Gathering Dark by Candice Fox (best life changing books txt) 📕

BLAIR

I couldn’t speak. Not as I sat clutching my seat belt while Sneak sent us screaming across the tarmac toward the road in the Gangstermobile, bullets tinking off the paintwork, splitting the back window, raining glass over the back seat. Not as we burned through San Jasinte and the next two towns, trailing dust, Sneak’s hands gripping the wheel until her knuckles were white. Not as she parked in an abandoned lot connected to what once must have been a drive-in movie theater, the big screen torn and whipped by wind, emblazoned with a huge spray-painted penis, no doubt the work of local youths. When I could finally put my thoughts in order, Sneak was clicking away at a laptop she’d obviously stolen from the airfield.

“Why the hell didn’t you just tell the truth, Sneak?” I growled. “You almost got us killed.”

“The truth is lame,” she said.

The gun she’d blasted at the men in the hangar lay on the dashboard. It was a long-nosed silver revolver with a handle so thick I wondered if I would be able to get my fist around it. I thought about Adrian Orlov’s gun bucking in my hands, the textured grip of the handle wet with my sweat.

“Where did you get that gun?”

“Where I get everything. The street.”

“We need to talk about strategy,” I said. “About your lies. About how much deeper I’m willing to get into this mess.”

“You can give me the third degree later,” she said. “I’ve got something here.” She pointed to the screen. “Didn’t take me long to find it. The camera in the reception where we were only comes on when it’s triggered by the door. See? There are separate video files for each visitor. Dayly visited three weeks ago. It’s not great quality, but it’s her. And some flat-top guy. He’s tall. Looks young and cute. They come in and they take two flyers away. I checked the video against the pamphlets I took from the counter. Looks like they took the parachuting one and this one.”

She fished a leaflet out of her handbag and showed it to me. On the cover was a picture of a small white plane. Sneak opened the pamphlet and began to look through it.

“The star of our extensive fleet of personal-hire aircraft, the Cessna 172 is a deluxe four-seater, single-engine, high-wing, fixed-wing aircraft made by the Cessna Aircraft Company,” Sneak read. “The engine capacity—”

“Four-seater?” I said.

Sneak checked the pamphlet. “Yeah.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.” Sneak shrugged. “Does it matter?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I saw two-seater planes on the field. Plenty of them. One was even done up on the inside with all sorts of Valentine’s Day stuff. Red velvet seat covers and a little heart hanging off the roof. Couples must hire them for romantic weekends. So if that’s what Flat-Top and Dayly were doing, why the four seats?”

Sneak sat quietly, watching the video on the laptop. The mountains were rimmed in gold light beyond the old drive-in screen.

“They don’t hold hands,” she said eventually.

“Huh?”

“Flat-Top and Dayly. They don’t touch each other. I’ve got footage of them parking her car, walking into the office, making the inquiry, and taking the pamphlets and leaving. They don’t touch, not even once. So is he a boyfriend, like Dimitri said, or not? And if not, what are they doing hiring a plane together?”

I leaned over and watched the footage of the young man and Dayly entering the office at the airfield, taking the pamphlets, wandering around, and leaving.

“How do we know they were going to hire the plane?” I asked. “Maybe they took that pamphlet for cover, in case they were asked, and the real inquiry was about parachuting.”

“The same is true in reverse,” Sneak said.

I sighed.

“Did you look at the record book before you almost got us murdered and forced us to flee?” I asked.

She twisted in her seat and hefted the logbook off the back seat and onto her lap. I shook my head. In the back seat were two other logbooks, another laptop, a cash register, and a silver model plane.

“Did you steal all that stuff before you knew I was in trouble, or after?”

“I was just making my second trip to the car when I heard you yell.” She rubbed her nose. I could see sweat beading at her temples. “I’m not seeing the name Lawlor anywhere. But if we find out who the guy is, maybe he’s in here, if they did end up booking something. Here, you keep looking. I’ve got to get back to the city.”

She threw the book into my lap and started the car. There was sweat on her upper lip. Withdrawals. As she took us back to the highway, we fell silent. I realized as night grew that I had pushed aside my terror at the feel of the man who had attacked me in bed, his stubble against my cheek, his weight on my back, all day. Now I had new nightmare fuel, the men in the hangar and the sound of the pistol actioning, the car crunching through the wall across the room from me. I was disassociating, the way I had in prison. Riding the chaos from moment to moment. I didn’t want to be alone when all the terror of the past twenty-four hours caught up to me.

“Are you staying in tonight?” I asked Sneak.

“I might have to run some errands.”

“Don’t run any errands,” I said. “Just do me a favor this one time. Stay in. I want someone there when I get back from the Pump’n’Jump.”

“You got it,” she said. I knew she was lying again.

I unlocked the door to my apartment and pushed it open, and Sneak followed me through it only to bump into my back as I stopped suddenly in front of her. On the coffee table, sitting on the remote control as if it were determined to turn on the TV and engage in an evening of viewing, sat a small, round