precisely placing the fork and butter knife perpendicular to one
another.
“I don’t want you to leave.” On this she rose, quickly crossed the
room and then raced up the stairs.
Lee heard her bedroom door slam shut.
Lee took a deep breath, stood and was surprised to find his legs so
rubbery. It wasn’t from the run, he knew. He showered, changed and
came back downstairs. Faith’s door was still closed and he had no
intention of interrupting whatever she was doing in there. With his
nerves unraveling, he decided to spend an hour with the mundane task of
thoroughly cleaning his gun. The downside to salt and water was that
they were tough on weapons, and automatic pistols were notoriously
finicky anyway. If the ammo wasn’t of a very high quality, you could
count on the thing misfiring and then jamming–or a little sand and
grit could cause the same malfunction. And you couldn’t clear an auto
pistol by simply pulling the trigger and bringing up a clean cylinder,
as you would a revolver. By the time you got your gun all straightened
out, you’d be dead. And with Lee’s luck to date, it would happen right
when he absolutely needed the thing to fire true and straight.
However, on the plus side, the 9mm Parabellums fired by the compact
Smith & Wesson had excellent stopping power. Whatever they hit would
drop. He prayed he wouldn’t have to use the gun, however. Because that
would probably mean someone was shooting at him.
He reloaded the fifteen-shot magazine, inserted it in the grip and
chambered a round. He clicked on the safety and holstered the gun. He
thought about taking the Honda down to the store for a newspaper but
decided he didn’t quite have the energy or desire to undertake even
such a simple task. He also didn’t want to leave Faith alone. When
she came downstairs, he wanted to be here.
When Lee went to get a drink of water at the kitchen sink, he glanced
out the window and almost had a heart attack. Across the roadway,
above a wall of tall, thick brush that ran about as far as the eye
could see, suddenly exploding into his line of vision was a small
plane! That’s when Lee remembered the runway Faith had told him about.
It was across from the house and shielded by the brush.
Lee hurried to the front door to watch the landing. By the time he got
outside, the plane had already disappeared. Then whizzing above the
top of the brush was the tail of the plane. It flashed in front of him
and then continued past at a fast clip.
He went up on the second-story front porch and watched as the plane
taxied to a stop and the passengers deplaned. A car was waiting to
pick them up. Bags were off-loaded and stored in the car, which left
with the passengers through a small paved opening in the brush not far
from Faith’s house. The pilot got out of the twin-prop plane, checked
a few things and then climbed back in. A few minutes later the plane
taxied to the other end of the runway and turned around. The pilot
opened the throttle and came roaring down the runway in the same
direction he had landed, and then lifted gracefully into the air. The
plane headed out toward the water, made a turn and quickly disappeared
into the horizon.
Lee went back inside and tried to watch some TV, while at the same time
listening for Faith. After roaming through about a thousand channels,
he concluded there was absolutely nothing worth watching, and he played
a game of solitaire. He enjoyed losing so much, he played another
dozen games, with the same result. He wandered downstairs and shot
some pool in the game room. When lunchtime came around, he fixed a
tuna sandwich and some beef barley soup and ate out on the deck
overlooking the pool. He watched the same plane land once more around
one o’clock. It shed its passengers and soared once more. He thought
about knocking on Faith’s door to see if she was hungry and then