Chapter 90
Logan Quick caught sight of the RIB with its seven passengers a second before he entered the low cloud cover.
It would be at St Mary’s long before he reached Exeter, but he figured it would take time for them to share their stories with officialdom, for the authorities at St Mary’s to run the various checks and counterchecks and consult their superiors on the mainland.
The chances were slim of there being anything to hold him up at Exeter Airport, to prevent his chartered flight to the Channel Islands taking off.
From Jersey he planned to fly to Switzerland where he hoped Lauren would join him.
He was leaving her more than enough money to divorce Thomas.
He had lawyers waiting for him in Switzerland, as well as one of the best private clinics in Europe.
The events of the last few days had entailed keeping a clear head, but now he could look forward to the morphine again.
He’d spend his last months in the foothills of the alps alongside the woman with whom he’d found solace over the course of the past year.
Logan had loved one woman in his life, and she’d been lost to him many years before. Shelley. He didn’t expect to see her again, he’d never believed in an afterlife, but the thought that death would no longer separate them was comforting in its way.
He wondered, for a moment, whether Thomas might become a problem.
When he learned his wife was leaving him, that she and his best friend had been having an affair for months, he’d be pissed off.
But there was nothing he could say without incriminating himself, and he too was being left enough money to soften the blow.
His kids, he was sure, would adopt Cobalt.
Through occasional breaks in the cloud, Logan could see the ocean, steel grey and choppy beneath him. The wind was picking up but that would work in his favour. He’d be at Exeter in no time.
The next day, he would issue the necessary instructions that left the bulk of his estate to the eleven weird and wonderful good causes he’d found on an idle internet search.
The 501st Legion was his favourite, a charity that brought together Star Wars enthusiasts to participate in costume-based local fundraising, but he also had a soft spot for Be a Dear and Donate a Brassiere, an organisation that distributed bras to women who were homeless or living in poverty.
None of the charities he’d name could even begin to cope with the money he was leaving them, of course. More chaos left in his wake.
The Critter Connection, that was another. For fuck’s sake, who’d set up a charity for neglected or abandoned guinea pigs? These people deserved to be messed with. He was laughing as he adjusted course ten degrees to the east.
It happened in an instant.
First, the engine sound changed from a loud, steady roar to that of metal parts clanging together. Then he began to spin. And fall.
Logan recognised the problem at the same moment he realised it wasn’t merely mechanical failure. His tail rotor had been deliberately sabotaged. How? was his last thought. How the hell had they done it?
The ocean opened its mouth and swallowed him whole.