Jazz was good at reading people, good at sensing setups and deceptions, and she felt nothing. Heard no false notes.
If Kelley Walters was a plant, working as part of the larger con orchestrated by Max Simms, she was the best damn liar Jazz had ever seen.
Jazz went back to her seat. Borden had finished the business section and moved on to sports. She picked up the paper and scanned it without really reading, watching the other passengers who were getting ready to board. Not a huge crowd, this time of night—maybe thirty, altogether. A few college-age kids, with the ubiquitous backpacks. A gaggle of businesspeople who must have all worked for the same firm—they had the look of people who’d traveled together so often they no longer had to make conversation. One middle-aged man, overweight and prematurely gray, sat slumped in his chair reading a mystery novel. His battered, much-traveled carry-on roller case had a large tag that read Qualls.
Jazz felt a sense of unreality close around her. Walters, she could dismiss as a deliberate setup. Qualls, being part of a group, wasn’t so easy. Still, Simms and the Cross Society could have gotten hold of the passenger list….
Flight 802. She stared at the number and found it suddenly hard to swallow.
“Borden,” she said, and stopped. He looked up. His brown eyes were tired and bleary.
“What?”
“Maybe we should—”
He folded his newspaper. “What?”
“Nothing.”
The boarding call went out for business class. Qualls and the rest of the flock of suits headed for the ramp. Jazz checked her ticket. She and Borden were in business, as well. She shouldered her bag and followed his long-limbed stride past the checkpoint, through the hollow booming tunnel, up to the accordion end pressed against the smooth skin of the airplane…
She stopped. Just…stopped.
This is stupid, she told herself. Move. Get on the damn plane.
Borden had heard the same things she had. He wasn’t hesitating.
She took a deep breath and edged past the tired smiles of the flight attendants to her seat. Borden eased in next to her with a sigh and buckled in tight.
“Borden,” she said again. “Listen, what he said—”
“About the crash?” He sounded utterly calm. “You weren’t listening, Jazz. There’s an eighty-two-percent chance it won’t happen. Believe me, the longer you’re around Simms, the more you’ll trust his odds.”
“But—” There’s a woman named Kelley Walters back there. And that guy over there, he’s named Qualls.
Borden went back to the sports section. “Just stay buckled in,” he said. “Trust me. You’ll either believe soon, or you won’t. And there’s an eighty-two-percent chance it’ll actually still matter in the end.”
The engine blew out, by Jazz’s watch, at 10:03 p.m., California time. She was next to the window and had a view of the sudden flare of fire. She hadn’t gone to sleep, though the plane was nearly silent and most of her fellow passengers—including Borden—had nodded off.
They all woke up fast when the loud bang shuddered through the aircraft, and the plane lurched sharply to starboard. Jazz gasped and punched fingernails into the armrests, wishing the damn plane came with crash harnesses instead of ridiculously inadequate lap belts; next to her, Borden snapped awake and grabbed for support, too. “Hold on,” he said.
She stared out the window at the whipping fire and smoke pouring from the ruined engine. The plane hit rough air and tilted again, waking screams from the back cabin. The engines growled, shaking the airframe, and Jazz felt her ears pop.
She grabbed for Borden’s hand.
“Eighty-two percent,” he said. It sounded like a prayer, or a chant. “Eighty-two percent. We’ll be okay.”
It didn’t feel like that. It felt like her stomach had dropped somewhere out of the cargo bay and was falling, weightless, to earth. About to crash into a row of sleeping suburban houses. He didn’t say how many of them it would kill, she thought, how many more innocent victims. Maybe, to Simms, nobody was innocent.
She felt her fingers twine tight with Borden’s. His were shaking. A whine built up at the back of her throat, and she felt the plane falling, falling, tilting…
And then, suddenly, there was a surge of power, and it leveled out. They were saved.
She let out a startled gasp and heard the cries behind her fade out. Borden was still holding her hand, but he wasn’t crushing it anymore, and she could hear him breathing again. Deep, deliberately slow breaths.
“See?” he said. His voice sounded an octave higher than normal. “Eighty-two percent. We’re going to be fine.”
She turned toward him in the dimness as the Fasten Seat Belts sign flashed on with a belated ding, and the captain announced in a businesslike voice that no, they were not going to die.
“He’s not bullshit, is he?” she asked. “Simms. He really can do these things.”
“Well,” Borden answered, “the alternative is that he has enough power sitting in a maximum-security prison to have arranged for a commercial airliner to be sabotaged just to convince you. Which one would you rather believe?”
She managed a pale, shaky smile. His fingers wrapped around hers, warm and comforting, and she let them stay there all the way to the terminal.
It was nearly five in the morning by the time Jazz flipped on the lights in her office and dropped bonelessly onto the couch. She let her head drift back against the cushions and stared at the ceiling, blank and drained, and saw Borden’s long, sharp-chinned face bend over her.
“Okay?” he asked. He hadn’t ever put his tie back on, she realized. His suit jacket was off and tossed over the arm of a chair, drooping just the way she felt, and his once finely pressed shirt was a mass of wrinkles. Unbuttoned about one too many fastenings to qualify as businesslike.
“Yeah,” she said. “For somebody whose head exploded several hours ago.”
“Believe me, I understand.” He sank down on the couch next to her. “Remember the night I walked into the bar with your letter?”
She wasn’t likely to forget it. “You looked like an idiot.”
“I felt like one.”
“Did Simms tell you what to wear?”
He didn’t answer. He reached out and smoothed a stray lock of hair back from her face. She turned toward him, cheek resting on soft cushions, and met his eyes.
They both froze.
His hand was still brushing her skin, fingers light and warm, but there was nothing casual about the look on his face. Dangerous, that look. Especially here, in the dark, after adrenaline and a hard day and the destruction of the universe as she knew it, with a comfortable couch to lie back on.
Really, really dangerous.
Jazz moved away a little. Just enough to put space between his hand and her skin. He took the hint and leaned away, elbow on the back of the couch, staring at her but not quite as nakedly hungering. “I should call Lucia,” she said.
“This early?”
He had a point, and the couch felt far too comfortable. “I should go home,” she said. “Then again, I should be here in three hours.”
“Sleep,” he advised her, and pulled her legs into his lap. She couldn’t honestly remember when it was she’d allowed him to get that close to her, allowed herself to be touched with that much freedom. His hands felt huge and burning hot through her clothes, points of fire on her skin. She closed her eyes, sucked in a deep breath and concentrated on the sensation of his palms moving lightly across the backs of her calves, massaging. He stripped off her shoes and let them drop to the floor.
She didn’t mean to fall asleep, but there was something so achingly soothing about the warmth of his body near hers that she dropped into a field of black behind her eyelids, and was gone.