Page 54 of Red Boar's Baby

“I’m not—!” Her voice rose in alarm; she forced it down, keeping it low enough to be covered by the white noise of the engines. “I’m not an agent.”

“I know.” Costa met her eyes with his level gaze. “I thought letting them believe you were one of us would work best for getting information. I’m sorry I got you into this, Di.”

“Yougotmeinto this?” she asked, annoyance with Costa briefly washing the panic out of her system. “Do you remember who brought you the baby in the first place? Do you remember whose house burned down? I’m in this up to my eyeballs already. If you hadn’t been willing to treat me as an equal in the investigation, I’d have just gone off and done it on my own.”

The corner of his mouth twitched up briefly. “Point taken. Well, now you see the downside of investigating things.”

Diana looked over her shoulder at the cockpit again, just in time to catch probably-not-a-pilot Jim looking back at them and then away. She kept one eye halfway on him as she asked Costa, “Do you have a weapon?”

“No,” Costa said grimly. “No reason to bring it. I wasn’t expecting trouble, at least not this kind. I have my service weapon in my car, not that it helps us right now.”

“I have a multitool on my key ring.”

His lips twitched. “Let’s save that as a last resort.” Movement from the cockpit made him glance forward, and Diana looked as well, but it was only Jim looking back at them again. Seeing them looking at him, he gave them a brief thumbs-up.

“Reassuring,” Diana said between her teeth. For the sake of appearances, she gave him a perfunctory thumbs-up back.

Costa looked thoughtful. “Can you fly this type of plane?”

Her stomach lurched at all he was implying. “Not legally,” she said. “I’m certified on single-engine small aircraft and helicopters, not something this big. But well enough to land it in an emergency, yes, I think so.”

“And how long can a pilot changeover take? I mean, it’s not going to fall out of the sky the minute their hands are off the controls, right?”

“Oh no, not at all. If the autopilot’s set, it can keep going until it encounters extremely rough conditions or runs out of fuel.” She decided not to mention cases she’d heard of an airplane flying for hours with no one at the controls at all. Hopefully they wouldn’t have to test its. “Even if it’s not on autopilot, it should be fine for a few minutes, kind of like how you can take your hands off a car’s steering wheel if it’s in alignment and the road is straight.”

“Right,” Costa said. “So I guess we have a plan, sort of. I’ll take the guys, you take the plane—crap, he’s getting up.”

Diana flicked a quick glance over her shoulder and saw Jim rising from his seat.

Sudden warmth on her wrist startled her. She looked down and saw that Costa had put his hand lightly on her arm.

“Diana, I promise I’m going to make sure you get out of this,” Costa said. His gaze on her was warm and watchful.

“We’re going to get ourselves out of it,” she corrected him. She gave his hand a squeeze and then let it drop, watching Jim approach them with an awkward side-to-side roll as he navigated the aisle.

As Jim got closer, Costa stood up, although he couldn’t quite stand straight in the low cabin.

“No need to get up,” Jim said. “I just wanted to chat with you folks a bit.”

“We were wondering if you had a restroom on board,” Costa said.

“Yes, I could really use one,” Diana chimed in. “I had a lot of coffee on the drive over.”

Jim looked slightly nonplused. “Uh ...” He looked toward the rear of the plane. If Diana had any doubt about his qualifications, they were washed away; he literally didn’t even know where the bathroom was. “There’s one back there,” he said, having spied what Diana had already noticed when they were boarding.

“Why, thank you.” Diana got up. She had to maneuver around Jim in the narrow confines of the aisle, and as she did so, she put her hands on the jacket that he was wearing despite the desert warmth on the ground. There was a definite hard shape under it at about rib level, and she glanced at Costa as she finally got oriented on the other side, trying to signal with her eyesHe’s got a gun.

“Watch it, lady,” Jim said sharply, pulling away. His mouth was smiling, but his eyes weren’t, and she wondered now if that was part of what had set her alarm bells ringing. Costa might not have noticed in the same way, but women had an acutely honed danger sense for men who seemed friendly but weren’t.

“No problem, there’s not much room in here.” Diana laughed a short laugh that hopefully didn’t sound as tense to him as it did to her.

She wasn’t sure how to proceed from here, because she didn’t need the restroom in the slightest and she hoped she wasn’t messing up something Costa was planning. But Costa gave her a little nod, so she started down the aisle, going slow and pretending to be having a little trouble keeping her footing.

“You can sit back down,” Jim said. “I just wanted to chat a bit.”

“Funny,” Costa said tightly. “Me too.” He remained on his feet.

Having delayed as long as she could, Diana reached the back. She opened the door to the tiny head and slipped inside, but left the door slightly cracked open so she could still see and hear. Without really meaning to, she realized, she had given Costa an opening to act without having to worry about her—and she was starting to be concerned about what he was planning.

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