Page 43 of Mile High Heist

“He’s lucky he’s already dead,” Jax growled, his jaw knotting. His fingers squeezed my hips in a painful grip. “Never again, princess.”

“Never again,” I promised.

“You will listen to me from now on,” he blazed on, not ready to let it go. “No more one-woman adventures. No more fucking lies. Not when we’re trapped on a plane full of professional killers.”

I wholeheartedly agreed.

But I knew he wouldn’t like what I told him next.

“There’s something else,” I said, wincing slightly when his fingers tightened. “I think the prototype is activated.”

Jax frowned, confused. “What?”

“The Wi-Fi is gone,” I said, my voice dropping to a whisper. Without turning, I felt Madoc’s attention sharpen, listening to my every word. “The signal is dead. No one can make contact in or outside of the plane, including the captain. Preacher told me the SKS could cause country-wide blackouts. What if someone’s used it to cut the plane off from the outside world?”

Jax released me and dug into his pocket, pulling out his burner phone. He pressed a few buttons, then cursed and clenched it in his fist. “Fuck.”

“Yeah,” I echoed miserably.

“Why the fuck would they do that?”

I shrugged, then tensed at the cold chuckle behind me. Turning around, I pressed my back against Jax, so I was facing the psychopath front on.

“Something funny?” I demanded.

“They need time,” Madoc said, and nothing else. Cryptic asshole.

Remarkably, Jax caught on without further clarification. He tensed behind me, then groaned: “They need time to reach their boat.”

I arched my face up toward him. “What boat?”

“The Vipers have a boat waiting for them. They’d never reach it if we had to make an emergency landing sooner.” His throat bobbed, his anger resurging. “It means they can keep killing people and we can’t call out. We can’t stop the fucking plane.”

Fear trickled down my spine.

“Why would they keep killing people?” I asked, already dreading the answer.

Jax glanced at Madoc, then down at me. His face said it all. “Because they want you.”

Before I could digest that like a square pill, Madoc piled on. “That’s not the best part.”

We both turned to him.

“The SKS is an invasive code that infects communications and navigation systems,” he drawled, a bored king on his porcelain throne. “It has to be inserted into the target system to work.”

I glared at him. “That was almost a full explanation. Well done.”

Madoc smirked at my sarcasm.

Behind me, Jax growled. “Enough flirting. Dumb it down for us preschoolers. The fuck does that mean?”

“The target system is the plane’s network,” Madoc said. “The servers are in the avionics bay, beneath the cockpit.”

“So?” I asked.

“So who has access to the cockpit?”

My throat clamped shut. Oh.