Page 19 of Mile High Heist

I stood up slowly, filling the space, ducking my head to avoid the overhead. The mother immediately locked onto me, a predator too close to her cub. I gave her a bland look, then shifted my focus to the portly asshole who would learn to swallow his tongue.

His eyes widened, then narrowed suspiciously. He’d built his career defending bad men. It made him arrogant, made him believe he was untouchable. He looked like a Gerald. Or a Richard. Dick, for short.

I slanted my gaze back to the mother. Barely older than a teenager, her skin flushed and pockmarked with acne. Her spawn wriggled in her arms.

“It’s your perfume.”

She blinked at me. “W-What?”

“You reek,” I said. Her cheeks flushed, humiliation creeping back in. No one jumped to intervene. Few people had Jax’s irritating hero complex.

“Oh, um, I’m…” the mother stammered, helpless. She was on the verge of tears. “They were giving out free samples at the airport. I just, I didn’t think…” She looked down at her red-faced toddler. “Oh.”

“Give him to me.”

“What?” Her head snapped up. The child screeched again. An insurgent fist cuffed her chin. She winced and barely caught the next one.

“Wash it off,” I said. “Come back when you’re not triggering his nervous system.”

Her embarrassment made her desperate. She nodded dumbly and stood, handing her child over to me, a complete stranger. My lip curled in a snarl. The child was a hefty thing, all pudgy knees and fists. One of those things hit directly into my bullet wound scar. Pain lanced down my arm, unwelcome now. I only liked pain that I controlled.

“I’ll, um, be right back.” His mother kept her eyes on me until she ducked into the bathroom at the end of the cabin.

The toddler screeched, sensing the loss.

“Shut up,” I said. Instead of punting it across the cabin, I sat down and plastered my hand across his back. His lungs expanded, his heart rabbiting. My skin itched in disgust.

I hated vulnerability.

Dick scoffed behind me: “Typical.”

I inhaled the scent of baby powder and overly sweet perfume and thought about murdering Dick.

The toddler went quiet, one chubby fist clawing at the fabric of my shirt. I looked down and met wide, searching eyes.

“I could jam my pen into Dick’s carotid artery,” I murmured, like a lullaby. “I could twist and twist until it severed his spinal cord. Then he would flop around like a fleshy puppet.”

The toddler cracked a watery smile.

I settled him on my knee. “Something in common, then.”

The man beside me balked and leaned as far away as the seat allowed. I glanced at him, coolly. The last splotch of color drained from his face.

Things were turning around.

An approaching click of heels immediately followed that thought, a perfect cause-and-effect. I didn’t bother looking up. The stride faltered, a momentary shock, before they blazed over.

“Ma—um, mister?”

“Yes?” The toddler smiled again, unperturbed by my coldness.

Olivia fought with her composure, a note of something in her voice. Fear? No. I was familiar with her fear. It went deeper, but just as primal.

Resigned, I dragged my gaze up.

Olivia stared down at me like I’d single-handedly gutted, skinned, and dropped a dead bunny at her feet. The violent imagery made me smile.

Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Where did you get a baby?”