Page 63 of The Biker's Brother

“Yeah. Can’t be helped,” he agreed.

They’d been headed west for a while, but turned north onto a dirt road outside Cornudas and drove for another couple of miles.

“Think you’re in the clear,” Johns said. “If anybody was following, we’d see their lights.”

Brandon nodded as they turned into a ramshackle house with a hangar in the back. They kept going past the house and stopped at the hangar.

“Your pop says he bought a single engine barnstormer for cheap. You sure you can fly it home?”

“I got my pilot’s license when I was fourteen. It shouldn’t be a problem.”

Cami looked at him with surprise, but said nothing.

The owner, who had apparently seen them coming, slid open the hangar doors. The building was brightly lit inside.

Brandon walked around the plane inside then said, “What the hell is this?”

“This, my friend, is a 1969 super AG-CAT.” He said it as proudly as if he was a new papa.

“This thing belongs in a museum.”

The owner bristled at the offense. “She’ll get you to the capitol of the Lone Star State and she’ll do it with no stops and a full two hundred fifty miles to spare.”

“Jesus,” said Brand, but he took a good look around, performing his own version of flight check and maintenance.

He concluded that, as unsafe as it appeared on first look, it was sound enough to get them home. Like the guy said, it was a fairly short flight.

“What crops are you dusting around here anyway?” Brandon asked.

“Bought this property to retire on. My wife speaks Mexican and likes it over here. But I weren’t ready to give her up. Got a good price though. It’s time. She’s all yours.”

“I don’t suppose you have a lighted runway?”

The man made sounds that were a mix of laughter and coughing. “I got flat ground.” He pointed with his whole hand. “Go due east. Don’t deviate. Get her up before fifteen hundred feet.”

“Jesus.”

The man shook his head. “You got a limited vocabulary, boy.”

Brandon looked at Cami. He’d feel a lot better if the thing had two engines, but he suspected the old guy was right. The plane was in good enough shape.

“I’ll ship your luggage to the clubhouse,” Johns said.

Brandon nodded and looked at Cami. “Pull out enough stuff for overnight. Just what’ll fit in your lap.”

Cami didn’t say anything, but looked at him with baleful eyes like she wanted to cling to the only things that were familiar to her. She held his stare for a couple of seconds before turning away to make decisions about what to take and what she hoped she’d see later.

Brandon got her up into the seat behind the pilot. He went over the flight plan. Luckily he knew where the little airport was. It was only twenty minutes from the clubhouse. It was actually a flying school, but they had a runway they could light for training purposes.

“You good?”

Cami nodded. He could see that she was far from good, but in less than two hours, the hardest part of this would be over. At least that was the plan.

They pointed the plane due east before starting the engine.

Cannon Johns stood in the darkness and watched the plane’s tail lights gradually rise into the air and then disappear.

“Well. That’s that,” said the former owner of a vintage plane.