“Why don’t we call the sheriff and check on Laurel?” Danny suggested.
Warren lifted the shiny pistol and pressed its barrel against Danny’s left temple. “Why don’t you shut up and fly.”
“Tell me where.”
“Just keep us over the river.”
“How high?”
“Two thousand feet’s fine.”
Danny spiraled upward in a slow climb, wondering how long the gun would stay at his head. It didn’t leave him much maneuvering room. He’d already begun forming the rudiments of a plan. If he could roll the chopper and pull enough g’s, he might be able to open Shields’s harness and dump him out before the doctor shot him. But he couldn’t do that with a gun to his head.
“Are you afraid to die, Major?”
Shields had asked the question in a philosophical tone. Danny shrugged. “To tell you the truth, I should have died long before now.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“I don’t want to die.”
The gun barrel entered the shell of Danny’s left ear. “But are you
Danny thought about it. He felt a lot of things at this moment, but the least of his emotions was fear. “I’ll tell you what I think. It isn’t dying that’s hard. It’s living.”
Shields’s jaws flexed angrily. “What are you trying to say? Are you saying I’m a coward?”
“No. I’m saying life ain’t a bowl of fucking cherries. I’m saying you owe that little boy whatever time you can give him, no matter what shape you’re in. I think he’s tough enough to watch you die. It might not be pretty, but he’ll get over it. A hell of a lot easier than he’ll get over this shit.”
Shields’s jaw was working so hard it looked as if he were trying to grind his teeth away. “You’ve got all the answers, don’t you? Or so my wife seems to think.”
“I don’t have any answers!” Danny snapped, tired of Shields’s paranoia. “I’m just trying to get by, same as the next man. All I’m saying is, it’s living that takes courage. In my experience, the hero who charges the machine-gun nest is sometimes the guy who didn’t have anything to go home to. To me, the real hero is the guy who goes home to face whatever life hands him, no matter how tough it might be.”
“That’s easy for you to say. You’re a lucky son of a bitch. And life handed you my wife.”
Danny put the Bell into a hover above the river. Far below, through sheets of rain, twinkling headlights moved steadily between Louisiana and Mississippi. “I’ve caught the short end a few times. You’ve been dealt a tough hand, I’ll grant you. But I’ve seen guys get a lot worse, with no time to set things right or even say good-bye to the people they loved. In muddy holes, on piles of sand, burned alive in a fucking Humvee. It’s like you said back at the house. It doesn’t make any sense. You want an answer, Warren? You’ve got two kids who love you. Two healthy kids who need everything you can give them, and who’ll give you everything they have in return. That means more than you know. Take it from me.”
Shields lowered the gun back to Danny’s waist. “I killed a cop tonight,” he said in a guilt-ridden voice.
“Well, I’d say he asked for it. He was a mean bastard who would have caught it one way or another down the road.”
“They’d still jail me for it. Or execute me.” Shields began to laugh strangely. “If only I could live all the years it would take them to execute me after sentencing me to death! I’d take that deal, all right.”
Danny wondered if he had any chance of getting back to the ground alive. As they hovered in the dark, he noticed that several cars had stopped along the northern span of the bridge. Then he saw red lights flashing at the Mississippi end.
“Whose baby is Laurel carrying?” Warren asked with sudden intensity.
Danny turned to him. In the cramped cockpit, their faces were as close as lovers’. “I don’t know.”
“Christ! Can’t anybody just tell me the truth?”
“I truly don’t know. But it doesn’t matter anyway.”
Shields closed his eyes. “Do you really think she’s dead?”
For the first time, Danny sensed as opportunity to save himself. But despite Shields’s closed eyes, the gun still pressed into his left hip. If they had been flying without the doors-as Danny sometimes did-or if Shields had neglected to fasten his harness, a high-G maneuver might have set the stage for Danny to dump his hijacker out of the chopper. But that was useless speculation.
Danny looked back at the flashing red lights. They were static now, at the center of the bridge. “I don’t know. All I do know is, Laurel was right. If you really love her, it doesn’t matter who the father is.”
Shields’s eyes popped open. “How can you say that?”
Danny shrugged. “Age, maybe? You’ll get there eventually.”
“No. I won’t.”
It was so easy to forget the man was dying. Danny wondered if Shields forgot it himself sometimes. For the first second or two after he woke up in the mornings, maybe. Danny had a paraplegic friend who’d experienced that. He said there was nothing worse than the crushing weight of remembering that he was paralyzed and couldn’t get out of bed. “I think love means giving up something,” Danny said. “Maybe the thing that means the most to you. Pride, maybe? That’s what she was talking about. That’s what they want us to do, you know? Only then do they truly believe you love them.”
Some of the anger had drained out of Shields’s eyes. “You really love her, don’t you?”
Danny didn’t answer. He’d already confessed once, and he saw no reason to do it again when repetition might buy him a bullet.
Shields raised the gun to Danny’s temple again. “Say it, Major.”
“I love her,” Danny admitted, suddenly aware that all his world-weary talk about death was bullshit. He’d found a woman he wanted to spend every day of his life with, and he had two kids of his own who needed him desperately-maybe even three. The thought that those children might come in harm’s way without their father there to protect them-that scared the hell out of him. It also gave him the resolve he needed to kill Warren Shields if he could.
“You want to kill me, don’t you?” Shields said.
Danny shook his head, but his heart wasn’t in it.
Warren leaned against the left-side door on his side and lazily aimed the gun at Danny’s belly. “I
Warren raised the gun until its muzzle touched Danny’s cheek. “If you lived through this night, what would you do?”
“Best I could.”
“Would you take care of them?”
“Them?”
“Laurel. My kids.”
Sensing a route to life, Danny nodded.
A quarter mile behind and below the doctor, more red lights spun and flashed on the bridge.
“It’s not fair,” Shields muttered.
“It never is,” Danny said, amazed that the man could have practiced medicine for years and not learned this lesson. Until his own diagnosis, Shields had actually believed himself immune to the vagaries of fate. Danny knew a lot of pilots like that. “The house always wins, Doc. It’s just a question of when. The way I see it, you’re alive now. Today. Let tomorrow take care of itself. Your family needs you. Let’s take this machine back to Athens Point and find out about your wife.”
“They’ve sent up another chopper!” Shields said, pointing with his arm across Danny’s chest.
Danny turned, scanning the night sky for lights. There was only one other chopper in the county, a JetRanger that belonged to a private businessman. Danny didn’t think they could find a pilot to fly it in this weather, but this was an extraordinary emergency. As he searched the sky, the Bell rose unexpectedly-maybe an updraft off the bluff, he thought. Then he turned to ask Shields what the hell he was talking about and saw that he was alone in the
