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I should spank her for that, but not here.
“Good point.” I lower my voice. “Doesn’t mean you’re not getting spanked for being mouthy.”
Her jaw drops and she looks quickly to Thayer, who only shrugs and shakes his head. He’s not surprised. Nothing he wouldn’t do.
I draw in a deep breath and release it. “Okay then. Let’s sit down and tend to your scrapes.”
“And yours,” she says, pointing a wobbling finger in my direction. I look down at my shoulder, surprised to see I’m bleeding, and not a little.
“Shit. What happened there?”
“You got shot, brother,” Thayer says. “Sit your ass down and I’ll get the first aid kit.”
“I can’t believe you didn’t even know you got shot,” Nicolette says. Her voice wobbles. I look over at her in surprise, and notice when she blinks, a tear falls down her cheek.
“Are you sure you’re alright?”
“She’s in shock, man,” Thayer says. “She’ll be fine. Let’s get you taken care of.”
“Her first.”
“Goddamn it, Fabien, she scratched her knees. You’re fucking bleeding from a gunshot wound. Sit down and let me look at it before I knock your ass out first.”
He makes sense. “Fine.”
I sit down.
But I reach for Nicolette’s hand and give it a squeeze.
“Let’s get you out of these clothes.”
I shrug out of my suit coat and he helps me out of my shirt. Finally, as I’m starting to realize that I’m actually hurt, pain begins to throb at my shoulder.
“When did that happen?” I ask.
“When you were pushing her onto the plane.” Thayer puts antiseptic on a cloth and dabs it on my wound. I hiss out a breath and clench my teeth.
I pride myself on being observant. I can’t believe I was that fixated on getting her on the plane that I didn’t realize I was shot.
“It just grazed your skin. Whoever the hell it was is a terrible shot.”
“Good. Any idea who it was?”
Thayer’s lips thin. “No.”
I blow out a breath and grab the cloth, pressing it on my shoulder. I reach for the first aid kit and snag the tape, yank off long sections, and slap it onto my shoulder to make a shitty bandage.
“Give me the kit.”
Thayer blinks, looks at me, then the kit. He looks over at Nicolette, who’s watched us in silence.
“This is just sort of a normal day for you guys? Weekday antics, huh? Day in the life of the French mafia.” She blows out a breath. “Lovely.”
Thayer doesn’t reply but holds my eyes for a few beats. He knows she knows, then. No point in keeping it secret. He’s probably wondering if she knows what he does for work, and she probably does suspect something, thanks to Milo.
I will only tell her what I need to. The more she knows, the more danger she’s in.
I look out the window at the clouds below us.
“Good job getting away,” she whispers. “Where will you land?” Her hand trembles. She rests it on her knee as if she’s trying to stop the trembling, but it doesn’t work. “Who did this? What will happen next?”
“Breathe, Nicolette.” I know she’s new to this, which has benefits of its own, but what I take for granted may frighten her. I’ll have to ease her in. I don’t want to scare her away.
I close the first aid kit while Thayer goes to talk to the flight attendant. They speak in hushed voices, and I take advantage of the momentary privacy to talk to Nicolette. “Alright, one thing at a time. First, we have a protocol for a situation like this. We’ll throw them off. I’ll have men stationed at that airport to make sure we don’t have an ambush waiting for us.”
“You have a protocol,” she repeats, then draws in a breath and lets it out slowly. “Of course you do. Alrighty then.”
“We have to. We fly often between Corsica and Paris.”
“Regular old business flight,” she mutters.
“Exactly. We have a secure line to communicate with ground control and will make sure they have our actual details. The flight is short, and we’ve managed to block anyone from tracking us. What was the next question?”
“Who did this?”
“Your guess is as good as mine, but we’d likely suspect it was whoever attempted to sabotage our flight on the way here. I’ll ask Thayer as well.”
I hear him walking over to us. He sits beside her, across the short aisle.
“That’s what I wondered as well. We didn’t know who attacked the plane the first time. Made sure we vetted our pilot and attendant, but other than that, we have no leads. We suspect we’ll find out more when we get to Corsica.”
I nod.
“Okay, so someone who wants to kill you—or, more accurately, us—tried to sabotage our plane and when that didn’t work, decided to send a team to shoot us down.”
“Looks like it.”
“Grrreat.” She fingers the pearls at her neck, and Thayer makes a sound of disapproval.
