16

The flight from Brisbane to Sydney was full, and delayed, so that they sat on the ground for twenty minutes before takeoff. Kim didn’t care. She was too full of everything else that was happening to worry about simple problems like travel delays. She was both eager and apprehensive, eager to see her parents, and apprehensive about George Manville.

Could George really have caved in to Richard Curtis, the way everybody else thought, even that police inspector, Fairchild? She couldn’t believe it, and yet what other explanation was there? Why would Curtis clear George’s name—as casually as he’d smeared it—if George hadn’t agreed to come over to his side, to help him in whatever it was he was scheming?

But how could she have been so wrong about him?

They’d given Kim the window seat, with Jerry in the middle seat to her left, and Luther on the aisle. She sat and looked out at other planes landing and taking off, little trucks scurrying busily this way and that, and her brain scurried like the little trucks around the problem of George Manville, while beside her Luther and Jerry talked. Until something Luther said attracted her attention, and she turned away from the dreary sight of Brisbane International Airport to say, “What was that? Where are you going from Sydney?”

“Singapore,” Jerry repeated.

“But why?”

“Curtis, of course,” Jerry said, surprised at her. “If what he’s up to next is so damn important, if he was actually willing to commit murder just to keep me from finding out what he’s doing—and I must say I didn’t know I was that important in his life, the bastard, and I’m glad I am—well, I have to find out what he’s doing, don’t I?”

“I suppose,” Kim said. She hadn’t been thinking about Richard Curtis at all.

Jerry said, “And his headquarters is in Singapore, and I just happen to have a friend in his offices there, he’ll know what’s going on, or he’ll be able to find out.”

“This is the man,” Kim said, “that told you things before, about what Curtis was doing.”

“Like Kanowit Island, for instance,” Jerry said. “Yes. So we’ll go to Singapore, Luther and I, and we’ll find out what Curtis is up to, and we’ll stop him cold.”

“I’ll come with you,” Kim said, so quickly that the words were out of her mouth almost before the thought was in her head.

Jerry frowned at her. “Why? Kim, haven’t you been kicked around enough?”

“I want to know what George is up to,” she said. “If Richard Curtis is based in Singapore, and if that’s where he’s planning whatever it is he’s going to do, then that’s where George will be.”

Luther, leaning forward to speak past Jerry, said, “Kim, if you’ll take advice from an old campaigner in the wars of love, forget the name George Manville. Go home to Chicago with your mother and father.”

Kim knew that Luther meant well, and that he felt kindly toward her, but every time he tried to say something sympathetic, it came out sounding like an order that you were almost honor-bound to disobey. “Thank you, Luther,” she said. “You may be right, but I just can’t walk away from all this until I know what’s going on. If you and Jerry don’t want me along, I’ll go to Singapore on my own.”

“It’s not that at all,” Jerry said. He put a hand on Luther’s arm.

Luther shook his head. “If you’re that determined to go into the lion’s den, Kim,” he said, “and Jerry’s determined to let you, better you stick with us.”

“Thank you,” she said, and the plane jerked forward, on its way at last.

* * *

Tired, cranky passengers pressed against one another like cattle in a chute, getting off the plane. Kim just let the movement take her, not really caring anymore, but then she saw her dad’s face back there among the people waiting, and next to him Mom, and she waved her arm high above her head and saw them start when they spotted her, and she began pushing and shoving along with everybody else.

Greetings were breathless, and incoherent at first, until they got away from the deplaning crowds, and then her dad said, “I rented a car, just follow me. Is that all your luggage?”

She held up the new string bag she’d bought this morning in Brisbane. “It’s all I’ve got.”

Dad turned to Jerry and Luther, saying, “We’ll give you a lift to the hotel.”

Kim’s mom put her arm through Kim’s, leaning in to say, “When I thought you were dead, Kim, it was the worst day of my life.” Kim pulled her close. Her chest still ached, but she didn’t care.

She’d tell them about Singapore later. They’d try to argue her out of it, like Luther had, and she’d stand her ground, and maybe there’d be tears or shouting. But that would be later. Right now she just felt so good to have her mom’s hand in hers and to squeeze it tight.