Page 54 of Broken Princess
I glanced down at my red-raw knuckles. “Clumsiness. Slipped on some wet leaves and broke my fall with my hands,” I replied. “What are you doing up, anyway? You were dead to the world when I went out.”
“Went out? Sneaked out, more like it,” he said, flashing me a knowing look. He turned back to the couch. “Anyway, I woke up because of this,” he went on, picking up his phone. “I forgot to turn off the notifications for this breaking news app I downloaded last week. It started going crazy over the last hour. Have you heard about this plane thing?”
“What plane thing?”
“A private jet exploded midair, just a couple of hundred miles off the coast of New Jersey,” he said, brows furrowing as he scrolled through something on his phone screen. “They think it might be some sort of terrorism incident.”
“Why?”
“Because that damn prince was on it,” he said, nose wrinkling. “Everyone’s assuming someone put a bomb on board to assassinate him. I think it was probably an accident, though. Onboard fire or explosive decompression. More common than airlines would have you believe.”
My blood froze in my veins as he spoke. “What prince?” I asked in a low voice. Please, not that one….
Dad’s upper lip curled. “That asshole Keshari guy. He was here in the States on some bullshit diplomatic business. Apparently he actually spent the last leg of his trip right here at this resort. Crazy, isn’t it?”
His words sent a shockwave through my system. I staggered back, eyes bulging as my breath hitched in my chest.
Dad frowned. “What’s wrong?”
I couldn’t speak. My tongue was paralyzed and my throat had closed up as if two icy hands were coiled around my neck, choking me until my lungs burned.
“Logan?”
I turned away, pretending to look out the window. “I’m okay,” I finally muttered. “I think something just got caught in my throat.”
“Right.”
I turned back to him. “So this plane… it really exploded?”
“Yes. There were a few boats out on the water, and some of the people on them were filming on their phones for some reason. Stargazing, I think. They caught the explosion and posted it on Twitter.”
“It was definitely the Keshari Crown Prince’s plane?”
He nodded. “Yes. All flights have to be registered, for obvious reasons, and according to this article I read a minute ago, they confirmed it pretty quick. It was right there on the radar one second, and then it just vanished.”
Fuck, fuck, fuck….
I scrubbed a hand over my face and took a deep breath. “What are the odds of anyone surviving?” I asked.
My father let out a derisive snort. “Are you kidding me, Logan? No one could survive that.”
“People survive plane disasters all the time,” I said. “Remember when that jet caught on fire over Ohio and only half the passengers died?”
I knew I sounded totally fucking delusional, but I needed to cling to this. I needed to believe that Willow could be out there somewhere, cold and terrified but still alive. I couldn’t lose her like this. This couldn’t be where our story ended.
“Look at this,” Dad said, holding his phone out to me. “It’s one of the videos shot from the boats.”
With a clenched jaw, I looked down at the screen. The video was clearly amateur footage from a cell phone, shaky and out of focus at the beginning, but it cleared up about thirty seconds in.
“Check out these stars, man,” a stoned-sounding male voice was saying from behind the camera as it focused on the night sky. “So bright out here. So peaceful, too. You should—holy fuck! Did you see that? What the fuck?”
A plane had been passing over at the top of the screen, only visible due to the blinking green lights on its tail. Halfway through the man’s little speech, there was a blinding flash. The plane ignited in a ball of orange flame which instantly billowed outwards, lighting up the night sky with great rags of fire.
Grief and horror roared up inside me, blazing hot like the blast I just witnessed.
Dad was right. There was no way anyone could survive that.
Willow was dead.
