Protecting The Boss. Beverly Long

steps and looked inside the open door of the boutique. “Wow.” Walls had been torn down to the studs and the old tile floor was half ripped up. A stack of hardwood flooring sat in the corner.

      She laughed. “I know. It doesn’t look like much now but we made a lot of progress today. It will be ready by the time we get back to do the opening here. I’m confident. The same team has been working on our other three stores and I saw pictures today that were awesome. Can’t wait to see these places in person.”

      She looked excited and happy. And now that he was close, he could see the multiple necklaces around her neck and her gold earrings that dangled down, almost reaching her shoulders.

      His fingers itched to reach out, to touch. Give them a little jingle-jangle. But he resisted. He caught a whiff of her perfume and breathed deep. He’d expected something light and floral, but it had a sharper edge and he liked it.

      “So your day went well?” he asked.

      “Of course,” she said, as if she couldn’t imagine anything else. As if bullets hadn’t been flying the night before.

      “So that means no one has shot at you today,” he said. “Yet,” he added, deliberately goading. He wanted her sharp, aware.

      “That’s right.” Her voice remained pleasant but there was a flash in her deep blue eyes that she wasn’t quite so successful in hiding.

      “These your bags?” he asked.

      “Yes.” She walked over and grabbed the handle of the large rolling bag.

      He’d used restraint before but now, he just had to say it. “It’s kind of weird, you know. That we met under the awning of the pizza place.”

      “What do you mean, kind of weird?”

      She knew exactly what he meant. “Weird in that you were already headed for my office later that afternoon.”

      “Yes. I suppose it was,” she said.

      No supposing about it. But he didn’t press her on it.

      “Let me get that,” he said. He grabbed her bag in one hand and his suitcase in the other. She carried her garment bag, her umbrella, and a purse that was on one shoulder and crossed over her body to rest on her hip. It was yellow like her dress with a big white daisy for the clasp. Her shoes were white sandals with a high heel that did very nice things for her calves. And, of course, he was pretty impressed by her pink painted toenails that were clearly visible.

      She was perfect in a cotton-candy kind of way. Except he didn’t think she was fluff. And that made her such a fascinating contradiction.

      She had one weakness, for sure. Her love of her sister. Hard to hold that against a person.

      She opened the door and they were on the sidewalk. She locked it behind them. “We’ve got a big drive ahead of us to Sedona.” She pulled out her cell phone. “Looks as if I missed a call. I had my phone on vibrate. But they left a message. It’s probably the car rental company. I thought they’d be here by now.”

      She put the phone up to her ear to listen to her message. But almost immediately, he sensed a change, knew that something was wrong. Her shoulders tensed, her jaw became rigid. Her eyes... Was that panic? Distress?

      “What?” he said, looking around. He felt open and exposed and motioned for her to get closer to the building.

      She held up a hand. He could tell that she was starting the message again. And at the end, she drew in a deep breath. “Well, that wasn’t the car rental company,” she said finally. “At least I assume not,” she added, and then laughed with what sounded like nervousness.

      “Who was it?” he asked.

      “I don’t know,” she said.

      “What was it about?” He could feel his patience rapidly evaporate. He was worried about her. Her face had lost all color. “Maybe we should go back inside,” he said.

      “Sure.” She unlocked the door. Held it so that he could pull their luggage in. Then she leaned up against a wall. She was very still. Very quiet. She was staring straight ahead.

      “I’d like to help,” he said. “But you’re not making it easy.”

      She nodded, as if in a trance. “That was a message from someone claiming to have information about the plane crash that killed my parents.” She looked up at him. “Yes, my parents were killed in a small plane crash. Sort of like your dad. And I probably should have said something last night when we were talking about your dad. But their crash was different. They weren’t flying the plane. They were the only passengers.”

      He wasn’t going to tell her that he’d known about their deaths. “What about the pilot?” he asked.

      She shook her head. “He survived the crash.”

      She spoke so slowly, so distinctly, that he could almost hear a drumbeat between each word. “So he was able to tell you what happened.”

      “Not really.”

      They weren’t getting anywhere quickly. “Can you tell me what you do know about the crash?”

      “It was a clear day. They’d been flying in the morning and had taken a break over the lunch hour. The crash happened shortly after they took off in the afternoon. Witnesses said they were banking for a turn and suddenly the plane went nose-down. They were able to issue a Mayday call but this was a small airport, with no air traffic operators on duty. The distress call was picked up by a regional airport but by the time help could be summoned, the plane had already crashed. The NTSB found no evidence of mechanical malfunction, although—” she paused “—I’m not sure how they could have. The plane was ripped apart.”

      He knew what that plane had looked like. Probably had been a debris field that stretched for hundreds of feet.

      “The finding was pilot error,” she said.

      That was generally the finding if there were no mechanical issues. “What did the pilot have to say about that?”

      “Not much. He couldn’t dispute the findings. He suffered a serious head injury, along with other very serious injuries, and has never been able to provide much detail.”

      None of what she was telling him was super surprising. Commercial aircraft almost never crashed but with smaller airplanes, those in the general aviation category, it was a different story. There were plane crashes literally every week and, unfortunately, way too many fatalities. And more times than not, the reason was pilot error. It was no different than a guy who might miscalculate how slick a wet Vegas street was and slam into the back of a line of stopped cars. Pilots, many with limited time in the air, made bad decisions, generally as a result of not being familiar with the plane, the terrain they were flying over, the weather conditions, or the airport they were landing at or taking off from.

      “And now somebody is calling to tell you that there is more information. Can I hear the message?”

      “I guess.” She picked up the phone. Put it on speaker. Played the message.

      It was a man’s voice. He spoke quietly, as if there might be the potential that he’d be overheard. There was no obvious regional or ethnic accent. “Your parents were killed. It wasn’t an accident. You better wake up and start smelling the roses.”

      “Play it again,” Seth said.

      She did.

      “Again,” he prompted, thinking he might have picked up a little background noise the second time.

      “No,” she said. “We’ve heard it enough. The words aren’t going to change.”

      He didn’t want to push her. She looked very fragile. “You don’t recognize the caller’s voice?” he asked.

      She shook her head.

      “Is it possible that it’s the pilot? You