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a police officer?”
“Something along those lines.”
“Do you even have legal jurisdiction? We’re not really in a country anymore.” She thought to herself, We’re in King Sorrow’s kingdom now.
“Why do you ask about legal jurisdiction? You worried I’m going to arrest you for parking in the wrong area at the airport?”
She fought to get free of the briars in her head, but cleverness was beyond her. She was overmatched, and every mile they
traveled brought them closer to midnight.
“We have to get off this plane,” she said.
“Why’s that, Allie?”
“It’s going to be destroyed.”
He leaned back in his seat, eyes narrowed. “Why would that happen?”
“What if I told you there’s a bad man on this plane? A total David Koresh nutjob. Anti-government. Probably cuddles an M16
in bed.”
“Depends. Is he a threat to the flight? Is there a chance he’ll try to blow the plane up?”
“Let’s just say if it blew up,” she said, “it would be his fault.”
“How do you know this total David Koresh–type dude, Allie?”
“He came up in some research I was part of,” Allie said honestly. “And I recognize his kind of crazy. I spent a few months
in a place for people with emotional problems, the year after my brother died.”
“Poor Theo,” he said. “Tell me about being institutionalized, Allie. Do you still suffer from paranoid ideation?”
Allie frowned. She was telling him she knew what a crazy person looked like, having spent a lot of time with them, and he
was acting like maybe she was the crazy person.
“It was stupid. I started having loud conversations with God because I was angry with him for taking my brother. People who
talk to God aloud outside of church tend to get funny looks.” Which was true enough but left out the gay stuff that had made
her mother breathless with panic and earned Allie a summer of conversion therapy at a pricey Bible camp. “Why are we talking
about me? I’m not the problem. I went through a phase and I got better. I’m fine now. I’ve been sober of mind for years.”
“Let’s not get carried away there, kiddo. How much did you have to drink today?”
Allie said, “Not enough.”
“Were you drinking before you left your car at the airport with the keys in it?”
Allie held her index finger and her thumb a fraction apart. “This much.”
“How’s your fiancé figure into this evening’s merriment?”
“He doesn’t. I didn’t even know Van was going to be on the flight. He surprised me. He’s a surprising guy. A week ago I wasn’t
even sure we were still a couple.”
“Is that maybe one reason you took off for old Blighty all a sudden? Were you maybe operating in a state of emotional distress?
Go someplace new, clear your head?”
“Maybe,” she said, thinking that sounded more plausible than the truth. “Van likes to throw romantic gestures around, like
cherry bombs, just to see what kind of bang they’ll make.”
“Here we are talking about bombs again.” Heck snorted. “I’m almost done interrogatin’ you, darlin’. Just a couple more things.
Help ol’ Frank out here now. So you have reason to think someone on this flight has both the intent and means to detonate
a weapon. At what point did you realize we were in danger?
Was it after you came on board? Or before?
Is that why you got to the airport in such a rush and left your keys in your car?
Were you distracted by bigger concerns?” He dropped his g’s and talked in a kind of prairie singsong, but then he would throw in a phrase like “intent and means” to remind her he
was the law. The accent was just another kind of cowboy hat, a bit of costume dressing, she thought.
“I never said he had a weapon,” she told him, and then wished she could take it back. Better if Heck thought Horation Matthews
did have a weapon, that at least made sense.
Heck leaned his shoulder into hers, and said, confidentially, “Allie, do you know what the penalties are for making a false
accusation to a federal officer? Or causing a plane to divert from its route by causing a crisis? You cause a panic on a loaded
airplane, you can expect to do time.”
“You aren’t panicking.”
He winked. “That’s why they pay me the big bucks.”
“You would if you knew what I know.”
“Try me,” he said. “What do you know?”
“What I know,” Van said, “is that if you sit with this strange man for another minute, Allie Shiner, the wedding is off.”