Page 59 of Running Scared
“Bird?”Echo said, arching a brow.“Bird flew them?Oh hell, son—why didn’t you say so?We’d fly through a hurricane to make sure Bird’s all right.Best pilot I’ve ever known.Okay, then.How long have they been missing?”
“Well, they pushed me out of an airplane over the desert about a hundred miles south of Juarez five days ago,” Bailey said.“This one,” he nodded to Reg, “has ways of tracking his brother’s phone.They were holed up about a hundred fifty miles south of Juarez for two nights, and on the third, they moved about two miles north, and have been there since.”
Glen grunted.“A hundred fifty miles south of Juarez,” he muttered, and then he stopped his swaggering pilot’s stride and turned toward Bailey.“What were they doing there?”
Bailey grimaced.“They were trying to track down a couple of, uhm, Bratva hit men who had links to a, uhm, local cartel—”
“Corazones de Sangre?”Glen asked, eyebrows raised.“Why would the Bureau send them to do that?”
Bailey felt so very small.“I, uhm, was a witness to a hit,” he said.“Dean said he was going to, uhm, bring the hit men in so they wouldn’t try to, uhm, silence me.”
Glen Echo dragged his hands through his hair.“So, Dean and his partner—”
“Marcus,” Reg supplied.
“Yeah.They were going to go off a couple of hit men in the middle of a cartel compound.”
Bailey and Reg glanced at each other.“They never said that in so many words,” Bailey said after a moment.“They….Dean just said they were going to keep me safe.”
“Oh, baby,” Glen muttered.“I know whatthatmeans.Okay, then.Do you still have Dean on your illegal tracking software?”
“How do you know it’s illegal?”Reg squawked.
Glen stared at him.“Because he’s with the FBI, junior.Don’t shit yourself—I’m not getting anybody in trouble.If what you’ve got helps us get our people out, that’s fine.But you keep an eye on your equipment so we know if our folks are on the move, yeah?”
“Yeah,” Reg said, nodding his head.Bailey had seen the younger, more timid man swallow nervously, but he didn’t hesitate.
“Good man,” Glen said, with a hearty slap to his shoulder.He caught Bailey’s eyes.“And you, sir, have the appearance of a man who’s been through battle.”
“Only in the ER,” Bailey said, but Glen shook his head.
“That’s battle,” he said, without equivocation.“I don’t see you backing down.”He paused for a minute, and his eyes softened.“So what’s your personal stake here?”
Bailey couldn’t even smile.“Dean Royal,” he said, the name coming from his lips before he could stop it.“I’m not going back to his parents without him.”
Glen nodded like Bailey hadn’t just laid his heart out for the world to see.“Well, then, let’s get this show on the road.”
Fifteen minutes later found them up in the air, strapped in tight to the comfortable passenger seats in the front of the plane, their gear stashed in a corner of the cavernous space in the back.Bailey had noted the four field gurneys, with sturdy vinyl padding and foldable all-terrain wheels, strapped to the side, as well as two ice chests that Glen had shown him were full of saline and plasma, which could be held up by eyebolts on the sides of the plane.
Glen had explained that his vehicles were made to be versatile.He could take rich folks into the mountains with their hunting/fishing/kayaking gear, or he could go searching for those same folks when they didn’t report back.
Underlying everything, Bailey noted, was the smell of wet dog.
Glen had chuckled.“Yeah, my brother runs a dog-training business for search and rescue hounds.We work together a lot, which is good because he and Damie live together, and Preston has certain rules about how long Damie is allowed to go without them hooking up.”
“Rules?”Bailey said, curious in spite of himself.
Glen glanced at him shrewdly.“Something along the lines of ‘Don’t make me hare into the wild yonder searching for you because I love you, you idiot.’I’m thinking you could identify.”
Bailey thought about Dean pushing him out of that plane, with no promise of when he’d be back in touch.“A little,” he said darkly.
Glen nodded.“Thought so.”
And now here they were.They were not so far south that the sun had set already, but it was getting close to seven as the plane took off.Bailey had fidgeted in his seat, trying to put that jumpy, fretful feeling in his stomach to rest.They weredoingsomething, weren’t they?He’d gotten help?
But Glen had been very frank about the twin-engine turbo-prop’s capabilities.Twelve hundred miles in six hours was probably the max, and it would be a buzzy dragonfly ride to Juarez, which was nearly a thousand miles away.Still, Glen had a fuel stop planned at El Paso, and Anthony’d had the good sense to stop at a burger place for food, and the seats were relatively comfortable.
Bailey needed to chill out and pace himself—he knew this from med school, from the ER, from his entire life.A man learned patience when he was waiting for an emergency he knew for sure was going to come.
