weapons didn’t make it any easier. Once he’d settled, it took him maybe two seconds to read the mood in the plane. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
“The kid asked about the fuel situation,” Big Guy said. “So, I told him the truth.”
Tristan thought he saw the boss’s jaw twitch, but it was gone in an instant.
“Oh,” Scorpion said. “Okay. Let’s go, then.”
The Big Guy reached forward with his right hand. The engine noise built to a crescendo, and they started to roll. “Thank you for flying Rescue Airways,” the pilot yelled over the noise. The runway, such as it was, was made of grass, and the plane bounced like an old stagecoach as it gained speed. Bright lights from the wings illuminated their path as they sped toward the line of trees that blocked the far end of the runway.
“Our cruising altitude this evening-if we ever get this piece of shit off the ground-will be about thirty feet, at a cruising speed of one hundred eighty knots.”
The wall of trees approached at an alarming rate, and as the plane moved faster, it didn’t seem to be getting any lighter. Without thinking, Tristan pressed himself deeper into his seat. Up front, he could see Scorpion doing the same thing.
It’s hard to judge distances at night, but on the approximate scale of close to very close, Tristan had them pegged at a distance of
As they closed to within
Just inches short of
For the better part of a minute, no one said anything.
The Big Guy broke the silence. “Okay,” he said. “That was exciting. Now, sit back and enjoy the flight.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Sometimes, Dom D’Angelo wondered what the bishop would think if he knew the real details of how he sometimes tended to his flock. This was one of those times. As he climbed down the stairs of the private Gulfstream jet that had delivered him to Phoenix’s Sky Harbor International Airport, he wondered how many of his seminary classmates had even seen the inside of such an aircraft.
It was nearly eleven o’clock when he stepped down onto the tarmac and into the car that was waiting for him. If he’d waited for a commercial flight, the earliest he could have arrived in Phoenix would have been tomorrow morning, and the nature of his business couldn’t wait that long.
His FBI seatmate in the back of the nondescript Ford said little, allowing him to absorb the details of the file he’d been given. He’d get only one shot at this, so he needed to get it right. He told himself that God would understand the lies that he would have to tell to put the plan in action, and that the deception was for the greater good.
If God didn’t understand, well, Dom would have to take that up with Him later.
“We’re getting close,” the agent asked. “Do you have any questions?”
“I don’t think so,” Dom said. “I just hope that I don’t screw it up.”
“If you play it like we discussed, things should go just fine,” the agent said. “But if things go terribly wrong, we’ll be close by.”
Dom gave a tired smile. If things went
The Georgens’ house looked like so many other houses in Scottsdale. Where there should have been bushes, there were cacti instead; where there should have been grass, there was white gravel. Even with the sun gone, the air was oppressively hot-103 degrees, according to the thermometer in the dash of the car that delivered him. That should be a noontime temperature, not a nighttime one.
Judging from the number and brightness of the security lights, the Georgens were a paranoid lot. Once Dom stepped from the street to the walkway that led to their front door, every corner of the single-story Spanish-style ranch erupted in the light of double floods. The suddenness of it startled the crap out of him.
“Are you okay?” Venice asked in his left ear, startling him.
“I’m fine,” he said. Apparently, he’d yelled out, though he didn’t remember doing so. “Security lights.”
“You’ll do fine, Father,” she said. “But you need to relax. I can hear your breathing. I’ve got tape rolling here in case you need it, and I’ve got the panic number preprogrammed into the phone. If anything starts to sound wrong, I’ll call in the cavalry.”
“I understand,” he said.
“And you need to quit talking to me. It’ll look like you’re talking to yourself. Worse, it’ll get people thinking that you’re wearing a wire.”
Which, of course, was exactly what he was doing. He had two of them, actually. One was disguised as a pen in his pocket, and the other was the audio feed that Venice was running via the bud in his ear.
Venice was right, though. He needed to get control of his fear if he was going to pull off this ruse. The plan was to make an end run around the Constitution of the United States by performing a warrantless search. It would be illegal for the FBI to record the conversation that he was about to have, but in Arizona, it was legal for private citizens to surreptitiously record conversations so long as one of the parties knew that it was happening. A thus- legally obtained recording of damning evidence, once turned over to the FBI, then becomes actionable. Dom supposed that this sort of manipulation occurred all the time, but deception had never been his long suit.
And the outright lies that lay in his immediate future made his mouth go dry.
He forced himself not to slow as he approached the front door and rang the bell. Following the instructions he’d been given, Dom stepped back from the door to allow himself to be seen, Roman collar and all.
Lights came on inside, and he saw movement beyond the beveled glass that doubled for a center panel as the occupants moved cautiously toward the door. Visitors at this hour were unnerving for anyone. For that visitor to be a priest had to add an even more drastic spin.
The bevels bent all the images looking in, and he could imagine it did the same for someone looking out. A man’s face appeared in the glass, a hand cupped to the side of his right eye. Dom recognized it as belonging to Eric Georgen, Bill Georgen’s father.
“It’s a priest,” the man said. He turned two dead bolts and pulled the door open a crack. He wore a blue terry cloth bathrobe, and perhaps nothing else.
“I’m sorry to be calling so late at night,” Dom said. He kept his hands in front of him, fingers lightly interlaced, as if in casual prayer. “Are you Mr. Georgen?”
The man’s confusion morphed to a scowl. “Who are you?”
“I am Father Daniel LaFrada,” Dom said, invoking the name of a seminary friend who had passed away a few months ago. “I need to speak with you if you have a few moments.”
“I’m not Catholic,” Georgen said.
“It’s about your son, sir,” Dom said. “Bill.”
A woman materialized out of nowhere to join the man. This was Tammy Georgen, Bill’s mother, and she wore a bathrobe over a nightgown. “Is Billy all right?” she asked. Judging from her perfectly coiffed big hair, she hadn’t yet lain her head on a pillow. “Is he hurt?”
The question meant that the boy wasn’t home, and that brought a sense of relief. “We need to talk,” Dom said.
“Is he hurt?” Georgen asked, building on his wife’s budding panic.
Dom kept his face noncommittal. “May I come in, please?”
Husband and wife searched each other for an objection, and then stepped aside to let him in. The house wasn’t large, but it was well-appointed. Lots of polished hardwoods, granite, and original oil paintings. Dom led the way to what he supposed they called their family room, where a beamed cathedral ceiling towered over a leather conversation group that was designed to give maximum viewing efficiency for the enormous flat-screen television that was mounted over the wood-burning fireplace.
