11. JAX
JAX
Iwas standing in a den of vipers. Thirty thousand feet in the sky. No exits.
Man, I couldn’t catch a fucking break.
I was a paranoid asshole by nature, and for good reason. I should’ve listened to my gut. I should’ve told Preacher where he could shove his good-willed bullshit plan. As I left the bar, my phone clenched in my fist like a weapon, I came across Martha watching me from the doorway of her suite.
Everything was different now. Before, I didn’t suspect her, but now I knew I was dealing with professional killers. The kind who had perfect camouflage.
If Martha was a snake, she’d done a bang-up job of hiding it. I narrowed my eyes, taking in her silk pink robe and designer pajamas. Noticing my attention, she curled her hand in a suggestive gesture.
“Looking for me, Noah?”
For a second, I imagined taking the tie off her robe and strangling her with it. Snake or not, she was testing my last remaining shred of restraint.
Before I could act on it, my phone buzzed in my hand. Without taking my eyes off her, I lifted it to my ear. “What?”
“Something happened,” Ryle said, sounding unsure. “Um, so, Princess—”
That was all I needed to hear. I hung up and stormed through first class, ignoring the startled looks. I’d shed the jacket and the tie, and with it, the pretense of civility.
I was a rogue thief again, out for blood.
I charged down the stairs, stupid expensive shoes squealing on the glass flooring. At the foyer (yeah, the plane had a fucking mini-foyer), I took a left toward lower economy.
How many snakes were on the plane?
I had Zola running background checks on the passengers—all five hundred and sixty of them. It would take time that we didn’t have.
Blazing through the galley, I sensed the shift. It was in the air, a sweat-tinged panic that sent my lizard brain into overdrive. Whatever had happened was still happening. There was too much movement, a cacophony of noise.
Find mine.
Ryle was the first one I searched for. I spotted his shorn head on the left side of the cabin, his face shadowed in a way it rarely was.
At the sight of me, his eyes widened. I knew I should probably cool off, or at least tone down the murderous rage.
As I approached him, Ryle subtly shook his head. I stopped. Revaluated.
That was when I spotted him. Standing near Ryle was a big, broad-chested man with a thick, handlebar mustache. Everything about him practically screamed ‘air pig’.
Realistically, we’d known there would be a high likelihood of air marshals on board. It was the biggest passenger airliner in the world, after all. Knowing our luck, there was probably a whole squad of them, just waiting to arrest us.
Funny how they’d become the least of my problems.
Not wanting to rouse suspicion, I retreated to the galley and watched from the shadows.
Between the panic and movement, a man’s body was revealed, sprawled on the floor. Someone was trying to revive him through CPR, but it was obvious the dude was toast. His face was so swollen, he looked like the victim of an intense wasp attack.
Or venom.
Fuck.
The snake hadn’t been lying. He’d already struck. Question was: who was next?
Suddenly, cold fingers ghosted across my lower back.
I flinched like I always did, but it was a tame reaction compared to what usually happened if someone snuck up on me.
Without turning fully, I angled my head to ask: “What the fuck happened?”
Madoc stepped up beside me, our shoulders brushing.
We were the same height. For a second, I took some comfort in his solid presence.
The day Madoc panicked was the day the world was fucking ending.
A glance at his face revealed his usual apathetic mask.
The only sign of tension was the slight furrow in his brow.
“Our mark is dead,” Madoc said drily. No fucking foreplay.
“What?” I turned and stared at him.
He held my eye, his lip twitching at my dumb expression. “That big purple pincushion over there is him.”
I looked at the body again. All I’d seen of Peter Vincilli was the quick photo Ryle managed to snap on his phone. That man had been good-looking, clean-shaven, easily passable as a wealthy lawyer on a business trip.
Now he looked like a regurgitated marshmallow.
“Shit,” I said, and reached up to pinch the bridge of my nose.
“There’s more.”
“Of course there is.” I hadn’t even told him about the Vipers yet. My chest tightened. We were never getting off this plane alive.
As Madoc recounted the last few hours, including Olivia’s stupid idea of luring the mark into a locked bathroom, my anger mounted. And mounted.
Madoc paused suddenly, his eyes lapping over my face. Whatever he saw made him shove me into the wall behind the curtain, away from prying eyes.
“Idiot,” Madoc said, his hand pressed to my chest. “Breathe.”
“I am fucking breathing.”
It was just getting harder to do.
I’d always had issues with my anger. The red-tinged fog of my childhood came flooding back. Things I didn’t want to remember.
Like punching my old man. Like fighting off thugs on the street. Like infected stitches.
I blinked, and Madoc was closer, so that I could see the flecks of blue in his eyes. His expression was cold. Clinical. Searching for the problem so he could solve it.
“I’m fine,” I said. My voice was a rasp.
“You’re angry.”
“You don’t know the half of it.” I swallowed, trying not to show how much his proximity bothered me.
Madoc smiled. Not a kind smile, but one that seemed endearing in a way only he could manage. “Idiot,” he said again, and stepped back, dropping his hand.
Of course, that smile vanished the moment I said the words: “Vipers are on the plane.”
Then I watched in real time as Madoc shifted into the cold-blooded killer that I needed. No feelings. No endearing smiles. Just a man with a special talent for torture and a stomach of steel.
He turned his head slowly, assessing the cabin and its passengers with new, predatory eyes. When he found his prey, his mouth quirked up.
“The watch is gone,” Madoc observed softly. “Yet the mouse remains. Who is she?”
I’d asked myself the same question at least a dozen times.
“A problem,” I grunted, and stepped forward, following his line of sight.
Olivia was standing over the body, a blank look on her face. While the others moved around her, she was stagnant, an island in the storm of her making.
You have no idea who she really is, do you?
No. I didn’t.
But I was going to find out.