Chapter 25 #2
“After he wrecked your plane, he was trying to get you in trouble, too?” Louise exclaimed, obviously reading the situation the same way Pullman had. “Of all the dirty, underhanded plays!”
Amelia grabbed Louise’s and Pancho’s elbows and tugged, turning both of them to face away from the journalists behind the sheriff, whose cameras were already turning to point in their direction.
“What the devil are you doing, Amelia?” Louise demanded.
“Keeping my eye on the ball. We’ve got to get out of here and get back to the planes right away. Make sure our planes don’t get sabotaged.”
“I don’t have a plane anymore,” Pancho said bitterly, starting to turn back to the driver. She was okay with going to jail and making headlines for socking the guy who had intentionally destroyed her plane—
Amelia jerked her back. “We need you, Pancho. Some of the other gals are just youngsters. They look up to you. We all need you to speak for the lot of us and make sure this derby continues. You can get the momentary satisfaction of burying your fist in that guy’s face here, or you can get the long-term satisfaction of showing the world what women pilots are capable of in Cleveland. But you can’t have both.”
“Blast it all,” Pancho burst out. “I hate it when you make good sense! But in Cleveland, do I at least get to thrash whoever arranged this sabotage against me?”
Amelia just rolled her eyes.
Pullman, however, answered dryly, “You will set your cause back years if you beat up anyone. One shot of you brawling in the papers, and those who say females are too emotional to be pilots will win their point.”
“Come on, Pullman. Surely, you see it. Someone paid that truck driver to wreck my plane. And that someone is out to stop the race. Amelia’s right.
If I go away, a bunch of the pilots will lose their nerve and quit.
Talk to your superiors. After all the other evidence and sabotage, and now this, they can’t just let this go,” she argued desperately.
Pullman’s expression tightened. “My superiors don’t like to make waves.”
“So we can’t count on federal law enforcement for justice?
” she retorted, appalled. “The BOI is the only agency with jurisdiction across state lines!” Her temper was starting to heat up again, but this time it was aimed at Pullman.
“I’ve got no use for men who are more worried about stopping folks from having a drink now and again than about stopping pilots from dying. ”
He flinched but made no reply. Maybe he knew she was right.
She said grimly, “It’s time for you to choose, Pullman. If you keep your mouth shut about the things you’ve seen, you’re no better than the people committing these crimes.”
He stood silent in front of her, his mouth set in a stubborn line.
“Fine,” she snapped, turning away from him and heading toward the row of planes. Thankfully, her crash had scattered the crowd and moved it back from the wreck enough for the last few planes to land beside the tangled truck and her mangled plane.
She trudged back toward the other planes, deeply disappointed in Pullman. Sure, he and she had gotten off on the wrong foot the night he arrested Phoebe and cuffed her. But she thought respect had grown between them since then, even a measure of camaraderie that she valued.
But she couldn’t trust anyone who stood by silently and watched injustice and outright crime.
She spared him one backward glance and was disgusted to see him chatting companionably with the sheriff.
Looks like he’s made his choice. Pullman’s betrayal hurt worse—far worse—than any act of sabotage by a stranger because she’d considered him a friend.
“What a crash! Pancho Barnes’s plane is smashed to bits!” the announcer yelled excitedly.
Pullman glanced up at the nearest loudspeaker in annoyance. The destruction of Pancho’s prized airplane was nothing to celebrate.
“Did you see her climb out of that mess?” the announcer continued animatedly. “They say she’s married to a pastor. Must be true. Only God could protect someone from a crash like that.”
Behind him, Pullman heard the first airplane start up, getting ready to taxi out and take off. The sheriff broke off chatting with him to send the rest of his men over to the parking area to help the airport crew hold back the crowds and make a path for the planes to get back out to the runway.
He used the pause to consider how to find out who had told the sheriff to stand in this exact spot at this exact moment. The guy had already slipped up and made a comment about just doing what he was told.
Before he could reengage the sheriff in conversation, though, an ambulance pulled up behind them, parking beside the sheriff’s own vehicle.
The sheriff frowned, muttering about not being allowed to park there, and Pullman snorted to himself.
Maybe the guy should enforce the parking laws over by the runway and move all those vehicles literally on top of where the planes were landing.
Pullman trailed behind the sheriff as he marched over toward the ambulance.
Three attendants jumped out of the back of it, and a fourth person, a nurse, stepped down from the front of the vehicle.
The sheriff said officiously, “You can’t park here. If you were called because of the accident a few minutes ago, I can report that nobody was injured. Your services are not required—”
“We’re here on other business,” one of the orderlies replied.
The nurse said briskly to the ambulance driver, “Show the sheriff our papers. Make sure he sees they’re properly signed by the husband and the judge. While you do that, I’ll take the men and fetch Mrs. Barnes.”
Pullman’s jaw dropped. Mrs. Barnes? Pancho?
The nurse said briskly, “Remember your instructions. We’re to grab her quickly and quietly if possible.
We need to get her back to the sanatorium and under lock and key before the press gets wind of what’s happened.
There’s a big bonus waiting for each of you back at the asylum for completing this task. ”
Sanatorium? Asylum? Pullman’s jaw opened even wider. These men were here, at the behest of Pancho’s husband, to take her to a mental hospital? She might be brash and frustrating, and she could get under his skin like nobody’s business, but she wasn’t insane!
“Is she dangerous?” one of the orderlies asked.
“You can bet your bonus she won’t want to come along quietly. She’s one of the pilots in this ridiculous race and is obviously mentally deranged, or we wouldn’t be here collecting her,” the nurse replied tartly.
Pullman had heard of women being labeled mentally ill for all manner of things, from being too willful to .
. . well . . . flying planes. He recalled a case a few years back where a husband got his wife committed and subjected to electric shock treatments until her obsession with flying was erased from her mind.
Although the way he heard it, just about everything else had been erased from her mind, too, in the course of the treatments.
His gut twisted at the thought of Pancho’s vibrant, larger-than-life personality being wiped out. How could Pancho’s husband do that to her? A bitter taste filled his mouth. Call him crazy, but it just seemed wrong to lock a woman up because she had spirit.
It occurred to him that Pancho didn’t have a plane to take off in and escape these people. And she was unaware of the orderlies coming for her.
He could lose his job if he interfered in the execution of a court order.
But like Pancho, he also had no use for people who stood by and did nothing in the face of injustice.
While she was wrong that he was doing nothing about the sabotage, he wasn’t able to share with her how he was investigating quietly, behind the scenes—like his chat with the sheriff that revealed someone had probably told the guy to be standing there, ready to arrest Pancho Barnes for attacking the man who’d wrecked her plane.
He had to warn her. Was it worth losing his job over? In this case . . . yes!
He lurched into motion as the orderlies followed the nurse into the crowd. They would be on Pancho before she knew what was happening. Without her plane, Pancho was a sitting duck.