Chapter 2
2
JACOB
S weet Jesus, this is bad.
I have no earthly idea where Raymond Harris is planning to fly this plane. I have no idea if he’s planning to land . He might have decided that turning the entire plane into a fireball on the side of the nearest mountain would be best.
Out Catherine’s window, there’s nothing but ocean, so a mountain crash doesn’t seem imminent.
Catherine holds my hand and scrolls through her phone.
“Do you have service, kitten?”
“No,” she answers, glancing at me from under her lashes. “All it showed me is, like, one weather alert for heavy rain, and I don’t know if that’s for New York or…wherever this plane is going. I’m just looking for inspiration.”
Inspiration , like she’s in the first stages of planning her deplaning outfit. The image almost sends me into another fit of laughter, but I suppress it. Nothing about this is funny. Except for the extreme to which my plans have gone astray.
Catherine was never supposed to be on this plane. Her life was supposed to be in less danger after we said I do , not more. I suppose there’s not much point in dwelling on how massively I’ve fucked up, but with Catherine sitting next to me looking utterly, completely beautiful, with her engagement ring and wedding band on her finger, the fault feels like a rope around my neck. I hate myself so completely that it’s embedded in my skin. Tattooed on, as it were. I’d claw off all the places that feel filthy with shame if Catherine wasn’t here to see it.
For now, I keep my free hand on the armrest and concentrate on Catherine’s hand in mine.
Some time in the windblown silence of the airplane passes. If I closed my eyes, I could pretend this really is the honeymoon Catherine was so sure I’d planned. I thought this was a surprise! I wish I could see myself the way she does. I wish I’d had as much faith in her as she has in me.
Had in me. I can’t imagine Catherine will want me after this catastrophe.
If we survive.
“Have you found anything?” I ask, in lieu of admitting that, so far, I can’t see any way out of this aircraft that doesn’t end up with us drowned or dead on impact.
“Not yet.” Catherine purses her lips, still scrolling. “I have a lot of wedding-related photos. Some pretty good photos of London in the winter. Look, our house!” She turns the phone so I can see. The photo on the screen was taken earlier this winter. I’m standing on the steps of the townhouse hanging a holiday wreath on the door, smiling at the camera over my shoulder. I was thinking of Raymond Harris even then. He was the last person on the list, and I was desperate to get to the end. I thought, like a fool, that finally handing that man a check would absolve me of at least some of the crushing guilt. Catherine turns her phone again and smiles at the photo. “I like this one.”
“But you’re not in it.”
“Yeah, but I took it. I’m there in spirit. And it’s not like I left myself out.” She flips the phone around again, and there she is, grinning at the camera in a selfie, her auburn hair tumbling out from underneath a winter hat. In the photo, Catherine’s looking slightly above the camera as if I’d called her name just before she tapped the screen. Because I did call her name just as she took the photo. I’d finished hanging the wreath and turned around and shouted kitten, I’m freezing to death, take me to the nearest hot chocolate shop or I don’t think I’ll make it.
“That one’s better,” I manage to say, though my throat closes around the memory.
There was fresh, white snow scattered over London, and I still thought we were never going to get married because our engagement was only a way to pass the time until Catherine turned twenty-one. If I’d seen this photo on that day, I might have done everything differently. Catherine’s pink-cheeked and happy. She’s in love. That’s how she looked when she was looking at me . That’s how she looked because she heard my voice saying something ridiculous about hot chocolate, and the result isn’t a posed facsimile of happiness, it’s sheer joy, captured by accident.
“ This one’s better.” It’s the one Catherine took of both of us a minute later, pressed together, the wreath and front door blurry in the background. She’s laughing, and I have my arm around her, and we look nothing like two people who have promised each other they’ll never, ever make wedding vows to each other.
I’ve thought about how far back in time I’d have to go to change all this, and it’s a question that’s impossible to answer. My parents’ decisions about their lives took shape long before I was born, and the consequences of what the consortium did will last for decades after I die.
If I could, I’d go back to the day in the photo, when I thought I’d have a chance to move past the guilt and shame and embarrassment at my parents’ legacy. I have a father in prison and a mother who’s moved to one of their few remaining properties on the Virgin Islands.
If Raymond Harris flew there, could Catherine and I convince her to help?
It’s a laughable idea. If my parents wanted to keep me out of harm’s way, they would have hidden the existence of the Consortium from me entirely. But alas, they were too invested in the idea of a family business. My father would never have agreed to exclude me from his criminal ventures.
Ah, well. He realized his mistake in the end when I turned over every bit of paperwork that came across my desk to the Hills’ lawyers. When I gave a deposition about the sickening initiation ritual I participated in under threat of death. When the prosecutor met with me personally after he’d received the transcript to assure me that I’d have immunity from any proceedings against the Consortium.
Although maybe it will always be a double-edged sword. Maybe, no matter how much I try to repair the damage done by my father and his friends, I’ll still end up on a metaphorical hijacked plane with my fiancée, hurtling through the sky to our deaths.
Or a literal hijacked plane with my fiancée, hurtling through the sky to our deaths.
“—parachutes?” Catherine says.
“Pardon?” I shake my head like I can shake off the curdled, guilty feeling clinging everywhere in my mind.
“Do you know if there are parachutes on the plane?” Catherine purses her lips and peers at the screen of her phone like it might have the answer, then seems to realize it won’t and turns her honey eyes on me.
So many wishes, and none of them can come true. I wish I could tell her that of course there are parachutes on the Gulfstream. There are nice, luxurious parachutes complete with instruction manuals that will allow us to strap ourselves into them and soar away into the night, landing softly on a white sand beach with a surprise resort nearby.
But I’ve read the safety instructions for this plane every time I’ve boarded one. I’ve read the full manual for the aircraft, too, and not once does it mention on-board parachutes for use if your plane gets hijacked by a madman.
Is Raymond Harris a madman? Looking into Catherine’s eyes makes me think I would absolutely hijack a plane for her.
Should I reverse-hijack the plane for her?
Probably not. I already know Raymond Harris owns at least one gun, and there odds he left it safely at home are zero. If I managed to break into the flight deck, he’d shoot me before I could threaten him with…
My bare hands, I suppose. I didn’t bring any other weapons. I was going to be no one when the plane landed. Just a mysterious handsome gentleman who disappeared from society and was never seen again. I didn’t think to prepare for hand-to-hand combat.
“There aren’t,” I’m forced to tell Catherine. “Unless Raymond Harris brought one as backup.”
Catherine wrinkles her nose. “That wouldn’t do us any good. If he has one parachute, we’d have to figure out how to harness both of us into it. And I haven’t done any parachute research yet.”
“Were you thinking about it?”
“Not, like, parachutes specifically.” The blush across Catherine’s cheeks darkens. “But I was looking for a hobby. The mummies pushed me over the edge.”
“Mummies?”
“At the British Museum.” Catherine lets her phone fall into her lap. Does she know how lovely she is when she’s embarrassed? “The day you were flying back from New York.” Her eyes narrow. “When you were getting shot .”
“I got shot the night before I flew back, not that day.”
My wife flicks her eyes toward the ceiling of the plane. “My mistake.”
“What happened with the mummies?” This flight could end at virtually any second, so our attention should be on finding a way to survive, but I find myself desperate to know everything I can about Catherine before it’s too late. “You never mentioned it.”
“Because it was silly,” Catherine says definitively. “I booked a lot of private tours at the British Museum while you were traveling. It seemed like a good place to start.”
“To find a hobby?”
“To find a passion.” Her expression sobers. “It’s embarrassing that I didn’t go to college. That I didn’t even think about a potential career the entire time I was in high school. Once I realized my parents were going to marry me off the second they could, I spent all my time trying to avoid it. Avoid you.” Her eyes move over my face, softening as she takes me in. I don’t deserve it. “So when we moved to London, I had nothing but time. I thought I would finally figure out what I’m passionate about.”
“Ancient Egypt?”
“The mummies happened because I used to have this book when I was a kid. This big, gold book.”
“ Egyptology ?”
“Yes.” Catherine’s face lights up. “Do you know it?”
“I can’t say I’ve read it cover to cover, but I know Remy has. It was a story about a lost archeologist, wasn’t it?” Gabriel’s youngest sibling was always interested in dirt and other ancient things. “And it had those cards and letters you could take out.”
Talking about letters reminds me of the one I left for Gabriel. He’ll get it in the morning, and if we’re still alive—if Catherine is still alive—then maybe…
“The cards were the best,” Catherine says softly. “I read it a lot when I was younger. And I liked the letter at the end that said which parts were real and which parts were just for the story. Anyway, that day at the museum, I wasn’t planning to go to the mummy exhibit. The tour guide just started heading there, and I felt like…” Catherine’s eyes go distant. The corner of her mouth turns down, as if she’s following her tour guide all over again, with me on a plane over the ocean. I should have been at the museum with her. “I felt like I couldn’t say no, even when the mummies made me think of my father.”
“And the funeral?”
Catherine had looked gorgeous and stoic, almost royal, at her father’s funeral. I’d bought her an entire new wardrobe so she never had to think about the clothes she wore when she lived under her parents’ roof again. I’d gone with her to the service and the burial, since we’d announced our engagement to her parents, if not the public, and she was living with me. Catherine didn’t shed a single tear that day. It had almost seemed like she was fighting back the urge to celebrate.
“Not because I’m sad he’s dead.” Catherine’s eyes are dry, so I don’t think this is delayed grief. “The first mummy was a priestess, and she—you know, she deserved to be…honored. I don’t think anyone should have taken her out of her tomb. I think it’s pretty questionable to have mummies in museums like that. But I felt like I couldn’t escape, and while the guide was telling me about this priestess, I thought…what if someone digs up my dad one day? And they think he was great ? And they’re so wrong, and they don’t know?”
I give her hand a gentle squeeze, because I don’t know what to say. It’s not as if Catherine’s father’s body has been preserved like the mummies at the British Museum. There won’t be much to find in hundreds of years. I understand the sentiment, though. I understand Catherine’s horror at the idea of someone in the future mistaking her father for a hero when he was the worst kind of villain.
“Anyway.” She brushes a strand of her hair out of her face. “I decided then that I wasn’t going to just stand around and let people tell me about mummies if that’s not what I wanted to do. I told myself I was going to speak up for myself after I got away from my dad, and I didn’t do it that day at the museum. I thought finding something to be passionate about would make me more confident, even if I’m, like, years behind everyone else.”
“You’re not.”
“I am,” she answers matter-of-factly. “Lydia has been working on her art since she was in kindergarten. Elise is so incredibly smart, like, a genius, and she started her own bakery basically the minute she got out. I don’t know what I’m passionate about. The only thing I’m passionate about is?—”
Catherine stops talking so abruptly that I whip my head toward the cockpit, thinking that Raymond Harris must’ve come out again, brandishing his murder weapon of choice.
But the door to the flight deck stays firmly shut.
“Catherine—”
She stands and brushes by me, her face brilliantly red. I stand, too, hoping she hasn’t just decided to knock on the flight deck door and confront Raymond Harris. I don’t see that going well, as much as I love Catherine’s brazen attitude.
“Kitten.”
“I’m going to boil some water.” There’s a slim kitchen-like area just before the door to the plane’s bedroom, equipped with an electric kettle.
“For…tea?”
Catherine reaches the compartment with the kettle and pulls it out onto the narrow countertop, then turns on the tap in the equally narrow sink and shoves the kettle under. The water hits the bottom of the kettle with a loud smack that deepens as it begins to fill.
“In case we have a chance to boil Raymond Harris to death.” She watches the water flow into the kettle, rising to cover the lines in its viewing panel. “We might not be able to kill him completely, but we can scald him. I saw it in a documentary.”