weight of it. She swallowed.
Had they done something wrong?
“Beatrice, please take your seat. We will be landing soon.”
Beatrice nodded once and immediately slid past the two of them to disappear around the corner. Annabelle stayed where she was. Not because she wanted to. But, because Jack blocked the exit.
He watched her in silence for several long moments, taking in the glass in her hands and the glitter in her eyes and probably a million other things that Annabelle wasn’t aware of because she wasn’t a professional killer.
Finally, she couldn’t take it any longer. “What is it, Jack? What did we do wrong?”
“You did nothing wrong, Bella.”
She rolled her eyes. “Okay, what did
At this, the corners of his mouth twitched into a smile. “Don’t get me started on that one, luv.”
Annabelle’s gaze narrowed. He was going to play games? Okay. Fine. She could play too. “What was Beatrice about to tell me with regards to your other wives, Jack?”
Jack’s smile disappeared.
And then the plane bucked under them and Annabelle’s glass slipped from her hands to shatter at her feet. She cried out in surprise as she was thrown off balance and her boot slipped on the now wet floor. She would have gone down if Jack hadn’t caught her.
Samuel Price’s voice sounded overhead, through the intercom system. “Sorry people – just some warm air playin’ with Betsy. We’re comin’ in for a landing, so get to yer seats and best buckle up.”
Annabelle’s heart was racing painfully in her chest. “
Jack helped her around the spilled brandy and out of the kitchenette. His grip on her arms was tight. He could feel her muscles bunching up under his grasp. She was going into terror mode.
“Annabelle, calm down. Sit here.” He lead her to the closest seat and sat her down, somewhat forcefully, because she wouldn’t sit at first. He could tell that she would have much preferred to run. To bolt at any second and make a mad dash for the door. Which would be very bad.
He kept his hand on her shoulder, effectively holding her down. “Buckle the seat belt, Bella.”
Annabelle didn’t hear him. She couldn’t. The plane bucked again and all of the breath left her lungs. Stars swam in her vision. She felt nauseated.
Jack knelt beside her and buckled her in himself. Though she didn’t try to leap out of the chair and sprint away as he was doing so, she sat stiff as a board, rigid from head to toe with mind-altering fear.
“Bella, look at me.”
She didn’t, of course. He’d come prepared for the worst of all possible eventualities as far as her fear of flying was concerned. That was why he had the syringe filled with tranquilizer waiting in his jacket’s breast pocket. But he didn’t want it to come to that. She wouldn’t easily forgive him – if ever – for sticking a needle into her arm. And, it wouldn’t be an easy task to accomplish anyhow. Annabelle wasn’t a weak woman.
It would be much, much better for everyone if she would just calm down and listen to him.
“We’re going to die,” she said suddenly, breaking the silence between them.
“No we’re not,” he told her firmly. He took her chin in his hand and forced her to look into his eyes. It wasn’t as easy as he would have preferred. “We’re not going to die, Bella. Not on this plane, anyhow. Sam is landing right now.”
“You’d better get in your seat, da’,” Clara told him as they could all hear the landing gear being dropped.
Annabelle pulled her face out of his grip and began to chew on her lip. She squeezed the ends of the arm rests, digging her nails into the leather. “Sit down, Jack,” she told him, gritting her teeth as she spoke.
Jack blinked. Had she just given him an order, despite her current state?
She looked up at him, her almond eyes shooting daggers. “Sit the hell down, Jack!” she yelled at him and he found himself automatically moving to the nearest seat.
Jack sat down just as the wheels touched the runway and Sam put on the breaks. If he hadn’t been sitting, the force of the stop might have thrown him down the aisle.
The plane slowed and Sam pulled it around to park it parallel with another waiting limousine.
Annabelle stared out the window at the waiting car. The sun was coming up on the horizon. To her, it seemed like the loneliest thing in the world – a nearly empty tarmac in the early morning light. It was like John Denver’s “Leaving on a Jet Plane”, put into a picture. And she was so, so tired…
Still, she wasn’t so tired that she wasn’t the first one off of the plane when they were able to disembark. She stepped down from the last stair and then turned and looked up at the plane she’d just exited. From where she stood, at that moment, she could admire its streamlined splendor and giant engines and even the stout-looking wings.
Planes were so much more beautiful when she didn’t have to be on them.
“Okay, let’s get the hell off of this air strip,” she told Jack in a low whisper. He smiled and led them to the limousine, holding the doors open for them as they climbed in.
Sam came down the plane’s stairs and strode to Jack, who closed the door he’d been holding open and turned to face him.
“You coming?” he asked.
“No, you know me,” Sam smiled. “I never ride in cages. And, besides,” he added, “I need to run some checks on Betsy. Where ya headed?”
“Forest Hills.”
It was roughly a forty to fifty mile drive from Monticello, where they’d landed.
Sam nodded. “I’ll catch up with you later. In the meantime, get some grub goin’, will you?”
Jack chuckled. “Fine. If you’re late, you’re eating it cold.”
During the ride South through New York, the inhabitants of the limousine more or less kept to themselves and gazed out the windows. It was May in New York state and the snow was melted, trees were beginning to green again and a few hearty, stubborn flowers were beginning to bloom. At some point, Jack turned on the radio, which carried through the car’s interior over a high-tech stereo system.
Apparently, it was going to reach sixty-five degrees later that day and then shoot down into the upper forties over night.
“Have you ever been to New York before, Dylan?” Cassie suddenly asked, breaking the silence. Dylan turned to face her, yanked from what Annabelle figured were probably none-too-comfortable thoughts.
“One Christmas, when I was five. We came to see the tree at Rockefeller Center.” He paused, swallowed, and then turned to gaze out the window again. “It was my mom’s last Christmas.”
Cassie’s eyes widened. She turned to Annabelle, a helpless look on her face. Annabelle gave her a sympathetic shrug and a slight smile. It wasn’t Cassie’s fault. She was only trying to be nice. Annabelle guessed that any topic at all, at this point, would most likely remind Dylan of his parents in some way.
“I think someone’s following us,” Clara suddenly stated.
Annabelle turned to her. The girl gestured out the back window and Annabelle followed her gaze. “See the red Altima?”
Annabelle nodded.
“Three blocks back, it traded with a silver Azera. A few blocks before that, I noticed a blue Toyota SUV. Might have been one of the new highlanders. They all had black tinted windows.”
Annabelle watched the red Altima. It was true that the windows were too dark to see through. Her heart began beating faster.
That was how they really did it. Not like it was in the movies. One car didn’t follow a few cars behind you the whole way. No. A child would notice such a thing these days. What a tail actually did was switch off. They were all linked via radio. One car would follow for a while, trading places with another later on. This made a tail virtually undetectable, unless you knew what to look for.
And, apparently, Clara did. Her father taught her well. Annabelle wasn’t sure whether to be happy for her or
