Page 2 of Shade

That’s how I knew. Russ had known all along.

“Russ.” My voice shook. “Russ, what the fuck is this?”

“Go sit in the plane, Mya.”

“Those are guns. That’s a whole crate of guns.”

“I know what they are, honey. Go sit in the plane.”

He didn’t sound sorry. He sounded like a man who’d just been dealt a good card. He turned back to the heavy man and spread his hands.

“Well, there you go,” he said. “Now my pilot’s seen it. That changes things, doesn’t it? I’ve got to keep her happy now. I’ve got to keep her quiet. So the price goes up, or we’re done, and she flies home and forgets what she saw. Your call.”

The heavy man looked at Russ for a long moment.

“I told you last month,” he said. “You talk too much.”

He took a pistol out of his jacket with his left hand and shot Russ in the chest.

The bang was so loud it rang off the side of the plane. Russ took one step back and sat down in the dirt like somebody had kicked his legs out. He looked up at me, confused, with both hands pressed to his shirt and blood coming through his fingers.

Then he fell over sideways and didn’t move again.

I screamed. I don’t remember deciding to. I was on my knees beside him with his blood soaking into my jeans, saying his name over and over, and his eyes were open and staring at nothing.

The heavy man tucked the pistol back in his jacket and looked at me with flat, calm eyes.

“You fly for us now,” he said. Then, to the kid, “Get her up.”

The cargo door was right beside me, still wide open.

I was up and through it before the kid had taken two steps, and I grabbed the handle and hauled that big door shut behind me. His hands slammed against the outside of it as I shoved the latch down.

Then I was scrambling over the crates in the dark, banging my shins on every one, until I fell into my seat. I’d just hit the lock on my own door when his face appeared at the window, and he yanked at the handle so hard the whole plane rocked.

Starting that plane always took forever. You flip the switches, you wait for the engine to wind itself up, you give it fuel, and then you wait some more. On a normal day I didn’t mind. Today it felt like an hour.

The kid gave up on the handle and pounded on the window. Behind him the heavy man was shouting in Spanish. Nobody shot at me, and it hit me why. I was sitting in an airplane, full of their guns, and they wanted their pilot alive and the guns back.

The engine caught with a deep roar that shook my whole seat. The propeller began to spin. The kid took one look at it and threw himself flat in the dirt.

Down at the other end of the strip, the box truck’s engine started. The driver swung it out into the middle of the runway and came straight at me to block my way out.

I didn’t think. I let off the brakes and shoved the throttle all the way forward.

That was when they finally decided to start shooting.

Bullets hammered through the right wing like hail on a tin roof. The window beside me exploded, and pain tore across my upper arm, hot and hard. I didn’t have time to look. The box truck was coming, and I was going right at it.

I held her down as long as I dared, until that truck filled my whole windshield and I could see the driver’s face go white. Then I pulled back with everything I had.

She came off the ground heavy and slow. The wheels clipped the roof of the box truck with a bang I felt all the way up my spine. I heard myself yell. Then there was nothing in front of me but sky.

I stayed low and headed north, putting the hills between me and that ranch before I let myself breathe.

Then I looked out at the right wing.

Fuel was coming out in a long white spray, and the gauge was dropping fast enough that I needed to be bothered by it. Russ never paid for a drop more fuel than a trip needed, so I hadn’t had much to start with.