The Single Undead Moms Club (Half Moon Hollow series Book 4) (39 page)

I followed along, checking the location of the air masks (there weren’t any) and running lights toward the emergency exit (also no). They really needed to make safety cards specific to tiny planes.

“You have flown before, yes?” the stranger asked.

Although he was distressingly attractive, I ignored him. I would not die in a fiery plane crash because I had neglected the safety card for a pair of beautiful blue eyes. I tucked it away in the seat pouch in front of me, tightened my seatbelt, and clenched my eyes shut while the plane struggled to lift off from the runway. I pressed my head back against the seat rest, as if holding a rigid posture would somehow get the plane in the air safely.

I prayed the only way I knew how, visualizing the exact opposite of all the horrible potential outcomes running through my head. I pictured the plane lifting off, maintaining a nice straight path through the air, and landing in Half-Moon Hollow with my suitcase intact. Oh, and I pictured the antianxiety meds releasing into my system exactly as I’d timed them, so I wouldn’t climb the walls of the plane from the moment it took off.

And when I opened my eyes, my purse was open on my lap and my hands were swimming through the contents, searching for the package I was bringing to Jane. Across the aisle, the stranger’s head was bent over a magazine. I felt faint, as if I were falling inside of myself, separated from my own body as my arm started to lift. I could see myself yanking the package out of my purse, as if I were watching it happen on a movie screen.

This was wrong. What was I doing? I hadn’t pulled the package from my bag since getting through security; why would I show it to this person I barely knew?

As suddenly as it began, the spell was over and I practically sagged against my seat. My long, sweater-clad arm was still raised and my hand still stretched as I shook off the strange dizzy sensation. I’d never felt anything like that before. Was I coming down with something? Had I had some sort of stroke? I didn’t feel tingling or numbness in my extremities. I wasn’t confused, beyond wondering what the hell had just happened to me. Maybe it was an inner ear problem? Or the veggie wrap I’d eaten at the airport sandwich shop? I should have known better than to trust airport cuisine. I probably had some sort of dirt-borne E. coli from unwashed lettuce.

I glanced across the aisle to the stranger, still poring through his magazine, completely unaware of my inner turmoil. I sighed. I was a very special sort of weird. I turned my attention back to my book. While the takeoff was fairly smooth, the rocking of the plane and the dark, quiet space actually made me a little dizzy again, and I wondered if I really was coming down with some strain of E. coli that affected the inner ear. Stupid airport lettuce.

With the stranger distracted by magazine articles about abdominal workouts that would change his life, I traveled through Dante’s rings of hell with the aid of the weak overhead light. After twenty minutes or so, I got tired of the weird, dizzy sensation intermittently flashing through my head and set my book aside.

“Not quite the beach-read romp you were promised?” the stranger asked.

I looked up to find him staring at me again, intently, on the border of attempted smoldering. Frankly, I found this to be unnerving. Either the stranger was the world’s chattiest traveler, or he was one of those skeevy men you saw on
Dateline
who targeted women who travel alone and tried to lure them into a human trafficking scheme. Forgetting every lesson my mother had ever drilled into my head about good manners, I gave him my full-on “disapproving professor” face I’d learned as a teaching assistant.

He was not fazed.

He did, however, get distracted by a child’s truck, a toy left over from a previous flight, rolling down the aisle toward the cockpit. The plane’s nose seemed to be tipping downward. I checked my watch. We were only twenty-five minutes into the flight, which was way too early to be starting our descent into the Hollow. I exchanged a glance with my handsome seatmate, who was frowning. Hard.

A metallic crunching noise sounded from the front of the plane, catching our attention. After flipping a few switches and hitting some buttons, Ernie the Pilot yanked what looked like an important lever from the control panel and stuck it in his shirt pocket. And then he took a large hard plastic mallet from his laptop bag and began swinging it wildly at the panel. He got up from his seat, snagging what looked like a backpack from the copilot’s chair. The stranger and I sat completely still as the pilot eyed him warily.

“What the hell are you doing?” I demanded as the pilot slipped the backpack on and clipped the straps over his thick middle. Some instinct had me reaching for the strap of my tote bag, winding it around my wrist. The plane continued to descend at a smooth, steady pace. “Get back to the controls!”

“I don’t want to hurt you. I just want the package you’re carrying. I know it’s not in your suitcase; I checked at the baggage screening,” Ernie told me, raising his hands and reaching toward my lap. The invasion of space had me grabbing at my bag to feel for the little canister of pepper spray I usually kept clipped to the strap. Of course, that little canister was not currently clipped in place because that’s the sort of chemical agent the FAA frowns on bringing through security. If I got through this, I was going to write them a long letter.

I clutched the bag to my chest. Why was Ernie doing this? How did he know what I had in my bag? Hell, how did he manage to get into my suitcase? Did someone send him after me? And what sort of person could bribe a pilot to commandeer a (admittedly underpopulated) commercial flight?

Another wave of dizziness hit me, full force this time, and I had to fight to keep my attention on my mind-numbing terror. This was it. This was the worst-case scenario. The pilot was abandoning the airplane while trying to mug me. I ran through all of the transportation studies I’d read on flight safety and crisis management to try to come up with some sort of solution to this problem . . . and nothing. I had nothing. None of them covered purse-snatching, plane-jacking pilots.

Shrugging off the heavy, sleepy weight that dragged at the corners of my brain, I took a deep breath. OK. I would handle this one problem at a time.

Problem one, no one was flying the plane. And Ernie—who I was absolutely correct in not trusting, yay for me—appeared to have broken off something important from the control panel, which probably rendered the plane unflyable. So, I could draw the conclusion that Ernie was a horrible person and that he had no plans to land the plane. So I seemed to be screwed on that front.

Problem two, Ernie was trying to snatch my bag. All of the personal safety guides I’d read said you should hand over your purse if you’re being mugged. Nothing in your wallet could be worth dying for. It would be easier just to hand him my bag.
I might as well let him have it
, a soft voice that didn’t sound entirely like mine whispered inside my head.
It isn’t worth dying for.

I could feel my arms lifting, my hands unwinding the strap from my wrist. Suddenly, a loud, shrill warning beep sounded from the cockpit. I whipped my head toward it just as the plane dropped suddenly, throwing me against the seat in front of me. I hissed as Ernie bent and tried to yank the bag away, dragging my strap-ringed arm with him.

I was going to die. Whether I handed over the bag or not, the plane was going to crash with me on it.

A heretofore unknown spark of anger fired in my belly. I’d been entrusted to take care of Jane Jameson’s package. Jane was a high-ranking member of the local World Council for the Equal Treatment of the Undead. She’d trusted me with Council business. She expected me to take care of the package for her, to deliver it safely. She was paying me a handsome sum to do so. And this pilot was trying to take it from me, to kill me for it. He’d put me in a terrifying, no-win situation to intimidate me into handing it over.

This was
bullshit.

That little spark burned into a full-blown stubborn flame and I wrapped the leather bag strap around my wrist even tighter.

I wasn’t going to give it up. I couldn’t do anything about the plane crashing, but I could keep Jane’s package from falling into clearly unscrupulous hands. As much as we both loved books, I was sure Jane would rather see it destroyed than dropped in the hands of people willing to kill for it.

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