Chapter 3

Before returning to the airport, she stopped on the boardwalk to have some fried clams, which turned out to be greasy and overpriced. By the time she left the little seafood bar, a downright cold wind was whipping off the ocean, and the clouds had rolled in. If she hurried, maybe she could beat any adverse weather conditions.

Of course, if they were going to have a thunderstorm, she didn’t know that she wanted to take off until it had passed. Still, a plane like the one she was flying was not only decked out in all the necessary gear but was made for high altitude zooming about. She could climb above the worst of the turbulence and any lightning that might be flashing around.

She caught a cab back to the airfield, and with one eye on the cumulus clouds, entered the administration offices to hunt down Frankel—the assistant general manager. Frankel was back from lunch and greeted Helen politely enough. She gave her by-now-accustomed spiel as to who she was and why she was here and started asking questions about Rotz.

“We have a lot of planes out of Atlantic City each and every day. Small planes, big planes, business jets, commuter jets, regularly scheduled, and recreational on-impulse hops. All I can tell you is what’s in the log. Since we checked the log for the FAA, I can give you the same information we gave them. Rotz’s plane landed, and an hour or so later, it took off.” He looked her in the eye, as if to dare her to think of another question.

“What runway did he land on?” she inquired.

He widened his eyes, acknowledging that she had scored one. “I’ll find out for you,” he said.

“Now? I’d like to fly my craft out of here before it storms, but I’d like to speak to any mechanics down where he might have come in.”

Frankel nodded. “What are you flying? I see a fair-sized blow coming up on the radar.”

“I’m piloting a spanking new Cessna jet with a healthy set of instrumentation intended just for weather like this.” She saw that Frankel was surprised and impressed. She wasn’t sure what the Cessna cost, actually. Three-quarters of a million? More? Hell, money was no object, especially when it wasn’t hers.

She went out to the field and fussed around the plane, waiting to hear from Frankel. A few drops started to fall. Funny that Frankel had asked her what she was flying and not what her rating was. Skill was the important thing in foul weather flying, so long as your plane had the instrumentation, but obviously he had made some basic assumption about her. Probably he had decided that she had her private pilot license, or an instrument rating, tops. He would never have guessed that she was a certified flight instructor—multiengine. The only reason she didn’t have an ATP—airline transport pilot—rating was that she didn’t want one. It was enough of a pain in the neck to renew her CFI every two years.

In a few minutes, Frankel came out to the end of the runway where her plane sat. “It’s ironic,” he said, “but Rotz came in on the same runway that you did. Nice aircraft you have. The storm’s going to be on us in about half an hour. Where you flying out to?”

“La Guardia.”

The drops were coming down heavier now. and Frankel backed away. “We have plenty of hotels in this town if you decide not to take off,” he advised in the midst of his retreat.

She went into the hanger and tried to scare up a mechanic who would talk to her about Rotz. An awful lot of flights went in and out of here, one grease-jock told her—a lot of jets, even a sprinkling of Beechcraft Starships. The mechanics wouldn’t have noticed one guy in particular.

Helen felt annoyed with herself that she hadn’t asked Mrs. Rotz for a picture of her husband. Eric probably would have thought to do so if he had been conducting this investigation.

Then she remembered Eric’s car. She supposed she could pick it up no matter how late she got in. The places where they towed your car had to be open day and night or people would have a fit if they had to wait to get their vehicles.

She hoped that was true.

It took her a few minutes to get clearance from the tower after filing her instrumentation flight plan—different from the plan a pilot would file on a nice day if she was flying by visual cues alone. By the time Helen took off, the rain had hit with a cats-and-dogs ferocity. The lightning had started, too, so she began to climb.

A clap of thunder crashed so near to the jet that Helen startled. She observed a flash to her immediate left, which she was sure was going to hit her craft and damage her electrical system. Her heart thudded. If that happened, she’d go back down for an emergency landing. You had to have a plan. You always had to have a plan. Nothing must ever take you by surprise in the sky.

She ascended above the clouds and her shock of fear evaporated. The sun was out up here. The day was as calm as calm could be, or almost so. She was sitting pretty in the middle of the radiant heavens. Helen cruised at 300-plus miles an hour, north toward New York city. All was well.

Looking at her radar as she approached La Guardia, Helen saw that her descent would be a turbulent one. Sure her craft was mighty, fully equipped, and she was a top pilot with plenty of bad weather flying in her background. But coming down through the storm that had swept up the coast ahead of her was not going to be a piece of cake entirely. And La Guardia was not the simplest airport in the world at which to touch down.

She called the tower, and they gave her a pattern to come in on but told her she would have a wait to land. She had plenty of fuel, so that wasn’t a problem. The scary part was the lightning. Lightning was rambunctious, random, and potentially disastrous to the flying machine.

Helen tilted her flaps and began to lose altitude. As she dropped below the cloud line, she began to feel the effects of the storm, which slammed against the jet, pushing it violently from side to side. No worries, except to her stomach, which started to rebel from the combination of grease-fried seafood and the shaking she was getting. Never mind. The last thing she was going to do was throw up in Viscotti’s jet.

She circled in the midst of the storm, having a periodic chat with the air traffic controller who assured her she would be okayed for a landing before long. She only had to hold on. Hold on, if she could. A stab of lighting in the sky ahead made her duck involuntarily.

The craft was buffeted by the swirling winds, and Helen wondered if she was turning a shade or two greener than her normal complexion. She didn’t have time to look in her pocket mirror, however—she was too busy scanning the instruments, making sure that all was well, and peering occasionally into the angry black clouds to see if she was going to collide with something that the radar hadn’t warned her about.

The rain pelted against the jet, further obscuring visibility and making aggressively threatening sounds. She was down to five-thousand feet and dropping as directed. Helen had no idea what the runways below looked like now. She was flying blind, but the lack of visibility presented no impediment to her instruments. And she preferred the dark to the tongues of feral light that licked hellishly in her direction.

Turbulence slammed the aircraft violently. Good Lord, could a craft even this well-made stand up to the ferocious elements of nature nearly a mile above the earth? Dear God. She held on tight, not sure if she was piloting this plane or if the devilish air currents were. “CitationJet 18A, this is the tower. Pull her back up to six thousand and turn left, heading 110. We have a slight delay on runway eight.”

She pulled it up again into the furious gales, now more than a little sick to her stomach with the added anxiety of the wait, but still willing to trust to her graphic navigation system and the edgy-sounding guy in the tower. Sweat wet her face as if the driving rain had swept right in.

She was down to 150 knots and was ever more subject to the almost equivalent force of the relentless streams of powerful wind. Her controller came on the radio again and guided her in wide circles around the sky. Doing these lazy loops in a fair-weather situation would be just swell, but traveling endlessly above her home on a night straight out of her nightmares was not so amusing.

“Okay Citation 18A, begin descent, pull her down to five thousand. We’ll bring you into runway eight now.”

Helen added some drag with the flaps, slowly—since her speed was already down—and began to head earthward. Her palms dripped with the moisture caused by a pounding adrenaline of fear.

“You’re cleared for the runway eight approach, Citation 18A. Maintain 2200.”

Helen dropped her landing gear down and aimed into the unknown at 130 knots. As she came closer to the ground, the winds finally lessened, and the craft returned to a merely bumping gait instead of slamming from side to side as it had been for a while there. Still, she couldn’t detect a single guiding light melting through the fog.

Two-hundred feet, and she could make out something down below—a diffuse shine that indicated human civilization. She swooped ahead, totally reliant on the voice in her ear, together with the combined technology of the tower and her own little vehicle.

In a couple of seconds, the runway rushed up at her. Thankfully, and somewhat to her amazed relief, she was right on target. She rushed in and hit the deck with the slightest touch of friction on the tires. Aerodynamically, she gave the Cessna an A-OK. She was down, she was alive, and she had come to a safe halt not too awfully far from the hanger. She called in a cool piece of grateful acknowledgment to her controller.

When she stood at last, she found her legs were a bit on the limp side, although she had lost the immediate need to throw up her lunch. That hadn’t been so bad, really, she decided. She had been through worse.

It was six p.m. when she deplaned her aircraft straight into the still driving rain. Hell, there was no way she was going to pick up Eric’s car and drive to Westchester tonight.

After dealing with administrative details inside the airport, she headed for the gate where she eventually snagged a cab.

At home on East Third Street, she pulled off her clammy clothing and got under the covers to warm up. The night was chill, but she was still amazed that the heat was actually on in her usually cold apartment.

The phone rang. It was Eric, his voice as clear as a bell.

“You’re there,” he said, sounding surprised and miffed. “I thought we lived together.”

“Where are you?” Good grief, was he home already?

“In our apartment. What are you doing down there?”

“I had a rough day. I’m just seeking refuge.” How was she going to explain this one? Was she going to explain this one?

“If I had my car, I’d drive down and pick you up, but the Honda doesn’t seem to be anywhere around. Hopefully, you know where it is.”

“Yes, I know.” Nice that she could answer that one without lying.

His tone softened. “Then why don’t you drive up here and stay the night?”

“Oh, Eric, I’m just too done in.”

There was a long pause. “I’m flying out tomorrow. I have to head down to Florida,” he told her.

Too bad she wasn’t able to offer to fly him down. She needed to drop by Miami International eventually, anyway, although this wasn’t the expedient moment. She couldn’t do it, however, because he might ask a few awkward questions like, “Where did you get this airplane?”

“I’m sorry,” she said meekly. “We’ll spend time together when you come back.”

“I’m disappointed, that’s all.”

“How was Moscow?”

“Lots of girls tried to sell themselves to me.” He laughed.

“Buy any?” She had no intention of showing the slightest degree of jealousy.

He laughed again, but not as if it was funny. “Guys like me pay for sex in ways other than cash,” he told her, as if he intended to say more.

She didn’t like the way this conversation was headed because she wasn’t sure what he meant. Did he mean he was screwing around, or what? “Like how?” she asked suspiciously.

“Sleepless nights, emotional torment,” he answered.

“Not because of me,” she protested.

“We’re getting married in August, right?”

She flashed back to riding through the storm; in fact, her body was still experiencing that. But during it, she had thought of Eric and how safe she would have felt simply being with him. She had longed to see him just once again before she died if that was in the cards. And now, speaking to him, she was pushing him away. Didn’t she know how to let him in a little? “I’ll take the train up,” she offered with some reluctance. “I don’t feel like driving in this weather,” she explained, as an after-thought.

“It’s not that late,” he agreed, hopefully. “I’d take the train down, but I want to wake up early and see David in the morning.” David was Eric’s Down syndrome son who lived with Eric’s sister, Katherine.

They hung up. Instantly, she regretted telling him she would come home. What was she doing, running to this man like a teenager in heat? Going that far wasn’t practical. She had quite a bit to do in the morning—not the least of which was to pick up his damn precious Honda. She’d call him back and cancel out. He’d understand.

The phone rang.

See, he did understand. He was calling to tell her not to come, that it was too nasty out, that she must be too tired.

She picked up the phone and said, “Hi” in an intimate way and was jolted when a strange man’s voice said, “Hello, Helen” in return. She was on her guard at once. It didn’t take much, actually. “Who is this?” she asked stiffly.

“Someone you seem to have been looking for.”

“I’m not looking for anyone,” she rebutted, trying to place the throaty, rather sexy voice.

“Sure you have. You’ve been flying all over the Northeast, just trying to get a clue.” Helen’s blood ran cold, sending a chill up and down her spine.

“But here I am, and I know who you are,” the voice went on. “Isn’t that more fun than you ever expected to have from your little investigation? Yes, I know who you are and where you are. I know quite a lot about you, in fact. And even after a tiring day, you don’t know a thing about me at all.” His voice softened, so she had to strain to hear. “The truth is, I don’t think you’ll live long enough to find out anything much. Are you looking over your shoulder?” She heard a click, and the line went dead.

Helen shuddered from the contact with something evil. That was the worst of it. She wasn’t afraid of danger, but the sheer insolent evil of her caller made her shiver with an instinctive recoil. Someone who would make a phone call like that was worse than a very bad person. He was perversely wicked.

She found her Beretta and checked to be sure she had an additional clip, then threw on some clothes. Even if her caller was outside, waiting for her, that didn’t really matter. She could certainly make it to Westchester. She’d tell Eric everything that was going on. No, maybe not everything, but just that she had been threatened. No bad guy could get by Eric. Everything would be okay once she was with Eric.

Hearing her own internal thinking process gave her a shock. She pulled back from the edge of an emotional cliff that fear had threatened to push her over.

Wait a minute, she cautioned herself. Who was she? What the hell was she doing, running to have some man take care of her? Take it easy here, sister. Was that what her life was about? No way.

She wasn’t only military, she had worked as an EP, an executive protection specialist, making sure that other people were safe under extreme conditions of threat. Couldn’t she take care of herself for one night? Of course she could.

The phone rang again, and she tensed, but this time it was Eric. “Okay,” he said. “You’ve got me. I don’t want you to come out in this weather, honey. By the time you got here, it’d be after ten anyway and we’d both be out of it.”

“I’m a really terrible person,” she admitted. “But I probably do love you.”

“Don’t worry,” he responded. “You may be really terrible, but I’m really good enough for both of us. And the odds are that I probably do love you, too.”

She laughed. She felt better now. He was on her side, even if he wasn’t exactly here in the flesh.

She turned off the light so she couldn’t be seen from the street and pulled the shade. Her window gate was locked, and her apartment door was secured with an old-fashioned “police lock” on the inside. The police lock wasn’t a lock, actually, but a metal rod from the floor to a cinch in the door that made it impossible for anyone to push the door open.

Helen got into bed with the Beretta on the pillow next to her. She was relaxed now after that initial burst of terror, and she sighed deeply. She was okay. She knew if the slightest noise sounded outside the ordinary, it would wake her up.

Of course, someone could do things to kill her in her apartment tonight, but they were big things, requiring innovative efforts that even the most desperate killer probably couldn’t get it together to do in only a few hours. Even arson would take some planning, surveillance, and gathering of fuel. Only a crazy person would set out to kill her in such a way, on a moment’s notice because he might be caught. She didn’t think the man that she was after was entirely nuts. He hadn’t sounded screw-loose in that sense, and the skyjackings had been carefully orchestrated.

But who was he? And most to the point right now, how did he know about her? Who had told him? She made a list of people who knew she was investigating for the PPPA. First, she thought of Viscotti himself. He could have told someone about her, even innocently, and that someone could have been the voice on the phone—or the person who passed the information on to the voice.

But, no, Viscotti only had her phone number in Westchester. He didn’t even know she had an apartment in Manhattan, did he? She thought back to her conversations with him. She didn’t believe she had said any such thing.

So that was the pivotal clue! Someone knew both that she was performing this investigation and that she had an apartment in the city. Tired as she was, she mentally dragged herself through every conversation she’d had that day. She had told Mrs. Rotz she was from New York. That was a possible, because to some people, New York automatically meant Manhattan.

She was drifting away when she realized: Mead, Slapps’ security head! She had told Mead where she lived, in explaining that she had commuted to her job at Westlake from the city. Damn! She hated to believe it of a fellow security guy—either that he had stupidly revealed something to some jerk trying to get information on her or that he was associated with Rotz’s killer. But the blabbermouth must be Mead. Mead, who worked for Falon—Falon, who probably was connected with organized crime. That was pretty much the story, she guessed.

She drifted off to sleep, jumping up once at the sound of a pack of Harleys driving by. She had to laugh at herself. Nothing unusual about that noise. She lived down the street from the Hell’s Angels clubhouse.

Helen had never even known that New York city had a Sheriff’s Office, but that was the agency which had towed her car for the Parking Violations Bureau, the officer at the La Guardia gate had told her. She then had gotten the address from a recorded phone message.

That message might have warned her that impounded cars weren’t released until eight-thirty in the morning. Oh well, at least she was first in line. Of course, she had been on that line for two and a half hours. In fact, she had been the only one on that line for the first two of those hours.

She opened her purse to extract her cash. Smart of her to bring cash, too, since you never knew if a government agency would accept a credit card. The doughy-faced deputy behind the counter stared into her purse. Her Beretta was sitting right on top. “I have a license for the gun,” she said defensively and dug for that license. He didn’t hesitate to look at it.

“This says Robbins,” the officer objected stolidly. “The car you want is not registered in that name.”

“I know,” Helen agreed. “But that was the car I was driving when you towed it away. It’s my boyfriend’s car.”

“Can’t release it to you,” he informed her stonily.

Helen looked at him, too incredulous to even attempt to win him over. “But you have to,” she insisted, shaken to her core. “If you don’t give me the car, I don’t think he’ll marry me.”