35. Chapter 35
Chapter 35
Two days later
“Thanks for the last-minute flight.” Gary tossed his small duffel in the back before sliding into his seat, putting on his headset, and buckling up.
“Of course. Thank you for being so patient this last week. I hope you’re not going to throw me over for another pilot,” Mari said jokingly.
He snorted. “Never.”
“I’m impressed you got a replacement so fast.” The plane she was flying today was a basic mirror of his other one, with the exception of the leather interior color. This one was more of a buttercream as opposed to caramel.
“Money talks.”
“Apparently. Any news on the plane?”
He sighed, shrugged as she finished up the preflight. Once she was done and rolling toward the taxiway, he said, “So did you hear anything more from law enforcement?”
“Nope. Well other than having to make an official report with NTSB. What about you? Are they answering questions for your insurance? Hopefully they’re not giving you too much grief. ”
“Everything’s fine on my end. We’ll get it all sorted.” He didn’t seem concerned, which made sense considering how much money she suspected he made.
At least that was one thing she didn’t have to worry about. And even though she knew the sabotage wasn’t her fault, she’d still felt bad about the whole thing.
Once she got departure clearance from the tower, they were off, the takeoff perfect and a good omen for the day. As they hit the three thousand feet AGL mark she could feel the last two days of internal stress fall away in the slipstream.
Mostly.
She was still a mess inside, but no one was trying to kill her and she was back to work, doing the thing she loved most. She’d get to the mental place she needed eventually. If only Colin would stop calling her. After seeing that woman leave his house, she’d decided to ignore his calls.
To be fair he’d only called twice, yesterday and the day before. But she didn’t even want to see his name on her caller ID. She was thinking about him the majority of the time, and seeing his name just slid the knife deeper. Seriously, love was a crock of shit. Who wanted to deal with all these emotions? Ugh. Not her.
“Did you see about Jeremy Ackerman?” Gary’s voice came over the comm line, startling her.
“Yeah. That was a shock to see his name on the news.” Luckily she hadn’t been mentioned at all. At least not yet, and she hoped it stayed that way. His murder had made even the New Orleans local news, mainly because he lived here and was rich, she was pretty sure. But they’d also mentioned potential ties to organized crime and how he’d been under investigation by the DEA when he’d been killed.
“You think you know someone,” he muttered, looking out the window .
“Right?” She wasn’t up for conversation today and thankfully Gary ended up pulling out his tablet and answering emails. Which was how they did things most days.
So she settled into doing her job, flying, monitoring the sky around them and trying not to obsess about a certain tall, ridiculously handsome pilot who’d stolen her heart.
And she nailed two of those things.
***
“This is just plain weird,” Berlin muttered.
Bradford was pretty sure she was talking more to herself than him. In fact, he was pretty sure she wasn’t even aware he was in her office. She had been at one point, but she tended to tune all of them out for the most part.
After the mess with Mari and Colin, they were back to normal, looking at a handful of job requests that had come in and deciding which ones to work on first. The work they did was mostly from word of mouth, but as he glanced over her shoulder he realized she was looking at something to do with Mari. The back of his neck prickled in alarm. “What is?”
“Oh shit. Didn’t realize you were there. What are you doing?” she asked without looking up.
“You stole all the little cakes so I came to grab a few.”
“They’re called petit fours, and they’re all mine.”
“Not anymore,” he said around a mouthful, enjoying the glare she shot over her shoulder. “So what’s weird? That doesn’t look like a new case.” He chin-nodded at the split screen. There was an image of Five C’s Aviation on it.
“It’s not. And I don’t know if this is anything or not, but the way Ackerman was killed just felt too neat to me.”
“Torture feels neat?”
“Not that. I still can’t figure out why he would want to kill Mari. Send actual trained killers after her. Hired guns. It’s too weird and I don’t like not knowing the why of things.”
“I hear ya.” He popped another tiny cake in his mouth, enjoyed the explosion of strawberry and cream.
“If you eat another one, I’m not responsible for what I might do.”
“These were a gift to the office , not you specifically.”
She just sniffed. “Fine. Hand me one, will you?”
He grabbed the platter—yes, platter—that she’d stolen from the break room along with a chair and sat next to her. Holding it out, he tried to follow what she was doing, but more often than not it was just gibberish on screen.
This time, however, it was different. “Is that the woman from Five C’s?” The rude, red-headed receptionist.
“Yep. It was just a hunch but I started digging into her. Her behavior was so over-the-top rude, yet she holds on to her job. She’s pretty enough, but that kind of shit doesn’t usually fly anywhere. Pun intended.” She grabbed two petit fours, shoved them in her mouth before she continued tapping away on her keyboard.
“She’s related to the owner. At least that’s what Blanca said. Maybe she’s actually screwing the owner.”
“Nope. I don’t think so… There.” Berlin frowned at the screen, which was showing a grainy birth certificate now. “Huh. That’s the same last name as—”
“Oh. Shit.” Bradford stared at the screen, trying to make sense of it. “So Gary Sewall is this Heidi’s father?”
“It would appear so. And he’s the owner of Five C’s Aviation. It’s buried deep but I finally found a small connection between…”
Bradford tuned out the tech talk as she went on, catching about a third of it this time. Finally he said, “So he owns the company that Ackerman uses—used—but doesn’t actually use it himself?”
“No. It’s like he’s compartmentalized different parts of his life. And he’s done such an incredible job, I wouldn’t have found this if not for the link to his daughter. And I had to look really hard. This makes no sense. If he owns the company, why not use it? Why use small corporate pilots for his daily life?”
“It’s a cover,” Bradford said, because it was the only thing that made sense. “Has to be. The guy is a political consultant and flies all over the southeast, usually with Mari. If I had to guess, it’s like you said, he’s compartmentalizing parts of his life so they don’t cross over with each other. It’s something that people involved in organized crime do. Cartels or… Oh, Jesus.” He watched as Berlin continued to work, his stomach twisting. “Mari is flying with him right now.”
Berlin stilled for a moment, cursed under her breath, but kept working as she muttered, “Hold on.”
But he wasn’t holding for anything. He already had his phone out and had pulled up Colin’s name. Because there was no way they could get to Mari in time with her being in the air. Adalyn was their only pilot—so far—and she’d headed to north Florida this morning.
As he hit send on his text, Berlin sat back and looked at the screen.
He wondered when the last time she’d slept was. “Am I seeing this right?”
“There is no Suarez cartel. Not really. It’s a cover he created. He’s a criminal mastermind.” She sounded in awe, or maybe horror, of it. “I’ve still got more layers to peel back, more bank accounts to hack, but…” She shook her head. “Gary Sewall is essentially, the Suarez cartel.” Her expression worried, she turned to look at him. “You’re sure Mari is with hi m?”
“Yeah, she texted me this morning. Said it was back to work as usual for her. We talked about other stuff… Not important. I’ve already texted Colin, he’s on his way to her now.”
Bradford just hoped Colin could make it to Mari in time. There shouldn’t be any reason for Gary to kill her, not that she’d let on about. But someone had tried to kill her more than once and now Ackerman was dead and tortured, likely not long after he’d taken that flight with Mari.
Something had happened on that flight, Bradford was sure of it.