Page 8 of Beachcomber Enemy

He took his hands off the controls and, turning to her, framed her face with them. She should have known he wouldn’t let her get away with holding back.

“Okay. I’ll tell you. But for the record, I wish I had a drink.” She freed herself from his grip and glanced at the horizon as they flew at a steady hum. Then she faced Dane. A frisson of nerves ran through her, but she suppressed it, hoping he didn’t notice in the near dark. She spoke loud and clear, owning her story, embracing who she was.

“Whitey sat at the defendant’s table with his shady lawyer and stared at me from the horrible new face I’d given him the entire time I was on the witness stand. When I stepped down and walked by him, I met his stare. In retrospect, that might have been a mistake.”

“You gave him one of your scowls,” Dane said, understanding. She nodded and continued.

“He jumped up and made the threat before anyone could stop him, loud and clear for all to hear. He said he wanted to kill me, but not until after he tortured me and disfigured me. Then said maybe he wouldn’t bother killing me after all. Maybe he’d let me live the same way he did. Half a man, half alive, an ugly gargoyle.” She paused remembering, didn’t realize she’d shivered until Dane put a hand on her arm.

“You keep your hands on the controls,” she said, shaking him off. She wasn’t sure why she was behaving so poorly, except maybe because she was angry with herself right now and that made her angry at anyone and everyone else. Especially Dane. Especially because he was dragging the story from her when she didn’t want to remember it.

“I told him he looked how he was supposed to look because he wasn’t human.” Shana took a long hard breath. That was another thing she probably shouldn’t have said to Whitey. But she’d been young—or younger—since she still wasn’t thirty yet. And she’d been in a naïve lather of self-righteous rage over Whitey’s crimes.

“In the end, they subdued Whitey, gave him a shot of some kind of drug, and dragged him from the court. I wasn’t afraid of him.”

She looked into Dane’s eyes.

“Until now,” he said.

Shana nodded.

“Escaped?”

“No. They let him go. A lawyer got his sentence reduced. Got him out . . .” Her voice faded and she closed her eyes again.

Chapter 4

Dane gripped the wheel and the plane jerked up a notch. Regaining his heading, he took several breaths, choosing not to let loose the string of expletives waiting to explode from him. The stabbing tension through his shoulder blades returned in full force.

“Damn,” he whispered.

She reached over and rested her hand on his thigh. Her eyes were closed, her head back against the seat. She looked exhausted, like she needed to recoup her energy, her fight, her belief in the system. He knew it had been given a tough blow.

Unlike him, Shana was not a cynic. She would be deeply offended by the injustice of this man’s release. Dane? Well, he knew better.

The determination to administer his own justice redoubled and solidified into a leaden force running all the way through him, as if his blood were made of molten retribution.

If Dane hadn’t been flying a tiny prop plane in the dark, he would have given Shana the hug she deserved and needed.

“Goddamn it,” he muttered and squeezed her thigh. Luckily it was only a few minutes to the airport and time to scour the horizon for the lights along the runway. He hoped like hell he’d be able to find it right away because this toy plane didn’t have much wiggle room for fuel.

It was Shana who spotted the runway lights after only a few minutes of searching.

Once they landed, they headed to the small building that couldn’t even be called a terminal. He paid the tie-down fee for a week. He wasn’t sure if they’d need it again or when Vendi would be able to pick it up. Dane was under no illusion that the man would sell his plane. The offer of a hundred clams had been for insurance.

It was closing in on midnight by the time their taxi came. An Uber ride would have been quicker, but they didn’t have cell phones. It had taken a ten-dollar bribe to get the airport’s night manager to let them use the airport’s phone. Shana had been about to punch the young man, so Dane did the expedient thing, bribing him before he had a chance to anger her more with another word.

The sudden role reversal between him and Shana unnerved him. This time they were dealing with an enemy from her past instead of his, a legendary if questionable act from her past, not his. Most jarring of all, her simmering fear-turned-anger now made her too volatile to deal with the public—a thing he’d been guilty of more times than he cared to admit.

“Where are you fine young Coasties heading to?” the taxi driver asked. The USCG reference shouldn’t have startled him since Dane had put the cap on his head purposely to hide under before they left the plane.

“Drop us in Falmouth.” Dane gave him the address of an inn he knew to be near a commuter bus and some shopping.

After they got out of the cab, Dane held Shana in place until they watched it disappear into the distance.

“What’s with you?” she asked.

“Have you no tradecraft?” he asked. “I don’t want the cabbie—or anyone else—knowing where we are or where we’re going.”