A cat jumped up next to him, stuck her face into his. He pictured a thousand worms spraying over his body. He pictured the worms squirming through Sheila’s hair. Her wormy fingers. Stephen began to detest this woman. He wanted to scream.

“Ooo, say hello to our new friend, Andrea. She likes you, Sam.”

He stood up, looking around the apartment. Thinking:

Remember, boy, anything can kill.

Some things kill fast and some things kill slow. But anything can kill.

“Say,” he asked, “you have any packing tape?”

“Uhm, for…?” Her mind raced. “For…?”

“The instruments I have in the bag? I need to tape one of the drums back together.”

“Oh, sure, I’ve got some in here.” She walked into the hallway. “I send my aunties packages all the time. I always buy a new roll of tape. I can never remember if I’ve bought one before so I end up with a ton of them. Aren’t I a silly-billy?”

He didn’t answer because he was surveying the kitchen and decided that was the best kill zone in the apartment.

“Here you go.” She tossed him the roll of tape playfully. He instinctively caught it. He was angry because he hadn’t had the chance to put his gloves on. He knew he’d left prints on the roll. He shivered in rage and when he saw Sheila grinning, saying, “Hey, good catch, friend,” what he was really looking at was a huge worm moving closer and closer. He set the tape down and pulled on his gloves.

“Gloves? You cold? Say, friend, what’re you…?”

He ignored her and opened the refrigerator door, began removing the food.

She stepped farther into the room. Her giddy smile started to fade. “Uhm, you hungry?”

He began removing the shelves.

A look passed between them and suddenly, from deep within her throat, came a faint “Eeeeeeee.”

Stephen got the fat worm before she made it halfway to the front door.

Fast or slow?

He dragged her back into the kitchen. Toward the refrigerator.

Hour 2 of 45

THREES.

Percey Clay, honors engineering major, certified airframe and power plant mechanic, and holder of every license the Federal Aviation Agency could bestow on pilots, had no time for superstition.

Yet as she drove in a bulletproof van through Central Park on the way to the federal safe house in mid-town, she thought of the old adage that superstitious travelers repeat like a grim mantra. Crashes come in threes.

Tragedies too.

First, Ed. Now, the second sorrow: what she was hearing over the cell phone from Ron Talbot, who was in his office at Hudson Air.

She was sandwiched between Brit Hale and that young detective, Jerry Banks. Her head was down.

Hale watched her, and Banks looked vigilantly out the window at traffic, passersby, and trees.

“U.S. Med agreed to give us one more shot.” Talbot’s breath wheezed in and out alarmingly. One of the best pilots she’d ever known, Talbot hadn’t driven an aircraft for years – grounded because of his precarious health. Percey considered this a horrifyingly unjust punishment for his sins of liquor, cigarettes, and food (largely because she shared them). “I mean, they can cancel the contract. Bombs aren’t force majeure. They don’t excuse us from performance.”

“But they’re letting us make the flight tomorrow.”

A pause.

“Yeah. They are.”

“Come on, Ron,” she snapped. “No bullshit between us.” She heard him light another cigarette. Big and smokey – the man she’d bum Camels from when she was quitting smoking – Talbot was forgetful of fresh clothing and shaves. And inept at delivering bad news.

“It’s Foxtrot Bravo,” he said reluctantly.

“What about her?”

N695FB was Percey Clay’s Learjet 35A. Not that the paperwork indicated this. Legally the twin-engine jet was leased to Clay-Carney Holding Corporation Two, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Hudson Air Charters, Ltd., by Morgan Air Leasing Inc., which in turn leased it from La Jolla Holding Two’s wholly owned subsidiary Transport Solutions Incorporated, a Delaware company. This byzantine arrangement was both legal and common, given the fact that both airplanes and airplane crashes are phenomenally expensive.

But everyone at Hudson Air Charters knew that November Six Nine Five Foxtrot Bravo was Percey’s. She’d logged thousands of hours in the airplane. It was her pet. It was her child. And on the too-many nights Ed was gone just the thought of the aircraft would take the sting out of the loneliness. A sweet stick, the aircraft could cruise at forty-five thousand feet at speeds of 460 knots – over 500 miles per hour. She personally knew it could fly higher and faster, though that was a secret kept from Morgan Air Leasing, La Jolla Holding, Transport Solutions, and the FAA.

Talbot finally said, “Getting her outfitted – it’s going to be trickier than I thought.”

“Go on.”

“All right,” he said finally. “Stu quit.” Stu Marquard, their chief mechanic.

“What?”

“The son of a bitch quit. Well, he hasn’t yet,” Talbot continued. “He called in sick but it sounded funny, so I made some calls. He’s going over to Sikorsky. Already took the job.”

Percey was stunned.

This was a major problem. Lear 35As came equipped as eight-seat passenger jets. To make the aircraft ready for the U.S. Medical run, most of the seats had to be stripped out; shock-absorbed, refrigerated bays had to be installed, and extra power outlets had to be run from the engine’s generators. This meant major electrical and airframe work.

There were no mechanics better than Stu Marquard and he’d outfitted Ed’s Lear in record time. But without him Percey didn’t know how they could finish in time for tomorrow’s flight.

“What is it, Perce?” Hale asked, seeing her grimacing face.

“Stu quit,” she whispered.

He shook his head, not understanding. “Quit what?”

“He left,” she muttered. “Quit his job. Going to work on fucking choppers.”

Hale gazed at her in shock. “Today?”

She nodded.

Talbot continued. “He’s scared, Perce. They know it was a bomb. The cops aren’t saying anything but everybody knows what happened. They’re nervous. I was talking to John Ringle -”

“Johnny?” A young pilot they’d hired last year. “He’s not leaving too?”

“He was just asking if we’re closing down for a while. Until this all blows over.”

“No, we’re not closing down,” she said firmly. “We’re not canceling a single goddamn job. It’s business as usual. And if anybody else calls in sick, fire them.”

“Percey…”

Talbot was dour but everybody knew he was the company’s soft touch.

“All right,” she snapped, “I’ll fire them.”

“Look, about Foxtrot Bravo, I can do most of the work myself,” said Talbot, a certified airframe mechanic himself.

“Do what you can. But see if you can find another mechanic,” she told him. “We’ll talk later.”

She hung up.

“I can’t believe it,” Hale said. “He quit.” The pilot was bewildered.

Percey was furious. People were bailing out – the worst sin there was. The Company was dying. Yet she didn’t have a clue how to save it.

Percey Clay had no monkey skills for running a business.

Monkey skills…

A phrase she’d heard when she was a fighter pilot. Coined by a navy flier, an admiral, it meant the esoteric, unteachable talents of a natural-born pilot.

Well, sure, Percey had monkey skills when it came to flying. Any type of aircraft, whether she’d flown it previously or not, under any weather conditions, VFR or IFR, day or night. She could drive the plane flawlessly and set it down on that magic spot pilots aimed for – exactly “a thousand past the numbers” – a thousand feet down the landing strip past the white runway designation. Sailplanes, biplanes, Hercs, seven three sevens, MiGs – she was at home in any cockpit.