Chapter 15
fifteen
BILLIE
The first thing I’m aware of is that I am extremely comfortable, which is wrong.
The second thing I’m aware of is the hum— a pressurized, thirty-thousand-feet-in-the-air kind of sound— and my brain, which is still not fully online, serves me the information before the rest of me is ready for it: I am on a plane.
I open my eyes.
How did I get here?
The ceiling above me is cream-colored and curved.
The lighting is soft and warm. I’m wrapped in a blanket that is so soft, I almost think I can’t be on a plane, because I’m too comfortable.
The seat beneath me reclines in a way that suggests it could go flat, like a bed.
Okay, now I’m sure this can’t be a plane, because people like me aren’t allowed that much luxury. Then, I realize:
I’m in first class.
I’ve never been in first class. I’m a coach person, all the way. Shove me in a corner and yell at me— that’s my general travel experience.
“Wha—” I say loudly, grabbing at the space around me. “How did I get here? This can’t be— first class?— no,” I clutch my head, which is throbbing, and let out a massive groan.
A woman in the seat across the aisle is watching me with an expression that says she has paid for a certain level of quiet and feels I am undermining it.
She has reading glasses on the end of her nose and a glass of red wine that she is now gripping with both hands, as if it needs protecting. From me, apparently.
“Sorry,” says a familiar voice to my left, warm and airy and absolutely unruffled. “She’s used to coach. Totally feral.”
I turn my head. Alana is in the seat next to mine, reclined exactly the right amount, wearing a pale rose cashmere set— top and matching pants— with a silk eye mask pushed up on her head like a headband.
She has a small dish of warm nuts on her tray table.
She looks like a picture from a magazine about first class travellers. She looks at me with fond exasperation.
“Hey friend,” she says.
“Am I— I’m on a plane,” I say.
“Girls’ trip!” she says. She claps her hands together once, delicately, the way you’d applaud a very small recital. “I know. I know! I’m so excited too.”
The woman across the aisle takes a pointed sip of her wine.
I look at my hands. I look at the blanket. I look at the small, illuminated screen in front of me, which is showing a route map: a tiny plane icon hovering over what appears to be the Atlantic Ocean, angled toward the Iberian Peninsula.
“How,” I say, very slowly, “did I get on this plane?”
“Okay, so,” Alana says, turning slightly in her seat to face me with enthusiasm.
She’s been waiting to tell this story. “You know how you fainted at the bar? Which was so scary, by the way, you’re okay though, good news.
” She pats my hand. “Well, you were knocked out cold— can’t hold your liquor very well, can you?
— so I just drove us to the airport and put you in a wheelchair and sent you right through security.
I told the TSA agent that you have a seizure condition, and I’m your sister, and you’d just had an episode.
They were so sweet. They have a whole thing.
Nobody asks very much. They’re way more focused on finding contraband, honestly. ”
I stare at her.
“Turns out the TSA is way more interested in finding illegal weapons than in human trafficking,” she adds, sounding as if she’s learned something very useful.
“Glad to know my tax dollars are hard at work,” I say, which comes out flatter than I intend because I still can't entirely feel my face.
“They really are,” she agrees.
A beat.
“Wait,” I say. “Trafficking.” I look at her. “Am I being trafficked?”
Alana tips her head, considering a technicality. “Trafficking is defined as forcing someone across international lines,” she says, reaching for a warm nut. “And we’re already in Europe, so— yes!” She smiles. “Technically.”
“How many?—“
“International borders?” she asks, then shrugs. “I don’t know. Probably like, three by now. Check your little map thing on the screen.” She eats the nut.
I try to remember things. I try to sequence events. Tilly’s. The warm amber light. The drink I switched. The drink I thought I’d switched.
“The glasses,” I say.
“Honey,” she says, not unkindly. “I saw you switch them.” A pause. “I had already put something in mine, too. Just in case.”
There it is. There is the thing that confirms what I am dealing with.
I had a backup plan, and she had a backup plan for my backup plan, and this is the gap between us as human beings.
I put my passport in my purse in case of emergencies.
She puts drugs in both glasses in case of emergencies.
These are both contingency plans. Hers was better.
“My passport,” I say. “You used my passport.”
“I know, I really lucked out on that one.” She sounds genuinely delighted by this. “You literally had it in your purse. Who does that?”
“I keep it with me at all times in case of an emergency,” I say. “Which, in retrospect, is incredibly ironic, considering it enabled you to kidnap me and take me across an international border?—”
“Three,” she says again, calmly.
I look around the cabin. There are maybe a dozen other passengers in first class, all in various states of expensive sleep or expensive reading. No one is looking at me. The flight attendant is at the far end, and I consider, seriously, what happens if I stand up and announce the situation.
Find the air marshal right now, Billie, I tell myself.
I start to do it. I actually shift forward in my seat, and Alana’s hand lands on my wrist. Not hard. Just— there.
“Tyler,” she says, very quietly.
I stop.
“And Melissa,” she continues, still in that same warm, level voice.
“Who is eight months pregnant. And Steve. They’re good people.
I’d really hate for anything to happen to them.
” She releases my wrist and picks up her water glass.
“I’m not saying that to be dramatic. I just want you to have the full picture. ”
I sit back.
“I still don’t feel like I have the full picture,” I say calmly, as if we’re talking about getting lunch.
I know from negotiation classes I took at the local community college— an effort to get Mr. Franklin to believe in me— that I need to de-escalate the situation, and try to get as much information as I can out of her.
The best way to do that is to make her trust me.
“My job,” Alana says, setting the glass down with a small clink.
“I should tell you properly. I deal in things that are difficult to move. Uranium, mostly. Some weapons. Occasionally information. I work under a larger organization. They’re called the Twin Ledger.
” She says it as if the job is no different than being an accountant. “I’ve been doing it for a long time.”
“The Twin Ledger,” I repeat.
“They’re very powerful,” she confirms. “And here’s the thing.” She turns to face me more fully now, and her expression has shifted— still warm, but now also direct. “I mixed business and pleasure. I got upset about Rodrigo. He tried to break up with me.”
“I thought you said he was obsessed with you and never leaves you alone?”
Alana clucks her tongue at me. “Two things can be true at once, Billie. Anyway, he clearly has commitment issues and he panicked and tried to break things off. And I may have— in the heat of the moment— placed a call. To some people I work for.” She presses her lips together briefly.
“And those people have been asked to— take care of him.”
I feel the blanket around me: a thing I did not choose, that I cannot get out of.
“You took out a hit on him,” I say.
“I was emotional,” she confirms. “And I’ve regretted it since.
As soon as I did it I thought, I’ve got to get out of this.
And then I thought— who could help me? And I was like…
Billie, obviously! Which is why we’re going to Spain!
” She fixes me with a look that suggests this is excellent news.
“And you get a free trip out of it. You’re so totally welcome. ”
“Wait…” I say, once again rubbing my throbbing head. “Why do we have to go to Spain? Can’t you just call them and say you want to cancel the hit?”
“Well,” Alana looks away, tapping her perfectly manicured fingers on the arm-rest. “I did try to call and they sort of laughed at me. They said once something like this is in motion there’s no cancelling it.
Seems as if they’ve already broadcast the hit to all assassins in the area for a bounty, and they think it would look bad to cancel it.
” Alana sighs. “They also don’t take me seriously, probably because I’m a woman. It’s a very sexist industry, Bille.”
The world spins, and I try to make sense of what Alana wants from me. “So… why me? Why am I being dragged to Spain?”
“You’re a negotiator. A head negotiator.
The Twin Ledger doesn’t exactly have a refund policy, but if we come in person, with the right approach, and frame the request in a way that—” she opens her hands— “makes them see why they have to cancel the hit, then there we go! Rodrigo won’t be killed.
” A pause. “I’m bringing you to negotiate.
Because you’re a negotiator and you’re like, the best at it. Right?”
My stomach turns. I have made a terrible mistake, and now I’m being punished. This is what you get for lying, Billie, I think to myself. I’ve told one big lie in my tiny, little life, and this is how it ends?
I pick up the in-flight airsickness bag from the seat pocket in front of me and get up, moving to the bathroom at a pace somewhere between running and walking. The door clicks shut behind me, and I get sick in the very elegant first-class toilet for a while.
Alana’s knock comes before I’ve finished.
“I’m fine,” I say.
“Open the door, babe.”