This made her pulse pick up, which was annoying. Down, girl. “How do you know I’m not self-sabotaging?”
“If you were, you would still need help,” he pointed out. “Just of a different kind. But, again: you love flying too much. I can’t see you risking your license, health, and freedom in order to gain misplaced sympathy when it’s inevitable your deception would be discovered. And given what we know about the drug test and the lotion, I don’t think your illness is a coincidence. But I cannot fathom how someone has been able to salt your food with a regurgitant. You’re in a hotel, you’re not dining in a private home, and you likely haven’t eaten at the same place twice.”
“I like variety,” she agreed. “And bread pudding.”
“Nevertheless, we need to proceed as if someone has poisoned you and behave accordingly.”
“We, huh?”
“Yes, we. I—ah.” In half a second, Tom had gone from confident to diffident. “I thought we might join forces.”
She studied him. “Why?”
He just sat there for a few torturous seconds, then replied, “Because I cordially despise the thought of anyone sabotaging you, never mind a murderer. And … I regret doubting you.”
“Oh. So it’s a guilt team-up.”
“If you like.”
“I don’t like anything about this. Not one thing.”
“Understandable. And you won’t like this, either: I need to remain by your side.”
“Huh?”
“You’re being targeted by a clever killer who knows your routine and how to strike at what you love most while simultaneously stirring up your worst fears and regrets of the past, and we have no idea who it is or what, precisely, they hope to gain from this. And so I’m not inclined to let you out of my sight.”
“Well, you’re gonna have to,” she said, equally startled and, it must be said, a smidge thrilled by his determination. “I’ve got work tomorrow.”
“But you’re ill,” he exclaimed. “You should be resting right now. And all of tomorrow. You’ve been through a great deal in a shockingly short time.”
Mental note: never tell Tom how much those words meant to me. “But I’m getting better. I’m pretty much empty now, and I won’t eat anything out of a vending machine—or any solids—until I get to the airport tomorrow. I’ll just push fluids tonight.” He opened his mouth and she cut him off. “Listen, if I’m not much improved in the morning, or if I think whatever-this-is will impact my flying, I’ll ask for a reassign. I’d never put my passengers and crew at risk. If you know anything about me, you know that, at least. But I hope I don’t have to.”
“As it happens, I was flying out tomorrow as well,” he admitted, “though I had planned to ask Abe to forgive my absence in favor of staying close to you.”
She shrugged. “If this was a movie, I’d be assigned to pilot your flight, but…”
“It’s flight 420 to BOS at eleven thirty A.M.”
“Oh my God.” She groaned, and had to laugh. “So … we’re in a movie, apparently.”
“Really?” The man’s face lit up like someone had dumped an unusual death on one of his tables. “I’ll get to see you work?”
“You’ll get to keep out of my way while I work,” she warned him. “Captain Capp and Ava are entirely different people. This is going to get weird, I think. Well. Weirder.”
“Or it’s a sign we’re fated to stay close to one another.”
“Let’s not get carried away.”
“It’s settled, then.” Tom stood, banged his upper thighs on the underside of the desk, sat, pushed the chair farther back, managed to stand again without hurting himself. She managed—barely—to trap her giggle before it escaped.
This hunky klutz wants to guard my body? Pretty sure he’s solid bruises from thighs to ankles. Argh, don’t think about his thighs … or his ankles …
“I will remain with you the rest of the evening and take you to the airport,” he pronounced, which was annoying, but she was tired and let it slide. “Your rental car may be compromised.”
Her annoyance disappeared. “Jesus. I didn’t even think of that.”
“We’ll all fly to Boston—”
“All?”
“Abe and my niece are traveling with me.”
“Ah. No longer horrified at the thought of exposing your family to me?”
“I apologize,” he said seriously. “I behaved foolishly.”
She sighed. The apology was sweet, but she couldn’t fault him for listening to his instincts. “Forget about it. It’s better to err on the side of ‘whoops, my bad’ when it comes to family, anyway.”
“Thank you.” Then he just looked at her. Just when the silence started to skew from charged to awkward, he added, “You require antihistamines, an antinauseant, and I wish to drop off your moisturizer for testing. Please remain in your room and leave it locked and dead-bolted until I return. Do not let anyone in. Not even room service.”
“A first in my life, but okay.”
“And you have to shower.”
“Rude.”
“A cold shower.”
She shivered. “Pass.”
“It’s the first step toward recovery,” he explained, looking earnest and adorable. “Get rid of the irritant. Do you have any diphenhydramine?”
Eh? “Not on me, no.”
“Or calamine?”
“Yeah, I grabbed some of that yesterday.”
“All right. I will be back within sixty minutes. Please take all precautions until then.”
“While showering.”
He laughed. “Yes. A cautious shower.”
Am I really going along with this? Looks like. And it’s nothing to do with the man’s essential hotness. Well. That’s not the main reason.
If she was honest with herself—and post-Hazelden, she tried to be—it was mostly fear. Someone had her in their crosshairs and she didn’t care for that in the slightest. And while Tom appointing himself bodyguard was presumptuous and possibly problematic, he was also the one who put it together and who seemed determined to get to the bottom of … well … everything.
That she could understand, even if it was the only thing about this she understood.
Sighing, she got up, flipped the lock and the dead bolt, and went to run the
(warm, thank you very much, Tom)
shower.
Twenty-Six
“This isn’t how I pictured this.” This in a low voice as he smeared medication all over her arms.
“You’re blind to the erotic qualities of calamine lotion, Dr. Baker?”
He snorted. True to his word, he’d returned within the hour in time to hand her a robe, politely look away as she dropped the towel to slip into it, then got her to sit down and briskly rubbed her hair with another towel. After she’d gone to the bathroom to comb out the mess he made, he politely hectored her into downing a couple of Benadryl, gave her sugared ginger to chew on
(Where the hell did he find that? And where has it been all my life? It’s roughly a zillion times better than Pepto!)
and then got out the calamine lotion.
He cleared his throat as he dabbed more lotion until she looked like someone with vitiligo. And not someone beautifully cool, like Winnie Harlow. More like Michael Jackson just before the autopsy. “I … think about you all the time.”
“Yeah? Well, I definitely haven’t thought of you more than several times an hour for the last few days, so don’t get your hopes up.”
He smiled and dabbed.
“Like what?” she persisted. “When you think of me?”
“I think about the night we met.” Dab. “And about what it might have been like…” Dab-dab. Dab. “… if you’d invited me up that first night.”
She could feel her face getting warm, because she’d be lying if she claimed the thought hadn’t crossed her mind, either. “Well. It wouldn’t be like this. I’m pretty sure. Is the calamine doing anything for you?”
“
Not really,” he confessed, and they both giggled.
Twenty-Seven
THE LIST
Check-in MSP
More calamine lotion
Brand new moisturizer THANKS TO THE PSYCHO WHO HAUNTS MY NIGHTMARES AND ALSO MY LOTION
Never come back
Ever
The door had no sooner closed behind her than someone came from somewhere and flung his arms around her.
“G.B.?” She was so startled she nearly dropped her tea. “Oh. We’re doing … whatever this is.”
“It’s so good to have you back, though you were technically only off the boards for a day or so,” he declared into her shoulder. He smelled like coffee and oranges and (faintly) sarcasm. “Are you okay?”
“Thank you, G.B. And yeah.” She reached up and patted the back of his arm. “Uh. How long are we doing this?”
“Just shut up and let me comfort you.”
“No problem,” she replied, stealing a glance at the clock over his shoulder. Plenty of time to put up with whatever-this-was before check-in. And she was feeling immeasurably better than last night, so she didn’t have to worry about barfing all over his crisp uniformed shirt front. Or back. “Take your time. But not really.”
“Fine, I’m done.” He drew back and squinted at her. “Well. You look great, for what it’s worth. Hardly traumatized at all.”
“You should have seen me yesterday.” For a few seconds, she wondered if G.B. could be her saboteur and then realized that until the psycho was caught, she could look forward to doubting absolutely everyone in her life. Not that she’d let many people in after Danielle. But still, it hurt to wonder about G.B.’s motives. “Doesn’t matter,” she added. “I mean—it’s good. To be back! At work. Very good to be back. Y’know, at work.”
“The mind of a poet, the speech of a concussed cheerleader.”
“Hey! Leave cheerleaders alone.”
By now other crew members had come up to them and were offering congratulations. The new attendant, Becka Miller, looked particularly curious. For a “private” drug test, a shocking number of people knew all about it. She made a mental note to discuss the matter with her union rep and resisted the urge to blast a whistle to force instant dispersal. “Thanks, everyone, but I’m fine and I just want to get back to work.”
“What work?” G.B. asked, smirking. “Admit it: your biggest challenge is to stay awake while the autopilot does ninety percent of the work.”
“Don’t talk about Captain Bellyflopper that way,” India mock scolded, gently plowing through the forest of crew members that had sprung up around her. Cripes, she hadn’t even hung up her suit jacket.
“Oh, shut up. Both of you.” Pause. “Well, G.B. might have a point. If it’s a really long run. Regardless, I’m ready to work.”
“We could tell,” India said. “What with how you’re back to work and all. No way you’re here unless you want to be, not with all the hours you’ve got in your bank.”
“Exactly. Nice to be flying with you again, India.”
“Well, I am terrific. Seriously, how are you?”
“Seriously, let’s get to work.”
Ava freshened her tea, scored a croissant—her stomach was audibly goinging and boinging at the sight of it; apparently her bout of whatever-it-was was over—and counted her blessings. For many airlines, it was rare for the same pilot to keep flying with the same crew, but Northeastern Southwest paid big bucks for studies that showed familiar crews worked better together.
Duh, G.B. had scoffed at the time. Can you imagine office drones who had to work for a new boss every day?
“Drones” seems unnecessarily mean, she’d pointed out.
He’d ignored her, as was his wont. You go to your cubicle or whatever and the HR rep is new every day, the company president is new, and the receptionist is new. And they’re all different each day. Can you imagine? The world would be in flames, Ava. FLAMES.
So she wasn’t at all surprised to see the familiar faces, which in this case
“Forget about my wife’s cousin,” India said as he handed over her paperwork. “My wife’s other cousin is a cop, and now he’s dying to meet you.”
was a mixed blessing.
“All of you stop bugging me and go straight to hell,” she commanded. “Not you, Becka. You’re fine. What’s our load, India?”
“Full flight, eight oversold. Weather’s good, should be a straight shot to Logan. And no live animals this trip, thank God.” To Becka, who had been a flight attendant less than a month: “Much less stressful. For everyone, really. Especially now they’re cracking down on fake service animals.”
“It’s why we can’t have nice things,” G.B. added. “Also, how dumb do the geese* think we are?” It wasn’t a rhetorical question. The answer: extremely dumb. “Who ever heard of a service boa constrictor? What the hell would a service snake even do?” To India: “Make one Snakes on a Plane joke. See what happens.”
India, wise for his years, raised his hands and took a step back.
“To be fair, it was little. Barely three feet long,” Ava pointed out while G.B. shuddered so hard it looked like a brief seizure. “And it didn’t bite anyone. Just wanted to keep under the guy’s sleeve. I think it was cold.”
“That checks out,” Becka announced, looking up from her phone. “Also, there’s no such thing as a snake service animal.”
“Oh my God.” G.B. breathed, staring at her. Becka looked up and was startled to see several people giving her the “slash across the throat” sign. “Scourge!” he declared. “You’re holding the scourge of mankind right there in your palm.”
“Uh,” Becka replied, slipping the phone in her pocket.
“You really aren’t,” Ava assured her. “And it’s a sliding scale anyway. Last month the scourge of mankind was Netflix.”
“Do not get me started on Netflix!”
“Next month it’ll probably be the uniforms again,” India added.
“Never!” G.B. actually backed away from them, as if Ava and India were going to strip off his uniform then and there. “They finally don’t suck. I’m happy, relatively speaking. My mom’s letting me put in a gym!”
“Hey, that’s great! And the uniforms weren’t that bad,” Ava said, looking up from her preflight lists. “At least we don’t have to wear high heels anymore.”
That snapped him out of it. “Of course not. Management isn’t entirely insane, and they don’t think it’s 1955, either. But you have to admit, the old reds were a disaster. Bad design, bad material, bad color, bad execution, bad everything, just all around bad, a boatload of bad.”
G.B. had a point, though the big lug looked good in anything. The old uniforms were bright, screaming-red, with screaming-red flared pants for the men and screaming red A-line, knee-length skirts for the women and bright white dress shirts—totally impractical for flight attendants, who by the end of a shift were nearly always decorated with coffee at best. These were paired with screaming-red box-cut jackets that swallowed figures and flared sleeves that swallowed wrists and anything the person wearing the jacket was trying to pick up. Entire cans of ginger ale had disappeared up those cuffs. The white belt and white scarf were mandatory.
We looked like walking stop signs. Angry, self-aware stop signs.
The new ones, designed by Wisconsin native Lisa Hackwith, with final sketches voted on by employees, weren’t just an improvement, they were stylish and practical: comfortable khaki pants and skirts (elastic waists and loads of pockets). Short-sleeved button-up tops in navy blue or cream—dealer’s choice. Short-sleeved button-up empire dress in navy blue. Reversible fitted jacket—navy on one side, khaki on the other—and through some sort of dark sorcery Ava didn’t understand, even more pockets than the pants. The khaki and navy blue sashes and scarves were optional; the belt, mandatory. No one really knew why, but they didn’t fight management on the belt issue, as they’d gotten more than they’d asked for.
“Um, I know it sou
nds dumb and shallow,” Becka began.
“Oooooh!”
“You have our attention,” India prompted. “Let your pettiness out.”
“… but I didn’t apply here until I knew the uniforms were gonna change.” She patted her bright, bright red hair self-consciously. “I mean—my God. Can you imagine?”
“Well, it’s shallow,” G.B. said, “but not dumb. So that’s okay.”
“You’re one to talk,” Ava teased. To Becka: “G.B. led the revolt. Give us khakis or give us death! That was literally one of the signs he made.” Oh. Lord. So many signs. She’d fallen over stacks of them on more than one occasion.
“Damn right. D’you know how hard it is to meet women who aren’t disappointed when they find out I’m not a pilot? When on top of that I’m dressed head to toe in an uncomfortable outfit that makes me look like a mobile blood bag?”
“Is this the part where we pretend to believe you have any trouble getting laid, you flaming man-slut?”
“Hey, I’m good, but that was a major drawback even for me.” Ignoring Becka’s grimace and India’s fake throwing-up noises, he added, “But I gotta give you guys credit. If the pilots hadn’t gotten on board—”
“I see what you did there.”
“—it would have been a lot harder to get management’s attention.”
Ava waved that away. “If you guys have a problem—with the uniforms, a company policy, what have you, then I have a problem. I have a huge problem.” As the giggles started, she added, “That came out wrong. I meant to say I’ll back you.”
“You do have huge problems and you did back us, so no complaints on my—shit.”
As G.B. bent to retrieve the sugar packets he’d accidentally spilled, Ava saw the bulge in his trouser pocket, grabbed her clipboard, and whacked him in the hip.
“Ow!” G.B. straightened and managed to simultaneously glare and look guilty.
“What have I said about bringing Tasers on board?”
“… not to?”
“Not to,” she replied firmly. “With your luck, it’ll fail at a critical moment or you’ll tase the wrong person. And who’s going to mess with someone your size?”
Truth, Lies, and Second Dates Page 12