Page 29 of Final Approach (Lake City Heroes #4)

FIFTEEN

Before Kristine could even ring the bell, the door opened and a young boy around the age of seven stared up at them with wide eyes. “Mom! Someone’s here!”

Tabitha, barefoot and dressed in black leggings and an oversized T-shirt, appeared and pulled her son away from them. “Go finish coloring, Ollie.” The child scampered away, and she eyed the bags in their hands with a raised brow. “Hi.”

“I hope you don’t mind us bringing food.”

“Um ... no, not at all.” She glanced over her shoulder and sighed, then opened the door.

Kristine and Andrew stepped inside the immaculate kitchen and set the bags on the table. “I guess we should have called,” Kristine said, “but it was a spur-of-the-moment thing.”

“It’s fine. Kids, come on in here if you’re hungry. Some friends brought Mike’s burgers.”

A stampede came from the back of the house and the den area.

The kids surrounded the table, eyes wide.

Tabitha distributed the food, then tilted her head toward the den.

Andrew and Kristine followed her into the now empty-of-kids room.

She took in the new recliner in the den, the new coffee table and end tables, new board games stacked on the built-in shelves, and an Xbox hooked up to the new flat-screen television.

She met Andrew’s gaze, noted his raised brows, and bit her lip on the first words that wanted to roll off her tongue. Instead, she pretended not to notice the new items.

“What’s all this for?” Tabitha asked.

“We just felt like doing something for you. We wanted you to know we haven’t abandoned you.”

“Well, we’re doing okay. You didn’t need to.” She hesitated and looked around the room, her expression uncomfortable but borderline defiant. Then she sighed. “Thank you. It’s been a rough few days.”

“Tabitha,” Andrew said, his voice low, “where’s Jacob?”

She frowned. “Why are you asking me? You’re the ones who lost him.”

“He ran,” Kristine said, “and you never asked us if we had any word about him.” She waved a hand at the room. “And this? Jacob has the money, doesn’t he?”

“He didn’t buy anything I didn’t need.” Her gaze flicked to the Xbox. “Except maybe that, but Marcus and I’d been saving to get that for the kids for Christmas.” She tightened her shoulders and lifted her chin. “We needed Christmas to come a little early this year.”

Kristine sighed. “Where is he?”

“Why does it matter? He’s safe.”

“Then why doesn’t he come home?”

She rubbed her palms on her leggings. “He’s afraid he’ll be in trouble for running away, but I told him I talked to the psychiatrist at the hospital and he cleared me. The overdose was an accident. My church family has stepped up and is helping.”

“Or ... he doesn’t want to give the money back?” Andrew asked.

The woman bit her lip and nodded. “I think that’s probably part of it.

Will we have to? I mean, part of me feels guilty about all of this, but another part of me feels like it somehow allows Marcus to give us what he wanted.

” She held up a hand. “I’m not saying I agree with what he did, but if we have to give the money back, then it feels like he died in vain. ” Tears dripped down her cheeks.

“He has to give the money back,” Andrew said. “That money is evidence in a crime that’s not solved yet. It needs to be examined, to see if it can be determined where it came from.”

“How are you going to figure that out?” Tabitha asked. “It was cash. In small bills.” Her voice cracked on the last word. “Jacob doesn’t want me to get in trouble. He won’t give it to me and he won’t tell me where he is.”

“But you probably have a suspicion?” Kristine asked. The noise from the kitchen was rising quickly and Tabitha hurried to defuse whatever argument had been sparked.

The kids settled and she returned to the den. “Maybe,” she said in answer to the last question. “He likes the library. He likes Mike’s. And he likes the church, whether he’ll admit it or not.” She shook her head. “I don’t know. And honestly, I’m not sure I should tell you if I did.”

“If you know where he is and don’t tell the authorities,” Kristine said, her voice soft, “you’re obstructing an investigation and could go to jail. Then where would your kids be?”

Tears welled and she swiped them away. “Right. Well, I guess it’s a good thing I don’t know where he is, isn’t it?”

Loud voices once more from the table sent a flash of desperation across the mother’s face.

She walked back into the kitchen, and they followed her.

“Brian, Ella, if you don’t stop arguing, you can go to bed without any dessert.

” The kids hushed and Tabitha walked to the cabinet, pulled down a canister, and opened it.

Kristine tensed. “Tabitha?”

“Some of the money is in here. Jacob left it in the mailbox. I haven’t spent a dime of it.

” She pulled out a pile of cash encased in a Ziploc bag and held it out to Kristine, who sidestepped and motioned for Andrew to take over.

This was potential evidence that might be needed for a trial, should they ever catch the person behind it all.

“Do you have another bag you can drop it into?” Andrew asked.

Without a word, Tabitha went to the pantry and pulled out a grocery bag, dropped the money into it, and once again held it out. “I couldn’t spend it,” she said. “I just couldn’t. I wanted to, but I couldn’t.”

Andrew took it. “Thank you. And I’m glad you couldn’t spend it. It shows a lot about your character.”

“But not Jacob’s.”

“He’s a kid,” Kristine said. “This will be a learning experience for him.” Hopefully.

Tabitha motioned them outside. Once they were on the porch, she asked, “Is Jacob going to be in trouble?”

“I think if you could convince him to stop spending the money and turn it in,” Andrew said, “the DA can probably be persuaded to go easy on him.”

“I don’t see him. I never see him. He never comes inside if he even comes here at all. He always has the things delivered.”

“Okay, well, if you can help us find him, that’s the best thing you can do for him. Convince the other kids that if they see him, they need to tell you. No matter what Jacob tells them to do.” Andrew gave her a card. “Please.”

She nodded and a crash came from inside. She swiped a tear and yanked the door open to tend to her kids.

“That poor woman,” Kristine said.

“Yeah. Come on. Nothing else we can do here. I’ll get someone to sit on the house and see if Jacob shows. He might be coming by and she just doesn’t know it.”

Kristine followed Andrew to the car and climbed in while he made the call. She checked her phone and had a message from her aunt Wendy.

Everything is fine here. Ethan finally left to get some rest. Emily is sleeping. Your father is nowhere to be found. Naomi is a godsend. All is good.

Kristine hearted the message and rubbed her eyes.

Andrew looked at her after he hung up. “I’ve got some news for you.”

“What’s that?”

“You know those hijacking cases we pulled to see if there are any similarities to Brown’s circumstances?”

“Yes.”

“We went beyond hijacking. We looked at criminal incidents from airports in Asheville, Lake City, Raleigh-Durham, Greenville, Spartanburg, Charlotte, and Atlanta over the last thirty years. Your mother’s was one of them, of course.”

Kristine stilled, wondering why she wasn’t surprised that her mother’s hijacked plane had something in common with Marcus Brown.

“Well, it makes sense. There haven’t exactly been that many hijackings.

What? Two or three actual attempts? A small handful that were stopped before anyone even knew what was planned? ”

“Yeah.”

“So, what did you find?”

“There were two that we wanted to look at. Your mother’s and one that involved a disgruntled FedEx worker in 1994. I gave them a cursory scan, but we want to take a harder look at them. You want to join us and look at your mother’s?”

“I guess I do.” She pulled in a deep breath. She could do this, right? Her father’s voice filled her head. “Leave it alone. Don’t go there. Don’t put those images in your head. You need to remember your mother the way she was the last time you saw her.”

Kristine flinched at her own thoughts. The problem was the last time she saw her mother was after she’d told her she hated her.

ANDREW WAS IN A HOTEL for the night. Hank was with James and Lainie. Hopefully they’d all get some rest.

Thankfully, this hotel room was a suite with a full kitchen, separate bedroom, and a workspace. Most importantly, it had a full-sized coffee maker. Its decanter was now closing in on empty. He, Nathan, and Kristine sat at the table with laptops open and the two case files in the middle.

Andrew hadn’t really been hungry, but Nathan had claimed starvation, so he and Kristine ordered and consumed most of a pizza.

They’d just finished going through the first case from three years ago.

A young man had gotten angry at one of the flight attendants and used her uniform scarf to practically strangle her.

Then he demanded that the plane be flown to a different location.

There’d been no marshal on that flight, but an off-duty police officer had taken the man down and held him until the plane landed.

Nathan leaned back. “That wasn’t a premeditated hijacking like ours was. I don’t see any similarities here. What made this one stand out?”

“The fact that he wanted the plane to go to a certain place but didn’t know what he’d do when he landed. Brown said something real similar. Could be just a coincidence. What about you, Kristine? Anything you want to add?”

“No.” Her gaze was on the other unopened file.

The one that was patiently waiting for review.

The one that held all the information she said she hadn’t looked at.

He had a hard time understanding that one. If it had been him, he would have been reading as soon as he had access to the information.

But not her.

Andrew eyed her. She looked a little pale, but the firm set of her jaw said she was ready to get down to business.

He passed her the file, and she pulled in a breath and flipped it open.

He watched her read. She was still, with only her hand moving to flip to the next page.

She read to the end without stopping, then turned the stack of papers upright so page one was facing her once more.

Finally, she looked up, eyes wide, face even more pale than when she started.

“Kristine?”

“Did you read this?”

“I glanced at it, but no, not in depth or detail. Why?”

Nathan leaned forward and frowned. “What do you see in there?”

She blew out a low breath. “I think the guy who hired Marcus Brown was behind my mother’s hijacking as well.”

Nathan blinked and jerked back. “What?”

Andrew raised both brows. “Huh?” He shook himself. “What makes you say that?”

“Look.” She flipped the file around. “Look at the details. Mom’s hijacking was sixteen years ago.

I was sixteen at the time. It says here that passengers who called 911 reported a man with ‘some kind of homemade knife’ was threatening to start killing people.

” She went quiet, then said in a low voice, “He said he had to or they would kill his family.” She looked up. “Who does that sound like?”

Andrew shot a look at Nathan, then back to Kristine. The three of them blinked at one another for a full five seconds. “I have to say, you’ve got my interest,” Nathan said.

Andrew nodded. “Same.”

“I don’t believe this,” she muttered. “How could I not have ever looked at this?”

“Don’t beat yourself up too bad,” Andrew said. “Who wants to read a blow-by-blow recap of a loved one’s death?”

She sat back and rubbed her face. “I don’t know. I didn’t want to know what her last moments were like. Filled with terror and probably replaying—” She blew out a sigh and blinked away a few tears, then shook her head.

“Replaying what?” Nathan asked.

“Nothing.” She stood and shoved her hands into the back pockets of her jeans.

“What kind of daughter does that make me? I defied my father at every turn and yet, on this ... I just let him have his way. I caved. I didn’t know these details.

That the hijacker who went down with the plane wasn’t the only person responsible.

I didn’t know that he was threatened just like Marcus Brown.

I didn’t know any of that. Not until this very moment. How could I not know that?”

Andrew leaned forward. “Maybe you weren’t ready to hear the details. Not that anyone is ever ready for that, but you know what I mean. I can understand a father wanting to protect his children from that kind of thing.”

“That’s probably part of it, I’m sure. But the truth was, it was easier to try to forget.

To block it and not have to think about it because thinking about it would have driven me mad.

” She tossed up her hands, then planted them on her hips.

“It still might.” She returned to her seat at the table and snagged another piece of pizza. “Who was the hijacker’s family?”

Andrew took the file. “Well, his name was Devon Bell. He was married to Allison Bell and they have four children.”

“But what else?” she asked.

“He died in the crash, so they couldn’t question him, obviously, but the report says it was the cell phone video footage that clued them in to the fact that he wasn’t working alone.

Back then, there wasn’t a lot of video, but there was some .

And some phones were recovered and the information retrieved.

” He continued to read, summarizing. “Before the plane went down, passengers were calling their families and sending goodbye videos. And other videos with instructions to deliver the footage to the police. We haven’t had a chance to watch what little there was, but it might help figure out the connection.

” He paused. “I just don’t know if you should watch it. ”

“I don’t know if I should either, to be honest.” She lowered her gaze to the report once more.

“It’s ... I just ... I don’t know what to think.

My brain is spinning, but I’m going to try and make sense when I voice this because it almost seems too absurd to even say out loud, but if it’s the same person responsible for both hijackings, then the other glaring connection is me and my mother.

Does that mean my mother was the target all along sixteen years ago? ”

Andrew rubbed his lips while another thought popped into his head. “And does it mean you were the target this time?”

“But ... why?”

“Who knew you were going to be on that flight?” Andrew asked.

She scoffed. “Everyone.”