Chapter 28
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Nikolett stirred beside him and Eric caught her hand as she reached for the bandage on her throat and chest. “Don’t touch it, Nikki baby,” he murmured.
She frowned, shifting uneasily. She glanced around, her eyes not quite focusing.
“Plane?” she murmured.
“Yes.” He kept his voice soothing. “We’ll be landing in half an hour.”
Given the size of the team Grigoris and Raphael had assembled to catch the Spaniard, they’d had enough people power to divide out tasks and get a lot of things done in the short number of hours since the moment the Spaniard crumpled to the floor, a tranq dart stuck in his back.
It wasn’t yet midnight, and their private plane was currently over Manchester on the way to the Isle of Man. The direct flight from Paris to his home was less than three hours. The plane was also now a mobile command center as the Masters’ Admiralty tried to unravel what the hell had just happened.
Raphael had warned Eric that it had taken ungodly amounts of money to bribe various air traffic controllers and airport executives to allow this last-minute, late-night flight.
He didn’t care. Eric would empty the society’s coffers to get the hell out of Paris and back to a place where he was in total control.
Bribes had also been needed in order for people to overlook that one of the passengers had been hauled on board unconscious and in chains.
“Where is everyone?” she murmured.
“They’re here. Doing what they need to do.”
Nikolett tried to turn to look behind them.
“Nikki, don’t.” He grabbed her but not in time.
She hissed in pain and sat back.
“No twisting,” he reminded her.
As Gus fell, his knife sliced a line diagonally down Nikolett’s neck. That cut wasn’t bad, more of a shallow scratch. But when the knife hit her clavicle, it had slid along the bone, peeling a large flap of skin away from her collarbone.
It had bled. Badly.
Eric’s life had flashed before his eyes several times as he leapt across the room toward her.
He’d seen Grigoris drop silently onto the balcony and had been ready to move.
At the time, he hadn’t known what kind of gun Grigoris held, and his greatest fear had been that Grigoris didn’t realize Nikolett was pressed against the target, and the bullet would go through both of them.
That fear had been easy to dismiss because Grigoris was simply too good for that. He wouldn’t shoot without knowing the shot was clean. That left the secondary fear that when the bullet entered the back of Gus’ skull, it would bounce around in there and exit at an angle, striking Nikolett.
Eric had a split second when he saw the red feathers on the back of the tranq dart as it shot through the air to process that Grigoris wouldn’t be shooting to kill, which brought its own kind of danger.
A voice at the back of Eric’s mind kept insisting that if Gus had wanted to, he could have slit Nikolett’s throat before the tranquilizer took effect.
It was very clear to everyone that the injury she did sustain hadn’t been deliberate. The fact that Gus had chosen not to hurt or kill her when he had the chance was something no one had mentioned aloud.
But he’d felt bone-deep fear the moment he saw her clutch her throat as red instantly stained her soft gray sweater.
The volume of blood had him convinced that Gus had managed to cut her throat as he fell.
The only thing that stopped Eric from throwing himself dramatically off the balcony so he didn’t have to live without her was the fact that Nikolett—alive Nikolett rather than a zombie version—reached out to him as he skidded to his knees beside her.
With alarmingly calm movements, she’d grabbed his hand, pressed it over her upper chest and collarbone, said, “Ouch,” and then passed out.
She’d been stitched up by a French doctor who made dire predictions about needing a hospital but stopped talking when Eric snarled at her.
The pain meds they gave Nikolett had left her drowsy, so technically they’d boarded this plane with two unconscious passengers, but unlike Gus, Nikolett had been in his arms, not chained and dragged on.
She’d been drifting in and out of awareness most of the flight.
During the ride, he decided his only job was to hold her.
However, everyone else seemed to think his job should include nonstop information briefings.
Eric—and Nikolett, though she’d need to hear it again—had been brought up to speed on what happened while they were blissfully ignorant in the hotel room.
The team had realized the person they identified as the Spaniard had doubled back to the hotel. They’d explained exactly how and why they figured it out, but frankly, Eric didn’t care.
The team assumed Nikolett was the original target, everything else a feint, and mapped out their attack accordingly, including Grigoris dropping down onto the balcony. Apparently, that was Grigoris’ go-to plan and Eric couldn’t fault it.
Regina and Grigoris had been so sure and confident in their explanations, he’d almost hated to tell them that there was a piece of missing information.
Luckily at that point, Nikolett had roused enough to pass Grigoris her phone as Eric quietly explained that Nikolett had texted Gus only after Regina announced the Spaniard was sighted. Nikolett blearily explained it was a quick test to see if they were the same person.
Grigoris had started cursing quietly at that point while Regina shook her head muttering, “I thought she was going to be the reasonable one.”
A nonanswer was supposed to be an affirmative that Gus was the Spaniard. Instead, the Spaniard had apparently abandoned his plan, thereby avoiding their trap, all because Nikolett asked Gus to come over for coffee.
By that point, Nikolett had been asleep again, curled up against Eric. Even with her asleep, everyone had carefully avoided discussing Gus’ reasons for changing course.
“Still hurting?” he asked softly once she’d settled back in the large leather airline seat. They were in the front row of seats, directly across from the door of the twenty-seat private aircraft.
“Not yet. Not really.” She looked around, blinking, then after a soft sigh, relaxed sideways against him. “I’m tired of being injured.”
“I’m pretty done with you getting hurt too. I’m going to die young because every time you’re injured, it takes ten years off my life.”
Nikolett snorted, sounding more awake. “You’re too old to die young.”
“I thought you said I wasn’t old.”
“You’re not. But too old to die young.” She shifted, tugging at the brace wrapped around her ribs just under her breasts which strapped her arm to her body with Velcro wraps at elbow and wrist. Given the shallow cut on her neck, a sling for her arm hadn’t been an option, but the arm had to be kept immobile to avoid putting stress on the wound and possibly popping the stitches.
Nikolett sighed, sounding weary. “What did he say?”
“Nothing yet.”
At that, she looked surprised. “How much tranquilizer did Grigoris give him?”
Eric scratched his chin.
Nikolett sighed. “What did you do?”
“He woke up, briefly, once we were on the plane. He looked around and started laughing.”
“At which point you…”
“Punched the smug fucker in the face.”
Nikolett picked up his hands one by one with her unstrapped arm, examining his knuckles.
“I only hit him once,” Eric said, explaining the lack of damage.
“Such self-control.”
“I thought so.”
Nikolett started to tuck her chin, a sure sign she wasn’t feeling like her normal, confident self. He grabbed her chin before she could finish the movement and possibly stress the cut on her neck.
He’d already put up the armrest between their seats, so it was easy to grab her knees and force her to turn sideways, pulling her legs across his lap, her good shoulder leaning against the seat.
Despite all the years he’d known her, and as much as he loved her, Nikolett was in many ways still a mystery. He wanted to see her face. To maybe, hopefully, see in her expression the things she wasn’t ready to say.
What he saw there broke his heart.
“Nikki, you have nothing to be ashamed of.”
She let out a bitter laugh. “Really? I was ready to not only sleep with our enemy, I was going to make him a member. I wanted us to marry him.” Her chin and the corners of her mouth quivered, but she pressed her lips together, forcing down the emotion before she spoke again. “I told you I’m not that smart.”
“You’re the one who said Gus might be the Spaniard.”
“Only after I asked him to dinner, planned to invite—”
Eric cupped her cheek, gently pressing his thumb to her lips to stop her harsh words. “Nikki, he fooled everyone. You think you feel bad? Every member of your security team is so deep in their self-loathing that I’ve had to tell all of them to pull it the fuck together. They can wallow later.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Don’t scold my people.”
The fact that the words were muffled against his thumb made them slightly less fierce than they otherwise would have been.
Grigoris appeared in the aisle. “He’s awake.”
Eric slowly dropped his hand from her mouth.
“How do you want to proceed?”
Eric looked at Nikolett, making it clear this was her call—though he was fairly certain Grigoris had been talking to her, not him, anyway.
“I’d like to question him.” Nikolett rose and Eric did the same, his hand at her back to steady her. “Not about specifics. I’ll leave the how of it up to you.”
Grigoris studied her. “You want to know why.”
She nodded once.
Grigoris led the way. The plane was far larger than the small private aircraft he and the Spartan Guard often used. He was vaguely worried how a plane this size would land at Ronaldsway Airport, but trusted that the bribery hadn’t been so excessive that they ignored a too-small-runway situation.