by John Etzil
Except that she was married.
Airliner Down Chapter 4
One hour and fifty minutes before the event
“Good evening, young man, may I offer you a beverage?” the flight attendant asked the young man that sat next to Kevin. He asked for a Coke. Kevin opened his eyes and looked up to see if he recognized her as part of a cabin crew he’d worked with. She was tall, midtwenties or so, with fair skin, blue eyes, and strawberry-blond hair tied back in a neat ponytail. Her face was symmetrical, her body lean. Her voice and features were familiar, but he didn’t recognize her. He lingered a little too long on her name tag.
“How about you, sir? Can I get you anything?” Her voice was flat and uncaring as she smirked down at him with both hands on her hips, confirming that he had been caught red-handed admiring her physique.
“Hi, Beverly.” Warmth rose in his neck and he started to blush. “Maker’s Mark with ice.”
“Sure.” She handed him the miniature bottle of bourbon along with a cup of ice. No napkin. She unlocked her cart and moved it forward to serve the next row.
Kevin closed his eyes and rested his head on the seat back to think. The way she’d handled their interaction was odd; something was off, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. It couldn’t be that she’d caught him admiring her breasts. She must get that all the time, and she should be immune to those weak male transgressions by now. He’d read in a magazine once that, while woman were reluctant to admit it, they loved when their breasts mesmerized the opposite sex. The “hello, look at me, I’m right here,” while they pointed to their eyes during conversation with a lust-stricken man who stared at their chest was really just a socially expected reaction. Deep inside, it excited women to have that control over the weaker male sex. For a woman to be walking down the sidewalk and have men trip over their own two feet as they passed by was empowering. Didn’t seem like Beverly was too excited though.
Maybe Playboy shouldn’t be his go-to read for learning about women…
He studied her as she served the other passengers and saw that her cold demeanor had disappeared. Her smile was genuine and her laughter, while subdued and professional, was real. What was up with her?
“Daaaang,” an accented voice interrupted his thoughts. “I’d love to hit that.”
Kevin turned and saw a young man, about eighteen, sitting across the aisle from him. The guy was thin with light brown skin and short dark hair. His arms were covered in tattoos, so many that they ran together and Kevin couldn’t figure out where one ended and another started. Maybe that was the point. The only thing that he could make out was the one that read “209” in big bold numbers down the back of the guy’s forearm.
Based on his behavior and how he was dressed, Kevin concluded that it was some kind of gang symbol. Just his luck, Tess had seated him next to a street punk who was now leaning out into the aisle in an aggressive fashion, ogling Beverly’s backside as she leaned over a few rows in front of them to hand a window-seat passenger their beverage.
Kevin leaned away from him to avoid breathing the same air. The young male, oblivious to Kevin and everyone else around him, squirmed in his seat, squeezed his knees together, and placed his hand on the crotch of his oversized jeans and fixed himself multiple times. The dumbass was clueless about how obvious and insulting his sexual attentions were. Or he just didn’t care. Sheesh.
Kevin grabbed his noise-canceling Bose headphones, switched it on, and placed it over his ears but didn’t turn the music on. Instead, he closed his eyes and enjoyed the solitude that the noise-canceling technology delivered. The drone of the turbine engines was barely audible, and the sounds of the excited holiday vacationers as they talked and laughed out loud were reduced to a low murmur of white noise in the background. Ahh, technology.
After a few minutes of peace and quiet, he selected Vivaldi’s Four Seasons in iTunes and hit play. The tranquility of listening to the violin concerti while sipping his whiskey soothed his soul like nothing he’d ever experienced. It made him relax and forget about the chattering fellow passengers who would spend the next five hours seated across from him.
Combined with the wonderfully relaxing effect of the alcohol, the music helped him forget his deeper problems. Gone were thoughts of his ex-wife Patty and how their loving relationship had been destroyed by sickness, torn to shreds by a bacterial organism that had directly turned their three-person family into two, and indirectly into one.
Most important of all, it helped him forget about Kevin Jr., his dead infant son.
Airliner Down Chapter 5
One hour and thirty minutes before the event
Twenty-two rows in front of Kevin, Cheryl Lamburt leaned over and snuggled her nose into the crook of her new husband’s neck. She’d always appreciated the smell of the opposite sex, but the excitement his scent created in her was off the charts. She wrapped her arms around his, squeezed, and kissed him hard on the neck before settling back into her seat.
She thought about how fortunate she was to have finally found someone who did it for her on all levels. She’d be the first to admit that years of bad dates, bad relationships, boring double dates with friends, and awful Internet meetings at the local coffee shop had tainted her feelings toward the men in her world. It had gotten so bad that she’d decided to take a break from dating and focus on her work. Her job as an assistant professor of chemistry at Princeton University had given her a host of options for a career path, and she was determined to make the most of them.
Until she’d met Jack Lamburt. Damn her friend for connecting them. A benign Friday-night dinner at a local Italian eatery had changed her life. As soon as she’d entered the restaurant, her eyes had been drawn to him like magnets to a steel rod. She had to work to close her mouth when she was introduced to him.
Her friend Kathy had told her that he’d be joining them, but she’d downplayed it. “Don’t worry, it’s not a setup. He just got out of a bad breakup, and he doesn’t want to date anyone right now.” Which was fine with Cheryl. She was in no mood to be set up with another friend of a friend.
Kathy’s husband Eric had been Jack’s roommate for two years at Notre Dame. Jack had been one year ahead of Eric, and after Jack had graduated, they’d stayed in touch and remained good friends. Eric had gone the finance route, landing a job on Wall Street soon after graduating, while Jack was a little more civic-minded. Perhaps it was because his father had done well for himself by opening up a chain of McDonald’s across the Northeastern US. He now owned thirteen of them, with no signs of slowing down, and Jacks upbringing never wanted for money.
Like any proud father, he’d wanted to groom his son to take over the business, but health-conscious Jack would rather have bamboo shoots shoved under his fingernails than peddle fast food. So after graduation Jack landed a government job in McLean, Virginia, better known as Langley, where he currently worked as a CIA analyst. He’d decided that he needed a change of scenery after his rough breakup, so he had taken some time off and headed north to Princeton to visit with Eric and Kathy.
Jack was seated at the head of the table when Cheryl arrived, and even sitting down she could tell that he was tall and athletic—she guessed about six foot four or five. He had broad shoulders that filled out his dress shirt, and she could see his biceps flex when he raised his drink to make a toast or gestured with his hands during the conversation. She had a big weakness for tall, athletic men, and she had to work hard to hide her excitement over him throughout the evening. She didn’t even know him, and she had butterflies in her stomach just from observing his demeanor. She wondered if anyone could tell by her subdued presence that she was nervous.
The night had been uneventful, a “nice to meet you” handshake upon departing, and just like that, he was gone and it was over. When she took her German Shepard, London, out for his final walk of the night, she wondered if she would ever see him again.
Unable to get him out of her mind, she’d tossed and turned all night,
hardly getting any sleep. His presence in her thoughts had triggered something in her that she hadn’t felt in a long time. A mixture of excitement that only meeting a new special someone for the first time could generate, narcotic and addictive while soothing and comfortable at the same time. The way he looked at her, his easy smile, his sense of humor, his kindness to the servers—it all just meshed with her philosophy on life, and he was everything she wanted in a man. And, God, he was hot.
Jack had called her Sunday morning and asked her if she’d like to get a cup of coffee later that day before he drove back to D.C. Even though her heart was beating like a jackhammer in her chest, she surprised herself by being able to answer in a nonchalant manner. “Sure, that’d be okay.”
When she hung up the phone, her hands had been trembling.
She nudged Jack. “Hey, wake up. You can’t sleep on our honeymoon.”
“What? I’m not sleeping.” He looked over at her, grinned, and placed his head on her shoulder.
She elbowed him in the ribs. “You’re supposed to be so excited that you’re pacing the aisle, unable to stay in your seat for more than five minutes. Remember how you used to say how hot I was? Before I was pregnant?”
“Are. How hot you are,” he corrected her with a smile and laid his hand across her inner thigh, her one ticklish spot that he’d discovered by accident on their first date, and squeezed softly. Before the baby had started growing he had been relentless in his thigh squeezes, borderline torturous, making her squirm in her seat whenever he was in a devilish mood. Now his thigh squeezes had morphed into gentle caresses.
“I’ve been aroused since we got married. Does that count for anything?”
Cheryl eyes lit up and she giggled as she leaned over to give him a playful kiss. “You bet it does.”
Beverly rolled her beverage cart next to them. She locked the wheels and held out a cocktail napkin.
“Hi, folks, can I get you a beverage this evening?”
“Can I have a bottled water?” asked Cheryl.
“Sure. And you, sir?”
“I’ll have a Diet Coke, lots of ice, please,” said Jack.
Cheryl knew that he wanted more than a Diet Coke, but being a supportive husband, he’d refrained from alcohol after she became pregnant. A gesture that she’d found nice, but she never believed in holding anyone back, so it also annoyed her.
“He’ll have some rum with that too, please,” said Cheryl. “A double.”
She turned to Jack, “I told you, don’t be martyring up to me and trying to ‘share my pain.’” She finger quoted and switched to an exaggerated arm pinch, a habit she had when adding emphasis to a point she was trying to make. “Got that, old man? I mean, honey?” She leaned over and kissed him hard on the lips and he grinned.
“Okay, honey, I’ve got it.” He squeezed her hand under the blanket and she rested her head on his shoulder. A sigh of contentment came from her lips as she closed her eyes and snuggled in close to him, both arms wrapped around his bicep as he sipped his drink.
Airliner Down Chapter 6
One hour and twenty minutes before the event
“Miss. Oh, miss!” the old man in 3B bellowed out to Carol, waggling his empty glass at her, rattling the ice cubes that hadn’t had a chance to melt in the thirty seconds it had taken him to down his second drink. “Another drink. I’ll have another drink. Scotch ’n’ rocks,” he called out.
Carol, the senior member of the flight crew with over twenty years’ seniority, had her pick of stations on every flight. She chose to work first class because most of the people she served were hard-working businesspeople. Nice folks with good social skills who were appreciative of her service. But not this guy. He was just obnoxious.
She looked over at the loudmouth and fake-smiled at him. “I’ll be right with you, sir.” Jackass.
He looked to be in his fifties and wore steel-rimmed glasses that were a seventies throwback. Fat, balding with a bad combover, he was stuffed into a polyester suit that had maybe fit him in high school, on a good day. His tie was so tight that it dug into the fat around his neck, causing it to hang over his collar like the jowls of an old Saint Bernard. He had a blotchy red face, from high blood pressure or alcohol abuse or whatever else he’d done to kill himself over the years. Yech. Carol’s stomach turned as she took in his appearance, and she forced herself to look away before her nausea progressed to vomiting.
“One minute, sir,” she said.
“I’ll have another drink,” he called out, rattling his glass again, just in case she hadn’t gotten the message the first thirty times he’d done it.
“Just a minute, sir.” Double jackass.
Beverly came into the galley next to Carol and opened up one of the cabinets. “My drinks are going like crazy. I’m out of cups already. Can you spare any?”
“Looks like someone didn’t refill their station supplies before we left. I’ll be writing that in my report, young lady.”
“Hey, don’t blame me. I was a last-minute swapout with Tess.”
“I saw that. She gave up a three-day layover in Hawaii for you?”
“Yeah, I owe her big-time. Of course, now that I see she didn’t stock her station correctly, I’ll have to punish her.” She playfully smacked Carol’s ass. “How many whacks should I give her?”
“Please. Get in line.” Carol smiled, and Beverly laughed in response to her pretend dislike.
“I know, it’s not fair that one person could be so beautiful. I’d hate her if she wasn’t so cool,” Beverly replied.
The old man in 3B interrupted them with more cup rattling. “Did you hear me? I’ll have another. Please.”
“Wow, do you believe this guy?” Beverly asked. “Must be a full moon tonight.”
“’Tis the season.” Carol winked at her and pretended to chug a shot. “It’s going to be the flight from hell with this clown on board. I’ll double up his drinks, and maybe I’ll get lucky and he’ll pass out.”
“Come on, be honest. You’re attracted to him, aren’t you?” Beverly nudged her shoulder.
“Oh. My. God. Are you kidding me? Have you seen this guy?”
“Hey, you know what they say about not judging a book by its cover. You’d never know how good a lover he is unless you try him out. How would you be able to go through life not knowing? Could you live with yourself? I think that you should sleep with him. Tonight. Consider it your Christmas penance for the time you had sex in the pilots’ lounge with that married French copilot.”
“Oh dear, I don’t know how those rumors get started.” Carol shook her head and sighed. “He was a captain, not a copilot.”
“Right. Just the same, I’ll put in a good word for you with your new friend in 3B. I’ll tell him that you want him. That you’re fantastic in bed and that you won’t take no for an answer. That men line up for your services. They fly in from France. Pay you, even. But he won’t have to. Wait in line. Or pay you. Unless he wants to pay you. Brad Pitt pays you. What should I tell him your normal rate is?”
Carol giggled and shook her head. “Don’t you have work to do? I hear the cattle in the back of the plane are thirsty.”
Beverly smiled mischievously at Carol before turning to leave. She couldn’t resist throwing out one last dig to her friend, letting it fly in a serious tone that was loud enough for everyone in first class to hear. “Okay, Carol, I’ll find out what hotel he’s staying in tonight and get his room number for you.”
Beverly sauntered over to 3B, her hips swinging as if in an old Mae West movie, and stopped right next to him. She looked right in his eyes and smiled.
“My drink?” he asked, holding out his glass.
She pushed his arm away, leaned over and whispered in his ear, “Carol will be right with you, sir,” her voice raspy and seductive like a young Kathleen Turner. She winked, looked him up and down with the lustful approval of a sailor at a strip club, and proceeded down the aisle.
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Acknowledgments
To my Advanced Reader Team, the best beta readers in the history of the planet earth. Thank you so much for taking the time to read Urban Justice and offering your input.
To my readers: THANK YOU!
One of the rewards of being a writer is hearing from fans. If you have a free minute, I’d appreciate a review.
Until next time ;-)
About the Author
John Etzil graduated from College in the early 80’s. After a short four year stint as a law enforcement officer in New York City, he decided that working for someone else wasn’t for him. In 1986 he ended his brief career and has been a small business owner ever since.
John was introduced to Agatha Christie in the late seventies, and became a life long reader of mystery and thrillers after he read Murder On The Orient Express.