12. OLIVIA #2
Heat rushed to my face. I cleared my throat. That made Jax frown suspiciously, like I was up to something. His distrust bruised me all over again.
“Why are you making that face?” Jax demanded.
“What face?”
“Your turned-on face.” He answered his own question, his brows shooting up incredulously. Then a smile threatened to unveil itself. I wanted to die from embarrassment. “You like this, princess?”
“Absolutely not.”
The smile widened into a terrifying grin. Jax pressed forward, driving me back into Madoc.
Suddenly, Madoc wasn’t the only problem. Jax had his own.
“Is that it?” Jax asked, his voice dangerous. “You have a type? You bend over for every outlaw you come across?”
He was still interrogating me. Even now, with him and Madoc using me like some kind of pincushion between them. My face was burning, my throat dry as bone.
I couldn’t let him distract me. I couldn’t let him muddle my thoughts. I couldn’t play his game. I couldn’t tell him—
Suddenly, cold fingers dug into my sides, causing me to yelp and launch forward into Jax.
“Ticklish?” Madoc taunted.
Every nerve in my body was singing. “Screw you, psycho.” I righted myself, grateful that I was no longer pressed against him. Jax was more than I could handle. The two of them together were lethal.
I suspected they knew that.
Jax’s hands dropped and settled on my hips, holding me in place. He looked down at me with a dark expression. “What happened in the bathroom with the mark?”
I shuddered. “I didn’t kill him.”
“I know that.”
My eyes bounced up to his face hopefully.
He looked grim. “The Vipers killed him. They took the prototype. That part was planned.”
Fabric shifted behind me. I shot a glance over my shoulder just in time to watch Madoc lower himself onto the closed lid of the toilet, legs spread wide like an invitation. My face burned again. I quickly looked away.
Jax wasn’t quick enough. He stared at Madoc for a beat, something complicated crossing his face.
I wondered if the two of them had finally manned up and admitted they wanted each other. Knowing Jax, and his chronic aversion to feelings, I highly doubted it. Plus, Madoc was toxic levels of ambiguous.
“Answer my question,” Jax grumbled, redirecting us to safer territory. “Why in the fuck did you put yourself in that position?”
“I needed to make sure the watch was the key.”
“He could’ve killed you.”
“Yeah, well, he nearly raped me instead, so I had time.” My voice was bitter.
Jax went completely still.
Even his heart stopped for a moment, like I’d shocked it. When I peeked up at him, his face was darker than I’d ever seen it. I shuddered again, fear and heat curling inside me.
It wasn’t fair that I liked his anger. It wasn’t fair that I did, in fact, have a type. The violent, unhinged, walking red flag that he was.
“He’s lucky he’s already dead,” Jax growled, his jaw knotting. His fingers squeezed my hips in a painful grip. “Never again, princess.”
“Never again,” I promised.
“You will listen to me from now on,” he blazed on, not ready to let it go. “No more one-woman adventures. No more fucking lies. Not when we’re trapped on a plane full of professional killers.”
I wholeheartedly agreed.
But I knew he wouldn’t like what I told him next.
“There’s something else,” I said, wincing slightly when his fingers tightened. “I think the prototype is activated.”
Jax frowned, confused. “What?”
“The Wi-Fi is gone,” I said, my voice dropping to a whisper.
Without turning, I felt Madoc’s attention sharpen, listening to my every word.
“The signal is dead. No one can make contact in or outside of the plane, including the captain. Preacher told me the SKS could cause country-wide blackouts. What if someone’s used it to cut the plane off from the outside world? ”
Jax released me and dug into his pocket, pulling out his burner phone. He pressed a few buttons, then cursed and clenched it in his fist. “Fuck.”
“Yeah,” I echoed miserably.
“Why the fuck would they do that?”
I shrugged, then tensed at the cold chuckle behind me. Turning around, I pressed my back against Jax, so I was facing the psychopath front on.
“Something funny?” I demanded.
“They need time,” Madoc said, and nothing else. Cryptic asshole.
Remarkably, Jax caught on without further clarification. He tensed behind me, then groaned: “They need time to reach their boat.”
I arched my face up toward him. “What boat?”
“The Vipers have a boat waiting for them. They’d never reach it if we had to make an emergency landing sooner.” His throat bobbed, his anger resurging. “It means they can keep killing people and we can’t call out. We can’t stop the fucking plane.”
Fear trickled down my spine.
“Why would they keep killing people?” I asked, already dreading the answer.
Jax glanced at Madoc, then down at me. His face said it all. “Because they want you.”
Before I could digest that like a square pill, Madoc piled on. “That’s not the best part.”
We both turned to him.
“The SKS is an invasive code that infects communications and navigation systems,” he drawled, a bored king on his porcelain throne. “It has to be inserted into the target system to work.”
I glared at him. “That was almost a full explanation. Well done.”
Madoc smirked at my sarcasm.
Behind me, Jax growled. “Enough flirting. Dumb it down for us preschoolers. The fuck does that mean?”
“The target system is the plane’s network,” Madoc said. “The servers are in the avionics bay, beneath the cockpit.”
“So?” I asked.
“So who has access to the cockpit?”
My throat clamped shut. Oh.
The only people who had access to the cockpit were the captains and the flight attendants. Which meant whoever accessed the server had been someone who wouldn’t attract too much attention.
Someone like…
Oh god.
One of the Vipers was wearing a uniform.
“Shit,” Jax groaned, reaching up to scrub his face.
Shit was right.
Things just got a lot more complicated.