Page 37 of Mile High Heist

I charged down the stairs, stupid expensive shoes squealing on the glass flooring. At the foyer (yeah, the plane had a fucking mini-foyer), I took a left toward lower economy.

How many snakes were on the plane?

I had Zola running background checks on the passengers—all five hundred and sixty of them. It would take time that we didn’t have.

Blazing through the galley, I sensed the shift. It was in the air, a sweat-tinged panic that sent my lizard brain into overdrive. Whatever had happened was still happening. There was too much movement, a cacophony of noise.

Find mine.

Ryle was the first one I searched for. I spotted his shorn head on the left side of the cabin, his face shadowed in a way it rarely was.

At the sight of me, his eyes widened. I knew I should probably cool off, or at least tone down the murderous rage.

As I approached him, Ryle subtly shook his head. I stopped. Revaluated.

That was when I spotted him. Standing near Ryle was a big, broad-chested man with a thick, handlebar mustache. Everything about him practically screamed ‘air pig’.

Realistically, we’d known there would be a high likelihood of air marshals on board. It was the biggest passenger airliner in the world, after all. Knowing our luck, there was probably a whole squad of them, just waiting to arrest us.

Funny how they’d become the least of my problems.

Not wanting to rouse suspicion, I retreated to the galley and watched from the shadows.

Between the panic and movement, a man’s body was revealed, sprawled on the floor. Someone was trying to revive him through CPR, but it was obvious the dude was toast. His face was so swollen, he looked like the victim of an intense wasp attack.

Or venom.

Fuck.

The snake hadn’t been lying. He’d already struck. Question was: who was next?

Suddenly, cold fingers ghosted across my lower back.

I flinched like I always did, but it was a tame reaction compared to what usually happened if someone snuck up on me.

Without turning fully, I angled my head to ask: “What the fuck happened?”

Madoc stepped up beside me, our shoulders brushing. We were the same height. For a second, I took some comfort in his solid presence. The day Madoc panicked was the day the world was fucking ending. A glance at his face revealed his usual apathetic mask. The only sign of tension was the slight furrow in his brow.

“Our mark is dead,” Madoc said drily. No fucking foreplay.

“What?” I turned and stared at him.

He held my eye, his lip twitching at my dumb expression. “That big purple pincushion over there is him.”

I looked at the body again. All I’d seen of Peter Vincilli was the quick photo Ryle managed to snap on his phone. That man had been good-looking, clean-shaven, easily passable as a wealthy lawyer on a business trip.

Now he looked like a regurgitated marshmallow.

“Shit,” I said, and reached up to pinch the bridge of my nose.

“There’s more.”

“Of course there is.” I hadn’t even told him about the Vipers yet. My chest tightened. We were never getting off this plane alive.

As Madoc recounted the last few hours, including Olivia’s stupid idea of luring the mark into a locked bathroom, my anger mounted. And mounted.

Madoc paused suddenly, his eyes lapping over my face. Whatever he saw made him shove me into the wall behind the curtain, away from prying eyes.