“I’m thinking again,” I said.
“I know you are,” she told me.
“They don’t call me the Raider for nothing, you know.”
“Naturally not.”
I looked at my watch and leaned over to scan the water below.
“It might take a while, but you’ll have to wait for me.”
She didn’t even know what I was thinking, but whatever it was satisfied her completely. “Forever if I have to.”
“Nobody else?”
“They’d really have to rape me.”
“It’s going to be fun,” I said.
“The best.”
“See you,” I said, and saw the confidence behind the puzzle in her eyes.
I raked my nails across the cut I had gotten from the knife of the guard back at the Rose Castle and started the blood running down my side again. I pulled my shirt away so they could see it wasn’t a phony and winced loudly enough so Sable turned and looked at me. I caught his eyes, hoped my expression conveyed what I wanted when I let them focus on the canvas bag he had at his feet, the one I made him carry, then stood up with my shirt back so the guy behind me could see what had happened.
“This thing’s bugging me, feller. Mind if I go back there and clean it up?”
He had the gun pointed at my head, but one look at the raw, open wound wiped any suspicion out of his face. I was his responsibility now and he wanted me delivered whole and healthy. He started to get up to go to the lavatory with me, and Victor Sable got into the act.
He picked up the bag, held up his hand and said, “Please, I am a doctor, among other things. Perhaps I can be of assistance.”
The guy frowned, nodded and sat back, but turned in his seat to watch us all the way.
Time and distance overlapped, that of the plane coinciding with that of the boat that was a small dot on the face of the sea below. We came out of the tiny lavatory with Sable leading the way so that he blocked the view of me in the chest pack, and when the guy did finally see it Victor Sable stumbled deliberately into him, smothering his gun hand with his clumsiness as I reached for the handle on the door of the plane and forced it open.
I had a wad of loot in my pocket to do what I had to do and if the guy in the boat was able to reach me he’d know what pennies from heaven really mean.
There was a happy glow in Kim’s eyes and a laugh on her mouth and words that said, “Go, husband!” as she made a V with two fingers, crossed it with her other forefinger to make the sign of the delta factor, then pointed to herself so I’d remember that she was the only delta left for me.
I couldn’t hold back the wild laugh and it must have been just like Old Henry himself let out when he mocked the whole world.
Then I jumped.