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Except…it wasn’t the case that had saved me. It wasn’t dumb luck that she’d shot me there. I remembered her touching my chest, just before she did it. She’d been feeling for the case, checking it was in my breast pocket.
She mustn’t have had a choice. She’d had to shoot me and she’d found a way to leave me alive.
She hadn’t been lying. She did love me. She was on that plane against her will and they were taking her back to Russia.
I scowled at the sky. No they’re fucking not.
51
TANYA
Rurik sat opposite me, leaning back in his soft leather seat. As we taxied towards the runway, he said, “I know you’ve had a difficult time, Tanya. But it’s all over, now. The next few years are going to be a time of great opportunity. America will have no money for war. The Middle East can be ours. And as America rebuilds, we can be there to lend a hand…and make sure the right people are in positions of power.” He shook his head in wonder. “We can define the next century, you and me.”
I gazed at him, my expression neutral. Inside, my world was in pieces. Rurik didn’t know what he’d made me do. If he’d suspected my feelings for Colton, he would have just killed us both. But as far as he was concerned, Colton was just another man I’d used. Disposable, just as I was disposable to him. He wouldn’t believe I could fall in love. Even I hadn’t believed it was possible.
Did it work? I was sure I’d hit the case and it had been a handgun round, not a rifle, but I didn’t know if the bullet would make it through. Rurik had been watching so I hadn’t dared look back to check. What if I killed him? In normal times, I’d be able to check on him from Russia but by the time we got home, America would be in chaos. What if I never found out if he was alive?
The engines roared and the plane trembled as it girded its loins for takeoff. I closed my eyes.
“There’s somebody on the runway behind us!” yelled the pilot over the intercom.
Rurik cursed and looked out of the window, trying to see. “Could his team have found us?” he snapped. But before I could answer, I heard a familiar noise. Even in the insulated cabin, even over the roar of the aircraft engines, the low, T-Rex roar shook my chest. I clutched the armrests, not daring to hope.
“Take off!” yelled Rurik.
We started our take-off run. But a second later, a cherry-red pickup truck blasted past us. Rurik and I scrambled out of our seatbelts and crowded in behind the pilot to see.
The pickup truck raced ahead of us. As we started to catch up to it, it did a handbrake turn and skidded to a stop in the center of the runway, rocking on its suspension. Then it accelerated, driving straight towards us.
“Take off!” ordered Rurik. “”Go over him!”
“There isn’t enough room,” snapped the pilot, his face pale. Both the plane and pickup truck were still accelerating, on a collision course.
“Keep going!” Rurik told him. “He’ll swerve.”
No he won’t. I stepped back from the cockpit and grabbed hold of a seat. The pickup truck roared towards us, bellowing like an angry bull. The pilot gritted his teeth, hunkered down in his seat...and then cursed and sent the plane slewing off to the left. We bounced across grass and then a wire fence was rushing up to meet us. The plane jolted so hard my feet left the ground and then we dropped—
I must have blacked out because I woke up on the floor, wedged between two seats. The floor sloped down towards the front of the plane—I was guessing the front landing gear had broken off, and that’s why I’d felt us drop. In the cockpit, the pilot and Rurik were still slumped, dazed.
I heard a banging on the door. I scrambled over to it, wrenched on the lever and—
Colton was stumbling towards me, hunched over and wincing in pain. But his face lit up when he saw me. He held out his arms and I ran to him. “Are you okay?” I asked, feeling his chest.
“Ow! Yeah, don’t touch it!”
“What can I do?”
He grinned through the pain. “Kiss me, princess.”
And I pressed myself close and did exactly that, and he kissed me back as if my lips were a healing salve.
Then I heard sirens wailing towards us. The airfield’s fire crew were approaching…and behind them, the red and blue flashes of police cars. Chyort! Someone in the control tower had called the cops. Colton and I looked frantically around but the airfield was empty, open space. There was nowhere to run.
As the first cop car pulled up, Colton and I exchanged looks…and then we tossed our guns on the ground and raised our hands.
