Free Fatal Error by J. A. Jance Page B

drones were history. Besides, if it had been someone on the up-and-up, Mina wouldn’t have come skulking up here unannounced to ask Richard for help.
    As far as Richard was concerned, a customer who was interested in staying under the radar was very good news. It meant money was in play—lots of money, for the Blaylocks and, if Richard played his cards right, for him as well.
    “What do you think is the problem?” he asked.
    Mina shrugged. “I have no idea,” she said. “Neither does Mark. We need someone who can troubleshoot for us. We’re not in any condition to start bringing people back on a permanent basis,” she added, “but since you’re so familiar with the project, we were hoping you’d agree to come on board on a consulting basis.”
    “What happened?” Richard asked.
    “We put a drone up in the air, or rather, Mark put it up in the air. He’s flown them before with no trouble, but this time it crashed and burned.”
    Which, Richard thought, is exactly what I programmed it to do: take off, fly flawlessly for a while, and then drop out of the sky for no apparent reason.
    Richard let the silence between them stretch for some time before he shook his head. “I just don’t see how I can do it, Mina,” he said reluctantly. “Not after what I hoped would happen between us. There’s too much history. Just seeing you again is enough to break my heart.”
    Lying to someone’s face was a lot more difficult than telling lies over the phone, but between the last time Richard had seen Mina and now, he’d had a whole lot more practice in the art of prevarication. And he had to admit that she was a pretty capable liar herself. Ignoring the mess around her, she watched him with a kind of almost breathless, bright-eyed attention. That was how she made men sit up and take notice.
    “I’m so sorry, Richard,” she said. “Please understand. I had to let you go along with everyone else. Otherwise Mark would have figured it out.”
    For months after Richard went to work at Rutherford, Mina had flirted with him shamelessly and hinted that she was interested in having a little fling with him. That was all that happened in the end—flirting. In actual fact, he’d hardly ever gotten to first base with any real women. They scared the hell out of him. Richard talked a good game, but when it was time to deliver the goods, he always came up short.
    He had hoped things would be different with Mina, but the flirting had come to naught. Later, when he’d been given his pink slip, rather than facing up to his own shortcomings, Richard had convinced himself that was why he’d been let go—because Mark had somehow caught on to what Mina was thinking. That was the real reason Richard had dropped that little programming bomb into the Rutherford works. It was the best way for him to even the score. And now, months later, when they finally knew they had a problem, not only did they not know he was responsible for their difficulty, they had come to him to fix it. How wonderful was that?
    Richard wanted to leap off the couch and dance a little jig. Instead, he sighed and shook his head as though he were allowing himself to be persuaded entirely against his will.
    “All right,” he said resignedly. “What do you need and when?”
    “I need to fly a ten-kilo payload, one hundred or so miles, to predetermined coordinates.”
    Richard had been wondering about the end user. Mina’s statement provided the answer. After all, this was California. Other businesses might be struggling to survive, but the illegal drug industry was still booming. Richard wanted Mina to verify it, though. He wanted her to understand he wasn’t as dumb as she thought he was.
    “I suppose that means we’re dealing with one of the drug cartels,” Richard said.
    Mina looked him square in the eye and didn’t deny it, and she didn’t object to his use of the word we either. In fact, she used the same word herself.
    “We’ll make a lot of money,”