Mile High Heist (Crowmarked #2)

1. OLIVIA

OLIVIA

“Emily, are you listening to me?”

My head snapped up too late, forgetting that was my name now. I was 'Emily'. Twenty-one years old. Former head cheerleader. Addicted to matcha smoothies and fictional hockey players. Amateur crusader who once took down an international trafficking ring while rescuing her missing sister.

Emily and I had a lot in common.

“Sorry,” I said, forcing a smile. “Could you repeat that?”

The look Lucille gave me could curdle milk.

She was a senior flight attendant and she despised me—that much was obvious.

She was older, in her late fifties, with insincere smile lines and immaculate white-blonde hair.

She reminded me of my childhood violin teacher, who’d rap the bow across my knuckles every time I messed up.

Mistakes were unacceptable. Sloppiness was a crime punishable by death.

And I’d be trapped in a confined space with her for the next fourteen hours straight. Goodie.

Lucille gestured to my uniform with her blood-red talons. “I said you need to fix your scarf. We always knot on the left.” She touched her own silk red scarf, perfectly slotted against her throat.

I adjusted accordingly, wondering if it was too late to strangle myself with it. Lucille gave me another hawkish look, finding every blemish and flaw in my appearance. Was my eyeliner too winged? Was my lipstick the wrong shade? Were my teeth reduced to ground nubs?

Lucille didn’t give me an inch. “I will be in charge of your probationary evaluation,” she said, with an important lift of her chin. “That means I expect you to follow the rules. All of them.”

“Understood.”

Lucille pursed her mouth, her eyes narrowing as if searching for sass in my response. There was. Plenty of it. But I grew up with a mother who served criticism as a side dish with every meal. I knew how to swallow it. Smile through the bitterness.

“This is not your average flight,” she reminded me again, like I’d forgotten in the last thirty seconds since meeting her. “This is the largest passenger airliner in the world. That means we are selling an experience.”

So far, I wasn’t loving the experience.

First days were always hard, more so for me. Lucille assumed I was just like every other probationary flight attendant. She didn’t know about my panic-sweat this morning when I slipped into my uniform for the first time. She didn’t know about my constant rehearsals in front of the bathroom mirror.

You are Emily.

Emily.

Not Olivia.

And she definitely didn’t know that I had almost zero formal training or qualifications, and that I was a big giant imposter.

If she did, I wondered if she’d treat me any better. Probably not.

“You will shadow someone at all times,” she told me sternly. “You will not make any decisions without clearing it with me first. And you will maintain an impeccable standard. Do you also understand that?”

I didn’t trust myself to speak, so I just nodded.

Thankfully, Lucille became distracted by another lost lamb in the room—a latecomer, whose neck scarf was also two inches off center. With a predatory glint in her eyes, she marched across the staff lounge on the attack.

Sighing in relief, I plonked down in the chair closest to the window. For the hundredth time that morning, I searched the sky for signs of an impending storm. There wasn’t one forecast, but my luck was known to take a turn.

I resisted the urge to check my phone. That restraint lasted approximately seventeen seconds before I was digging it out of my suitcase.

No new messages.

A familiar hurt bloomed in my chest. No matter how many times I told myself to stop expecting it, I was always hopeful. Always pathetic. The anger that followed was like a salve, soothing the hurt into something more manageable.

I wasn’t this girl.

I didn’t obsess over unread messages or overanalyze the hidden meaning behind blunt one-word responses. I didn’t pretend to pocket dial the number in the vague hope he’d pick up.

I was the cool girl. The popular girl. The bright, perky, sunshine girl who wouldn’t let some asshole dim her shine.

Or so I told myself.

My screen went dark, and my reflection glared up at me. Taking a breath, I softened my face. No guy was worth premature frown lines.

Besides, I had more important things to worry about, like the mission.

Despite Preacher’s assurances that all my fake credentials were in order, I couldn’t stop thinking about everything that could go wrong.

Like being exposed. Like losing the prototype. Like losing Molly again.

Sweat prickled at the back of my neck. I unlocked my phone and scanned through the attachment brief again.

The target was a man named Peter Vincilli, a former CIA agent gone rogue. There were no pictures of him, but his rap sheet painted a pretty grim picture.

Murder, kidnapping, conspiracy to commit murder, and lastly, treason.

Peter had stolen the CIA’s classified baby, a prototype cyber weapon known as the SKS, or Satellite Kill Switch. I wasn’t a techy person, so I had Preacher dumb it down for me.

“Imagine, darling, you wanted to invade a country, and all you had to do was flick a switch and turn off the lights. No one can see you. They can’t call in or out. Even their military is in the dark.”

“So…it’s bad bad?”

“Yes, darling. It’s bad bad.”

That bad bad device sold on the black market for a whopping half a billion dollars.

My job? Help steal the prototype before it landed in Zurich.

The hard part? Not only was Peter a scary-ass dude, but he was also a trained CIA profiler. That made him a living, breathing lie detector.

My phone suddenly buzzed in my lap, causing me to jump and nearly launch it across the room. Molly’s name flashed across the screen.

“Hey,” I answered, keeping my voice low. “Are you okay?”

Molly hated that question. Her response was always the same these days; a quick, automatic: “I’m perfect.”

The old-Molly used to strive to be perfect. The perfect older daughter, with her perfect law degree, her perfect choice in future suitors so that she could produce her perfect children.

It used to drive me crazy. Now I would do anything to have the old-Molly back.

The new-Molly was something else. Quiet, introspective.

She flinched when I touched her. She slept with the lights on, when she slept at all.

She refused to talk about what happened during the two years she was missing.

But I’d seen the boat. I’d seen the hollow-eyed, broken girls trapped within it.

I’d seen the monster Molly had to become to survive the unsurvivable.

I tried to keep things light, like I always did. “How did therapy go? Give me the waiting room cast.”

Molly chuckled, but it was a breathy, barely-there sound. “The guy with the foot fetish was back.”

“Ugh. Did you wear closed-toe shoes this time?”

“Yeah. I learned my lesson.” She fell silent. I waited, but the silence grew awkward. That was also new.

“Anyone else?” I pushed, my fingers picking at a loose thread on my skirt. I stopped when I remembered the uniform police was still in the room with me.

“Woman who licks her cat was back. She coughed up a fur ball and tried to hide it under her purse.”

“Ew.”

“Yeah.”

More silence.

The Old-Olivia would’ve called her out on it. Why are you being so weird? I would’ve demanded. Talk to me, dammit.

But I lived in a constant state of worry that I would push her too far. My worst fear was losing her again. The memory of her empty room still sent bolts of cold panic through my body.

The grim reality was that she wasn’t back. Not really. Her body was present, but her mind was somewhere else. Sometimes, she stared at me like she was looking through me, and I wondered what terrible things she was remembering.

Then I hoped I’d never find out.

Another awkward silence made me fidget. Something thumped in the background.

“What was that?” I asked.

Molly waited a beat before answering. “Nothing.”

“Where are you? There’s a weird echo.”

Molly released another, barely-there chuckle. “Mom’s redecorating. The energy of the house is off, apparently.”

That didn’t surprise me. Our parents were a class act in emotional avoidance. Depressed? Take a pill. Anxious? Book a trip. Kidnapped? Traumatized? Addicted to narcotics?

Yeah, that went well beyond our conflict-averse parents.

It made lying to them so much easier. They didn’t even ask questions when I told them I’d booked an impromptu ‘spa retreat’ with some friends from college.

As long as I was quiet and not breaking the law or besmirching the family name, I was given a free pass.

Boy, if only they knew…

After a few more minutes of painfully awkward small talk, I called it. “Hey, so, I have to go. But I love you.”

“I know,” she said, another quick, automatic response. I waited pointedly, and she sighed like I was pulling her teeth out. “I love you too, weirdo.”

I smiled and hung up.

A dark-haired girl suddenly collapsed into the chair beside me. I startled again, dropping my phone into my lap. The girl released a quiet sigh, one I recognized intimately—the sigh of the personally eviscerated.

“God, what a bitch,” she said, glaring at Lucille, who was still mid-rant. “She must be a hoot at the Christmas party.”

I instantly liked her. I turned in my chair, tucking my leg up beneath me. “I strongly suspect she irons her wrapping paper.”

The girl, whose name tag said 'Julie', grinned like I just handed her a loaded gun.

“I bet she never tips,” Julie said, mimicking my position. She moved gracefully, like a dancer. She had a perfect ponytail devoid of any flicks or bumps. Mine was held together by three cans of hairspray and way too many pins. I’d mourn my bald spot later.

“I bet she’s never eaten an empty carb in her entire life,” I said.

Julie’s eyes sparkled. “I bet she’s on every no-call list in America.”

“I bet she thinks those knock-off Louboutins are fooling everyone.”

Julie’s brows flew up. “How do you know they’re fake?”

I grinned like a Cheshire cat as I kicked my foot. “Mine are real.”

Julie burst into laughter, then quickly slapped a hand over her mouth. “Shit,” she murmured, her eyes widening. “Is she looking?”

I hazarded a glance. “Double shit.”

We waited, but when there was no approaching click of heels on the warpath, we relaxed and continued the game. By the time we were expected at the gate, Lucille was a chronic gambler with slightly racist tendencies who had a secret manifesto detailing her many sordid affairs.

“I like you,” Julie declared, bumping her hip into mine as we wheeled our suitcases down the crew terminal. “We’re going to be great friends.”

Julie was on probation like me. She was excited to board the plane for her first international run.

Me? Not so much.

Usually, I had a fondness for airports. I liked the busy atmosphere, the charged excitement of honeymooners and vacationers, even the studious quiet of business travelers.

I liked the bright kiosks and twenty-four-hour chain stores.

I was a total slut for the duty-free mall.

Now it all filled me with a nauseating dread.

The tinny voice announcing the flight activities might as well have been Satan himself.

Strap in, Olivia, he announced gleefully. There will be turbulence.

As we approached the premium lounge, the stomachache I’d been ruthlessly fighting took a sharp turn. Please, god, don’t let me get travel belly.

I’d rather fly through a monsoon.

I faltered slightly, but Lucille was quick to catch me. “Keep up, Emily!” She snapped over her shoulder. “If we are delayed by even a minute, it can have serious ramifications…”

I didn’t hear the rest of what she said.

My attention was thoroughly stolen by the six-foot-two blond man sitting in the premium lounge, nursing a whiskey with a thunderous expression. Even though it had only been four months since we'd last seen each other, I was unprepared for the sight of him.

Jax in a suit.

Jax with his dirty blond hair cropped short at the sides, styled longer on top, with just a shadow of stubble across that infuriatingly sharp jawline.

Jax sitting patiently in a room full of lawyers, not punching, shooting, or maiming anyone.

Preacher got his wish. Hell had truly frozen over.

“It’s intense, isn’t it?” Julie observed quietly.

I kept my gaze pinned on Jax as we approached. He wasn’t alone. His youngest crew member, Ryle, sat beside him, posing as his assistant. He was talking at Jax with his usual mile-a-minute gusto. I missed him.

Ryle, not Jax.

I definitely didn’t miss Jax. Screw that guy.

“What is?” I asked absently.

“All the attention,” Julie said, clearing her throat as if uncomfortable. It was then I noticed how the room was leering at us; at least a dozen heads snapped up and tracked our path intently. The other flight attendants were either oblivious or well-versed with such attention.

“It’s the uniform,” Julie said. She walked a little taller. “It’s like a dumb fantasy of theirs. We’re not even on the plane, and I’m already suffocating from testosterone and Italian leather.”

My answering chuckle sounded like a choking cat.

Of course, that was the moment Jax looked up.

I watched in real time as those Nordic blue eyes darkened.

Unlike everyone else, his gaze felt like a physical blow, sinking straight into my bones and turning them brittle.

Fragile. His expression didn’t change, but his fingers tightened on his glass.

Just like that, I was transported back to the day we met.

The island. I’d been looking for Molly, following a lead that turned out to be the right one.

Jax and his crew had been sent to steal from the island’s sole resident, the now-deceased Theodore Salvadore.

In a strange twist of fate, our paths had crossed.

I’d struck a deal with Jax—help me uncover the truth, and I would keep my silence about him and his crew.

It sounded simple in theory, but it wasn’t. It got complicated and bloody and dangerous real fast.

But there were some good parts, the parts I hadn’t buried beneath a nice protective layer of PTSD. The hot hands and violent kisses. The clash of our bodies. The sharp, twisted desire that I couldn’t shake, even four months on.

And, oh, the balcony.

My knees ached with phantom bruises, my mouth suddenly dry. Jax was the most impulsive, reckless, uncharacteristic thing I’d ever done. He was the reason I stared at my phone for hours, waiting for a text back like a hopeless lovesick loser.

I’m already your past, princess.

Chest tight, I forced myself to look away. And if I walked with just a little bit more sway to my hips and an exaggerated swing to my ponytail, that was completely unrelated.

I had to impress Lucille, after all.