as he’d seen Jesse do.
“ Is anyone listening out there?” he said, lips inches from the mike.
Ten minutes later, J.P. sat secure behind locked doors and watched as Deputy Lincoln Hewett’s police car drove up the dirt road and parked alongside. Not until the Deputy was out of the car, did he unlock the door.
“ Well, J.P., I’m sure you have quite a story,” Lincoln said.
J.P. had always like Lincoln, but he wished the sheriff had come instead.
“ Come on, J.P., what’s going on?”
J.P. told him about how his father and Sylvia were murdered. How he was kidnapped and held in the trunk. How he got away. How he saw the saber-toothed Ghost Dog. How it chased him. How he saw Jesse and Stacy, naked, making love. And how he got safely into the police car.
“ Stacy and Jesse were up at Lover’s Hideaway?” the deputy asked, pointing up the dirt path.
“ Yes, sir.”
“ Show me!”
“ I can’t walk too good and besides, I don’t think it’s a good idea to go up there.”
“ Nonsense. I’ll carry you.” Lincoln pulled J.P. out of the car, hefting him up to his shoulders the way his dad used to when he was younger.
“ I don’t wanna go there.”
“ It’ll be fine.”
J.P. kicked against Lincoln’s chest.
“ Stop that.” Lincoln squeezed his leg, hard.
“ You’re gonna be sorry.”
“ Just calm down.”
“ This is a bad idea.” But it was no use, because now they were in the clearing and Lincoln set J.P. down.
The dead leaves, pine needles and the dirt throughout the center of the small clearing were covered in wet blood. The couple’s clothes lay in a heap, near the clearing’s center, undisturbed.
The deputy bent to pick up Stacy’s frilly blouse.
“ The Ghost Dog did it,” J.P. said. “It killed ’em, then it ate ’em.”
“ There is no Ghost Dog,” Lincoln said.
“ Yes there is. I saw it. It chased me.”
“ He fired his weapon,” Lincoln said, talking to himself. He bent over and picked up a shell casing. He found the forty-five near a pool of blood, picked it up. “My God,” he said, “he emptied it. Whatever did this is one bad son of a bitch.”
When they reached the end of the clearing, J.P. heard a low growl and wailed, “Oh, no, not again,” as the black beast slammed into Lincoln Hewett.
He had a front row view as the Ragged Man stepped from the bushes and slit Lincoln’s throat with his Jim Bowie knife.
J.P. wanted to run, but he was frozen in place as the Ragged Man stepped away from the dead deputy and the Ghost Dog moved back in, clamping its powerful jaws around Lincoln’s neck and closing them with a sharp snap, severing his head and sending it rolling toward J.P. like a soccer ball kicked out of play.
J.P. passed out.
Chapter Twenty-One
He was too low and too close to the cliffs. The plane slid out of his control, reminding him of the time when a rogue wave grabbed his board and ripped it from him, leaving him to be tossed about at the ocean’s mercy, his board a deadly weapon lashed to his feet. He kept his head and toughed it out then, he’d keep his head and tough it out now.
“ We’re gonna crash!” Harpine shouted
Rick grabbed a quick look at the man. His florid face had darkened from its usual drinker’s pink and he was drenched in sweat.
“ Can you get us out of this?”
“ Hope so.” Rick shoved in the left rudder as he pulled back on the throttle, and like that time when he had to slip loose from the board and claw his way from the sea, the plane clawed its way away from the cliffs. He nosed down toward the ocean, to try and free the plane from the turbulence. He couldn’t abandon the plane like he had the surfboard.
“ Oh, sweet Mother of God, we’re going down! Hail Mary full of grace, forgive us at the hour of our deaths.”
“ That’s not how it goes,” Rick said.
“ Who the fuck cares how it goes! Oh, Lord we’re going in the ocean. I’ll be good, God. I’ll be good!”
Rick tried to tune Harpine out and gradually added power as they closed in on the water.
“ Oh, sweet Jesus, forgive me. We’re gonna die!”
Rick stared to get the plane back at three hundred feet and regained full control at a hundred and fifty. He leveled off at a hundred feet and flew over the rough sea. He spotted a lone surfer below.
“ Thank you, Lord. Oh, thank you,” Harpine said. Then to Rick. “What the fuck was that all about?”
“ Turbulence off the cliffs. Much more than I expected. Took me by surprise.”
“ You gonna have any more surprises like that?”
“ Hope not,” Rick lied, because he knew he’d have one grand surprise for him. No way could he put it down at the airport. There was a good chance that Mitchel had seen a news broadcast. If so, Sheriff Sturgees might be waiting for him.
He brought the plane back up to five hundred feet, then leveled off.
“ Higher, we should be higher.”
“ It’s okay now, Chief. Trust me.”
“ That’s what you said before and look what happened.”
“ You’re still breathing.”
“ Barely. It’s a miracle my heart’s still beating.”
“ All right, I’ll take it up to a thousand.” Rick pulled back slightly on the yoke, starting a slow climb. Fifteen minutes later he leveled off and they flew in silence for about twenty minutes. Then he eased in the throttle and they started a gradual descent.
“ What now?” Harpine said.
“ Palma dead ahead,” Rick said, “about ten miles.” He turned in, toward the coast and was at five hundred feet when he flew over the beach, headed inland.
“ What are you doing?”
“ We have to go inland, then make a wide left, to make a straight in landing on runway two-seven,” Rick lied. He’d never flown out of Palma-Tampico, never been to the airport, didn’t have a clue what the runway numbers were, and he had no intention of getting anywhere near the airport today. Two miles inland he saw a place were he might be able to land, a straight stretch of dirt road that ran from the twisted highway through the pines to a log cabin-like house.
If he was able to make it through the trees without clipping the wings, if there were no large potholes in the road to throw them into the trees once they touched down and, if there was a headwind and not a tailwind, they had a chance. But if his timing wasn’t right on, they could wind up in somebody’s living room.
He was preparing to fly over the dirt track and check it out when the plane sputtered. Shit, he thought, out of gas, he wasn’t even going to have to fake it with Harpine. He’d only get one chance. He wasn’t lined up. He was too high. He was going too fast.
“ What’s wrong?” Harpine asked, agitated.
“ Out of gas,” Rick said.
Harpine spun his head around, fixing Rick with a cold stare. “You’re shitting me!”
