Page 16 of Hell In A Handbasket
I swing around in my seat and peek at her through the gaps, only to follow her gaze and look to the front again. Finally, I lock eyes with a furious Cato as he limps along the aisle. For every giggle that escapes her throat, his jaw grows tighter, and his eyes burn hotter.
“Oh, dear.” I choke on my laughter, thankful Archer thought ahead and shoved me into the window seat. Because as Cato arrives and slams his carry-on into the storage bin above, he brings his dangerous glare down.
“I didnotconsent to that.” He swallows and growls, his nose and lips wrinkling with a feral sneer. “I did not consent!”
“You need to sit down.” Chuckling, Archer grabs his brother’s shirt and tugs him forward. “You’re already on thin ice with the air marshal, stupid.”
“There’s an air marshal on this flight?” I unsnap my seatbelt and pop to my feet, searching the rows behind us. “How do you know?”
“Jesus.” He snags my shirt, too, and yanks me down. “We’re Malones. Our tickets are in our names. I assure you, there’s an air marshal on this flight.”
“They don’t have air marshals on all flights, right?” Aubree stands and sets her arm on the back of Archer’s chair. “How do they know which ones to put them on?”
“Intelligence agencies.” Fletch clutches her wrist and pulls her down. “The second Soph purchased these flights, and thentwo moreMalones jumped on board at the eleventh hour, flags went up in every office from here to New York.”
“But you have badges, too.”
Cato slaps the luggage bin closed and sits, only to gasp and bounce an inch upward again.
Sore bootyhole.
I burst out giggling, but I swear, I really, truly swear I try to clamp my lips shut and silence the sound. Tears fill my eyes, and the muscles in my cheeks ache, but then I look at Archer, who only glowers, and lose my battle. “I’m sorry!” I howl, wiping my eyes and clutching my stomach. “It’s so bad. So, so inappropriate to laugh.”
Aubree leans across Tim’s lap and looks around the chairs. “Things got a little out of hand, okay?” Her breath explodes on a soft, almost silent snort. “I was kidding. But they latched on to it real fast.Wayfaster than I expected. And now that I’m hearing about the intelligence stuff and your names sending up alerts, I can see how they were already primed to get a look insidesomeone’sbutt. You were unlucky today.”
“I’m gonna get you back.” Red in the face and not nearly as playful as usual, the mafia boy voices a very real, very deadly threat, right in front of an air marshal.
Probably. I can’t tell which one he is.
“Revenge is best served cold, Emeri. You won’t know when it’s coming or what I’ll have planned for you. You’ll just know that I?—”
“Forgot she has a gift,” Fletch chuckles. “There isn’t shit you can do to her that she won’t see coming. Now, put your seatbelt on and stop making a scene. I wanna get wherever the hell we’re going,quickly, so I can turn my phone back on in case something is happening with my baby.”
I settle back into my seat and open the file Soph sent over, and though a part of my mind focuses on the flight attendant closing the door of the plane and locking us in, and then as she picks up a phone to make her announcements—doors are locked and ready for taxying—I scan the profile in front of me.
Though God knows, I get no name. No date of birth or hair color or eye color.
I just get approximations and photographs from the scene.
“That’s a knee reconstruction.” I pick up the top photograph and bring it closer, staring down at the skeleton of a woman—easy to know in just a glance—who is somewhere in her twenties—though that will require measurements and testing to confirm—and most obvious of all, the titanium joint she wasn’t born with.
“This is dumb.” I show Archer the photograph and point at her knee. “How can they have discovered a body but not identified her, when replacements like these are registered and documented?”
Curious, he takes the image and settles back into his seat. While outside, the terminal grows smaller as we roll toward the runway. “She’s had surgery.”
“Mmhm. Even the most inept, small-town, shitty coroner’s office would know about the registry, so why the hell haven’t they identified her yet?”
“Maybe that’s part of the mystery,” he murmurs. “Maybe it wasn’t registered, which is what makes this difficult. Or maybe it was registered incorrectly. Or?—”
“Maybe theycan’tcheck the registry since this case is not on the up and up. But that doesn’t make sense either.” I shuffle to the next page. And the one after that. “Sophia knows what we ate for breakfast, Archer. There’s no reason she can’t look this up herself. It would take ten seconds.”
“Which brings us back to the registry being wrong.”
“Oh God.” Aubree clutches to her seat and groans as the plane screams along the runway andup. “Oh God. We’re off the ground. Tim, we’re off the ground!”
Cato growls. “It sure sucks to be uncomfortable, don’t it, Emeri?”
Ignoring them, Archer leans closer and whispers into my ear, “When the seatbelt light is off, I’m getting up and going to the bathroom.”
