“What’s the hell’s wrong with him?” Callahan asked, afraid.
Still clutching the axe, Jo dashed over to Max. She kneeled over him and placed her hand on his forehead.
“Oh no. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry!”
She looked mortified, tears leaking from her eyes as Max tugged desperately at her clothing.
“What-did-you-do-to-me?” he rasped.
“It was… I thought it was the only way…”
Bloody spittle coated Max’s lips in a noxious foam as he tried to draw painful breaths, each intake of oxygen like a knife blade to his chest.
Jo was desperately trying to cradle him, but he used the last of his strength to fight her off, shoving at her like she was attacking him.
She heard Callahan’s outraged voice from over her shoulder.
“What did you do to him?”
Max uttered two sharp, final, breaths. He fell silent, eyes fixed in silent horror at Jo’s guilty face.
Only what I had to do, to save her, thought Jo, to save my baby girl.
Callahan snatched the taser from the floor. He was standing over Jo now.
She looked down at Max, the boy she’d felt so drawn to when they’d first met at the airport. The boy who was now dead from the poison she had poured into the champagne under Alligator’s instruction. Max had downed all the glasses. She’d meant for the others to partake too. Jo gripped the crash axe. Alligator had made a murderess of her. That’s how far she’d go to save her little Sophie.
“Oh Bravo, Jo.” Alligator’s voice, razor sharp, cut through the tension in the cabin. “Beautiful work. You’re the only one who has actually managed to complete their assignment.”
Jo stood up and locked eyes with Callahan. He was pointing the taser gun right at her.
She was ready for the fight.
“Time for the final round,” Alligator sneered.
The claustrophobic emergency lighting clicked on, painting the jet interior a carnal red. Jo’s monitor screen flickered with digital noise, which cleared to reveal a camera-eye view of a shadowy room. On-screen, a terrified middle-aged woman and teenage boy were tied up, back-to-back, on chairs in the centre of the room, their mouths gagged with thick black duct tape.
“Ten minutes to impact, Mr. Callahan. So, the question is, are you going to listen to Jo the poisoner here, or are you going to get back on schedule and save your wife and firstborn?”
Callahan looked at the screen, distraught. The cameraman held a gleaming hunter’s knife blade up to his captives’ eyes. His wife and son’s fear was palpable through their muffled cries for help — help that wasn’t going to come unless he acted.
“Don’t listen to him,” Jo pleaded, “they’re already dead… they’re all here, all of them!”
She gestured at the piles of body parts.
Callahan glanced at her, then back at the screen.
“Which one goes first? Wifey? Or the boy?” Alligator said.
Jo fixed Callahan with imploring eyes. “Don’t listen to him!”
Callahan hesitated, hearing Jo’s urgency but unable to tear his eyes away from the sight of his wife and child on the monitor screen.
They twitched and struggled against their bonds as the camera-killer drew closer to them, knife blade gleaming.
“It’s all pre-recorded. Those suitcases back there… all the people he told us were still alive on the ground. They’re all fucking dead! All of them!”
She grabbed Callahan’s shoulder, forcing him to look toward the suitcases, at the blood and severed limbs.
He looked at her, numb at the sight of so much death and the muffled cries of his family.
“You said he has your daughter.”
“What? I…”
“If your daughter is alive then there’s a chance my family is too.”
“I looked through the suitcases, my Mum’s body was there but not my daughter’s. But all the other people were killed before we even took off — that video he’s showing you…”
Callahan’s face was resolute. “No. If there’s even the slightest chance they’re alive… I can’t take the risk of letting them die.”
“No. No! Please! They’re dead already!” Jo tried desperately to grab a hold of him, but he fended her off.
“Get in that cockpit right now Callahan, or your pretty wife loses her head.”
Alligator’s voice betrayed an anger Jo had not heard in him before. She watched, dismayed, as the pilot began to retreat towards the cockpit.
“No! Don’t do this! All those innocent lives, for nothing!”
“Too slow,” Alligator said.
Callahan’s eyes widened in pure terror as the on-screen killer pushed the tip of the blade into his wife’s neck. Blood trickled over the blade, a little flower of death blooming.
“Now get back in that cockpit or I’ll take her fucking head clean off.”
“No,” Jo said, “Please…”
She searched Callahan’s eyes, looking for that glimmer of hope that he might see reason in what she’d told him. Only pain and regret looked back at her. Callahan turned on his heels and walked back toward the cockpit door. She swallowed an angry breath, forcing it back down into her solar plexus. Jo felt it burning inside her, and drew energy from her rage.
“Stop!”
He turned, and she charged at him, lifting the axe in readiness to strike.
He flinched, trying to lift the taser gun in time, but she’d caught him by surprise. She closed in on him, almost within striking distance. The plane’s engines whined in protest as the jet buckled in the gathering storm, dropping suddenly and knocking Jo off her course. She stumbled and fell against the hull, smacking her head with a heavy thud. The edge of the seat stopped her from hitting the deck, and she pushed herself up into a standing position using the crash axe for support. The plane righted itself once more and she turned to face Callahan again, clutching the axe with both hands now.
Callahan raised his arm, taking aim, and fired the taser at her. She looked down in shock at her chest, seeing the little electrodes that had pierced her blouse and were embedded in her flesh.
Convulsing from the sudden surge of electricity through her nervous system, she staggered back into the hull again and dropped to the floor.
Callahan advanced, finger on the trigger, still pumping volts into her prone body.
Jo lay on the floor watching, sideways, as he crouched down and disconnected the taser wires from her paralysed form. Her vision blurred as she watched his shiny black shoes disappear over the threshold and into the cockpit.
Moments before she passed out, she saw the little LED light at the cockpit door flicker from green to red.
Seventeen
Jo regained consciousness with a start and clutched at her chest, imagining the electrodes were still there discharging their hot white pain into her.
She lurched forward into a clumsy seated position. The plane felt like it was tilting slightly, but she could not be sure if it was an after-effect of the taser. She blinked, trying to clear the mental fog that was clouding her eyes, but not wanting to see.
Carnage was all around her — a mess of body parts and luggage. Spilled blood was daubed across the surfaces of the once-plush private jet. Dave’s corpse was just visible in the crew prep area. Close by lay Gwen, who had helped drag Dave to his resting place beneath the curtain. Gwen, whose neck she had snapped during the struggle. Max’s body lay slumped in the spot where he had taken his last agonized breath. Max, whom she had poisoned at the behest of their unseen host.
I’m a murderer,
she thought bitterly, and this must be Hell.