“What happened?” Jessica was closer now.
“Get up, you son of a bitch,” muttered Alec. “You’ve got a plane to fly.”
“He’s not flying anything,” said Maxim grimly. He sank into a seat, paying no attention to my father, or the gun now trained at his chest.
“What did you do?” demanded Jessica. “Alec? What did you do?” Her voice hitched.
“I didn’t do anything,” Alec muttered. “Ask your boss.”
“Max?” She was standing now, and walked toward us on wobbling legs, gripping seats on either side of the aisle. She fell to her knees beside Jeremiah, hands out to the sides, as if she wasn’t sure what to do with them.
“He can’t fly,” I said quietly, watching as a cough wracked through Jeremiah’s body. The blood on his chest made the bile crawl up my throat, or maybe it was the knowledge that we were thousands of feet above the ground without a pilot.
I didn’t want to die.
Alec rose quickly. He glanced at me, just long enough for me to see the terror in his eyes before he spoke to my father.
“You’ve got this, Ben?”
“I got it,” Dad answered. “What’s the plan?”
Alec siphoned in a breath, as if preparing to jump into cold water.
“Sit down, all of you.”
I didn’t listen. I followed Alec right to the front of the plane. He didn’t look surprised when I took the small foldout seat behind the pilot’s chair. The dashboard blinked with lights—red, green, white. There were dials and buttons, all of which I had no idea what to make of. A wide window wrapped around the front of the cockpit, the night beyond our view black as coal, the land thousands of feet below us twinkling with city lights.
It was almost beautiful, but for the knowledge that we might be very soon crashing headfirst into it.
The autopilot light was glowing from the center of something that looked similar to a steering wheel.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” Alec confessed.
“You took pilot’s lessons,” I said.
“I never got out of the simulator.”
I swallowed. “You probably could have not mentioned that.”
“Anna . . .”
“Land the plane, Alec. You can do this.”
I wished I felt as confident as I sounded. I reached around the back of his seat, squeezing his shoulder. He touched my hand briefly, then took a deep breath and picked up the radio.
“Mayday, Mayday,” he said. “This is . . .” he clicked the button. “Where’s the number?” He must have found it somewhere, because he pushed the Talk button on the radio again. “This is N-two-nine-four-six. Our pilot’s been injured.”
A few seconds later someone responded.
“N-two-nine-four-six, this is air traffic control. Identify yourself.”
“Alec Flynn,” he said. “I’m . . .”
“We know,” interrupted the operator. “What’s the status of your crew?”
“Two shot,” said Alec. “One restrained.”
A woman came on the line.
“Alec, it’s Janelle,” she said, and I’ll be damned if I wasn’t happy to hear her voice. “Local PD alerted us that you’d reached the airfield.”
Marcos. He must have arrived shortly after we’d taken off.
“Is Stein with you?” she asked.
“Stein, Barlow, and Rowe,” answered Alec.
The radio turned to static for a few seconds before she returned to the line.
“One big happy family. A private investigator called me earlier with information linking them all together.”
My father. I nearly smiled.
“I’m turning back to Tampa,” said Alec.
She put someone else on the line. An experienced pilot, who assured us he’d given enough flying lessons to get us down safely. He guided Alec through a series of tasks I didn’t understand. First, to locate the airspeed indicator, and make sure we didn’t fall below one hundred and forty knots. When Alec took the jet off autopilot, I bit the inside of my cheek hard and squeezed his biceps.
“So far so good,” I whispered to him.
“I fucking hate flying,” he responded.
Alec redirected our course and turned the plane back to Tampa. I dug my heels in as the force pulled me against the safety harness. It wasn’t the smoothest transition, but we had yet to make a nosedive.
“How’s it going up there?” my father called.
“We’re still in the air, aren’t we?” I shouted back.
As we closed in on the Tampa airport, the bright lights of the city gave way to the black waters of the Bay. Even from this high up we could see the long string of red markers lining the runway.
The operator on the line had gone quiet, waiting for us to make our descent.
“Talk to me,” Alec said quietly.
I didn’t know what to say. I wished there was something encouraging I could tell him, or something that reflected the intensity of what I was feeling as I looked down on the hard ground below.
Instead I said the first thing that came to my mind.
“I want to get married on the beach. That beach you took me to when we first got together. I’m going to wear the prettiest dress you’ve ever seen, and underneath, I’ll have on blue panties.”
“Blue?” I could hear the smile in his voice.
“For my something blue,” I said. I knew practically nothing about weddings, but I knew that much. “Paisley will be a flower girl. And after, I want to spend a week in bed with you.”
“That can be arranged,” he said.
“And I want a house,” I said, my words growing stronger. “It doesn’t have to be big, but I want a nice kitchen where I can cook. And I want our families to come over for barbecues. And if I ever run away I want you to chase me. That’s what I want.”
“I love you, Anna,” he said.
He might as well have said I’m sorry.
“Hey,” I said, squeezing his shoulder. “We’re here because of Maxim Stein. He’s here because he lost the trial. He lost, baby. That means we won. That means we’re done with him, and you own one of the biggest private aviation companies in the world.”
“That’s worth approximately six dollars.”
“Well,” I said with a watery laugh. “Then you can sell it and buy a Big Mac.”
The stars above twinkled, just like the lights of the city below. They were hypnotizing, I couldn’t look away.
Alec shifted in his seat.
“We’re going to bring it back,” he said.
There was a familiar confidence in his voice.
“You and me,” he said. “We’re going to rework the whole company. Start from the ground up. Take it in the direction Max should have years ago.”
“I’m in,” I said.
“I love you,” he said, and this time I heard the voice of the man who could have moved mountains if someone gave him a shovel.
“Land this plane and marry me, Alec Flynn.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said.
The pilot returned to the line then, and walked Alec through the landing procedures. Alec lined the plane up with the red flashing lights, and began our descent, pulling back on the throttle to reduce the power. It felt like we were free-falling at one point, and I had to bite back the scream. But Alec held fast, knuckles white on the stick. He extended the flaps and lowered the landing gear as the ground came closer and closer, and the engine roared louder, and in the last seconds before our wheels touched the runway, I loosened my belt and reached around the seat, holding on to his shoulders for dear life.
We bounced, and then bounced again. And then the plane slowed.
And then the plane stopped.
From outside I could hear the sirens. Flashing red and blue lights ba
rreled in our direction.
“We’re alive?” I couldn’t let Alec go. I doubted he could breathe with how hard I was squeezing him.
“Why does that sound like a question?” He gave a shaky laugh. I released the seat belt and jumped into his lap, kissing him all over the face. He still gripped the throttle with one hand.
“I don’t think I can get up,” he said.
“You don’t have to,” I told him. And then I kissed him some more.
* * *
The police were the first to board the plane, followed closely by the FBI. They took Maxim and his secretary into custody, and Jessica bawled while they were read their rights. Before the end, she was already ratting him out, trying to make a deal with the FBI to get her sentence reduced.
I really hoped that wasn’t an option.
The paramedics came and took Jeremiah. My father went as well, though in a different ambulance. He made certain to shake Alec’s hand before they loaded him into the truck. We told him we’d be right behind him.
Before we could follow, Janelle took our statements, and told us that they’d found the airport security guard passed out in the trunk of the white sedan. She was looking for the prosecution to add assault of a federal employee to Maxim’s long list of charges.
“I treated you like a son, Alec.” Maxim’s voice cut through the sirens, through the other voices, through all of it. The sound had been permanently ingrained into my mind, like nails on a chalkboard.
I turned before Alec. He’d heard it, but seemed to be debating whether or not to give the man who’d nearly killed him the time of day. Marcos had cuffed him and was loading him into the back of the police car. I had no doubt the arrest of an escaping Maxim Stein was going to boost his stock around the department ten times over, and I was glad for that.
“You tried,” said Alec.
He glanced back toward the ambulance, where the gurney holding Jeremiah Barlow was currently being loaded. Maxim followed his gaze, hunching in his seat. All traces of the billionaire business tycoon were gone, and left in its place was a desperate, shriveled old man.
Alec placed his hand in mine, and led me away from the planes and the flashing lights. Away from Maxim Stein. Away from all of it.
Toward something better. The unknown.
Epilogue
Things were good with Alec. Perfect, even in their imperfection. As the dust settled, we found our rhythm, one with laughter, and good food, and long nights that led to heavily caffeinated mornings. But I was still me, despite how he’d changed my life, and the time came when that old urge returned, and quickly became impossible to ignore.
He’d known it would. He’d even put it in his vows.
If you need to run, I’m coming with you.
I smiled as I thought of that now, and attached the white thigh-high to the new garter strap I’d picked up a week before the wedding. It matched the little baby-doll nightie Amy had given me for my bachelorette party.
I straightened it in the mirror, listening as Alec finished his phone call on the other side of the door.
“No, we’re switching everything that direction. That’s right. Green Fusion. Yes, I promise you the patent was approved.”
I smiled at the passion in his voice. We’d talked this through after Alec had taken over Force Enterprises. The company had been worth almost nothing by the time Maxim Stein was put away, but we didn’t need a whole load of money. We needed each other, and with Alec’s passion and good business sense, we were going to build something great.
Force Enterprises was switching to green technologies.
I considered giving him a moment to finish the call, but decided against it. I was his wife now. Mrs. Anna Flynn. I could distract him anytime I wanted. And since we only had a few days off before I had to finish the class I was taking to renew my social work license, I was going to make the most of my distractibility rights.
I pushed the door open, and stood in the threshold, hands on my hips.
He was pacing in front of the sliding glass doors wearing jeans and a plain black T-shirt, the sun setting on the long stretch of ocean beyond. We’d reach St. Thomas tomorrow, our current runaway destination. But for tonight, the honeymoon deck of this cruise ship belonged to us.
He’d been in the middle of a sentence, but stopped short when he saw me, mouth gaping.
I smiled. Then did a slow turn to give him a better look.
“Right . . . What?” he said to the person he’d been speaking to. “Look, something just came up. I’ve got to call you back.”
He hung up the phone. Tossed it on the small nightstand. Then gave me a long, smoldering look that started at my patent leather pumps and stopped just below my shoulders. As always, my pulse fluttered under his gaze, and the need tightened inside my belly.
I twisted the strap of the tiny nightgown around one finger and sauntered toward him.
“My new favorite color is white,” he said. “Definitely white.”
“Yesterday it was pink.” As in, the pink teddy I’d worn on the first night of our trip.
“That was yesterday,” he said, eyes now glued on my backside as I crawled onto the bed and stretched out like a cat. “I’m a complicated man, Anna.”
“I can see that.”
I rolled onto my back, crossing my knees just so he would have to uncross them. His fingers slid up the inside of my ankle.
“Everything go all right with the call?”
His thumb rubbed up the back of my calf as he gently eased open my thighs.
“It did,” he said. “There’s still a chance to back out if you don’t feel good about it, though.”
“I’m about to feel real good about it,” I said, dragging him over me. When he was close, I kissed the tip of his nose. I didn’t want him second-guessing this deal he’d worked so hard for.
“It’s perfect,” I said. “Force goes green, and the patent proceeds to go CASA. What’s not to like?” Alec had made certain that a portion of Trevor Marshall’s payment for the Green Fusion patent went straight to a payee, who would later delegate it toward his mental health care. The rest of the funds would be donated to someone who hadn’t attempted to kill me.
Alec’s mouth found my neck, and nipped a line down to my shoulder. I gasped.
“Good,” Alec repeated as he settled his weight between my legs. His hand rode up the underside of my thigh, stopping just short of my center. “Then on to my next order of business. Punishing you for interrupting my very important meeting.”
“On my honeymoon.”
His mouth lowered over my breast, and teased my nipple through the sheer fabric.
“Let me make it up to you,” he said.
And he did. Three times over.
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