Page 55 of Shared By the Pilots

Taylor Hawkins sat across from me in a diner booth, hunched over his plate, shoveling eggs into his mouth. He had already finished off the bacon, sausage, and pancakes, so the eggs were all that remained of his breakfast.

“Well?” I said, holding my coffee mug with both hands. I hadn’t ordered food. “What do you think?”

He finished the last bite of eggs and leaned back in the booth with a sigh. “Yeah. Human trafficking is about what I feared. I once saw one of their suitcases thrash around on the tarmac. The guy loading the bags started cursing up a storm before him and his buddy carried the bag over to their truck.”

I gawked at him. “You saw that and didn’t do anything about it?”

“I made an anonymous tip to the authorities,” he answered simply. “That was about a year ago, and as you can see, Excelsior is still running.”

“I did the same. That was a month ago.”

Taylor gestured with his hand. “Well, now, there you go.”

I leaned across the table. “We need to do something about this.”

“Something the feds won’t do?” Taylor ran his fingers through his messy dirty-blond hair. “Veronica, in case you didn’t notice, we don’t have an army. Or data collectors. Or whatever else people use to gather evidence of crimes.”

“We can collect evidence,” I insisted. “We just have to try harder.”

He stared at me from across the booth. “I’m listening.”

“What if we go down to Mexico ahead of them. On our own, using your plane. We can videotape them on the tarmac. Then follow them, see where they go.”

“Now, hold on a minute. You just told me youdidfollow them in Cancun, and they led you to a park guarded by men with machine guns.”

“It’s a big park,” I said. “I looked it up on Google Maps. The entrance is guarded, but if we sneak in from another side…”

Taylor was already shaking his head. “Trespassing in Mexico is a bad idea. Throw in the men with guns? Well, now it’s the king of all bad ideas. Besides, we don’t know when they’re flying. You don’t get the passenger information until you show up at the terminal before the flight.”

“I can ask Rita at the front desk. She’ll tell me. It won’t even seem suspicious if I come up with the right excuse.”

“Okay,” Taylor said slowly. “So we can find out when Broussard is flying. We still need some sort of plan beyond that. Unless you want to accidentally trip over one of the bags and knock it open.”

“Can we not do that?”

He gave me a skeptical look.

My mind raced. I thought Taylor would be eager to help me, but he was poking holes in everything I said. And the worst part was: he was right. We needed a real plan.

“How about this,” I said. “On all our flights to Mexico, I usually leave the airport and get lunch in the city. When I return, the plane is already loaded up and ready to go. That means there’s a window of time after they load the plane, but before we take off, when we might be able to access the bags and see what’s inside.”

Taylor scratched his chin. His eyes were alive with thought. “Do they stick around? Watching the plane?”

“One of the loaders usually hangs out nearby. But we could distract him somehow. He’s usually glued to his phone the entire time.”

“Okay, let me walk through it.” Taylor pushed his plate aside and leaned across the table toward me. “We find out when they’re flying. We head down there in my plane and hang out on the tarmac. We wait for the plane’s luggage to be unloaded, then loaded up again shortly thereafter. One of us distracts the loader while the other checks the plane. We snap some photos, or gather any other evidence. Then we hop on my plane, fly home, and turn it over to the authorities.”

“It’s not a bad plan,” I said. “What do you think?”

“I think I need to sleep on it.” He tossed a twenty dollar bill on the table and stood up.

“What?”

“I do my best thinking after a good night’s sleep.” Taylor checked his watch. “And I’m flyin’ to Puerto Rico this afternoon, and have some errands to take care of first.”

“Wait!” I said.

He turned around.

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