Page 55 of Red Boar's Baby

“Look, man, we’re detouring around turbulence, so I’d sit down,” Jim said.

“Really?” Costa shot back. “Because it seems to me that it’s smooth as a baby’s butt up here. We’re flying south, and we’ve been flying south for a little while. Where are we really going?”

“Sit down.”

“Nope. I think I’ve gone about as far as I’m willing to go. This was a decent idea, but if we are really heading into turbulence, we don’t need to go to Alamagordo today. I’d like to turn around and go back.”

Oh, that’s smart, Diana thought, watching through the crack in the door.If the customer is calling the shots, they have no reason to say no.

“It’s not that severe,” Jim said. “We’ll be around it soon.”

“And meanwhile we’re flying toward Mexican air space. How about we stop doing that right now, turn around and go back to the airport.” When Jim didn’t move, Costa gave a little nod and started to push past him. “Yeah, I’m gonna go talk to the pilot.”

“Stop,” Jim snapped. He gripped Costa’s arm, and Diana sucked in a breath when she realized he’d drawn the gun. “Get back in your seat right now.”

Costa didn’t speak or react in any visible way for a second or two. Then he snapped into motion so fast that Diana flinched. Before Jim could do anything, Costa had him in an armlock, trapping the gun against the seats while hooking a foot behind Jim’s legs.

It was a display of swift, competent force, every movement purposeful, no motion wasted.

It was astonishingly hot.

But Jim was a trained fighter too, and he grappled back. Locked together, the two men stumbled against the seats as they wrestled each other. The gun, which Costa had clearly been trying to capture, instead flew from Jim’s hand and went tumbling beneath the seats.

Jim managed to fling Costa off him. Struggling over to the side, he threw the lever that operated the emergency door.

Diana had started to lunge out of the bathroom in an attempt to stop him, although she was too far away. Now she flung herself backward and grabbed a seat as the door slammed open and a tearing wind roared through the cabin. Every loose item inside the plane went tumbling toward the open door.

Clinging to a seat back for dear life, Diana looked around and saw, with huge relief, that Costa was also safely tucked between two seats.

She was abruptly glad that she had a flying shift form. Roadrunners weren’t strong flyers, so she wasn’t entirely sure what would happen if she tumbled out into a jet slipstream at 10,000 feet, but it was better than falling.

Like Costa would do.

Costa couldn’t fly, and there was no possible form in which she could carry him or do anything whatsoever to slow his fall. The relief she had felt an instant earlier evaporated in a flood of concerned panic.

The plane rocked as wind tore through it, and Farley yelled from the cockpit in alarm, “What the heck are you doing back there?”

“Getting rid of our problem!” Jim yelled back.

Diana was nearer to him now than Costa, so he reached for her. Realizing what he meant to do, she yelled and rolled back onto the seat behind her, kicking out at him.

Then Costa slammed into him, snarling in fury.

She had never seen Costa like that before, half incoherent with rage. The two men rolled around on the floor of the plane, knocking into the seats, hitting and clawing at each other.

All she wanted to do was help Costa, but she was afraid that any help she could offer would be more of a hindrance. And with Jim occupied, this might be her one chance to get control of the plane.

Diana tried to get past Costa and Jim to get to the cockpit, but the small aisle seemed to be filled with furious, wrestling men. She was afraid to accidentally throw off Costa’s resistance if she interfered, with lethal results. There was only one other way she could think of to get to the cockpit.

Diana shifted.

The world got suddenly dark as she found herself tangled up in her shirt. She wrestled her way out of her clothes and dashed up the floor of the plane, weaving in and out of the seats as if they were cactus on a desert plain. The wind tugged at her, and she realized she hadn’t anticipated how much more she would be affected by the screaming air currents at roadrunner size. As long as she kept moving, however, she was reasonably confident she could avoid being sucked out the open door.

She arrived in the cockpit, leaped up on the copilot seat, and shifted in mid-jump. She landed on the seat crouching and backwards as a naked woman.

Farley gave a startled yelp. Already struggling to control the plane, he accidentally wrenched the controls and it tilted over on one wing—fortunately away from the open door.

There were yells and thumps from the back, and a sudden crash as the door slammed shut. The screaming wind abruptly ceased, and then, as the plane rolled back the other way, started up again as the door slammed open with another crash. Diana winced; that impact might have sheared the latch right off. She wasn’t sure they could shut it again.

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