Chapter 41
Ridge
The arrivals hall at the small airport has a few people milling about. There are more in the coffee shop, where they sell overpriced muffins and sandwiches. The pre-packed kind. A few rows of plastic chairs line the wall opposite the gate.
The guards I brought with me are tucked around the corner near the restrooms, out of sight of the gate.
There are four of them, which is total overkill, but Reed insisted.
At least they are all in plain clothes. If anyone is watching, they’ll see one male in a black T-shirt waiting at the rope barrier, looking like he’s picking up a relative. Nothing more.
I stand with my hands clasped in front of me, watching the runway through the wide window beyond the gate. The strip of tarmac shimmers a little in the afternoon heat. The sky above it is so blue it almost hurts.
I try to roll the tension out of my shoulders, but it doesn’t work.
I’ve barely slept. Twenty minutes here, an hour there, dozing on the sofa at my place with the TV on for company.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw her face.
The way her mouth opened when she realized.
The way her eyes went hot and wet. How her back went ramrod straight when she refused to let the tears fall.
I want to put my fist through something just thinking about it.
I’m a total asshole. I was selfish…I am selfish. I should have stayed well away. I should have excused myself; it would have been the right thing to do. I should have insisted when Reed told me she wanted me to stay on board. I ran with it because it was the easy thing to do…the selfish thing.
I make myself breathe.
The plane comes into view, a small commercial jet, white with a red stripe along the side. It descends toward the runway, tilts a fraction, then the wheels touch, and there’s a small puff of dust as it rolls along the tarmac. The engines wind down. The jet taxis toward the small terminal building.
The doors to the airport’s main entrance slide open behind me, and I turn. Flint walks in. He’s in jeans and a dark shirt. He gives a small nod and makes for me.
Some of the weight on my shoulders eases.
“You made it,” I say.
“Of course I made it.” He stops next to me, hands in his pockets, eyes on the gate. “I thought you could do with the support. This can’t be easy on you.”
I shake my head.
We stand there for a moment, both of us looking out at the plane. The passengers will start to disembark soon.
“How are you?” he asks.
“I’m fine.”
He looks sideways at me. “Yeah, right. How did it go with your doctor?”
I drag in a long breath.
“How do you think it went?”
He winces. “That bad?”
“Yep. Probably one of the worst things I’ve ever had to do. I don’t know if I’ll be able to fix it.”
He doesn’t say anything for a moment. He just looks outside at the tarmac.
“What happened?”
I rub a hand over my jaw. The stubble there is rough. I haven’t shaved.
“Robyn kissed me when I arrived.” My voice is a rasp. “She had no idea what was coming. I had to stand there in her apartment and tell her I’d been investigating her the whole time. That guards were outside, ready to take her in. That—” I stop. Push out a breath. “The look on her face, Flint.”
“Shit.”
“I betrayed her like I betrayed Magma, only, with her, it was worse. Magma still had some fight in him. Robyn went very still. She didn’t shout. She didn’t cry, even though I could see she desperately wanted to. She just looked at me like I’d reached inside her chest and pulled something out.”
Flint blows out a slow breath through his nose.
“She told me she was falling for me.” The words come out flat.
“Said she wanted to take a chance on me. That she had planned on telling me last night, but then I walked in and told her what I’d done.
She said her ex broke her trust and she swore she’d never put herself in that position again, and I…
” I shake my head. “I really hurt her. I hurt her badly. I was intimate with her. I connected with her, and then I broke her.”
He’s quiet for a beat.
“My rule is to never sleep with the same female twice,” he says finally. “It’s safer that way. Anything more than once, and she starts to think there’s something between you, and then it gets messy. My other rule is to never mix business with pleasure, for the same reason.”
I give him a look. “That isn’t helping me right now.”
He shrugs. “I know it isn’t, but it’s true.”
“I know I messed up, Flint. I know it. You don’t have to explain it to me.
” I chew on my bottom lip for a few seconds.
“I can’t stand the thought of her in a cell.
It’s killing me. I keep seeing it in my mind’s eye.
She’s a doctor, for fuck’s sake. She fixes shifters like us – makes sure they survive.
She’s a good person, and now she’s in jail, and I put her there. ”
“You didn’t put her there. Don’t do that. Those fuckers who framed her put her there.”
“You know what I mean,” I say again, quietly.
He turns to face me properly. “Here’s what we do.
We take Layla in the moment she steps through that gate.
We offer her the same deal we offered Rachael Da Silver.
Witness protection for her and her family in exchange for everything she knows.
It’s ultimately the same people who did this to your doctor.
Once we have Layla talking, we work Robyn’s case from the same angle.
Like you said the other night, it’s twelve people on the access list at that hospital storage room who are our suspects.
I already pulled the files. Eight are male, four are female.
That narrows it down considerably. Based on the shoe print we found, we know it’s more than likely one of the males. ”
“I agree with Reed on one thing.” I look at him.
“We can’t pin everything on that footprint.
The loafers might not be related to the framing.
Whoever was at the bottom of the emergency stairs that led to Robyn’s apartment might have been doing something else.
We need to look at all twelve. All angles.
I don’t want to be locked in on one theory and miss something. ”
Flint nods slowly. “Agreed. We’ll work all angles. Every name.”
“I want pictures of all twelve, ideally headshots as well. That, and their vehicle makes and models. I’ll go back through the CCTV from around Robyn’s apartment.
I want to look at the street footage too.
I want to see if I can match one of the twelve to any of the people moving through the area in the days before the planting and specifically on the night of the break-in. ”
“I agree that the shoe print and this case might not be related, but let’s face it,” Flint says, “a delivery guy or a gardener doesn’t own a pair of expensive Italian loafers.”
“Let’s wait and see where the evidence takes us.”
He nods. “Agreed.”
A faint chime sounds from the speakers over the gate. The screen flips from “On Approach” to “Landed.” The doors at the gate slide open, and a uniformed female from the airline takes up her post beside them.
“Here we go,” I murmur.
We both turn to face the gate.
The first passengers come through. It’s a young couple with two small kids, the smaller one asleep over the father’s shoulder, his mouth open.
Then an older man in a sun hat with a duty-free bag in each hand.
Next to come through are three businessmen in shirtsleeves, ties loosened, all checking their phones at the same time.
Then a teenager with earbuds in. More people walk through.
I scan every face. Flint does, too.
It suddenly gets busy, and then it starts to ease off to a trickle.
There’s a male in a wheelchair being pushed by an airline attendant.
Then nothing.
The female at the gate looks down at her clipboard. She glances up at the empty mouth of the jet bridge and then back at the clipboard.
Flint and I stand there for a long minute.
“Maybe she’ll be the last one off,” he says, but his voice has gone flat.
“Maybe.”
We wait some more, but no one else comes through that door.
My stomach has gone hard and cold. I can feel it in my chest, too, a dropping sensation that won’t level out.
The airline attendant by the gate takes a few steps inside, has a quick word with someone I can’t see, then comes back out and starts collecting the rope barriers, pulling them back toward the wall.
“That’s it,” Flint says. “She wasn’t on the flight.”
“No, doesn’t look like it.”
We go to the desk at the side of the gate, where an older male in a navy blazer is logging something into a tablet. He looks up as we approach. I pull my credentials out, and Flint does the same. We hold them up.
“Commander Ridge. This is Flint. We’re from Draig Security. We need to confirm something about a passenger on the flight that just came in.”
The male puts the tablet down. “Of course, sir. What do you need?”
“Layla Hamilton,” Flint says. “Booked on the last flight from the Mainland.” He gives the flight number of the plane that has just disembarked. “Did she board?”
He turns to his screen and types. Frowns. Types again. Pulls up something else.
“Hamilton, Layla.” He runs a finger along a line of text. “She was booked on the flight. She checked in online yesterday, but she didn’t make the gate. She’s a no-show. The seat was empty when they closed the doors.”
Flint and I look at each other.
“Are you sure?” I ask.
“Yes, she’s confirmed as a no-show. The seat number is right here on the manifest. She most definitely was not on board that flight and hasn’t rescheduled.”
“Thank you,” Flint says. “That’s all we need.”
We step away from the desk.
“Fuck,” I say quietly.
“Double fuck.” Flint keeps his voice low. “She’s scared. It must be that.”
“I think so, too. If she’s half as scared as Rachael Da Silver, she’ll be reluctant to return to Draig Island.”
“It’s possible,” Flint says.
“There is no way Layla is an asset. I’m certain that she was threatened. That she’s running scared,” I add.
Flint nods.
“Either way, she wasn’t on that plane,” I say. “Which means she’s still on the Mainland.”
“Now what?” Flint asks. “Do we send human guards to the Mainland to question her? Because she could be anywhere by now. She’s probably in hiding.”
I take my phone out of my pocket, pull up her contact, and tap. The phone rings against my ear.
It clicks through.
“Ridge?” Her voice is small. Stricken. She sounds like she’s been crying.
“Hi, Layla. Please don’t hang up. I need to talk to you. It’s important.”
She makes a small sobbing noise, and then the line goes dead.