Earth to Emily (8 page)

“What? Whyever would they not?”

“On account of it’s Jesus’s birthday.” The rest of the white zin slid down my hatch.

Mother set her unsipped-from glass down on the counter. “Well, I never. I daresay I’m as well-versed as almost anyone, and I don’t see anything in the Bible that
prohibits
exchanging gifts, at Christmas or any time.” She picked her glass back up to salute with it. “Tasteful ones, and not in excess. All things to the glory of God.”

I refilled my wine.

“Do you have plans for your Friday night, dear?”

“I’m going to take some roast and vegetables back to my room for now. I’m really tired,” I ladled an enormous bowl.

“You don’t want to watch
Murder, She Wrote
with me?”

We’d seen every episode at least three times. I smiled at her. “You tell me whodunit at breakfast tomorrow.” I kissed her on the cheek. “Thanks for making dinner.” What I left out telling her was that I needed to get in touch with Jack. He didn’t know it yet, but he was going to have passengers on the way to New Mexico tomorrow.

Early the next morning outside the Maxor Building, Jack dropped his bag and Snowflake’s collapsible kennel into the trunk of my Mustang, then opened the passenger door. Snowflake hopped in and he followed her. She adjusted herself into his lap.

Jack swiveled in his seat. “Morning.”

I’d texted Jack late the night before, asking to hitch a ride to his ranch for me and two, which he’d agreed to if I’d pick him up on my way to the airport, since his Jeep was still in the shop. The kids accepted that he would believe our cover story that they were two family friends who I was dropping in Alamogordo. I knew the chances of him buying it were slim to none, but a) I trusted him with the secret and b) I was still going to give it my best shot.

“Jack, these are the two family friends of mine I was telling you about, George and Frannie.” I used the cover names we’d picked together. “Guys, this is my boss, Jack.” I paused, then added the nickname I occasionally used for him on a whim. “Short for Jack Ass.”

Greg and Farrah stared at me for a split second.

Greg—who I had to remember to start thinking of and calling George—laughed first. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Ass.”

“Jack, please.” Jack rolled his eyes. “She doesn’t show me a lot of respect.”

“Who, me?” I winked toward the teens.

We drove out of downtown, passing several of the older, more established churches on the way. At the First Baptist Church’s sign, I read POTLUCK SUPPER SUNDAY AT 5:00 PM—PRAYER AND MEDICATION TO FOLLOW. I laughed.

“What’s so funny?” Jack asked.

I pointed at the sign and he chuckled. “I can just picture some little blue-haired lady carefully writing that in her shaky handwriting for one of the youth group members to put up.” Remembering the one from the night before, I decided that I really needed to start writing them down. I could write a hilarious little book, and surely authors made more money than paralegals.

Jack’s left dimple appeared. “Church bulletin typos made Sundays worth it for me as a kid.”

I merged onto I-40, keeping a sharp eye on the rearview mirror, as I had the entire way from Heaven in to pick up Jack. No followers that I could tell. Jack chatted with the kids as I exited and made a few quick turns to get us to the nearby Tradewind Airport. I parked as close as I could to the edge of the surface lot nearest Jack’s hangar—on the opposite side of the facility from the airport’s small terminal building—and checked the mirrors one last time. Still no suspicious vehicles.

Jack grabbed Snowflake’s kennel and his suitcase, and she walked beside him on a leash. I followed with my one rolling bag, and the kids fell in beside me, each of them carrying mostly empty plastic grocery bags. We passed a pole crowded with painted arrows pointing in different directions and denoting mileage to a multitude of destinations. It looked like an old-school Rolodex in mid twirl. Jack unlocked the door and we entered his pitch-dark shared private hangar. He flicked a switch. Fluorescents crackled, hummed, and then flooded the interior, revealing eight small planes. It was barely warmer inside than outside.

“Wow,” Greg/George said. His voice echoed in the cavernous space. “Cool!”

“Do you like to fly?” Jack asked him.

“I think so, but I never have.”

“I did when I was a baby,” Farrah/Frannie said, but her voice was less enthusiastic.

“If either of you want to learn more, you can help me get ready.”

“I do!” Greg said.

“I’ll stay with Emily,” Farrah said, moving so close to me that her side pressed against mine.

Jack spent the next ten minutes prepping the plane, under a watchful teenage eye. We girls visited the hangar bathrooms, then we all loaded up. Five minutes later, we were under way to Wrong Turn Ranch.

Cabin conditions in the Cessna 172 were not ideal. For starters, I still hadn’t fallen in love with small planes and the concept of amateur pilots. I trusted Jack, and his Skyhawk seemed airworthy, but I’m of the belief that humans are creatures of the earth rather than the sky. I’m not overly fond of big planes and professional pilots, either. Not only that, but before today I had my own spot in the backseat. Today, Greg and Farrah had bumped me into shotgun, where I held Snowflake’s kennel, with Snowflake in it. Even a tiny dog in a tiny kennel gets old fast when it’s on your lap for three-plus hours, buckled in the seatbelt with you. It reminded me of the times Dad had me ride in the stock trailer with the horses as a kid, something probably akin to forcing your unhelmeted, unbelted children into the back of a pickup truck these days. I’d always considered it a badge of honor to shepherd the animals back then. Now? Not so much.

Other than Snowflake in my lap, though, the front seat was better than the back. Up here, I could wear headphones that allowed me to talk to Jack during the flight. It was much too noisy without them to hear each other even from less than two feet away. In general, I’d found that, in the two months I’d known him, Jack didn’t talk much. Today was a different story. His voice crackled in my headphones, surprisingly loud and clear. He looked straight ahead as he spoke, although I noticed that he couldn’t see much of anything but his instrument panel in front of him while in flight. That was something I would have to try not to think about.

“I’m an officer of the court. You realize I could get disbarred for this, right?”

I knew he was talking about the kids, and I did know how much trouble this could bring down on him. It bothered me. A lot. “If, hypothetically speaking, you knew you were doing something wrong, then, yes, you could get disbarred. You’ve got plausible deniability, though, and I’d like to keep it that way.” My heart clenched like a fist as I said it. I would never forgive myself if I got Jack in trouble, so I would have to make sure I didn’t.

“So that confirms my pretty good guess about who those two are.” Now he glanced at me, and I saw his chest rise and fall. “You do keep it interesting, Emily.” His lips pulled tight as he looked away, and my heart did its normal little flip-flop when I had earned one of his lopsided smiles.

I nodded. “Friends of the family, like I said.”

“Ha. The same ones that called you at the office yesterday, I suppose.”

I licked my lips. “That was Katie.”

“She never calls you on the office phone.”

I guess I hadn’t fooled him after all. I turned to check on the teenagers, shooting them an okay sign with my thumb and forefinger in question. Greg’s arm was slung around Farrah, and her head was tucked in the
V
his underarm made with his chest and shoulder. Her face looked pale, but they both gave me thumbs skyward.

“Hypothetically, my two friends tell me they may have seen a murder take place at a certain truck stop Wednesday night.”

Jack’s head whipped toward me for a second. “No shit?”

“None.” He shook his head, eyes wide, and I continued. “I gave them my card when I saw them in the field the other night. They said I’m the only one they can trust, but they haven’t trusted me enough to tell me who it is. They’re plenty scared though, and they’re convinced the shooter saw them and is coming after them.”

Jack’s thumbs danced on the yoke. “That’s why they were running away from Love’s.”

I nodded. “Yep. They’ve had such a rough time. Losing their families. Sexual abuse at the foster home where they met, at least Farrah. On the run from the group home CPS put them in after that. Honestly, it doesn’t sound like the group home was all that bad, but they’ve lost faith in the system and are just young enough to believe they’re invincible together.”

“Young and stupid.”

“Young and, sadly, experienced. And idealistic.”

“Did you tell Wallace?”

“No, no one else. I can’t put him or the kids in that position.”

His lips twitched. “But you can put me in it.”

I decided it was best to pretend I hadn’t heard his last remark, even though my gut tightened with guilt. I looked out the side window at the ground far below us, like the surface of a Life game board without its color. Treeless, wrinkled, brown dotted with white. Ribbons of black asphalt wound through the landscape, vehicles crawling along them at the pace of snails compared to us. Here and there, small clusters of roofs gave evidence of community. We’d long since crossed the border into New Mexico and I tried to identify the towns. Clovis? Portales? Or were they even on our route?

Jack’s voice crackled in my ear again. “So, what now?”

I stuck a finger in Snowflake’s kennel and was rewarded with a tiny, rough tongue. Snowflake didn’t hold back her affection, or her constant search for a crumb or tiny dried remnant of whatever I’d last eaten.

“I was hoping we could let them lay low in Tularosa for a while. At least for the weekend with me. Maybe longer if I figure something out.” Jack’s family ranch was between the tiny towns of Bent and Tularosa, New Mexico, but closer to Tularosa.

“Such as?”

Snowflake’s tongue bath over, I used my fingertip to scratch behind her fluffy white ears. I couldn’t hear her, but I knew from the many times I’d scratched there that she was humming her special happy noise.

“Maybe someone at the ranch could take them in for a while. It’d be good for them.” I braced myself for Jack’s response, expecting a verbal wallop.

Instead, he nodded again. “That might work. We can ask Mickey and Laura what they think.” Jack turned and met my eyes, looking deep into them. “No promises.”

“Of course not.”

“You sure do seem to have a knack for finding the lost souls.” He reached over and chucked his knuckles gently against my cheek.

My heart jackhammered in response to his touch.

***

Jack taxied to the barnlike hangar from the rough dirt runway at Wrong Turn Ranch. He pivoted the plane, and turned off the propeller. Two minutes later, Greg and Farrah hopped out of the plane, jaws hanging open.

“That was the coolest thing ever,” Greg said, his voice almost a shout.

“You’re a better flier than me,” I told him.

I patted Farrah. She still looked a little green around the gills, but she hadn’t used the barf bag, which was more than I could say for myself on my first trip out here. The kids loitered and watched as I helped Jack. He opened the hangar and I got in the awaiting old blue Suburban. The keys stayed in the ignition, so I pulled it out and around the side of the building. Jack retrieved a tow bar and hooked it to the plane’s front strut, and together we started to push it over to a spindly-legged silver fuel tank—with Greg scrambling to help on my side when he saw what we were doing—then the boys maneuvered it backwards into the hangar when Jack had finished fueling it up. Greg shut the hangar for Jack, then we all piled in the land vehicle with the dog and the bags.

Jack drove us down a dirt road away from the private airport, through high-desert pastureland and toward the foothills of white-topped mountains beyond. A light layer of snow covered the ground and bushes around us, enough to look like icing on an Italian cream cake, but not enough to make driving—or landing a plane—difficult. I could still see the outline of yucca stalks and blades, but the snow rendered most of the other flora unrecognizable.

“Where are we?” Farrah asked.

Jack put one hand on my seat back as he turned himself toward Farrah. Even with him facing away, the Suburban stayed on course, practically steering itself through the rutted dirt track. With his hand almost touching me, I could feel his nearness in every cell of my body, and I wished it didn’t make me tingle all over. Or that he’d lower that hand to my shoulder. Or my leg.

“We’re a little more than a hundred miles from the southern border of New Mexico. Of the United States, for that matter. Less than two hours that way”—he pointed to his right—“is Mexico.”

“How far are we from Amarillo?”

“About five hundred miles.”

I turned toward her in my seat, my mouth now close enough to Jack’s hand to kiss it, if I’d wanted to, which I did. I lowered my voice. “Far enough away that no one will follow.”

Greg said to Jack, “Is this all yours?”

Jack lifted and dropped his shoulders. He moved his hand away from my seat and back to the steering wheel, causing a twinge in my chest. “Most of it, although it belongs to my parents, not me.”

“Will it be yours someday?”

“I guess so. Unless I go before them.”

“You must be really rich.”

Jack laughed. “You’d be surprised. It costs a lot of money to run this ranch. But we do okay. Plus, I have a job.”

“You’re Emily’s boss, right? A lawyer?”

“Yep.”

I smiled and looked from one kid to the other. “The house is really nice here, and they have lots and lots of horses. Racehorses.”

Farrah leaned forward, eyes round. “Can we see them?”

Jack turned the Suburban to the left at a
T
intersection in the dirt road. “Absolutely. In fact, if you’d like, we could take a ride this afternoon.”

“That would be awesome.” Farrah bounced in the seat, regressing a few years in her excitement, then stopped. “But I’ve never ridden a horse.”

“Me either.” Greg’s voice sounded tight and worried.

“Nothing to it. We’ll put you on some gentle ones that will do whatever mine and Emily’s do. It will be as easy as riding in this old Suburban.” Jack patted the dashboard.

The two kids looked at me, Greg clearly still uneasy with the arrangements, Farrah as clearly thrilled.

Jack continued. “Did you know Emily was a rodeo star in college?”

Farrah’s brows rose and scrunched together. “Really?”

I smiled. “I went to college on a rodeo scholarship, and my dad was a professional rodeo cowboy. I rode horses before I could walk. And Jack’s right. This will be a piece of cake.”