moments for him to be connected, during which he wondered if he was the biggest idiot the world had ever seen. Until seven days ago, Jake Van Der Mark hardly cared about money. He was barely making a living, but making it nevertheless, flipping burgers during the day while at night he played his electric guitar in a band he hoped would hit it big sooner rather than later. Three years and four “almost” contracts since they started, they still played weddings and bars. But it was fun. His entire life he’d wanted to be in a band. He was living his dream, just not in a profitable sort of way. They’d had several close breaks, and their lead singer, Toby, had a passion for their music and vision. That alone kept him flipping burgers for the sake of the greater cause.
The phone finally began to ring. Four rings. Five rings. Six—
“Met Idya Van Der Mark.”
“Um…hi…Idya?”
“Met wie spreek ik?”
“Idya…it’s Jake.”
“Jaap. Het is midden in de nacht! Waarom bel je midden in de nacht?”
“Idya, please, you must speak English. Remember, I can’t understand a word of—”
“It’s a shame, Jaap. A real shame your parents never instilled your Dutch heritage. I don’t understand it. Not a bit of it.”
“Yes, um, well…listen, there’s been a delay. The flight I was scheduled to arrive on was cancelled, and I—”
“Call me Oma.”
“Oma?”
“Our blood is in each other’s veins. I believe the word is ‘granny’ in English, Jaap.”
“It’s Jake.”
“It’s Jaap. It’s on your birth certificate.”
“I’ve never gone by Jaap.”
“Another real shame. And it’s a real shame that your parents couldn’t find the time or money to bring you over to see me. Do you know that? They sent pictures once or twice a year. We should’ve met long before now.” They’d never talked over the phone because his parents told him when he was young that she couldn’t speak English. Turned out she could, very well, just not very happily.
Jake tried a deep breath. This wasn’t a family reunion, at least by normal standards. And he didn’t really want to talk about his parents.
“Please. Just listen to me. I’m flying out in the morning. I leave at—” He almost gave her the rest of the flight information, but then decided against it. Just in case somebody was listening. Man, he was getting paranoid. But he had every reason to be, and to let his guard down now would be foolish. “I’ll call you when I arrive in Amsterdam. How is that?”
“Jaap, you don’t sound good. You sound flustered. Not good at all.”
Jake’s hand tore through his hair. “Look, this is no small thing.” He lowered his voice. He hoped she could hear him over all the airport noise. “Do you know how much I’m risking here for you?”
Her voice turned coy. “For me, Jaap? Ahh, don’t kid yourself. You’re in this for you, too, are you not?”
That was the only reason he was in this. How could he get this woman to understand how dangerous this was? Diamond couriers are very specialized. Only a couple security companies in the entire world will do it. Most security companies wouldn’t dream of going into the gemstone courier business. The cost of insurance on the stones is almost equal to their wholesale value. The thieves in the business are very good at what they do and very seldom caught. Diamond couriers have a very high mortality rate.
And this was just what he got off the Internet.
Somehow he managed to find himself at the receiving end of an offer he couldn’t refuse. His eighty-three-year-old grandmother, whom he’d never met or even spoken to until seven days ago when she called, had five diamonds stolen…by a boyfriend. They were not insured and she had, unbelievably, kept them safe for years underneath her mattress in her home.
The boyfriend managed to escape to America, but he underestimated what Idya Van Der Mark was capable of. Within three weeks he was caught and the diamonds recovered.
Unfortunately for her, no government agency in the United States or in the Netherlands would take responsibility for the diamonds’ transport back. And according to Idya, the security companies wouldn’t touch it for any amount of money. Too risky, they said. No kidding, Jake thought, as he stared down at his left hand, which shook like he’d just downed eight cups of espresso.
That’s when she’d called him. She promised him two of the five diamonds as an inheritance if he would return them safely to her. It was a deal he was too stupid to pass up apparently, because at the moment, the diamonds were duct-taped to his belly in a tiny black satchel.
“How do you know that I won’t just take the diamonds and run?” Jake asked her over the phone the first time they spoke.
In her taut Queen’s English, she said, “Jaap, you are a Van Der Mark. Van Der Marks have nobility and character. This has gone back through many centuries.”
Jake couldn’t say too much in return. He hadn’t really thought about his roots. He knew he’d come to America as a baby, brought over by his parents, who were both Dutch. His mother held on to more of the Dutch accent than his father, but by the time he was old enough to care, he was an American and never thought twice about his heritage. Though his grandmother was seldom mentioned, from what he gathered, his mother had a falling out with Idya, her mother-in-law, which caused enough of a strain that they moved an entire ocean away. They sent cards on all the right holidays, but other than that, she was a vague notion far away across the sea.
When his father died, Jake wondered where he came from. When his mother passed away, leaving him with no siblings, cousins, or family to speak of, he felt lonelier than he ever had. But sometimes family comes in other forms, and as far as he was concerned, the Rubber Band had become his family. He spent most of his time with them anyway.
“I have to go now. I don’t know who might be watching.”
“Nobody is watching you, Jaap. You told me yourself that the arrest didn’t even make the newspaper.”
“It made the newspaper. One small blurb, but it made it.” Jake hoped that nobody had read it or cared. It was buried deep on page ten with, of all things, the obituaries.
“Don’t let this get the best of you,” she said. “You’re going to be on an airplane in a few hours. What can happen on an airplane?”
It wasn’t the airplane he was concerned with. It was the few hours before boarding that was about to give him hives.
“I’ll call you when I land. Good-bye.” Jake hung up the phone and wiped his palms on his jeans. Closing his eyes, he wondered if he was the stupidest man alive.
Maybe.
But if he got his inheritance as planned, he would also be pretty stinkin’ rich. Rich enough to quit his day job and buy all new equipment for the band. They were in desperate need of new amps and a drum kit. The t
hought of new amps was enough to celebrate with a Cinnabon.
A soft purple hue bled into the deep blackness of what had an hour earlier been the dead of night. Perry Watts tiptoed his way across the dewy grass onto the long concrete driveway on the west side of the house. Trash cans lined the curb of the neighborhood, and in the distance, trash-truck sounds reminded him that even this early he could be spotted, no matter how black his turtleneck was.
In the backyard, hunched behind a gigantic flowerpot, Perry examined the house and found a single light on. Probably a bedroom light. He could only guess when the man rose in the morning, but judging from his work habits, Perry assumed it was early.
Looked like he was right.
He waited a few minutes, and soon the kitchen light came on. On the curtains a shadow moved back and forth. He thought he could smell burnt toast.
Perry turned, his back sliding down the flowerpot. He held his hands against either side of his head. “What are you doing?” he whispered. “This is crazy.”
Brief moments of anxiety caused him to second-guess his plan, especially since the first plan failed so miserably. It shouldn’t have failed, but it did, and now he’d formulated Plan B, which included hiding in the dark at his boss’s house.
Plan A started simply. While job hunting, he’d run across a short article referencing a previous story about five diamonds trying to make their way home to the Netherlands. A young man named Van Der Mark now had the diamonds and would presumably return them to his relative overseas. At least that’s what Perry gleaned from the blurb.
He decided to steal the diamonds. He wasn’t certain if the guy was stupid enough to have them on him, but he figured either way, he could get the guy to turn them over. He spent a couple of hours planning it out, then hunted down Van Der Mark. He broke into his apartment with ease only to find the guy gone and, according to an itinerary on his table, on his way to the Netherlands.
Plan A got a little complicated when the guy’s flight was delayed and Perry had to use illegal pass codes he’d acquired over the years to break into the computer and find out when he was actually leaving. The new flight left this morning. He could’ve just bought a ticket, but he didn’t want his name exposed.
Which brought him to Plan B, crouching in the shadows of his boss’s house. Former boss, he reminded himself, which was what made Plan B workable and likable.
He was getting cold. He peered up at the kitchen window again. The shadow was still visible.
It did feel strange that at this moment, he wasn’t the least bit apprehensive. He was prone to nervousness, which his boss cited several days ago when he was fired. Something about not being able to handle the pressures of the job, among other things.
Yet here he was now, not a nervous bone in his body.
He stood, adjusted his turtleneck, and stepped up to the back door, which was Windexed to the point of near invisibility.
He knocked.
He heard shuffling. A pause.
He knocked again. “Who is it?”
“Me,” Perry replied. “Perry.”
The back door swung open, and Perry smiled, not because he was glad to see Miles, but because his boss’s hair stuck straight up on one side and his eyes were puffy and bloodshot.
“Perry?” Miles said, holding tight to a piece of toast and wearing a shocked look. “What are you doing at my house this time of night?”
“It’s technically morning.”
“It’s still dark outside! What are you doing here?”
“I wanted to talk to you.”
Miles tightened his fancy robe. “Now? Why? What else is there to talk about?”
“Please. Just a little of your time.”
“No. You need to leave. Now.”
“That’s it? You’re just going to kick me out to the streets?”
“What about that job with the airline? I gave you a good lead on that.”
“I got hired.”
“Fine. Great.”
“Then I got fired. On the same day.”
Miles leaned forward with a disgusted expression. “Then maybe, Perry, the problem isn’t me, like you keep claiming. Maybe the problem is you. Maybe it’s because, like I stated for three consecutive job reviews, you do everything haphazardly, with no reason or sense behind your decision making. You couldn’t carry out a plan if your life depended on it.”
“Maybe,” Perry said and, with one swift motion, pushed Miles backward into his own home. “Maybe not.” He stepped into the kitchen and shut the back door. Miles stumbled into the cabinet behind him, then held up his hands before Perry even reached into his bag to pretend he had a gun.
“What do you want?” Miles cowered on the floor, his hands raised straight above him and his eyes wide.
“Sit down,” Perry said and pointed to a kitchen chair.
Miles scrambled over to it. “Look, listen, I can help you. Maybe we could—”
“Shut up.” Perry took the phone off the counter. “You’re going to leave a message for Maggie that you’re sick and you won’t be in today and possibly tomorrow.”
“Are you going to kill me?”
Perry wanted to laugh. This guy was as pathetic as he’d always suspected. “Maybe. If you don’t cooperate.”
Miles nodded eagerly. Perry removed a roll of duct tape from the black satchel that hung over his chest and beside his hip. He instructed Miles not to move.
“Now,” he said, thumping his hand against the roll of tape, “it’s time for Perry to be the boss.”
Chapter 4
Every half hour, Danny jolted awake and reached through the dark toward the red glowing numbers on his digital clock. Sleep was something he wasn’t taking for granted anymore, but in the last four days it had only come in short spurts. But they were deep short spurts, and he kept wondering if he might oversleep.
Peering through blurry eyes, he focused on the time.
His alarm wasn’t set to go off for another fifteen minutes, but he rose anyway and opened the shades, revealing an inky black sky and Mr. Hellman rolling his trash to the curb. Switching on his bedroom light felt like the sun had just parked itself in his reading chair. He closed his eyes and shuffled toward the bathroom where he hoped a splash of cold water would help him make it to his coffeepot.
The mundaneness of his morning ritual soothed him. Since Saturday, all he’d wanted was for life to return to normal. It hadn’t, but this was a step in the right direction.
As the cold water hit his face, he remembered the phone ringing at 1:30 a.m. In the fogginess of sleep, and perhaps some desperate hopefulness, he thought it was Maya calling. “Baby,” he answered, smiling through his exhaustion. “It’s okay. I forgive you. I love you.”
“Baby” turned out to be Martha Crowder—surly and not fond of nicknames—from the scheduling office, wondering why he’d forgotten to make his preflight check-in call yesterday.
It was the first time in fifteen years of flying he’d forgotten to make that phone call.
He downed two cups of coffee, managed a piece of toast although he wasn’t really a breakfast person, then put on his uniform. He studied his reflection in the long mirror on his closet door. Three stripes, not four. His wings didn’t have the star and wreath on top. Not yet, anyway. He’d make captain someday. Every time he put the uniform on, it meant something to him. He held on to that thought. Even if it didn’t mean anything to anybody else, it should always mean something to him.
Shoving the shiny black hat under his arm, he grabbed his flight bag and headed to the airport.
A small, internal tingle of excitement surprised him as he got off the shuttle that took him from the parking lot to the doors of the pilots’ lounge. He stepped away from the building for a moment. The western runways spread widely across the horizon. A 747, dipping low and elegantly like a dragon, roared by the control tower. It was tradition for a captain to pass low at home port before the final landing.
The ground rumbled. The bu
ildings trembled. Then, like an atmospheric sink hole, the sound was swallowed up and gone.
Danny watched the runway. A plane turned into position, firing its engines, hot and orange against the morning haze. It built speed, then lifted effortlessly into the air, like it balanced on the tip of the finger of God, raised to the heavens in glory.
Another roaring wave enveloped him. Danny smiled.
Yeah, this was his element. At five hundred miles an hour, you can leave a lot behind.
After punching in his code, he swiped his card and headed down into the stairwell, emerging into a room barely alive with activity. He put his jacket and heavily decorated flight bag down among the hundreds of others. He’d begun collecting stickers for his bag when he first started flying—any that seemed like they’d make a great tattoo. So far five were inked onto his body: three on his shoulder and two between the shoulder blades. He’d probably add another one soon. Thankfully, he’d had the sense to stick to symbols that had nothing to do with interpersonal relationships. He had Billy Bob and Angelina to thank for that inspiration.
He kept that thought—that he wouldn’t have to scrape a tattoo off his arm—in mind as he gathered the information he needed for his flight, logged on to the computer for any alerts, then checked his mailbox, where he found a memo announcing that the crew of Flight 1945 would meet in conference room number eight.
Sometimes there was a meeting beforehand, sometimes not. Usually not, so he wondered why it was needed as he paused in front of the big screen television for some early morning sports highlights. He liked this television. All the Atlantica pilots had pitched in for it. They’d bought the television, fifteen recliners, and two large leather couches. Sometimes you have to make your own perks.
He headed to the conference room.
Opening the door, he discovered another first officer standing in the corner, looking down at something. The man whirled around, his eyes wide. Then he slumped in relief, glanced at the doorway, and walked toward Danny. They shook hands. “James Lawrence.”
“Danny McSweeney.”