Terror in the Desert

                                                        ACT THREE

          Barnaby Jones reclined on the bed in his hotel room, his fingers laced together behind his head as he stared up at the rough surface of the white stucco ceiling, unable to relax.  The images of Betty and J.R., memories of their humor and their rapport, were locked in his mind as he waited for the telephone to ring. 
          When it did, he felt his body jerk involuntarily, as though startled by it.  Swinging his long legs off the edge of the bed, he sat up and reached for the phone on the bedside table.  Lifting the handset to his ear, he said, “John?”
          “Yes, it’s me,” said the familiar voice of John Biddle.  “I’m afraid we haven’t found them yet.  Our planes and choppers have searched the area where they dropped off the radar, but there is no sign of them.  They’ve been forced to terminate the search tonight because of darkness, but tomorrow they will expand the search area.”
          Barnaby was quiet for several moments, thinking about that.  His mind was tired, but his powers of reason remained sharp.  “So they flew for a while under the radar,” he said at last, more of a statement of fact than a question.
          “Appears that way.   The terrain is very rough, with a lot of mountain ranges that would impede landing.  They couldn’t have picked a worse place to go down.  Possibly, the pilot was attempting to keep the plane in the air long enough to find a suitable landing spot, but that’s just speculation.”
          “If he had done that, wouldn’t he have been in contact with the air traffic controllers to alert them to the fact that they were still in the air?”
          “Perhaps he had his hands full trying to keep it aloft,” Biddle suggested.  “Our rescue crews followed their flight trajectory for some time, expecting that they would come across them at some point, but there was no sign of them.  The conclusion is that they flew off course.”
          Barnaby’s back stiffened in reaction to that bit of news.  “Off course?  Why would an experienced pilot fly off course like that?”
          “Again, it’s just speculation, but it could be that something was wrong with the navigation system, or if he was searching for a flat stretch of ground on which to land he may have simply drifted off his intended path.  The good news about this is that if the pilot was able to keep the plane in the air for an extended amount of time, it’s possible that they managed to land somewhere without crashing.”
          That thought had already crossed Barnaby’s mind.  “There is always that hope, isn’t there?” he said, but the guarded tone in his voice indicated that he was reluctant to be too optimistic. 
          “I’ll stay in touch, Barnaby.  You try to get some rest, okay?”
          “I’ll try,” the detective promised.
          With a weary sigh, Barnaby hung up the telephone and sat quietly on the edge of the bed.  Biddle’s explanation about the reasons why the pilot could have flown off course sounded feasible, yet the fact that he had not notified ground control that they were still in the air was not sitting well with the detective.  There was more to that flight than met the eye.

          Night had fallen over the dry, desolate landscape of the Mojave Desert.  The temperatures had cooled, allowing the stranded commuters to enjoy a reprieve from the burning hot sun that had plagued them throughout the afternoon and early evening.  However, with nightfall came the realization that any rescue operation that was underway would have been suspended until daylight.  That meant spending at least one night in the desert.
          The two men and the woman were now lying quietly, trying to find some rest in spite of the discomfort of the rugged wilderness.  Utilizing the blankets and the small pillows to provide meager cushioning from the hard, rocky ground, J.R. and Betty lay side by side on one side of the luggage, while Tyler was stretched out on the other side.  The decision had been his, for he was still uncomfortable in the silently condemning expressions he continued to see in J.R.’s eyes whenever he looked at him.  And he would be less likely to disturb them when he went into the wilderness to hide his cargo.
          His mind in a constant state of turmoil, Tyler listened for indications that his two passengers were asleep.  Betty’s steady even breathing was evidence that she had managed to fall sleep in spite of the discomfort, but as he listened carefully, he was unable to determine whether or not J.R. was still awake, or not. 
          Quietly, he rose up on one elbow and peered over the assortment of suitcases and the ice chest.  Shadowed from the moonlight by the bluff, he could just make out the other man’s inert form lying face down on the other side of the woman, his arms folded beneath the flat pillow in an effort to make it seem larger.  He watched for several moments, but J.R. did not move or offer any indication that he was awake.  It was so dark, in fact, that he could not even see J.R.’s sides moving in and out with his breathing.  He stared intently at his face, but in the darkness he could not see his if his eyes were open or closed.  He would have been startled to find out that J.R.’s eyes were partially open, gazing back at him with suspicion, waiting.
          For hours, Tyler had been wide awake, waiting for the right moment to slip away, but no longer was it a simple matter of hiding the contents of the suitcase.  Lying awake for so long had provided ample opportunity to think, and he realized that getting out of this mess would not be as easy as he had initially imagined.  The dealers to whom he was taking the goods would not settle for accepting the merchandise and allowing him and the others to walk.  The stakes had changed.  Because of the plane crash, the deal had become more complicated, and complications were something dealers liked to avoid. There would be media attention and an investigation.  The FAA and the FBI would be involved in determining who had sabotaged the plane and why.  He was convinced that the buyer would send out searchers to find the plane before the authorities did in an attempt to recover the goods.  He had failed in his job, and if they found him alive, he knew that they would now consider him a liability.  He was convinced that they would try to eliminate him and his passengers to prevent them from tracing the merchandise back to him. 
          His only chance was to simply walk away, to disappear into the desert, and let J.R. and Betty fend for themselves.  He felt guilty about that, but he had no choice.  If he was going to survive, he had to use whatever means were at his disposal.  With a suitcase full of quality merchandise in his possession, he could easily find another buyer and secure enough money to start over somewhere else.
          “J.R.?” he whispered.  “Are you awake?”
          There was no answer, and Tyler’s nervousness began to calm somewhat.  Apparently, the would-be attorney was asleep as well.
          Moving quietly, he stood up and gripped the handle of his suitcase.  With a lingering gaze on the motionless form of the other man, he turned and started to walk away.
          Listening to the retreating footsteps on the hard ground, J.R. raised his head and watched curiously, his suspicions confirmed.  Tyler’s possessiveness of the suitcase had not escaped his notice, for he had sat most of the afternoon with his arm resting casually on top of the luggage, as if guarding it.  Like Tyler, J.R. had been lying awake, anticipating that at some point during the night, the pilot would slip away to hide whatever was concealed inside the suitcase.  He had a pretty good idea what it was.
          Unaware that he was being observed, Tyler walked into the debris field and began to search among the airplane parts that littered the ground.  J.R.’s brows knitted together in a puzzled frown, wondering what he was doing.  Finally, the pilot found a small piece of the fuselage, a chunk of the plane’s outer shell about six inches by eight inches.  J.R. could only wonder at its purpose.
          As he straightened up again with the piece of the plane clutched in his hand, Tyler turned briefly back toward the bluff where Betty and J.R. lay.  J.R. quickly dropped his head back to the small pillow.  After a few moments, he raised his head again, and saw that Tyler was walking away from the crash site, taking long hurried strides toward the nearby mountain range.
          J.R. quietly got to his feet, and gazed down at the woman who continued to sleep, unaware that anything unusual was occurring.  He hesitated, reluctant to leave Betty alone, but there appeared to be no danger from either unscrupulous men or wild animals in the immediate area.  That is, except for Tyler, and J.R. had every intention of keeping an eye on him.   Moving quietly to avoid disturbing her, he followed the errant pilot.
          Keeping his distance, J.R. tailed the other man for fifteen minutes, watching intently as he continued to walk away from him.  At one point, Tyler turned around as if to verify that he was not being followed.  Watching him carefully, J.R. could tell by his posture that he was turning, and instantly dropped to the ground, hoping that in the darkness he would blend in with the many rocks and boulders that littered the ground.  Apparently, Tyler saw nothing in his wake that caused a sense of alarm, for he immediately turned back around and resumed his walk.
          J.R. rose cautiously to his feet again, and continued to follow, maintaining his watchful vigilance on the other man’s posture.   Tyler did not turn around again, apparently satisfied that he was completely alone in his nocturnal hike.
          When he finally reached the foothills of the mountain range, he disappeared behind a shallow bluff.
          J.R. approached quietly, his sneakers making almost no sound on the hard ground.  As he neared the bluff, he slowed and peered cautiously around the edge of it. 
          Tyler was still visible in the faint moonlight.  He skirted the bluff, crossed a small barren hill.  J.R. followed him over the hill, and as he watched, Tyler slipped quietly into an arroyo that wound its way through the foothills, following the path carved out by many years of erosion.
          J.R. approached it with caution, lest he alert the other man that he was being followed, and looked over the edge. 
          There was a sparse array of plant life in the arroyo, which obviously saw more moisture than the upper levels of the desert.  A few Joshua trees clung to life on the rocky slopes, and here and there a barrel cactus had found a foothold in the dry soil.
          Tyler was hurrying along the bottom of the arroyo, moving faster than before.  It seemed to J.R. that he was getting desperate to get where he was going, yet every so often, he stopped and scraped the hard ground with his shoe, as if searching for something.  Then, apparently not finding what he was looking for, he resumed his walk along the floor of the arroyo.
          J.R. watched this unusual behavior with a puzzled frown as he carefully started down the edge of the arroyo.
          Finally, Tyler uttered a low exclamation of triumph and dropped to his knees beside an outcropping of layered sandstone that jutted out of the side of the arroyo.  He carefully placed the suitcase on the ground and then, using his piece of fuselage as a shovel, he began digging in the hard, dry soil, scooping out a depression beneath the sandstone.  When he had opened a hole about a foot wide and another foot deep, he popped open the suitcase.
          J.R. squinted through the dim light of the stars, eager to see what had been concealed inside the suitcase, but Tyler’s body blocked it from view.
          Tyler reached into the suitcase, then turned back to the hole.
          A rock slipped from beneath J.R.’s shoe as he made his way down the bank of the arroyo, and it clattered loudly against the sandstone as it tumbled into the crevice, instantly alerting the other man that he was not alone.
          Startled, Tyler leaped to his feet as he spun around and saw his passenger completing his descent into the arroyo. 
          “J.R.!” 
          J.R. was staring at him; or more accurately, he was staring at Tyler’s hands.
          Lowering his gaze, Tyler gazed at the bags of cocaine that were clutched in each hand.  He knew that J.R. was fully aware that he intended to bury them beneath the outcropping.  Anger replaced his surprise.  “You just had to be nosy, didn’t you?  You just had to come after me!  Why couldn’t you have just minded your own business?”
          “It all starts to make sense,” J.R. said as he approached the other man.  “The reason you wanted to fly under the radar for so long.  The reason you wanted to delay our rescue.  You knew that this stuff would turn up during an investigation into the crash, so you had to get rid of it.”
          “Look, J.R., you don’t understand what’s going on here!”
          “I understand, Tyler.  I understand that you’re involved in illegal drug trafficking.  The question is why?  You have a successful business!  Why are you throwing it all away?”
          “My overhead is high, J.R.!  It costs a lot to keep these planes in the air, and an opportunity came up that I just could turn down.”
          “Did this ‘opportunity’ involve that Jeff guy back at the hangar?”
          “J.R., you’d be wise not to get yourself involved in this.  You don’t know who is at the helm of this operation.”
          J.R. nodded.  “I take that is a ‘yes’.”
          “I’m serious, J.R. “  He paused, trying to think of something that would convince the detective to let go of this particular event; to just forget about it, but nothing was coming to mind.  By tossing him the knowledge that there were others involved had just fed J.R.’s investigative instincts.  There was no way he was going to forget it.  “Look,  I’ve gotten myself a little bit in the hole, you know?  I have high expenses, taxes, and everything else that goes along with trying to have a good lifestyle.  This is just a temporary thing to make some extra money.  I swear I was planning to get out of it after this deal goes through.”
          “Oh, come on, Tyler!  You don’t expect me to believe that!  There would be a next one, and a next.  It isn’t going to stop just because you tell me it is!”
          “Look, J.R., I have debts.  I was about to lose my house!  Surely, you can understand that!”
          “Maybe you’re just living beyond your means!  Did you ever think of that?  Huh?  I’ve seen your house!  Couldn’t you have simply settled for something a little more modest rather than resort to this?”  He pointed to the bags of white powder.
          “It isn’t that simple!  I’d gotten accustomed to a certain lifestyle before my father’s inheritance ran out  . . . I didn’t want to lose it.”
          “It IS that simple!” J.R. retorted.  “Didn’t your mother teach you that you can’t always have everything you want?  In time, maybe you could have gotten it back, but this –-- This is a one way trip to prison!”
          “Not if you keep quiet.  I’ll complete this one deal, and then bail!  I swear!” he pleaded as J.R. stood before him, shaking his head.  “Just don’t tell anyone about this.  Promise you’ll keep silent about the drugs.  We can tell the authorities that it was probably a competitor who cut the oil line.”  He shrugged at the irony.  “That is the truth, even if it has nothing to do with the shuttle service.”
          J.R. shifted uneasily.  “You know I can’t do that, Tyler.”
          “Why?” Tyler sputtered in disbelief.  “I thought we were friends!  Think of what this will do to my sister!  My mother!”
          “Turn the cocaine over to the authorities, and I’ll help you in any way I can, but I won’t lie for you.  If you cooperate with the police and name your sources, I’m sure they would be willing to cut a deal.  You’ll probably only get a few years, and you might even get probation.”
          “The only thing I’m going to get is a death penalty!”
          “What?” J.R. asked, startled, wondering if Tyler had committed another offense of which he was unaware.  “What are you talking about?”
          “My buyer is Albert DuHart.”
          The name settled into his brain; a well known drug dealer.  “I’ve heard of him.  He’s some kind of big drug boss, isn’t he?”
          “Yes.  He’s the distributor.  I’m the middle man, taking the goods from the supplier to the distributor.  If word gets out that I squealed, he’ll come after me with a vengeance.  He’s ruthless, and he has contacts and assassins, like the mob.  If I name him as one of my buyers, he’ll set his sights on me!  There would be no place for me to hide!  The only way out for me is to deliver the goods to him, and then disappear!”
          “Is he the one who sabotaged the plane?”
          “No, I think that was probably Larry, my former  . . . boss.  He didn’t like it when I struck out on my own, and he threatened to get even.  I thought he was blowing steam, you know?  I really didn’t think the little weasel would have the nerve.  But DuHart definitely has the nerve.  He’s in an entirely different league.”
          “The police will protect you,” J.R. insisted.
          “You don’t know these guys!” Tyler’s voice rose in frustration.  “They will find a way to kill me!  Even if they have to send someone into prison to do it, believe me, they will do it!  The police will probably be happy to let them!”
          J.R. hesitated.  He was more than familiar with the practice of powerful criminals slipping an assassin into jail, for it had happened to him when he had been arrested in Hawaii, an experience that was still fresh in his mind.  However, that had been an entirely different situation, involving a hostile cop who would have been delighted to see J.R. murdered if for no other reason than to hurt Barnaby.  “DuHart needs to be brought down.  I know a lieutenant on the force.  He will see that you are protected, I give you my word.”
          “I know you mean well, but that’s not good enough, J.R.,” Tyler replied, his voice menacingly quiet. 
          “Tyler, think about all the kids who are going to get turned on to this stuff!  Think of the people who could die because of it!” 
          “The people who could die because of it are us, J.R.  The three of us.”
          This caught J.R.’s attention as nothing else could have.  “What?  What are you talking about?”
          “The fact is, you are in danger, too.  You and Betty.”
          “What do you mean?  We’re not involved in this!”
          “I’ve been lying awake all night thinking about it.  As soon as Duhart heard that the plane went down, he probably started getting his assassins geared up.  They’re probably out there somewhere right now,” his arm swept the vast expanse of desert wilderness, “looking for his cocaine!  He knew I was bringing him a shipment, and he’ll want to find us and collect the merchandise before the authorities find it!  The rescue crew has probably returned to L.A. for the night.  Believe me, DuHart’s people won’t!  They’ll find a place nearby, and they’ll wait until daylight, then they’ll be searching again.  I wasn’t supposed to be carrying passengers, and I assure you, they won’t want to leave any witnesses to the fact that he picked up his drugs!”
          J.R. knew that was probably true.  He stared silently at the pilot, his tongue clamped between his lips as he tried to think.  Finally, his mind found the obvious flaw.  “Tyler, if they come in here and shoot all of us, that will alert the authorities right away that someone else was involved!”
          “There are other ways of killing people.  My guess is they’ll hit us in the head with their rifles stocks, or something, and then strap us back in the plane to make it look like we were killed in the crash.  You were right, J.R.!  I should have put us down at the first level strip of land – we’d probably have been rescued by now --  but I didn’t think about the consequences of going farther.  All I could think about was hiding the coke!  I figured I could come back later and pick it up, and complete the delivery and everything would work itself out.  I realize now that this whole situation won’t end with turning the drugs over to him.  DuHart won’t let any of us live.”
          J.R. raised his hand to silence him.  Tyler was starting to sound panicked.  “Listen, we need to go back to the plane and talk about this rationally.  We need to decide what we’re going to do to protect ourselves in case those goons show up before the rescuers do.”
          Unless you have a machine gun hidden in your duffel bag, you won’t be able to protect yourself against them!”
          J.R. stared at him in stunned silence, understanding for the first time the hidden implications behind Tyler’s trek into the desert on foot.  “You were about to run out on us, weren’t you?  You were going to let us face DuHart’s men alone while you hid in the hills!”
          “No!” Tyler denied a little too forcefully.  “I was coming back just as soon as I hid the stuff!  I swear!”
          “I don’t believe you.  If you had intended to tell us about DuHart and his thugs, you would have done so before now.  No, you were going to buy some time by letting them find and deal with Betty and me first!”  He quickly ran his fingers through his hair, combing it back from his face as he tried to think.  They were wasting time arguing, when they needed to be planning how they were going to get out of the mess Tyler had created.  “We’ll worry about that later.  Right now, we need to come up with a plan.  Let’s go back and get Betty, and then see if we can find a cave in these mountains or some sort of hiding place where we can watch the plane, and see who shows up.”
          Tyler was silent for several moments, his mind working furiously to come up with an alternative plan.  Finally, he nodded.  “All right.”
          Kneeling, he returned the two bags of cocaine to the suitcase and latched it.  Then, as he stood up, he swung the suitcase with all the force he could muster.  It struck J.R. in the ribs; the target Tyler had aimed for, knowing that they were either bruised or fractured and the most disabling point of contact. 
          J.R. cried out in pain and surprise, and sprawled on the rocky ground, clutching his side in agony, but there was nothing he could do except watch as Tyler turned and ran with the suitcase.
          “Tyler!” he shouted, but to no avail.  The pilot continued to run until he had disappeared into the rocky, uneven terrain.  “Of all the stupid . . . Aahhh,” he groaned, doubling over his injured ribs.
          J.R. had no idea what Tyler had in mind, but it was obvious that he did not want to stay and risk facing the drug buyer and his thugs.  Was it true? he wondered.  Would DuHart send assassins to rid himself of possible exposure? The idea would have seemed far-fetched had he not witnessed for himself the lengths drug dealers and users would go to in order to ensure their own safety.
          As the pain became manageable again, J.R. climbed slowly to his feet and stared up the arroyo in the direction Tyler had taken, but he did not give chase.  Gripping his painful ribs with his hand, he climbed back out of the arroyo and made his way back to the plane, moving at a much slower pace than he had before.
          As he neared the ridge, he saw that Betty had awakened and found herself alone.  She was sitting up, watching for him.  Recognizing his painfully slumped posture, she got up and rushed to his side, noticing that his hand was clutched to his ribs.  She placed her hand over his.
          “J.R., are you all right?” she asked, worriedly as they walked slowly back toward the ridge.  “When I woke up and you and Tyler were both gone, I didn’t know what to think!  Have you hurt yourself again?”
          “Tyler knocked me down with his suitcase.  If my ribs were only cracked before, I think he finished the job of breaking them.”
          “But why would he do such a thing?”
          “He’s carrying cocaine.  That’s why he’s been so possessive of that suitcase, and it’s also why he didn’t want to land the plane too close to the point where we dropped off the radar.  He wanted to give himself time to hide it before we were picked up by rescuers.  He sneaked out of here a little while ago to do just that.  I followed him.”
          “J.R. that was a dangerous thing to do!” she scolded like the older sister he had never had.
          J.R. managed a painful laugh.  “Yeah, tell me about it.”
          “Where is he?  Did he run out?”
          “Yep.  He hightailed it into the foothills.  There was no way I could catch him.”
          “I’m glad you didn’t try!” she exclaimed.  “He could have hurt you badly!  Cocaine?  Is he using or dealing?”
          “Dealing.”  They reached the ridge, and J.R. sank heavily down on his blanket with a groan.  “His shipment is intended for Albert DuHart.”
          “DuHart?”  Betty repeated.  Her voice sounded concerned.  “He’s a major drug kingpin, something akin to the mob.  I’ve heard Lieutenant Biddle mention him.  He’s wanted by every law enforcement agency in the Southwest.”
          “Yeah, Tyler says he plays hardball.  He says that DuHart probably has sent his goons out here to track down his shipment before the authorities reach the crash site.  By taking us so far off course, our wonderful pilot has made it more difficult for the rescuers to find us, and because the rescuers have probably returned home to their beds back in L.A., he’s also made it more likely that DuHart’s people will find us first.”
          Even in the darkness, he could see the sudden unease on her face.  “He won’t want any witnesses, will he?” she asked.
          “No.”
          “What . . . what are we going to do?”
          “We need to get out of here before dawn; that’s the first thing we need to do.”
          “Honey, you’re in no condition to be hiking around the desert!” she protested, stroking a lock of his unruly hair off his forehead with her fingers.
          “We don’t have any choice, because if we’re here when they arrive . . .”  He didn’t finish.  He didn’t have to. 
          She nodded.  “All right.  Should we take the ice chest?”
          “No, it’s too heavy; it’ll just slow us down.”
          “When it heats up in the afternoon, we’ll get dehydrated,” she pointed out.
          That was true, but he knew they could survive several days, even in the desert, without water.  Still, it would be very uncomfortable.  “It’s too bad we don’t have canteens.  They’d be easy to carry.”
          Her eyes fell upon the empty pop cans.  “Why don’t we fill a couple of those cans with water?  They’ll be easier to carry.”
          “It won’t be much, but we can use it sparingly.  Good idea, Betty.”
          She smiled.  “Thank you.”
          Selecting a couple of the empty cans, she rinsed them out, then filled them with water from the melted ice in the cooler.  It was warm now, but it would quench their thirst, at least for a while.
          “What time is it?” J.R. asked as she passed him one of the cans.
          She pressed the button on the side of her digital watch, and the numbers lit up.  “It’s two o’clock.”
          “Two o’clock,” he repeated.  ‘That’s good.  That gives us plenty of time.”
          “Where are we going?”
          His eyes scanned the rugged horizon in all directions.  Surrounded on all sides by the rugged mountain ranges, it was obvious that they were going into the mountains, regardless of which direction they took.  “Well, Tyler went south, which tells me he’s probably hoping to get to Mexico.  He probably flew us off course toward the south, too.  So, I think we should go north.  We’ll get into those mountains and find a hiding place.  From there, we should be able to see anyone who approaches the plane.”
           She nodded in agreement.  “Sounds good to me.”  Reaching down, she took his arm and helped him to stand.  As he struggled to his feet, she watched with a worried frown as his hand immediately went to his ribs again.  “Can you make it?”
          He nodded.  “Yeah.”  His eyes fell upon her purse, tucked away against the ridge.  “Do you have a mirror in your purse?”
          “Yes, a small one.  Why?” she asked with a teasing smile.  “Want to tidy up a bit?”
          He gave her a look of mock scorn, but his eyes were smiling.  “No.  I’m thinking we may need it to signal help when the rescue team gets here.”
          “Good idea.”  She reached down and picked up the purse, slinging the shoulder strap over her head so that it hung at her hip.
          “It might be better if we didn’t carry anything bulky with us except the cans,” he suggested.   “Maybe you could just carry the mirror in your pocket?”
          “J.R., I am not leaving my credit cards and my identification here for those creeps to find!”
          “Good point.”  He knelt down and fetched his wallet from his duffel bag, then slipped it into his back pocket.  It was a tight fit, but he succeeded in getting it in there.  Next, he removed his identification tag that dangled from the duffel’s straps and slipped it into the other pocket.  “Is your name or address anywhere on or in your luggage?” he asked.
          “No.  I didn’t put an ID tag on it, since we were taking a chartered flight.”
          “Okay, then.  I guess we’re off to see the wizard!” he quipped, using humor as an attempt to ease the tension they felt.
          They turned north, walking resolutely toward the rocky, barren mountain range.
          J.R. managed to walk upright, but slight bent to his left, as if trying to protect his side.  He carried his water can in his left hand, his right hand clamped to his injured ribs, which throbbed incessantly under his palm.  By the time they reached the mountain’s foothills thirty minutes later, his leg was starting to ache again as well, a fact that he kept to himself.
          She had already noticed that he was slowing down, but she attributed it to the rib injury.  “Maybe we should stop and rest,” she suggested.
          “No, we need to keep moving,” he replied.  “I want to be out of this valley when daylight gets here.  We won’t be safe until we’re hidden from view.”
          She said no more, but he knew she was worried about him.
          He placed his arm around her shoulder, gripping her in a brief embrace.  “I’ll be fine.  Don’t worry.”
          Releasing her, they trudged onward, moving on a steady incline up the paths of erosion left by water flowing from the peaks into the arroyos below.  The incline was gradual, but it was difficult to maintain the uphill hike, and soon they both were panting from fatigue.
          Finally, J.R. sank down on the ground, unable to go any farther.  Betty sat down beside him.
          “We can’t keep up this pace,” she told him.
          “I know, I know,” he agreed.  Gasping for breath, he allowed himself to fall backwards on the ground, careful to keep his water can upright.  The gesture jolted his ribs, but his weariness was even greater than the pain.
          Sitting beside him, Betty gazed into the valley below, and felt her heart sink, discouraged.  They had not come as far as it had seemed.
          “Oh, J.R.,” she lamented.  “We’re barely out of the valley!”
          He lifted his head to look, then laid it back down again.  “Yeah, I know.  It would be physically impossible for us to go straight up the side.  This gradual incline we’re taking is longer, but less steep.”
          “At this rate, we’ll never make it to the top.”
          “We don’t need to make it to the top.  We just need to get high enough to find some boulders or crevices, something to hide behind.  A cave would be ideal.”
          Turning her head, she gazed up at the rocky slope above.  “Somehow, I don’t think we’re going to find a cave here.”
          “All we need to do is see them before they see us.  That gives us the advantage.”
          She drew her knees up and wrapped her arms around them.  “I wonder how Barnaby is doing,” she said, softly.  “I bet he’s worried sick.”
          He turned his head to look at her, silhouetted against the shimmering stars.  “He’s tough.  He’ll be okay.”  He turned his gaze to the sky.  “I never realized there are so many stars up there.  You can’t see many stars in Los Angeles.  Can’t see them in Chicago, either.”
          She tipped her head back to look straight up.  “Too many city lights.”
          They remained there for fifteen minutes, resting and catching their breath, then J.R. forced himself to his feet again.  “Guess we’d better get going again.”
          Betty stood up too, and they proceeded up the side of the mountain.

                                                               ACT 5

          The throbbing in J.R.’s side was relentless, and he pressed his hand tightly against the injury in an ineffective effort to suppress the soreness as he led the way through the fissure that cut a narrow path through the rocky hill.  Betty’s hand was clutched in the other hand.  She followed closely behind, her ragged breathing indicative of her fear and exhaustion, but she uttered no complaints as she kept pace with his brisk strides.
          The crevice was longer and deeper than he had initially thought, and appeared to be leading them down a gradual incline toward the back side of the hill.  Sandstone walls rose up on either side of them to a height of more than eight feet at its highest point, and directly overhead was the blue of the sky.  The fissure, a deep crack that had formed in the rock probably thousands of years ago, had been gradually enlarged and deepened by the erosive effects of wind and rain until it was now large enough to enable the man and the woman to traverse the winding pathway with relative ease.  It twisted and turned, widened and narrowed again with no pattern.  Repeatedly, they had to maneuver their way over chunks of sandstone that jutted up from the earthen floor.
          J.R.’s biggest concern was that the fissure would terminate in a dead end or a barrier too high to climb over, creating a fatal trap.  Another possibility was that they encounter one of the other drug dealers at the other end, and become caught between them.  He did not voice his concerns to Betty, but he knew that she was aware of that possibility as well.
          With a mild shudder, J.R. was very much aware of the fact that he had come within mere inches of being shot in the head when the criminal had shot the can from his hand.  That misjudgment would have been corrected had the assailant been able to fire off another round.  He had been very fortunate that the man’s gun had jammed.
          Behind them, they heard the sound of a rock clattering down the sandstone walls, and realized that one of the other drug dealers had joined in the search.  He was probably somewhere at the top of the crevice, and had accidentally kicked a rock down the sheer sides.  Glancing over his shoulder, J.R. lifted his eyes to the rim, expecting to find a gunman gazing down at them through the barrel of his pistol, but was greatly relieved to see only blue sky overhead.  Good.  The man was too far behind to see them through the twisting and turning corridor.
          “Where are they, Kline?” asked a gruff voice high overhead and behind them, so sudden that both J.R. and Betty jumped at the abruptness of it.  “Are you sure they came this way?”
          “They’re in here somewhere,” responded the voice of the man who had taken a shot at J.R.  They could tell by the direction of his voice that he was somewhere inside the fissure behind them.  “This is the only they could have gone without you seeing them from your position.”
          J.R. glanced over his shoulder again, his eyes fixing briefly on Betty’s wide terrified eyes.  Though he knew it wasn’t necessary, he pressed a finger to his lips, urging her to remain silent.  She nodded her agreement and crowded close against him, urging him forward.  As quietly as possible, they pressed forward, grateful that their sneakers made almost no noise on the hard ground.
          “Was that you who fired the shot?” asked the first voice.
          “Yeah,” growled the shooter.  “My sights are off on this damn pistol.”  He did not add that the gun had jammed, probably from improper loading, which had prevented him from firing off a second shot.
          “Any idea who they are?”
          “No, but they’re unarmed.”
          “Good.  We should be able to deal with them with no resistance once they’re captured.  Could you tell if they were carrying the drugs with them?”
          “I don’t think so.  They probably stashed it somewhere, or it could be that Abbott stashed it when they split up.”
          “No matter.  We have ways of dragging information out of them.”
          Without making it a conscious thought, J.R. hoped desperately that they never found out what methods the drug dealers used in obtaining information. 
          Finally, he saw open spaces beyond the end of the fissure and he picked up his pace, eager to be out of the confining space.  He knew that the very act of moving into the open presented additional dangers, but it was necessary to elude their pursuers. 
          As they neared the opening, J.R. slowed down and approached it with caution.  Leaning out just far enough to peer around the edges in all directions, he observed the vast expanse of desolate terrain that lay before him.  For mile after mile, the rugged hills rose in tall jagged peaks toward the larger mountains.  There was no sign of any kind of life except an occasional clump of scrub brush, but particularly, there was no sign of any human in the vicinity, nor was there any sign of the helicopter.
          Glancing over his shoulder at the frightened woman, he whispered, “Let’s go.”
          Cautiously, they moved into the open, their eyes continuously scanning the area around them and, in particular, behind them, searching for any indication that danger was lurking nearby.
          Halfway across the open space, J.R. released Betty’s hand and stopped abruptly.  He blinked his eyes and shook his head to clear the sudden blurriness of his vision, and pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger.
          Betty was watching with a worried frown.  Placing a hand on his shoulder, she asked, “J.R.?  Are you all right?”
          The world became sharp again, and he nodded, briskly.  “Yeah.  I’m fine.”  He pointed toward a gap between two rises.  “Over there.”
          Betty knew that he was not fine, but with a possible killer on their trail, she understood that the first priority was to find a place of refuge.  Together, she and J.R. jogged across the open space and moved into the notch between the rises of ground, and collapsed behind one of them. 
          There, suitably concealed behind the rocks that jutted out of the landscape, they crouched down and gazed toward the fissure, waiting to see if they were still being pursued.  Sure enough, a few minutes later, a man emerged from it, looking about him, clearly searching for them.  The muzzle of the pistol he carried was pointed at the sky, but his finger was on the trigger, ready to bring it into firing position.
          Beside him, J.R. heard Betty’s breathing accelerate in sudden panic at the visible threat of the man with the gun.  “Oh, God, there he is,” she whispered, fearfully, struggling against the urge to flee.  She slid lower to assure that the man could not see her, and pressed her body against the hard ground, but J.R. continued to peer over the top of the rise.
          “There’s the other one,” he said quietly, indicating the man who was approaching along the rim from above.  Like his accomplice, he carried a pistol and was searching the desolate terrain intently in a decidedly predatory fashion.  “I wonder where the other two are,” J.R. muttered to himself as his eyes scanned the area around the fissure.
          “I don’t know,” Betty responded, her voice trembling with fear, wondering how in the world J.R. could remain so calm.  “Let’s go,” she urged.
          “Not yet.  That guy on top of the ridge will notice any movement we make.  Better to stay still for now.”  He rested his right arm on the rocky ground in front of him, and he stroked his chin thoughtfully with his right hand.  “I’d be willing to bet a month’s wages that they’ve split up to cover more ground.  The other two are probably on the other side of the valley searching for the drugs in case Tyler hid them over there.  There must be a fortune in cocaine in that suitcase Tyler was carrying, or they wouldn’t be this desperate to get it back.”
          That sounded logical to Betty, but she too frightened to respond.  Her heart was pounding so wildly at the nearness of the killers that she could hear it pulsating in her ears.
          J.R. glanced at her, and saw that she was very pale and was obviously fighting tears.  Placing his hand on the side of her face, he managed a weak smile.  “Hey, it’s going to be fine,” he said, encouragingly, even though he had no earthly idea how they were going to get out of there alive.  “The rescue crews are looking for us.  All we have to do is stay ahead of these guys long enough for them to find us.  We know where they are, but they haven’t spotted us yet, and that gives us the advantage.”
          Tears squeezed out of the corners of her eyes as she stifled a sob.  She clutched his wrist as she nodded, trying to force a smile that refused to cooperate. 
          J.R. rose up again and peered over the rise toward the fissure.  The two criminals were still trying to decide which direction their prey had taken.  Finally, the one that had emerged from the crevice moved off toward the west, the direction J.R. had hoped to take, for it offered the greatest protection in the form of boulders and irregular rock formations in the craggy hill.  The other man, still standing atop the rim, turned around and retraced his steps in an apparent effort to find a way down.  His path carried him out of sight.
          When both men had disappeared from view, J.R. rose up again.  “Okay, let’s go.”  He pointed east.  “That way.”
          Keeping low behind the protection of the shallow hill, J.R. and Betty crept quietly away, moving farther from the scene of the plane crash and away from the men with guns.

          Barnaby had been picked up earlier in the day by a rescue helicopter, and for the past few hours, they had searched the rugged ground below, searching for any sign of the downed aircraft.
          Gazing out the window, his forehead pressed against the Plexiglas, the private detective had a better understanding of the daunting task faced by the rescuers.  The seemingly infinite expanse of wilderness of southeastern California had hardly been noticed during his occasional flights over the area, but now, closer to the ground, he was suffering from eye strain as he searched for his loved ones.  The glare of the sun and the discouraging enormity of the desert gave him a greater degree of appreciation for the men who did this sort of thing for a living.
          Although the chopper was air-conditioned, the window was hot against his forehead from the heat outside, attesting to the tremendously high temperatures that Betty and Jedediah must be enduring.  And he knew that they were enduring it, for his mind refused to allow room for the possibility that they could have perished in the crash.   They could be injured, but he would not accept their deaths until he saw the bodies as proof. 
          Piloting the helicopter was Chris, a former Vietnam veteran who now volunteered his skills with the aircraft to the search and rescue teams that were frequently called into the Mojave Desert to rescue lost hikers and trapped rock climbers.  Beside him, in the co-pilot’s seat, was Michael, an off-duty paramedic who had also volunteered his services.    
          Barnaby occupied the back seat, and had long ago answered all their curious questions about his relatives and his reasons for wanting to accompany them.  They did not question the authority that had allowed him access to the rescue, for it often paid to have friends in high places, but they silently questioned whether the aging detective had the stamina to hold up under the stress of the search.  Although neither man commented on the subject, Barnaby knew that both of them suspected that this mission would not be a rescue at all, but a recovery of bodies.
          “Is that metal over there?” asked Michael, breaking into Barnaby’s thoughts.
          Barnaby glanced at him quickly, and his eyes followed the direction the paramedic was pointing.  The bright glint of a metal object reflecting the brilliant sun could be seen in the distance.
           Speaking into his microphone, the pilot informed the others in the search crew.  “This is Rescue Chopper Three.  I’m picking up a metal object in my sector.  Going to check it out now.”
          “Roger,” crackled the reply.
          The chopper soared above the rocky landscape toward the shiny object, whipping up dust and the occasional clumps of dried sagebrush and creosote bushes as it passed.  Barnaby leaned forward eagerly, his eyes intent on the brightly reflecting chunk of metal.
          “It’s an airplane,” the paramedic announced as they neared.
          Barnaby’s heart skipped a beat, and he shifted in his seat, trying to get a better look at the crumpled, twisted wreckage of the small airplane below them.  
          “Looks like a single engine Piper,” the pilot said, squinting through his dark sunglasses as the dirty white fuselage.  “And it’s been here a while, too,” he added.  “Probably several years.  Look at the brush and debris tangled up in the wreckage.” 
          “Wrong type plane, anyway,” said the paramedic.  “Didn’t Biddle say the plane we’re looking for is a twin engine King Air?”
          “Yes.”  He adjusted his microphone, and spoke to the other searchers, “Looks to be an old crash site.  We’re going down to have a look, but this isn’t the craft we’re looking for.”
          Barnaby’s heart jumped again.  “Going down?  Why?  You said yourself that this is an old crash.  We could be wasting valuable time!”
          “I know, Mr. Jones, but we need to see if there are any bodies aboard this plane, so that the authorities can be notified.”
          “Can’t we just record the coordinates and come back after we’ve found Betty and Jedediah?” Barnaby insisted.  “There is obviously nothing that can be done for anyone who might be aboard this plane!  My cousin and my daughter-in-law are out there in this desert somewhere, and they have been since yesterday!  Time may be running out for them!”
          The pilot exchanged glances with the paramedic, clearly indicating that they did not believe that the people they were looking for would be found alive, but finally the pilot nodded.  “All right, Mr. Jones.”
          After recording the coordinates, he turned the helicopter away from the crash site, and guided his craft farther south in search of the more recent accident.

          The sun was sinking lower toward the western horizon when J.R. glanced at his watch:  it was after five thirty.  Time was rapidly diminishing for a possible rescue that evening.  Facing them was another night in the desert, this time with the potential of being overtaken by a group of killers.  They would have to take turns keeping lookout to prevent being apprehended while they slept.  He was already exhausted, and knew that Betty was as well.  They had acquired very little sleep the night before, and, with the exception of the candy bars the afternoon before, they had had nothing to eat since breakfast the previous day.
          They had stopped to rest in the evening shadow cast on the east side of one of the desert’s many clusters of boulders that lay at the foot of the jagged hills, and with a sigh of weariness, he leaned back against the boulder and allowed his body to sag with fatigue.  He knew that soon they would need to start searching for a suitable place to spend the night, someplace sheltered where they would be able to keep an eye on the surrounding terrain.  He had no idea whether or not the drug dealers would also decide to spend the night in the desert, but it was better to stay alert.
          Seated beside him, Betty had folded her arms on her upraised knees, and was resting her forehead on her arm.  Like his, her clothing was dirty and sweat-damp; her beautiful fluffy hair was limp.  Several locks had come loose from the scarf she used to hold it back, but she made no attempt to replace them.  She was simply too tired to concern herself with it.  Her makeup, impeccably applied before leaving her apartment yesterday morning, was long gone.
          They had seen no sign of the drug dealers since leaving the fissure hours earlier, but J.R. did not become complacent and allow his guard to fall.  In all probability, they were still out there searching.  Though his body was relaxed, his eyes were scanning the landscape for any sign of movement.  Lifting his eyes higher, he gazed longingly at the vast sky overhead, desperately wishing to see a friendly airplane or a helicopter.  He saw only endless, cloudless blue.  The drug dealers had not returned to the sky either, apparently realizing that the sounds of the rotor blades would alert their prey to their presence.  They were much deadlier on the ground.
          The silence was broken by the grumbling of Betty’s stomach.  She turned her head on her forearm and glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, waiting for the comment that she knew he would make.
          “Hungry?” he asked, lifting his eyebrows in an attempt to be cheerful, even though he wasn’t feeling very cheery at that moment.
          “A little,” she replied, refusing to admit that she was feeling weak and nauseated from the gnawing emptiness in her stomach.
          “Yeah, me too,” he replied, rubbing his hand on his abdomen as if to sooth the empty rumbling inside.  “What I wouldn’t give for one of my mom’s spaghetti dinners, right now.  That woman was a great cook.”
          “Please, don’t talk about food right now,” she scolded.  In an effort to at least partially fill the void in her stomach, she reached down beside her and picked up the can of water that she had firmly propped up on the ground beside her.  It was alarmingly light, and she shook it in her hand, listening to the rapidly diminishing amount of liquid that it still contained.  Glancing quickly at J.R., she saw that he was looking back at her with a solemn expression.  Since losing the other can of water, Betty had shared hers, but with two people drinking from the same reserves and natural evaporation, it was nearly gone.  “I didn’t notice it being this light before,” she said.
          “It’s evaporating in this heat.”  He nodded toward the can.  “You go ahead.  Better to drink it than to let it evaporate.”
          She was thirsty enough that she could have easily done just that, but as tempted as she was, she could not, in all conscience, deprive him of his fair share.  He was as thirsty as she was.  “No, there’s enough for us each to have a swallow,” she told him. 
          She lifted the can to her lips and drew in one mouthful, savoring the wetness in her mouth for a moment before swallowing it, knowing that it would probably be her last for a while.  Then she passed the can to J.R.  He hesitated, reluctant to drain the last of her water, but at her insistence, he lifted the can to his lips and took in the last mouthful.  With a discouraged sigh, he lowered the empty can.  It was gone.  From this point forward, they would have to do without.
          “Well, I guess that’s that,” he said, regretfully. 
          She dropped her head onto her arms again and drew her hands close against her head in an effort to hide her despair from him.
          He seemed to understand, and placed a comforting hand on her back between her shoulder blades, rubbing gently.  “Hey, it’ll be all right.  We’ll be a little uncomfortable for a while, but we’ll get through it.”
          “I’m not a little girl, J.R.,” she said, sharply, turning her face to glare at him.  “I know things are getting desperate for us!” 
          Surprised by her outburst, he withdrew his hand, but did not refute her statement.
          She regretted her sharp tongue immediately.  Raising her head again, she shrugged, ashamed.  “I’m sorry.   I should haven’t have snapped at you.  I’m just so damn hot and tired.”  Lifting a hand to her sore shoulder, she grimaced slightly as she rubbed it.  “My shoulder hurts, I have a headache, and I’m hungry and thirsty.  Not to mention the fact that we’re being chased by men who want to kill us!  I just want this to all be over with.”
          J.R. could not recall a single time that he had heard Betty Jones swear, but he refrained from commenting.  This was not the time for teasing.  “Betty, I know it seems hopeless, but they are going to find us.  I’m not just saying that.  It’s just going to take time.”
          “And what if those goons find us first?” she retorted.
          “We’re staying ahead of them,” he reminded her. 
          She kneaded her forehead with her fingertips in an effort to reduce the throbbing in her temples.  “Why is it taking so long?  Why don’t they find us?”  The unthinkable suddenly sprang into her mind, and her eyes widened in alarm.  “Oh, God, what if they’ve given up on us?”
          “They haven’t given up on us,” J.R. insisted.  “You know Barnaby.  He won’t stop searching until he finds us.”
          She covered her face with her hands and wept softly in anger and frustration.  “I don’t know how much more of this I can take!”
          “You’re strong, Betty,” he told her, gently.  “You’d be surprised how much you can tolerate.”  Moving closer to her, he placed his arms around her and attempted to draw her nearer.  She resisted briefly, stiffening as he pulled her against him.
          “No, don’t . . . .” she said, attempting to push him away.
          “It’s okay,” he said quietly against her hair.  “It’s okay.”
          Giving in to frustration, she pressed her face against his shoulder, and he held her with comforting arms as her body convulsed with quiet sobs.
          Her tears did not last long, and when she was under control again, she drew back, wiping tears from her cheeks with the back of her hand.  “Here I sit telling you that I’m not a little girl, and then I act just like one.”
          “No, you’re not.  You’re just upset and scared.  Believe me, so am I.”
          “You‘re not the one who’s crying.”
          “Well, I was never a little girl,” he offered by way of explanation.
          She managed a smile at his attempt at humor.  “No, I guess you weren’t.”
          “There, that’s better,” he said.  “I don’t have a handkerchief,” he said, helping her wipe the wetness from her cheeks with his fingers.  “Are you rested enough to go on?”
          She was not eager to get back to her aching feet and resume their hike through the blistering sun, but she understood the need to put as much distance as possible between them and the men with guns.  She nodded.  “Yeah.”
          “Okay.”
          They stood up, both of them using the boulder for leverage, and as they did, J.R.’s eyes fell upon the aluminum can that he had placed on the ground.  If their pursuers saw it, it would give them an indication that they had passed that way.  Gripping his ribs protectively with one hand, he bent down and picked up the can with the other.  
          “Guess we’d better take this with us, at least until we can find a place to hide it.”
          “J.R.!”  Betty urgently grasped his arm. 
          As he turned curious eyes to her in response, he saw that she was staring past him.  Turning quickly, he saw a man carefully picking his way down the rocky slope of the distant hill.
Instantly, he and Betty squatted down behind the clump of scrub brush.
          “Good eye, Betty.  I don’t think he’s seen us, or he would have already taken a shot,” J.R. mused.  Grasping her hand, he said, “I think it’s time to leave this place.”
          Once again, they pressed onward, keeping close against the protection of the ridges and hills, always aware of the fact that they were leaving the crash site farther and farther behind.
          Finally, J.R. spotted a narrow horizontal cleft in the rocks just above ground level.  It was less than two feet high, a narrow squeeze, and about five feet in length. 
          “Hold this,” he said, shoving the pop can in Betty’s hand. 
          Dropping to his hands and knees, he peered into the darkness beneath the rocky opening.
          Squatting down beside him, Betty grasped his shoulder.  “What are you doing?”
          “This may be a good hiding place,” he responded.
          She looked dubiously at the narrow opening.  “I don’t know about this, J.R.  There could be snakes or scorpions under there.  If we were bitten . . .”  She didn’t complete the sentence.  There was no need.  Without a doctor nearby and no rescue in the foreseeable future, it was a dangerous endeavor.
          “I wish I had a flashlight,” he lamented. 
          Picking up a small rock, he tossed it into the cleft, and listened carefully as the rock clattered against the stone wall at its deepest point.  Leaning closer to the ground on his elbows, his rear end pointing skyward, he positioned his ear closer to the opening and listened intently for the tell-tale rasp of a rattlesnake’s warning but heard nothing but silence. 
          “If there had been a rattler in there, that rock should have stirred it up,” he reasoned.
          “Not necessarily,” she cautioned.  “While most of them respond to a threat by rattling their tails, there are some that strike without warning.  And the rattler isn’t the only venomous snake,” she added.
          “Well, there’s only one way to find out for sure, isn’t there?” 
          Stretching out on his belly, trying to ignore the constant throb of pain in his side, he pulled himself into the cleft beneath the rock, knowing fully well that if a rattlesnake or scorpion had taken refuge from the heat of the sun, he could be bitten or stung before he even realized that it was there.
          “J.R.!  Be careful!” she urged.
          “I will,” he promised, his voice muffled as he pulled himself deeper into the cleft.  His hand moved over something smooth and hard, and he investigated it with his finger tips, realizing almost right away that it was a small skeleton, probably that of a large field mouse or a rat.  He gathered up the bones and tossed them aside, uncertain how Betty would react if she found them. 
          Then, his groping fingers touched something dry and papery, and he jerked his hand back on reflex, realizing that it was a dried snake skin.  So, the cleft had at one time been used by a snake, but it seemed to have abandoned its lair.  It was empty of animal life.
          Betty watched nervously.  All that remained in the open was his lower body, from the hips down, twisting and turning as he shifted positions inside the cleft to inspect the shelter for dangerous animals or reptiles.  Finally, he pulled himself out, groaning with fatigue.  Rising up on his knees, he brushed the dirt and gravel from the front of his shirt and his chest with his hands.  “All clear,” he announced.
          She gazed at him for a long moment.  “J.R., I don’t know if I can get in there!”
          “It’s perfectly safe,” he assured her.  “No snakes or scorpions, I promise.”
          “It’s just . . .”  She frowned, making a repulsed expression as she looked at the dark opening.  “It’s just so close.”
          “Are you claustrophobic?” he asked, surprised.
          “Not really.  I mean, not much.  It’s just . . .”
          “What?”
          “What if it caves in?”
          “It’s solid rock, Betty.  I promise, it won’t cave in.”
          She shifted her gaze around the horizon, but so far there was no sign of their pursuers.  “You saw that gap,” she reminded him.  “If you can see it, so can they.  And if they do, we’ll be trapped under there.”
          “Hm, good point,” he mused, his eyes searching the landscape for something useful.  “Ah-ha!” he said triumphantly, rising to his feet again. 
          He moved to a dead creosote bush with a three foot span and seized it in his hands and pulled.  Its roots ran deep, seeking moisture during its difficult lifetime, and it refused to relinquish its hold.  He took a firmer hold and leaned back, pulling as hard as he could.  The clump of brush abruptly yielded, and J.R. sat down hard, momentum carrying him over onto his back.  It would have been funny had it not jarred his injured ribs so badly.  His hand immediately went to his side again.
          Betty knelt beside him.  “Are you okay?”
          “Yeah, I’m fine.  I just wasn’t ready for it to come out of the ground yet.”  He gasped a few times.  “Damn it, I can’t even draw a deep breath.”
          “You’d better rest a few minutes.”
          “We don’t have time.”
          He struggled to his feet again, noticing the pop can that Betty had set down when he entered the cleft.  It seemed prudent to cast it as far as he could, which would hopefully lead them away from their hiding place inside the cleft.
          Stooping, J.R. picked up the can and hefted it in his hands, testing the weight.
          Betty watched, curiously.  “What are you doing?”
          “Laying a false trail,” he replied. 
          He gripped it tightly in his hand, then hesitated briefly, knowing in advance that what he was about to do would cause a stab of pain in his ribs.  He grimaced, slightly.  Painful or not, it needed to be done.  Bracing himself, he drew his hand back and tossed the pop can farther up the trail, near enough to be seen, but far enough from the cleft to hopefully lead the drug dealers away from them.
          J.R. managed to stifle the scream that rose in his throat as his ribs cried out in agony.  As he clutched his side with his hand, the pop can soared through the air in a graceful arch, then struck the ground with a clatter and rolled several more feet, coming to rest a respectable distance from the man who had thrown it. 
          Betty was at his side in an instant, steadying him to keep him from falling.
          “I’m okay, I’m okay.  With a little luck, the bad guys will spot the can, and believe that to be the direction we had took,” he explained.
          When the pain was manageable again, he smoothed down the ground he had disturbed when he had uprooted the bush, then grasped the stem of the dead shrub and made his way back to the opening, dragging the dry clump of brush behind him.
          “You go in first,” he instructed.
          Again, she hesitated with a decidedly repulsed expression.  “Isn’t there any other place we can hide?” she asked.
          “If you’ve seen such a place, let me know and we’ll go back to it,” he replied with just a trace of impatience at her resistance.
          “No, I haven’t,” she admitted.
          Given no other choice but to continue to remain in the open, or to hide and allow the pursuers to hopefully go on past them, she finally got down on her hands and knees and peered into the darkness.
          “You’re sure there’s nothing in there?” she asked, looking up at him with worry in her eyes.
          “I’m sure,” he replied, glancing over his shoulder.  If she dallied too long, hiding would no longer be necessary.
          Heaving a deep sigh of protest and disapproval, she removed her purse from her shoulder, and resolutely got down on her abdomen and dragged herself through the opening pulling the purse behind her.  As soon as she had pulled her legs inside, J.R. blocked out the light as he pulled himself inside behind her.
          It was extremely close quarters with two human bodies crammed into the narrow space.  The cleft was not quite long enough for their entire length, so they were forced to bend their legs at the knees and turn them slightly to one side, even though there was not enough room for them to actually roll onto their sides.  Betty was pressed against the rear wall and J.R. crowded right up against her, their shoulders and hips jammed tightly against the low ceiling. 
          “Are you aware that there are dead animals in here?” Betty’s voice came to him through the darkness.
          “Yeah, I know,” J.R. replied, unable to suppress the smile in his voice in response to her calm query.  He had expected the bones to generate more of a reaction from her.  “I tried to move them out of the way, but there isn’t enough room in here to move anything out of the way.  Oh, and there’s a snake skin in here, too, so if you ---”
          He heard a thud in the darkness as her head connected with the low ceiling, followed by her low exclamation.  “Ow!  You just had to mention that, didn’t you?” she asked, rubbing the back of her head with her hand.
          “Sorry.”
          Reaching back outside, he grasped the bush and pulled it close against the mouth of their burrow.  Twisting his body enough in the confined space to slip his hand into his front pocket, he withdrew the knife his father had given to him when he was a boy.  Using the blade to dig into the soil, he buried the bush’s roots in the dry dirt and positioned it in such a way that it appeared to have been growing there naturally.  Folding up the blade, he returned the knife to his pocket.
          Then, they waited.
          It was cooler inside the cleft, and the reprieve from the scorching sun would have been a welcomed relief had their place of refuge been a bit more comfortable.  The rocky, uneven floor was littered with pebbles on which they were forced to lay, and every time they shifted in an attempt to find a more comfortable position, a head, shoulder, or hip made contact with the low ceiling.  Grateful for the cooler temperature, Betty folded her arm beneath her head, and felt the headache that had plagued her all afternoon slowly begin to ease.
          After about five minutes, they heard a noise outside, the sound of shoes crunching on the hard, rocky ground as someone approached their hiding place.
          “Can you see them, Kline?” asked a gruff voice.
          “No,” came the response from just outside their burrow.  “But I’m sure they came this direction.”
          “I’m about ready to pack it up and go home,” said the first voice.  “I’ve had it with this dust and heat.”
          “You really want to face DuHart and tell him that we couldn’t find the merchandise?”
          “Wish we had a tracker with us.  This ground is so hard I can’t tell if they passed this way or not.”
          There was a long span of silence.  Peering through the dry branches of the bush, J.R. could see the shoes and ankles of one of the drug dealers as he stopped outside their burrow.  His back was to the cleft, indicating that he was standing there gazing around at the landscape, looking for them.  He was so close that J.R. could have reached out and grabbed his legs.  That thought would have been tempting had the man been alone.  Then, after overpowering him, he would have had a weapon with which to even the odds.
          “Holsey, have you found anything on your side of the valley, yet?” asked the drug dealer called Kline.
          An electronic garbled voice replied through what was apparently a walkie-talkie, but J.R. could not make out the words.
          “Nothing here, either,” said Kline.  “We’ve been following a man and a woman, probably friends of Abbott.  The woman might be his girlfriend, but we don’t know for sure.”
          Again, J.R. listened to the garbled response, but could only make out a word here and there.
          “You’re breaking up,” Kline advised.  “These damn hills and rocks!”
          The first voice, more distant than that of the man outside the cleft, called, “Hey, I found something!”
          “Holsey, we’ll get back with you,” he said into the walkie-talkie, then louder to the other man, “What is it?”
          “Something shiny.  Hang on.”  Another pause ensued, and J.R. could easily envision the man as he approached the discarded pop can.  “Just an aluminum can.”
          The shoes quickly vanished from sight as Kline rushed toward his accomplice.  “I shot a pop can out of the man’s hand.  Could be they were carrying these to stay hydrated.”
          The voices faded, and J.R. knew they were probably discussing the presence of the pop can and the possible direction they had taken.  He moved his face closer to the entrance, and peered through the branches of the dead bush.  He could just make out the two men as they walked away from the cleft, and then disappeared beyond the range of his vision.
          “They’ve fallen for it!” J.R. said, turning his head to look at Betty.  His eyes had adjusted to the darkness just enough that he could make out her face, only inches from his own.
          She nodded, approvingly.  “Good.”
          “We’ll give them a few more minutes, in case they double back.”
          They waited inside their hiding place for another ten minutes, until finally J.R. moved toward the opening.
          “Wait here.”
          “What are you going to do?” she asked.
          “I need to find out where they are.  It’s okay; I’ll be careful.”
          He pushed aside the bush and emerged from beneath the cleft into the intense heat of the open desert again.  Cautiously, he moved to the edge of the ridge and gazed down the path taken by the two drug dealers.  They had crossed the narrow valley that separated the two hills, and he could just make out their shapes wandering around the other hill, still searching determinedly for them.
          Triumphantly, he returned to the cleft, and knelt down beside it.  “It’s safe.  You can come on out.”
           Betty pulled herself out of the hiding place, feeling almost reluctant to leave the cooler environment, yet glad to be out of the confining space.  She rose unsteadily to her feet, and placed her hand on the rocky ridge to steady herself.
          “Hey, you okay?” he asked.
          “Yes.  My leg went to numb.”
          “Let’s go back the way we came and see if we can find a place to spend the night.” 
          Betty made no comment, but her expression spoke volumes.
          “I know, I know,” he said, quickly.  “I’m not thrilled about the idea either, but it’s getting late and the rescue crews will be retiring for the night.  In the morning, we’ll head back toward the plane.  I don’t want to get too far away from it.”
          Together, J.R. and Betty retraced their steps, searching for a suitable place to rest until dawn.

                                                            Act 6

          “This looks like a good place,” J.R. said as the sun slipped over the western horizon and the long shadows of late evening blended into the twilight.
They had been skirting a large rugged hill, searching for a suitable niche or recess in which to spend the night, where they could hopefully rest with reduced risk of discovery.  Following J.R.’s gaze, Betty saw a dry runoff channel at the foot of the hill, one of many.
          Erosion had created many such channels that ran down the sides of the rugged hills, forming wide troughs at the base.   In the one J.R. had selected, the upper tip made a slight curve, and when sitting or lying down, it would conceal them on all sides from anyone who might pass by. 
          J.R. motioned for Betty to enter first, and she complied, moving up the gradual slope between the two low rims, and settled into the curve.  J.R. followed, casting a final glance at the desert behind him.  The desert remained devoid of any indication of life or movement, and he hoped that the drug dealers had decided to either leave the area or bed down for the night, giving them at least a few hours of respite.
          Supporting his injured ribs with his hand, J.R. sank down onto the ground with a low, exaggerated groan that conveyed more of his extreme weariness than actual pain.  He could not recall a single time in his entire life when he had been so tired.
          Betty sat down across from him and wiped the perspiration from her forehead, leaving a smudge there could be seen even in the rapidly diminishing light, and it brought a smile to J.R.’s lips.
          “What?” she asked in response to his smile.
          “You.  Us.”  He indicated his formerly crisp white shirt, now covered with sweat and grime.  “I feel like I’m wearing half the Mojave Desert.”
          She managed a weak smile, but her heart wasn’t in it.  “You look like you’re wearing half the Mojave Desert, but I guess I must be wearing the other half!”  She sighed, wistfully.  “What I wouldn’t give for a long hot shower.  No, on second thought, a long hot bubble bath.  Complete with flower petals and bath beads.  And maybe a glass of champagne to sip on.  Soft music in the background.”
          He smiled.  “Ah, in the need of a little pampering, eh?”
          “M’dear, I need a lot of pampering, after this experience.”
          “Well, hopefully tomorrow you’ll get your wish.  It can’t be too much longer before they find us.  As for me, all I want is a shower followed by a good meal, about twenty glasses of water, and then about three days of uninterrupted sleep under a good, strong air conditioner!”
          “If you drink twenty glasses or water, you will not have three hours of uninterrupted sleep, much less three days!” Betty teased.
          They smiled at one another in the fading light, experiencing a closeness known only to those who have shared a dangerous encounter or a brush with death.  “No, I guess not,” he agreed.  “Make it ten glasses of water, then, instead of twenty.  I’m so dehydrated, I think I can handle that much!”
          They fell silent for several moments, then Betty shifted her eyes to the rugged landscape, searching for the ever-present danger that lurked somewhere out of sight, and asked, “Do you think they’re still out there?”
          J.R. nodded.  “Yeah, I think they’re out there.  They’re running out of time, and they know it.  The rescue crews will be expanding the search area, and the druggies know they will eventually find the plane, so it’s unlikely that they’ll try to return to civilization tonight.  They may even search all night, but I doubt it.  There are so many shadows and rock formations out here that it would be unproductive.  I expect they aren’t accustomed to much physical exertion, so they’re probably pretty tired, too.  I think they’ll probably bed down in the desert someplace and then try to get an early start in the morning.  I wish I knew where their camp was.  I’d try to sneak in and swipe one of their guns to even the odds a bit!”
          “You will do no such thing!” Betty said firmly with that “big sister” tone of voice again.  “If you got caught, there’s no telling what they would do to you!”
          “Yeah, and they probably will have a guard posted, anyway, which is what I think we should do.  We’ll take turns.”
          Betty turned her head, gazing at the first stars of the evening, lost in thought.
          J.R. watched in silence.  She appeared to be miles away, depressed and discouraged.  “What are you thinking?” he asked.
          “I was just wondering what Barnaby is doing right now.  He must be worried sick about us, wondering if we’re still alive, or . . . .”
          “Yeah.  I had hoped we wouldn’t be spending another night out here.  Looks like Tyler did a good job of steering us far from his flight plan.”  He sighed heavily with regret, and his voice was apologetic as he said, “Betty, I am really sorry about all this.  If I’d had any idea that Tyler was not on the up-and-up, I would have agreed to a commercial flight instead of insisting on his shuttle service.  I guess this falls under the old adage: If it looks too good to be true, then it probably is.   If I can’t use better judgment than this, I don’t have a chance in hell of being a decent lawyer.”
          “Hey, don’t go doubting yourself,” she told him.  Sensing that he needed a bit of reassurance, she reached out and rubbed her hand up and down his arm with genuine affection for her father in law’s much younger cousin.  “You’re going to make a fine lawyer.  You have good instincts.”
          He was unconvinced.  “Yeah, right.  That’s why were sitting out here in the desert being chased by a gang of drug dealers.” 
          “You just trusted a friend who had gotten himself into something over his head.  You had no way of knowing that he was doing illegal business.  This isn’t your fault, J.R.”
          “Then why does it feel like it’s my fault?
          “Don’t go there, honey.  This is Tyler’s fault, not yours.  You are not responsible for the things he got himself into.” 
          For a moment, she considered revealing to him the fact that she had checked out Tyler’s shuttle service before leaving Los Angeles, but decided that he would take it wrong.  He would probably think she didn’t trust him, when in truth it was Tyler she hadn’t trusted.  Even though her sources had reported that Tyler Abbott was a responsible pilot with an excellent safety record, a nagging feeling had persisted that the service what not what it seemed, and it had been against her better judgment when she had agreed to the flight. 
          “J.R., he was using us as cover to make it look like a legitimate flight, and when he knew we were going down, he flew us far off his flight plan so he could hide the drugs before a rescue party could reach us.  There was no way you could have foreseen all this.”
          He was quiet for several moments, finally accepting the truth in her words.  “I thought I was the one who was supposed to do the comforting, here.”
          “It’s a shared task.  Everyone needs a little comforting sometimes.”
          “We need to be up early in the morning.  Why don’t you try to get some sleep?  I’ll take the first watch.”
          “Maybe you should sleep first, and let me take the first watch,” she countered.
          “Why?”
          “Because I know you, J.R.  If I’m asleep, you won’t wake me up to take my turn standing guard.”
          He made a growling sound, but conceded that she was right in her theory that he would allow her to continue resting while he remained awake.  “Oh, all right.  You have a wristwatch, so wake me in three or four hours.”
          She glanced at her watch, checking the time.  “Okay.  Good night.”
          “’night.”
          He stretched out on the ground beside her as Betty moved to a position where she could see over the rim of the runoff channel.
          For a long time, there was no sound, not even a slight breeze to help cool them.  The last glimpse of light faded into darkness.  The moon rose over the horizon, and a host of stars shimmered in the cloudless sky. 
          Betty continued to watch the surrounding area, paying particular attention to the occasional shadows that scurried across the barren landscape, realizing that it was the desert nightlife that had been absent during the daylight hours, emerging from their burrows to feed.
          She turned her wrist over to see her watch and pressed the small button on the side to illuminate the face.  Only twenty minutes had passed since J.R. had lain down.  It was going to be a long night, but as weary as she was, she knew she would be unable to sleep when her turn came. The dryness in her mouth was a persistent reminder of her thirst, and the knowledge that they were being pursued by killers would make it impossible for her to relax.
          Beside her, J.R. turned over onto his right side and tucked his arm beneath his head, apparently having difficulty resting, too.  After a moment, he removed a small rock from beneath his hip and tossed it aside, then tried again to relax.
          Another twenty minutes dragged slowly by.  High overhead, an owl circled gracefully in the night sky, searching the ground below for a meal.  Betty watched it until it finally swooped down to the ground, and she knew that it had captured something.  A moment later, it took to the sky again with something clutched in its talons.  She was unable to determine what it was, but presumed it was probably a desert rodent of some kind.
           Her body gave an involuntary shudder, in spite of the lingering heat.  Nature’s way, she reminded herself.  The desert was unforgiving of mistakes and carelessness.
          Unable to find a comfortable position on the hard ground, J.R. attempted to turn over onto his left side, but was unable to do so because of the pain in that side.  “Dammit,” he muttered, annoyed, as he pushed himself up on his elbow. 
          Betty looked down at him, curiously.  “What’s wrong?”
          “I can’t sleep.  I can’t even get reasonably comfortable.”  He sat up.  “Why don’t you go ahead and try to sleep?  I’ll keep watch.”
           “You’re exhausted, J.R.  You really should try harder.”
           “You can’t force yourself to sleep.”
          “I know.  I don’t think I could sleep either,” she admitted.  I’m too wound up.”
          He dragged himself closer to her, and looked over the rim of the channel at the desert.  “See anything out there?”
            “No, just some animals moving about.”
          “That’s good, that’s good,” he said, speaking so rapidly that the words nearly ran together.  “It’s good just to rest for a while, even if we can’t sleep.  It’s starting to cool down a bit, too,” he added.
          She nodded, grateful for the relief from the intense heat of the day.  “Do you think the rescue crews find us tomorrow?”
          He was unable to give her a definitive answer.  “I hope so.”
          “J.R.,” she began, then paused, as if choosing her words carefully.
          “Hm?” he asked.
          “I hate to bring this up, but the rescuers won’t have guns.  They won’t have any idea what they may be walking into.”
          He knew where her thoughts were going.  “I know.  I’ve thought about that, too.  I’m hoping that once they see the rescuers, the druggies will simply withdraw.”
          “What if they don’t?  If there is only one rescue chopper that finds us, then they will be vulnerable.”
          He gazed at her steadily through the darkness that separated them.  “I know,” he said, finally.  “I guess we’ll have to alert them somehow.”
           “How?”
          “I have no idea.  I guess we’ll have to cross that  bridge when we get to it.”
          Thinking about that, they fell silent again.

          It was still dark when J.R. and Betty left their hiding place and began the trek back toward the crash site, hoping that they could reach the site before the drug dealers got on their trail again.
          Although he kept his worries to himself, J.R. was growing increasingly concerned that they had taken a wrong direction at some point and had become lost.  It seemed to him that they should have reached the final hill by then.  Calculating distance and noticing landmarks was difficult while being chased by men with guns, plus the added difficulty of such rugged terrain.  In every direction, the desert looked exactly the same.
           By midmorning, under the burning sun once again, Betty was experiencing the same worries as her companion.  “We’re lost, aren’t we?” she asked as they stopped to rest.
          J.R. looked at her solemnly.  “I don’t know,” he answered as he scanned the horizon.  “I think we’re going the right direction, but everything looks the same, no matter which direction we’re looking.  Every hill is identical to its neighbor.” 
          “In other words, we could be going in circles,” Betty concluded.
          He turned to face her, and noticed that the skin of her nose and cheeks were bright red.  “You’re getting sunburned.”
          She gingerly touched the tender skin of her burned nose with her fingertips.  “I’m not surprised.”  She suddenly became focused on something over his shoulder, and she pointed toward the distance behind him.  “J.R.?”
           He turned to look in the direction indicated, and saw a flock of large dark birds circling over the hills in the distance.  His expression was grim.  “Buzzards.”  He turned back to Betty and they gazed solemnly at one another for several moments, then he said, “That’s the direction we need to go,” he said. 
          With grim resolution, they began walking in the direction of the buzzards, knowing that they were circling the body of Tyler, lying somewhere in the hills south of the crash site.
          After a short time, a distant sound broke the intense silence of the desert.  J.R. froze, bringing up his hand for silence, and they both listened intently.  It was the faint sound of a helicopter.
          “Do you hear that?” J.R. asked.
          She nodded.  “Do you think it’s a rescue chopper, or DuHart’s men?”
          He shook his head.  “Impossible to say without seeing it.  Let’s stay close to the hill, in case we need to find a place to hide again.”
          The sound of the chopper faded away again, and J.R. and Betty resumed their walk toward the circling buzzards, keeping close to the shelter of the long line of hills.
          Unexpectedly, a man leaped from behind a clump of boulders, his weapon held at the ready as he faced the man and woman.  It was the one called Kline.  His white polo shirt was now brownish with dirt and sweat, and his slacks were even filthier.  He was clearly not in a good mood.
          Startled, Betty and J.R. froze at the unexpected appearance of the drug dealer.  J.R. felt his heart sink, knowing that the outcome of this encounter would not be good.
          “My, but the two of you led us on a good chase, didn’t you?” Kline said, mockingly.  “You put up a good fight, but you had to have known that we could catch you in the end.”  He gestured with the pistol, a distinct “come here” gesture.  “Hand it over.”
          J.R. moved slowly in front of Betty, shielding her with his own body, and he spread his hands to show that they were empty.  “We don’t have anything.  What is it you want from us?”
          “Don’t give me that!  You know exactly what we want!”
          “Hey, we were just passengers on a private flight to Phoenix,” J.R. told him.  “We have no idea what it is that you’re looking for!”
          “You think we’re stupid?” the man retorted.  “If you had no idea, why have you been running from us?”
          “Wouldn’t you run from men carrying guns if you had no idea what they wanted?” J.R. retorted.
          “Good try, but I’m not buying.  You were hiding before the helicopter ever landed.  You knew we would be coming, and you hid in these hills.”
          “I swear, we didn’t.  We had sought shelter in the hills to get out of the sun,” J.R. insisted.
          “Wrong.  You had shade near the crash site.  We saw your camp site.  If you were innocent in this, you would have flagged us down the moment you saw the chopper!”
          J.R. gave up.  He knew that was true, and observed the fact that his attempts to play dumb were agitating the drug dealer.  The man was shifting nervously from one foot to the other, his finger on the trigger of the gun that he was pointing casually at J.R., his arm bent. 
          Kline waved the pistol, threateningly.  “Now, where is it?”
          “Where’s what?” J.R. asked.
          The man straightened his arm and pointed the gun directly at J.R.’s chest.  The detective took an involuntary step backward, stepping on Betty’s foot.  She was watching over his shoulder with frightened eyes, her hands on his shoulders, and she pulled her foot from beneath his heel, so frightened that she hardly felt his weight on her toes. 
          “The suitcase!” the man shouted, impatiently.  “Tell me where it is, now, or I’ll drop you where you’re standing!”
           J.R. swallowed hard, his heart pounding loudly in his ears, as he stared at the round black hole, waiting for the muzzle flash to signal the end of his life.  “I don’t know where it is,” he said.  “That’s the honest truth, I swear.  Tyler took off with it after dark the night we crashed.  We haven’t seen him or the suitcase since.”
          “We found Abbott on the other side of the valley, and he didn’t have the suitcase with him.”
          “You killed him, didn’t you?” J.R. asked, accusingly.
          “J.R.!” Betty hissed in his ear, urging him to withhold any accusations that might agitate him further.
          The drug dealer grinned, menacingly.  “The penalties for refusing to cooperate with us are severe.  Now, WHERE IS IT?”
           J.R. shrugged.  “I’m telling you the truth.  We don’t’ have it.  Tyler took it with him.  He must have hidden it somewhere in the hills.”
          Kline shifted nervously again, and glanced over his shoulder, apparently expecting his partner to offer assistance, but he was nowhere in site.  They had obviously split up to cover more ground, and Kline seemed uncertain what to do about the possibility that the younger man was telling the truth.
          While he was distracted, J.R.’s muscles tensed as he started to rush him, then changed his mind when Kline turned back toward him.  “Don’t even think about it,” he warned, noticing that the detective’s posture had changed.
          J.R. raised his hands as if in surrender.
          Lifting the walkie-talkie to his mouth, the drug dealer said, “Holsey, this is Kline.  I have the man and woman.  They say they don’t know where the suitcase is.”
           There was a pause, presumably as Holsey reached for his unit to respond.  “What did you expect them to say?” came the muffled, sarcastic response that was heard by all three of them.  “They’re all in this together.  I’m sure we can convince the woman to cooperate.  Meet us at the crash site with her.”
          “What if she doesn’t tell us anything?” Kline asked, his eyes nervously scanning the horizon.  “I mean, we’re running out of time here.  Those rescue choppers we saw this morning will be covering this area eventually.  And when they get here, we’d better be gone!”
          J.R. glanced over his shoulder at Betty.  That had been a rescue chopper that they had heard!
          Holsey seemed impatient with his co-worker.   “I’m aware of that, Kline, but I’m sure we can break her.  If not or if we run out of time, then we’ll have to fly her to DuHart for interrogation.  He has ways to loosen her tongue.”
          Kline’s eyes fixed on J.R.  “What about the man?”
          There was a moment of silence as Holsey considered the question.  “The man may be a hindrance.  Kill him.”
           J.R. felt Betty’s fingers tighten on his shoulders, horrified that he was about to be murdered, and terrified of the abuse that awaited her at the hands of the criminals.  “No, please!” she said, hastily, her voice trembling with fear.  “You’ve already killed the only man who knows where the drugs are.”
           Kline cocked his head, curiously.  “I never said anything about drugs.”
          Betty exhaled sharply, and tipped her head forward to rest her forehead on J.R.’s shoulder.  “Oh, God,” she whispered, realizing that she had just made their situation worse.
          “Innocent, ay?  You’ve been lying to me all along!”
          J.R. spoke up quickly.  “All right, I saw what was inside the suitcase, but I swear, we don’t know where he hid it.  He knocked me down with the suitcase, and took off with it.”
          “I don’t believe you,” Kline said.  Shifting his glance to Betty, who had lifted her head again and was staring at him over J.R.’s shoulder, he scrutinized her for a long moment, then asked, “You’re not Crystal, are you?”
           Betty was too frightened to do anything except shake her head, negatively.
          “No, I didn’t think so,” he answered himself, gazing at her intently.  “Abbott said that Crystal is a blonde, and, no offense, but you’re quite a bit older than she would be.  You’re a handsome woman, though,” he added, admiringly.  “Fixed up in clean clothes, I bet you’re a real knock-out.”  Shifting his eyes back to J.R., he added, “Is she your woman?”
          “No.  She’s my cousin’s wife.”  There was no point in specifying the details that his father and Barnaby were first cousins, and that Barnaby’s son was Betty’s husband.
          “Just wondering,” he added.  “I mean, I can see that you’re younger than she is, but what the hell?  That makes no real difference, anymore, does it?  You two look real close.”
          “We are close,” J.R. told him.  “We’re family,”
          He looked at Betty again.  “He missing you?  You’re man?”
           “He’s dead,” she answered, her voice shaking.
          His eyebrows lifted, intrigued.  “Oh?  A widow then?”
          Betty felt her insides tighten, realizing that Kline was the man who had been so interested in her undergarments back at the ridge.  She did not answer his question.
          “All right, you heard what the boss said, and you know what I have to do.  We’ll be taking you with us, lady.”  He made a gesture with his gun, urging her to step aside.  “You’d better move away from him,” he suggested.
           Betty looked as if she had just experienced a bitter taste in her mouth at the thought of J.R. being shot to death right in front of her eyes.  “No, please.  Just let us go.  We don’t have any idea who you are.  There’s no way we could identify you.  Don’t add another murder to your list of crimes.”
          “I’m not calling the shots, here.  Holsey is.  I have my orders.  Now, move away from him, or I’ll drop him with you right there behind him!  You might just catch the same bullet!” 
          “You heard your boss.  He wants me alive,” Betty said, more terrified than she had ever been in her life, but determination had steadied her voice as she attempted to move in front of J.R., hoping to dissuade the drug dealer from carrying out his orders.
          Realizing what she was attempting, J.R. grasped her arms and pushed her away from him.   “No, do as he says,” he instructed, his voice quiet, as if he had accepted his fate.
          “J.R., no!” she protested, turning toward him.
          “I’m afraid there is nothing we can do to stop this from happening, Betty,” he told her, his voice barely above a whisper.  His words were intended only for her.  “I don’t think the rescuers are going to get here in time to save me, but with a little luck, they can save you.”
          Tears squeezed out of her eyes and rolled down her cheeks.   “J.R.,” she murmured, helplessly.
          He placed his hands on both sides of her head, and rested his forehead against hers for a long precious moment.  “You have to hold it together,” he told her.  More terrified than he had ever been in his life, he somehow managed to keep his voice calm.  Then he drew back and they looked at one another for a long moment, not the look of lovers, but of dear friends who did not wish to say good-bye in this manner.  “Just cooperate with them, and wait for your chance to get away,” he whispered.
          “Oh, J.R.,” she said quietly, a tremble in her voice as she raised her hand to stroke his cheek.
          “We don’t have time for this!” Kline said, roughly.  “You’ve said your good-byes, now step back from him, lady!”
          “Go on,” J.R. urged.
          Betty backed away several steps, and Kline raised his pistol again and pointed it straight at J.R.’s head.  She immediately looked away.
           J.R. knew he intended to pull the trigger this time, and turned his face away with a grimace.  Like Betty, he did not want to see it happen.
          “POLICE!  FREEZE!” 
          Kline jerked the trigger as he turned quickly toward the shout, and his gun went off.  Acting on reflex, J.R. dove at Betty, and he heard the bullet whiz past his head like an angry bee as he collided with her, taking her to the ground with him.  He landed on top of her and remained there.  Straddling her, he folded his arms around her head and rested his cheek against hers, shielding her from the bullets and from the awful scene that was being played out only a few yards away.
          Before they even hit the ground, several more shots rang out, and Kline’s body twitched and jerked as each bullet struck him.  His own gun went off again, this time into the ground at his feet.  Then, the pistol dropped from his hand, and a moment later he landed on top of it.
          Lieutenant Biddle returned his pistol to his shoulder holster that was concealed beneath his jacket, and quickly knelt beside the critically wounded drug dealer.  He shoved Kline onto his back, and confiscated the pistol.  Kline moaned, but offered no resistance.  Lifting his walkie-talkie, Biddle said, “Unit One, we have one suspect in custody.  Bring in the paramedics to our location.”
          “Roger,” crackled the reply.
          J.R. got up quickly and, taking Betty’s hands, he helped her to her feet.  “Are you all right?” he asked.
          “Yes,” she replied, shakily.  “You?’
          “Still alive,” he answered.
          She wrapped her arms around him tightly and wound her fingers into the hair at the back of his head so tightly that it hurt.  “Oh, thank God!” she wept, overcome with emotion.
          “Betty!  Jedediah!” Barnaby exclaimed as he rushed toward his relatives.
          “Barnaby!” Betty cried.  Releasing J.R., she rushed into the arms of her father-in-law.  “Thank God you got here when you did!”
          “Yes, seems we weren’t a moment too soon,” Barnaby agreed, turning toward his cousin.
          J.R.’s legs were wobbly, and he staggered to the boulder and placed his hand on it to steady himself.   When his legs threatened to give out completely, he sat back against it and stared at the ground between his feet, visibly shaken and suddenly overcome with exhaustion.
          “You all right, Jedediah?”
          J.R. drew a long, deep, shuddering breath.  “The truth is, I’m not feeling too good right now,” he admitted.  “Man, I thought I was going to buy it, that time.  If you hadn’t shown up when you did, I’d be dead right now.”
          Betty withdrew from Barnaby’s arms, and went to J.R. and embraced him tightly again.  Both of them were trembling, slightly.  
          Barnaby moved toward him, and for the first time ever, he drew his cousin into his arms, embracing him tightly, patting him affectionately on the back.  “When you went down, Jedediah, for a moment there, I thought . . . .”
          Emotion burned behind J.R.’s eyes at the unexpected fatherly embrace, then they parted, both feeling somewhat embarrassed at the public display of affection, and knowing that it probably would never happen again.  Barnaby was a considerate, compassionate man, but there was a rather distant quality about him, and physical affection was rarely demonstrated.  It had made this embrace all the more meaningful.
          As J.R.’s pulse and respiration began to return to normal, he noticed that several more police officers had joined them.  He addressed Biddle, who was still kneeling beside the groaning man on the ground.  “Lieutenant, there are three more of them.  One of them is somewhere on this side of the valley, and the other two are in the hills on the other side.”
          “I know.  I have men out scouting the area,” Biddle replied.  “They’ll find them.” 
          “They came in by helicopter,” J.R. told him.  “If they get back to it ---“
          “We found their chopper, and I have men posted there waiting for them to come back to it.”
          J.R.’s brows knitted in a puzzled frown.  “What are you doing here?” he asked, curiously.  “You and the other officers, I mean.  I expected that Barnaby would join the search, but ----“
          “We got an anonymous tip that drug dealing may be involved.”
          “Anonymous?” J.R. asked.
          “Yes.  A woman called the station late last night.  She said she had heard about the disappearance of the airplane, and said that it was a drug deal gone bad and that the plane had probably been taken down by a rival cartel.  She also indicated that the intended recipients of the drugs might try to find them, and that any survivors would be in danger.  She sounded very upset, and it also explained why the pilot flew so far off his flight plan, so we decided to treat it as a legitimate call rather than a prank.”
          J.R. and Betty exchanged meaningful glances.  “Crystal,” they said together.
          “Crystal?” Biddle asked.
          “Tyler’s girlfriend.  I don’t know her last name, but she’s a commercial airline stewardess and sometimes flies with Tyler as hostess for his passengers.  She must be worried about him.”
           “I’m sure we can track her down,” Biddle said with confidence.  “We’ve already arrested the mechanic, and he confirmed much of what the woman had told us.  What about the pilot?  Where is he?”
          Betty and J.R. exchanged somber glances again.  “He ran out on us the night of the crash with the suitcase full of drugs.  They caught up with him yesterday morning.  We heard a couple of gunshots, and this morning we saw buzzards circling over the south range, so I’m sure he’s probably dead.”
           “Lieutenant, how did you get here without us hearing you?” Betty asked.
          “A small private pilot flew over the crash site a few hours ago and radioed the coordinates of the airplane.  He flew in low enough that he could see your suitcases against the bluff, therefore confirming that there were survivors who had gotten out, but he couldn’t land because of the rough terrain.  We pinpointed the location through his reports, and when we saw the other chopper, we decided to set it down far enough away that they couldn’t hear us.”
          “You nearly got here too late,” J.R. commented.
          Barnaby placed a hand on his shoulder and squeezed it. 
          The eggbeater sounds of an approaching helicopter diverted their attention, and they watched as the Fire and Rescue helicopter selected a landing position nearby, and settled slowly to the ground.
          The side door slid open, and two Los Angeles County paramedics emerged from it with their equipment.  Both rushed to the man who lay groaning on the ground and knelt beside him.  With the skill and silent cooperation of an experienced team, they divided their tasks, one checking vital signs while the other set up an i.v.
          The others watched in silence until finally, while one paramedic continued to monitor the shooting victim, the other moved toward J.R. and Betty.
           “Take care of her first,” J.R. told him.  “She has an injured shoulder.”
          As he started to move toward her, Betty shook her head.  “No, he’s hurt worse than I am.  He may have some broken ribs.”
          “Did anyone ever tell you have a stubborn streak?” J.R. asked.
          “Don’t argue and let the man work!” she instructed.
          “Yes ma’am,” he replied with a smile.  To the paramedic, he asked, “I don’t suppose you’d have any water on you?”
          The medic smiled.  “I do, in fact.”  He presented a canteen.  “Only a few sips, though.  You’ll need to be re-hydrated under a doctor’s supervision.”
          J.R. took the canteen and passed it to Betty.  “Ladies first.” 
          This time, she did not argue.  Gratefully, she tipped the canteen to her lips and took several deep swallows before the paramedic grasped it and pulled it away from her. 
           “Easy, there!” he told her.
           “Sorry,” she apologized, wiping the delicious wetness from her mouth.
          He then passed it to J.R., and he tipped it up, intended to take only to few sips, as they had been instructed, but as Betty had done, he found it difficult to stop.  Again, the paramedic had to force the canteen away from him.
           “I know it’s hard,” the medic said.  “We’ll let you have a little more, later.”
          “Hey, Steve,” said the other paramedic to his partner. 
          Steve turned his attention to his partner, who was tending to the wounded drug dealer.
          “We need to get this one to the hospital quickly, or he’s not gonna make it.”
           Steve ran back to the chopper for the stretcher, and the gravely wounded drug dealer was lifted onto it and placed inside the helicopter. 
          “You two come with us,” Steve said, motioning for J.R. and Betty.
          Betty turned to Barnaby, who nodded.  “You two go ahead.  I’ll catch up to you later.”
          Together, Betty and J.R. walked to the helicopter and climbed into it.
          Standing beside John Biddle, Barnaby shaded his eyes with his hand and watched as the chopper rose into the air and flew away, disappearing into the brilliant blue sky.