Last Chance To Run Read Free

throbbed. Blood trickled from the deep gash. Forcing her heart to pump harder only made her bleed more, but she’d survived worse.
    She softened her steps as she neared the hangar then crept to the edge of the building. A tall, lanky man in mechanic’s coveralls loaded boxes into a sleek twin-prop cargo plane. 
    When the worker finished, he walked across the spotless floor toward a brightly lit office.
    She could just make out two men on the other side of a glass door. The mechanic pushed the door open and announced the airplane was ready to go.
    Angel hesitated. She’d always obeyed the law before. Now, the “slightly illegal things” she never would have done in the past just kept stacking up. Clenching her jaw against the unavoidable twinge of guilt, she made her decision.
    That was the old Angel.
    The new one wanted to survive and accepted that she’d never outrun those dogs on the ground.
    One way or another, she was leaving on that plane.

 
     
    Chapter 2
     
    Zane peered through the dull glass office door into the pristine hangar where Hack’s man loaded the last box into Zane’s Cessna 404 Titan. He moved over to the pot of strong coffee always ready for pilots and filled his thermos.
    “You ain’t listenin ’, son.”
    “I have to make this run,” Zane answered Hack absently, then shifted around to face the terminal manager.
    “You cain’t be serious ‘bout flyin ’ in this mess.”  Hack laid a dog-eared queen of spades down, completing another game of solitaire.
    Oh, yeah, dead serious . He had five days left to prove he deserved the charter contract High Vision Enterprises had up for grabs. The other two charter groups had enough equipment and personnel to cover deliveries anywhere in the continental US. Zane was already at a disadvantage in that he only wanted the southeastern region, but he’d impressed High Vision last week by delivering a shipment the other two carriers had turned down . This was another opportunity Zane wouldn’t pass up.
    Couldn’t pass up.
    Zane’s skills as a pilot had given him a reputation across the business for doing what couldn’t be done. His roster of clients had grown steadily since he’d opened for his first cargo flight. But he had other reasons for going after High Vision’s business. He had a deal on the side nobody knew about. That deal hinged on getting contracts with companies like High Vision – companies of interest to the DEA.
    The money he made on the side as an undercover informant would save his baby sister’s life. He’d almost lost her to her demons once.
    He’d unintentionally abandoned her when he went into the military. Not again.
    “I’ll be fine,” Zane said. Genetically engineered white mice, packed in the six cases being loaded on his plane, had to arrive alive and on time. He didn’t give a rat’s ass about the mice. No pun intended. But he also didn’t plan to blow the best chance he had at cinching the deal with High Vision.
    “H-o-o-wee!”   Hack raised one gray eyebrow at the weather radar on the huge, outdated CRT computer monitor to his left. The dial-up connection was deadly slow, and the animated radar loop crept across the screen. “Nobody oughta fly in a front like this. Don’t be fooled none by that little break out there. It’s a comin ’ in hard.” 
    Zane grunted just to give the old guy a response.
    Hack shifted his bulk to lean forward, and the vinyl office chair squeaked in protest. “You hear ‘bout that fella down in Montgomery? Told his wife he had ta fly in that bad squall come off the Gulf. Said he’d lose his contract with Shoreline Delivery if he didn’t. They used a bag to pick up parts of that man. He was scattered plumb across Alabama.”
    Zane shrugged. Life was a gamble.
    Odds were no worse now than when he’d put everything on the line for his brothers in arms, which he’d do again in a minute.
    It would take more than lousy weather to make him pass up a chance to get one step