30. OLIVIA
OLIVIA
Iwas paralyzed.
I was made of stone.
“Is one life worth all of yours?”
The intercom was above the bed. I stared at it with wide eyes, hoping I’d misheard. Or maybe I was dreaming. Maybe I was having a really weird, vivid, nightmare-of-all-nightmares.
The kind that ended with five hundred angry lawyers tearing me apart.
Oh god.
This couldn’t be happening.
Stiffly, I rose from the bed. In the same beat, there was a loud thump on the door. I jumped, my heart shooting into my mouth.
I was completely and utterly frozen.
So much that I couldn’t react when Ryle burst through the door, Nate blazing in behind him.
“Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit,” Nate was chanting. His panic was contradicted by the seamless way he dropped a bunch of items on the bed—makeshift weapons. There was a corkscrew, a handful of utensils, a half-empty bottle of champagne.
This was really happening.
“Olivia.” Ryle stood in front of me, snapping his fingers. “Don’t go mute again. You need to wake up now.”
I slapped my hands to my cheeks, hard enough to sting. “I hope I’m not awake.”
“You are. This is real.” Ryle’s face was grim. “As we speak, the passengers are starting to panic. They’re searching for you.”
My mouth dropped open. I shut it with an audible click.
Ryle reached for my uniform and removed my nametag. It wouldn’t be enough. Even without it, I’d made an impression on too many people.
“What are we going to do?” I asked, my voice pitchy with panic.
Ryle glanced around. He tried moving some of the furniture to form a makeshift barricade in front of the door, but everything was bolted down.
“Shit,” he cursed, scrubbing his hand over his head.
Nate whistled. We both turned to him. He tossed a metal fork at Ryle, who caught it with a confused expression.
Then he understood. “Right. Duh.” He marched to the door and jammed the fork into the lock, twisting it until it was thoroughly wedged in.
The floor vibrated beneath our feet. I told myself it was just the engines. Just the normal hum of the plane…
It definitely wasn’t the sound of a hundred pounding footsteps racing toward us.
Something smashed, then fizzled beside me. I jumped again, my nails biting into my cheeks. It was Nate, breaking the champagne bottle over the bolted-down side table. He held the sharpened neck of the bottle like a weapon.
Both men stood on either side of me, armed with whatever they could. I really wished I’d held onto that taser. Anything would be better than the piddly utensil Ryle forced into my uncooperative hand.
“That door isn’t going to hold for long,” Ryle warned.
The vibrations got stronger. I gasped when I heard the unmistakable rise of voices in the first-class cabin.
“They’re going to rush us,” Nate predicted. He reeked of champagne, his whole body twitching. “Stab hard and quick. Jugular, stomach, eyes. All the soft bits.”
I nodded dumbly. The fork was damn near slipping out of my sweaty fingers.
Someone knocked on the door.
It was almost polite, asking for permission to enter. Ryle held a finger to his lips. Quiet.
I stopped breathing, even though I was certain my heart was beating loud enough to expose us.
Calm down, calm down, calm down…
The door shuddered as someone tried to force the handle. “It’s locked,” a deep voice said. “She’s in there for sure. Careful lads.”
Outside, I imagined a pack of bloodthirsty wolves, ready to tear me limb from limb. Then someone banged on the door again, hard enough to make the walls shudder.
“Come out, Emily!” a voice shouted.
We didn’t move.
Another bang, harder, like they were ramming something into the door. Next to me, Nate groaned. “I fucking jinxed us. They’re using a trolley.”
On my other side, Ryle scoffed. “Jinxes aren’t real, dumbass.”
Nate balked at him, waving his shattered bottle in outrage. “Are you cooked in the head? Why would you say that right now?”
“What difference would it make?”
“You don’t fuck with jinxes, numb nuts!”
Another bang, and the door shifted, a crack appearing right down the middle. It was made of carbon fiber, so it was hardly a deterrent to a horde of desperate lawyers.
The idiots on either side of me stopped bickering and prepared to face the intruders.
Me? I wasn’t prepared. I was pretty sure I was having a heart attack.
Could people die of fear? If so, I was definitely running on borrowed time.
Another bang caused the door to split down the middle. Two faces leered in, spotting me immediately.
“Ready?” Ryle asked, his grin evident in his voice.
Nate sounded just as excited. “Let’s fucking go.”
The two of them rushed the broken door and started stabbing. There was a pained gasp, followed by a howl. More voices joined the fray on the outside. We were severely outnumbered.
And all I had was a stupid fork.
It would almost be funny if the situation weren’t so dire. Panic hovered at the edges of my mind, tinged with hysteria. I’d barely recovered from the first shock. Now the second was seeping in, threatening to turn me into an easy target.
No.
No, I couldn’t fall apart again.
Too much had happened to me already. I wouldn’t allow the same assholes who’d leered, swatted, and made demands of me for the last twelve hours to take me without a fight.
Gripping my mighty weapon firmly, I planted my feet and faced the door. I recalled every ridiculous request from these pieces of shit.
Miss, can you scrape off this chewing gum? It’s stuck under my shoe.
You there, open my soda. My hands are busy.
Hey, blondie. Over here. There’s something wrong with my seatbelt. Can you reach down and adjust it? Slowly.
Anger burned through me, igniting me like a match
The door exploded, sending Nate and Ryle flying backward. The trolley was now wedged in the doorway, but the men were already climbing over it.
Gone were the uptight, legal worker bees who couldn’t be bothered opening their own drinks. These men were wild-eyed and downright feral. Dressed in expensive suits, armed with fists instead of words.
The world had gone mad, and I along with it.
Charging forward, I stabbed the first one in the eye before he could finish clambering over the trolley. He was a thin, weedy man who yelped like a trodden dog. I’d barely ripped my fork out when a large hand slammed into my face, sending stars bursting across my vision.
I hardly felt it.
I was on fire.
“You fuck!” I roared and launched forward, stabbing at everyone I could. Nate rejoined me at the doorway. Ryle was on the ground between us, propped up against the trolley, keeping it wedged in the doorway. It bought us time.
But not much.
The crush of bodies was too much for us to hold back. The doorway buckled, and we were forced back into the suite.
“Shit!”
They flooded in.
When I wasn’t stabbing, I was kicking, punching, slashing with my nails. At one point, I caught Nate’s wide-eyed look as he was wrestling a huge man in an ugly copper suit. I was a girl possessed.
But as hard as I fought, more of them kept pouring in. As the seconds ticked by, their desperation became more evident. One life for all of theirs. It was an easy choice for them.
I’d already thrown myself on the sword once. I didn’t want to do it again so soon.
Nate was plunging his broken bottle into a man’s leg when three others rushed him and overwhelmed him. Two held his arms while the third delivered a brutal blow to his temple. He was knocked out cold
Ryle roared in fury and tackled the man who’d knocked out Nate. There was a harsh, wet sound and then Ryle reared back, his bloody teeth flashing.
Had he…bitten him?
The man howled and cupped his face. Then a woman launched at Ryle’s back, strangling him. Another delivered a blow to Ryle’s face.
“Ryle!” I cried.
I tried to move to help him, but a large man stepped into my path, a vicious glint in his beady eyes. I aimed a kick at his balls, but he was fast, catching my ankle with one hand and pinning me against the wall with the other.
“Come along, bitch,” he sneered, and tossed me over his shoulder like an old rug. I stabbed at his back, but it only made him move faster.
When we emerged from the suite, the cabin cheered.
Cheered.
A lump formed in my throat. Even upside down, I couldn’t mistake the malicious glee in their faces.
These perfect strangers, who probably worked in high-rise buildings, drank overpriced coffee, spent their weekends at the country club.
They cheered for my capture like I was a virgin sacrifice about to be thrown into a volcano.
“Wait, stop!” I cried, hoping to appeal to some shred of humanity left within them. “Don’t. please. Don’t let him take me!”
The lawyers laughed.
Cheered again.
I couldn’t believe this was happening.
A large hand swatted my ass. Humiliation burned through me, hotter than anger. I stabbed my fork into his spine and twisted.
That, finally, made him stumble.
We hit the floor and I rolled, then scrambled on my hands and knees through a sea of grabby hands.
“Get her!” Someone bellowed.
My hands were tacky with blood, none of it mine.
I saw my opening between a pair of legs near the galley. With a burst of speed, I shot through them, then stumbled to my feet and ran.
There was only one destination in my mind. One person.
Jax.
Find Jax.