“Why don’t you answer?”
“Do you interrogate all your clients this way, Mr. Mallett?”
“Just the dodgy ones.”
“There’s nothing dodgy about me.”
“Only everything.”
Initially, when she’d arrived on the scene so soon following the crash, he’d thought she might have had something to do with bringing down the plane. He no longer thought so. She wanted that damn box too bad. Since he’d handed it over to her, she’d kept a tight hold on it.
But something was out of joint. She could deny it till her shapely chest ran out of breath, but she had crept into that clearing and approached the airplane in a covert manner, and not because she was afraid it would ignite.
Of course he didn’t really care what the box contained. Let it be her secret. So long as it didn’t affect him, he didn’t care if the Hope diamond had been heisted and she was the fence. His participation ended as soon as they signed off on the paperwork, and he got his pound of flesh from Brady White. Then it was finis, and he was out of there.
“Is Rye short for something?” she asked.
“No. Just Rye.”
“I’ve never known anybody named that.” After a pause, she said, “Not that you asked, but my name is Brynn.”
“Brynn? Never knew anybody named that, either.”
“Very dodgy name.” Again she gave him that smile, and he admitted to himself that if he’d been killing a rainy afternoon in an island bar, he’d have covered her drinks in the hope of covering her. Without a stitch between them.
“You’re staying here overnight, I guess.”
He dragged his thoughts away from the tantalizing prospect of seeing her naked amid damp sheets. “I planned to bunk in the plane, fly back in the morning.”
“Sleep in the plane?”
“Sometimes it’s the only option, so I’m used to it. But now?” He raised a shoulder.
“What will you do tomorrow?”
“Depends on what the FAA agent decides. If he passes on an on-site investigation, Dash, that’s the guy who sent me here, will—”
“Dash-It-All.”
“Right. He may want me to stay here and babysit the plane until he can get an insurance adjuster on it. But I doubt he’ll have me hang around for however long that’ll take.”
“Why?”
“He’ll want me flying. More than likely, he’ll send me to pick up another payload.”
“Where?”
“Could be anywhere. Tulsa. Trinidad.”
“You’ll just…go?”
“I’ll just go.”
She thought on that for a time. “How long have you worked for him?”
“I don’t. I freelance. But Dash uses me a lot.”
“You must like each other.”