Total pages in book: 19
Estimated words: 17348 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 87(@200wpm)___ 69(@250wpm)___ 58(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 17348 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 87(@200wpm)___ 69(@250wpm)___ 58(@300wpm)
“Sure, baby. I’ll be right back.”
With another kiss and a squeeze on my butt that makes me feel even worse about the total load of nonsense I just told him, Conrad steps out the door and leaves me alone in his suite. Knowing I have less than a minute before he gets back, I instantly race to his carry-on, unzip the main compartment, and frantically start digging through it.
Shirts, pants, jackets, a small shaving kit back.
“Come on, come on,” I whisper under my breath. Part of me wants to find the gun instantly so I can get this over with, but the biggest part of me wants to find nothing. I want to come up empty-handed so I can go back to Hannah and tell her she was wrong—so wrong about Conrad and that we’re not doing anything. We’re just going to go about business as usual, and when the plane lands I’m going to wait for Conrad to ask me out on some kind of unbelievably romantic date like I know he has planned.
I keep going. I’m tearing his carry-on apart, but at this point it doesn’t matter. More pants, more shirts, socks, a copy of American Gods by Neil Gaiman and then…
…my hand hits something hard. Very hard and metal.
No…
Under any other circumstance, I might go into shock right now. But this isn’t any other circumstance, and I’m out of time. I reach down through the clothing and grab the metal and pull, and out comes a gun. A black pistol that I’m sure a man could identify but just looks like something Jason Bourne or James Bond would carry to me. The sheer shock of holding it in my hand causes it to feel like fire, and I instantly drop it. It falls back into the bag and I instantly clap both hands over my mouth to stop myself from screaming. It’s at that exact moment that the suite door opens behind me.
“Ah, shit,” I hear Conrad say. I turn and see him looking down at me, his face hard, his eyes narrow. “I really wish you hadn’t found that.”
8
Conrad
Like a leopard, Roxy leaps from her position on the floor and practically dives for the door. I barely have a second to react, but I do; I tuck low, snatch her up with an arm around her waist, while at the same time tugging the door to the suite closed behind me.
“Help—!” she tries to scream, but I muffle her cry with a hand over her lips.
She kicks, swings an elbow into my ribs, but I tug her close, wrap an arm around her torso, and then press her down into the seat and pin her down beneath my body.
Shit. This is not how this was supposed to go.
She bucks back against me, but her strength is no match for mine. When she realizes this, she tries to bite my hand, forcing me to let go for a split second before I stuff one of my shirts into her mouth.
“Stop,” I tell her. “You can’t beat me, okay? Just stop. You’ve got it all wrong.”
Roxy tries to say something back. Her words are muffled by my shirt, but I’m pretty sure I hear the word “gun” at the end.
“Yes, I have a gun in my carry-on,” I tell her. “And if I can guess, I’d say it was Hannah who told you, am I right?”
I wait. It takes her a few seconds, but eventually, she nods.
“Thought so. And if I were to guess, I’d bet she made up some story about how I’m a terrorist or some kind of a bad guy as well?” Another nod. “Well, think about it, Roxy. How would I, in this day and age, get a gun onto a plane in my carry-on? You know what security is like. How would I do that?”
I wait, let that question sink in. I know she can’t answer me, but I want her thinking, not just going off of the lies Hannah fed her outside.
“I couldn’t, Roxy,” I continue. “I would have been stopped and arrested long before I got onto the plane. Unless I had permission to have this weapon on the plane. I’m an air marshal, Roxy. I’m undercover, and I’m on this flight specifically because Hannah is a wanted criminal in connection with a domestic terrorist group who is also responsible for a bank robbery in New York that went down yesterday.”
I’m revealing way more than I should right now. In fact, I could lose my job for this, but I guess adhering to the “flight plan” hasn’t been something either of us has been good at today. Besides, I trust Roxy. It’s clear she’s a woman with strong moral values. She was willing to risk her safety to determine whether or not I was a threat to the rest of the passengers on the flight, and that’s only made me care about her more.