Hitch frowned. “I thought she agreed to stay here.” But then who knew what went on in that head of hers? Her English wasn’t that bad, but it left more than a few holes to be tripped into.
“Which way did she go?” he asked.
Earl pointed southward, toward town.
“Why didn’t you stop her?”
Earl raised both eyebrows. “Didn’t exactly ask my permission, did she now?”
No, she wouldn’t. And last night she had said she needed to go someplace where Zlo wouldn’t find her. Hitch made himself breathe out. She wasn’t his responsibility—just like he’d told Matthew and J.W. yesterday morning. But having her wandering around in the open wasn’t something he’d choose for anybody in her circumstances.
’Cept Rick maybe.
He huffed. “Well. If she starts knifing people again, there’s going to be trouble.” He squashed down the impulse to go after her. He’d told her she could stay. What more could he do? “If she doesn’t want to stay, that’s her business I reckon.”
The corner of Earl’s mouth twitched, and a twinkle surfaced in his eyes. “Yeah, good riddance to her.”
“Well, she was a nuisance.”
“Oh yeah, I know how you’re always glad to see nuisances go. Especially when they’re as cute as that.”
Hitch scowled. “I mean it. She’s done nothing but cause trouble.”
“Yup.”
“She tried to stab me.”
“Yup.”
“Never mind.” He buckled his helmet under his chin and hauled himself into the rear cockpit. Maybe he’d fly south just to keep an eye out for her. “If you see Rick, give him black coffee and tell him to stay put. Assuming your repairs get me off the ground, I’ll be back before it starts raining.”
*
The weather held up only until Hitch reached the edge of town.
Out of nowhere, a blast of wind smacked into the Jenny’s nose. Raindrops spattered the windshield and peppered his face, dry like rice kernels. The already low cloud ceiling dropped rapidly, and, just like that, visibility went to zero.
What in tarnation? He pushed the plane into a dive to get beneath the cloud and back into sight of the ground. Where were these clouds coming from? This storm cycle was like nothing he’d ever run afoul of. Clouds could roll in fast enough, sure, but they always rolled. You saw them coming, a mobile barricade scudding across the sky.
Fortunately, Earl’s repairs worked fine. The Jenny refrained from even her normal grumbling as Hitch pushed her down. The Hisso snarled steadily, and the reverberation thrummed up the stick into his hand and all through his chest.
The haze parted around the forward windshield, and the wide stretch of a shorn hayfield flashed below him, only a couple hundred yards away. He dropped another twenty feet, then leveled out. He was just beyond the outskirts of town, where the crop fields were bordered by a scattering of houses.
He looked over his shoulder. Toward the center of town, the overcast was even lower. No blue streaks to indicate rain, but thunder rumbled darkly from the cloud’s interior.
Time to get back to the field before he broke the plane, his promise to Earl, or both. He started to swing around.
To either side, movement flashed—on the ground to the left and in the air to the right. He looked up first.
Through the haze, something rose. It was too small and the wrong shape to be a plane, and if another motor was running nearby, it wasn’t loud enough to hear over the Hisso. Whatever it was, it sure as shoeshine didn’t move like a plane. It was going straight up, almost like one of those elevators they had in some of the big city hotels. Color flashed within it and—maybe—a face?
He blinked hard.
The ground movement to the left caught his eye again, and he spared it a glance.
Someone was running full-tilt across the stubble in the hayfield, headed toward where the elevator hung suspended. Someone small and lithe. Someone wearing a red kerchief on her head.
Earl was right: Jael looked like she knew exactly where she wanted to go.
That was more than he knew at the moment. He hesitated between destinations. Jael couldn’t outrun the Jenny, and, in the wide-open of a hayfield, she’d be easy to find if he came back to her in a bit. Whatever was up there in the clouds wouldn’t necessarily give him the same consideration.
He stepped on the rudder pedal and moved the stick to turn the plane.
A flash of brown darted alongside him.
It was a big, brown eagle, like the one Zlo had called Maksim last night. The bird flew level with his cockpit for a moment, easily keeping up with the Jenny’s fifty or so miles per hour. Then, with a scream, it tilted its wings and dove toward Jael.
Great. Rabid birds on top of everything else.
Holding the plane steady, he leaned over the cockpit’s edge and scanned the ground.
Jael was all alone in the middle of the field, running hard in long-legged strides, fast and surefooted. If she heard the eagle’s screech or the plane’s engine, she didn’t so much as tilt her head.
Then from the edge of the field, a man in a bowler hat and a long coat jumped the narrow irrigation ditch and gave chase.
Oh, gravy.
Hitch swung the plane around and dove low. Precious little he could do to help her from up here, save maybe whack Zlo in the head with the landing gear. With luck, the roar of the engine would distract the man from his pursuit.
Or not.
Zlo didn’t even look back. He caught Jael’s waist with one hand and spun her around to the ground.
Hitch swooped on by, then hauled the plane around for another pass, even lower this time.
On the ground, Jael and Zlo struggled. He clawed at the collar of her blouse, going for the pendant no doubt. Flat on her back, under the man’s bulk, she was at a major disadvantage. Still, she punched him in the eye, then managed to squirm free, crawling backwards on her elbows.
Hitch zoomed past once more and craned his head to watch behind him.
She got a leg up and kicked Zlo square in the jaw. Then she was on her feet and running again, one hand clutching at the pendant under her blouse. She looked up at the Jenny, tracking it through the sky. She waved at Hitch with her free arm.
He dove as low and slow as he could, leveling out only a couple yards off the ground. He could hardly escort her to safety in the plane. But if he could get a sense of the field’s condition, he might be able to set the Jenny down right here.
The ground looked smooth enough, so he lined up and set the wheels down. He rolled up beside Jael just as the tailskid touched the ground.
“Fly!” she shouted. “Go back to fly!” As soon as the wing reached her, she grabbed hold of a strut. The whole plane rocked with her weight. The hoop-shaped skid on the wing’s underside nearly bumped the ground.
He scrambled to right the plane before she pulled the whole thing over. “Get off! What are you doing?”
She kept right on coming. Her momentum had given her enough of a start to grab hold of a wing strut and haul her legs up. As soon as the plane was more or less level, she squeezed through the first X of guy wires that stretched between the two wings.
If she put all her weight on the wing’s unsupported canvas, her foot would go right through, and then the jig would be up for all of them.
“Step on the ribs!” he hollered into the wind.
She walked the wing like she’d been doing it all her life. Her face was tight, her eyes huge. But her movements were sure and steady—no shaking as she switched handholds from wire to strut to wire. She’d scaled J.W.’s house without a second thought, so this was probably nothing.