Chapter Thirty-Six
Ava would be lying if she’d said she wasn’t disappointed that they had to bring Clara with them.
Whatever Jack was planning, they needed her to get out of this mess—but Ava really would have liked a chance at joining the Mile High Club, and she had a feeling that if she’d asked nicely enough, Jack would have obliged.
Of course, their circumstances were dire and all that. But if Ava gave herself a chance to feel the bone-deep exhaustion, the relief and anger and grief and love all rolling toward her like a wave, she’d be pulled under. So as always, it was better to focus on the horniness of it all.
They lifted off the roof just moments before half a dozen men came pouring onto the rooftop, guns drawn.
They wore no badges or identification, probably Clara’s security team—maybe the same people who had kidnapped Ava, actually.
Had some of those men been standing guard while Devin backhanded her, tied her to a chair, asked her how she liked pain?
Ava shivered at the thought.
She kept her eyes fixed on Clara, as Jack had requested, as he maneuvered the helicopter away from the mansion. In some other moment Ava would have loved the wind in her hair and the ground growing smaller below, but this one required all her focus.
Jack had estimated the flight correctly—in about ten minutes, they were past the pool, tennis courts, and driving range, flying over trees until a long airstrip appeared, carved out of the forest. Jack landed the helicopter with a few bumps, but Ava held on to Clara until they had landed.
Jack helped her down, and they crossed the landing strip together toward a large private jet, Jack half carrying Clara, who was protesting and yelling the whole way.
When they reached it, Jack loosened the ties on Clara’s ankles and let her walk. He hung on to the rope attached to her wrists with one hand and then drew his gun with the other.
“Are we stealing a plane next?” Ava asked in a stage whisper. It was kind of hot, but at this rate they were both going to be in prison for the next ten lifetimes.
“Trust me,” Jack said. “I have a hunch.”
Jack O’Sullivan, meticulous planner and cold-blooded killer, was doing all this on a hunch. It shouldn’t be comforting. Or heartwarming.
But it was somehow both of those things, maybe because Ava was down bad for a man she had thought was plotting to kill her only this afternoon.
“I’m going to kill both of you,” Clara spat. “You aren’t going to get away with this. Wherever you are, I can reach you. I will send people after you. I will kill you.”
The plane was empty, leather-bound couches that hugged the curves of the aircraft stretching out on each side, and beyond that an opulent bathroom was visible.
“This plane is fueled and ready to fly south,” Jack said to Clara. “Yes? So get your pilot here, without raising suspicions, and have him get us in the air. Or I’ll shoot you and fly this plane myself.”
Ava stared at him, open-mouthed. He couldn’t possibly also know how to fly a private jet.
Actually, she was fairly certain he didn’t really know how to fly a helicopter, either, and had used wikiHow and his infuriating ability to be good at everything the first time he tried it.
Or something. She was going to get to the bottom of it later.
Clara looked like she was considering calling his bluff, but Jack leveled his gun at her head.
“You threatened my—” His eyes flicked to Ava, clearly biting back whatever he had been about to call her. “You threatened Ava. And she’s right. I’d empty this magazine into you in an instant. Do you understand me?”
“You’re a monster,” Clara said.
“Yes,” Jack said. “But I belong to her.”
Ava’s throat constricted. She must be monstrous, too, to hear that and feel nothing but elation and love pounding in her chest.
“Fine,” Clara said. “But then I need some kind of guarantee that I’m going to survive this.”
“What you need is to listen,” Jack told her.
“You’re going to tell your pilot to fly to Tahiti, leave the plane for half an hour, and then fly back to the US.
I know you pay them well enough not to ask any questions.
You won’t be on board—you’ll be safe and sound, right here—and your pilot doesn’t even have to see us. ”
Clara’s mouth opened and then shut. “I’ll go down for this crime,” she said. “My prints are on the gun that killed my brother. I left a homicide scene. I flew away after my other brother got thrown from the roof. Nobody’s going to believe me.”
Jack shrugged. “That’s not my problem.”
“You have an army of lawyers that can take care of that,” Ava added. “Cry to them about it.”
In the end, Clara made the call.
The pilot had been on standby—Jack’s hunch had been good, that Clara kept both a pilot and a plane ready for her. Like Jack had predicted, the pilot asked no questions, not when it was Clara Jacobson giving the orders.
They were in the air soon after, the pilot shut in his cockpit as Clara had instructed.
Ava sank down onto the couch, something that probably cost more money than she had ever seen in her life. “Did we do it?” she asked in disbelief. “Jack, did we do it?”
Jack laughed, a sound that filled her with warmth she had thought she would never feel again, and then he scooped her off the couch and into his arms.
“My Ava,” he said as the forest, the West Coast, the United States entirely, grew small below them. “We did it.”