Hate (22 page)

Okay. Gross.

Maybe it was just my imagination, but I was really thinking I didn’t want to know where that bomb was. Talk about the idea of disarming it taking on a whole new meaning.

My face scrunched up reflexively.

“Ugh. TMI Tommy.”

Though, wait. They had x-ray machines. Maybe it really was just my gross mind taking that the wrong way. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d selected the dirtiest of all the options instead of the most logical.

“My name isn’t Tommy,” he argued.

“Uh, yeah it is. Tommy Terrorist. It’s got a nice ring to it. Even make a good newspaper headline if that’s what your going for.”

“Greedy Americans,” he murmured in perfect American English. And I didn’t have a good view at the moment, but when I’d gotten a look before he’d been a walking, talking imagine of the average American Joe. Blond, blue eyed, and of average stature. “Always assuming the reason for something is fame or grandeur.”

Annoyed, I didn’t hold my tongue. “Not to be obvious or anything, but if you don’t like America,
don’t live in America
.”

“Whitney,” Blane warned quietly.

“No,” I protested vehemently. What was the difference? Either he slit my throat or he detonated the bomb, and the angrier I made him, the more chances were he would pick the former. I’d rather be the one to die than let everyone else suffer the same fate.

“I love all kinds of people.” Bugging out my eyes when Blane’s eyebrows crept softly up, I amended, “Okay, that’s not true. As a rule, I hardly really like anybody. But I accept them. Foreign or domestic, black, white, or orange, gay, straight, or transgender. Why does it have to be your way or no way? Why can’t we all just believe what we want and let everyone else be? Live your life, but by God, let me live mine!”

Unfortunately, that was the last thing I said before everything went black.

Man, sometimes I really
hated
my big mouth.

“WHITNEY,” I HEARD, THAT ONE word whispering and tugging forcefully at the edges of my mind.

The slightly rough voice sounded familiar, and I wanted to respond, but my vocal cords wouldn’t cooperate and my eyes wouldn’t open. In fact, pretty much everything I asked my body to do result in a big, fat DENIED.

“Whit,” the voice called again. “Come on, babe. Wake up.”

I swam upward through the fog, swatting it away with my hands and working desperately to pull myself free.

A hand settled onto my cheek, a thumb coming out to sweep effortlessly just below my eye.

And, as if summoned by the thumb, I managed to crack open just that one eye.

The light was bright, but cast heavily in shadow, I could see a sea of blue that I knew well. A blue I wished I had the time to stare into and study, cataloguing all of the nuances for future reference. I know I waxed poetic about his eyes, but they were the shit. I would have written a book about them even before I fell in love with him.
In
.
In
love. I’d always loved him.

“There she is,” he whispered reverently, his focus totally on me.

All at once, at the sight of the back of the leather airplane seats in front of me, the reality of the situation, our location, and the very big fucking trouble we were in slammed home. “Oh my God! There’s a guy on our plane with a bomb!”

Blane’s hand shot out to cover my mouth, and he gave me a gentle shush at the same time.

“I know. He’s still up front.”

He searched my eyes, looking to see if I was going to have another outburst, before he slid his hand away, the tips of his fingers lingering on the slightly chapped skin of my lips. Stress tended to make them dry out, and this
so
wasn’t the time for lip gloss.

“Then what the hell are you doing back here with me?” A million questions racing through my mind, I added, “How am I still alive?”

“Calm down,” he comforted. I hadn’t even realized my voice had been upping the volume and hysteria without my approval. “He just put you to sleep by holding your pressure point. You weren’t being a very cooperative hostage.”

No kidding. I had fucking lost my mind, making quips and carrying out rants. I was fucking
taunting
the terrorist.

What was wrong with me?!

“Jesus. I’m so sorry. I’m so stupid.”

“No,” he protested, his lips scarily close to my own. “It’s fine, Whit.”

“No, it’s not! I put everyone in danger!” I whisper-yelled.

Hooking his thumb toward the front of the plane, he disagreed. “
He
put everyone in danger. You just acted on your instincts to the best of your ability in an extremely difficult and unprecedented situation.”

“It was stupid,” I argued. “My instincts are
stupid
.”

“Whit,” he said, giving my pliant body a slight shake. “Stop. It was courageous. And it turned out to be smart because, look, now you’re here with me instead of up there with a nail file to your throat.”

“Is that what that was? A nail file?” He nodded. “Jesus.”

“Granted, it was modified and sharpened to the point where it cut through your smooth skin far too easily.”

He thought my skin was smooth. I guess my skincare regime was working.

I took a deep breath. Whispering, I admitted, “That wasn’t courage, Blane. I was scared to death. I don’t think I’ve ever been that scared. Still am, actually. But I have to admit this spot is better than my last one.”

“Come on, Elbow. Everyone knows that courage is the act of standing up and acting in the face of fear. The absence of fear is actually just stupidity.”

For the first time, I noticed that he was practically laying flat on top of me. How interesting and unexpected.

“Okay, well then this question definitely aids in the argument that I’m courageous.” Because I was scared he was going to react pretty negatively when I pointed this out. “What the fuck are you doing back here on top of me when you should be up there kicking terrorist ass, Mr. Air Marshall?”

I figured it was pretty obvious what he was, but I still made sure to say it super quietly, practically mouthing the words.

Just a smirk curled the end of his lips as he explained, even more quietly, “I have a partner. We usually fly in teams, and seeing as someone he loves wasn’t the one being held at knifepoint, he was smart enough to keep his cover.”

Someone he loves?

Yeah, let’s just ignore that for now.

“Oh, well that’s good. But, um, sorry for asking, because I’m sure you know how to do your job and all, but why the hell haven’t you taken this asshole down yet?”

“Something’s not right.”

I’d thought that myself. Maybe my counterterrorist instincts weren’t all that bad.

“He seems to want us to kill him. I mean, these guys are usually martyrs, but not until after they’ve carried out whatever they want to carry out.”

I nodded along. It all made sense.

“But he wanted me to shoot him. I could see it in his eyes. And I don’t know, it seemed a little preemptive since all he’d managed to do was nick your neck.”

“And ruin my shirt.”

“And that,” he agreed with a tiny chuckle.

“So what’s your theory?”

“I’m thinking he’s got some kind of dead man switch on it. You know, has it wired to go off when it stops reading a pulse. Something like that. That’s what I’d do if I were the terrorist.”

“Why? What does that do?” I asked, noting that he was still laying on top of me. My brain told me not to get excited. It was just easier to keep our voices low this way. But my vagina just wouldn’t listen. She had always been a stupid bitch. She was the one who’d spurned me by being devoid of hormones for all those years. If I’d been a little more open to men, I might have led a very different life.

“Well, for one thing, it’s a fail safe. No matter what, his mission gets carried out. But it’s also the perfect act of
terror
. Emphasis on terror. Say we kill him. Boom. He’s down. The threat’s eliminated, we’re all high five-ing and breathing easy. Until maybe twenty seconds later when we realize something isn’t right. Probably forty or so seconds after that, boom, we’re all dead. It’s the perfect way to lull a crowd into a false sense of safety.”

“Alright. Alright,” I muttered, trying to wrap my head around his theory. “So what do we
do
about it?”

“Now that’s a good question. It says a lot about you too.” He winked. “I knew I was smart to pick the only bulldog in the building all those years ago. It’s a lot easier to lean on someone who stands on her own two feet.”

“Yeah, I’m a fucking genius, asking what we should do in a situation where we clearly need to figure out what to do,” I scoffed.

“No,” he whispered with a small shake of his head. “You’re brave because you said ‘we’. You’re not just relying on me to figure it out for you.”

His head, and consequently his lips, lifted from their close proximity to mine as he peered out the small over window above my head.

He watched for only a few seconds before bringing his lips almost directly back to my mine. Only at the very last moment, he dove to the side and brought their plump pink flesh to the shell of my ear.

I could feel the moist heat of his breath on my skin as he spoke nearly silently. “The pilot knows.”

Bringing my lips to his ear, I questioned, “How do you know?”

“Because we’re over the ocean, and we’re making very big circles. The turning so slight that you almost can’t feel it. And certainly for Tommy, someone who’s very busy with other things, might not notice. He might,” he added quickly. “But he might not.”

Bringing my head back from his, I shook it slightly, confusion in my eyes. “Why would we be over the ocean?” I mouthed. “Why not land?”

His head mirrored mine, shaking back and forth in response, but I could tell it wasn’t because he didn’t know. He didn’t want to tell me.

“Why?” I whispered, adding a little force into my voice.

“Whitney,” he started, his intention clearly to avoid answering my question again.

“Tell me, Blane,” I demanded, this time the quiet completely gone. My anger made it hard to remember how important being quiet probably was.

He squeezed me tightly, his arms clenching almost painfully into the entirety of my upper body. “Shh. Listen—”

“Listen nothing!” I whisper-yelled. “Why would they have us fly over the ocean? Why isn’t it safe to land?”

“Alright,” he gave in, shaking his head slightly. Moving even closer to my ear, he spoke a little more softly. So much so that I thought I might have imagined the words he spoke.

At the very least, I was hoping I had.

“Because we don’t know exactly what he has planned. Landing somewhere hasn’t been cleared as a solution. He could be rigged to do something at lower altitude. It’s just too much of a risk at this point.”

“And the ocean?” I asked, uncertain I really wanted to know the answer.

“So, if they need to…they can shoot us down.”

God. What an eye-opening statement.

I had always been in the camp that said,
“Sure, there’s a terrorist on the plane, and you’re out of other options? Shoot that thing down.”

Somehow, now that I was the one on the plane, I wasn’t so sure I’d thought it all the way through.

I still agreed in theory, but who decided when all the other options were spent?

I’d be willing to bet it wouldn’t be us.

So now we had even more to fear. Not only was it possible we would die at the hands of Tommy, but our government might end it just as quickly.

No matter the option, we weren’t in control. And both of them left us dead.

“Great,” I mumbled, my eyes closing in order to get away from him regardless of our close proximity.

“Whit,” he called, forcing me to open my eyes to him again. “I know what you’re thinking, but there are more than two options here.”

“Don’t patronize me,” I demanded.

“I’m not.” I couldn’t understand how he could say that without lying, but his eyes seemed earnest.

He truly believed he’d find a way to get us out of this.

So I did the stupidest thing I could think of.

I believed him.

“Okay.”

“Okay,” he repeated, nodding his head in approval.

Honestly, it felt weird not to argue.

So I figured something out to fight about.

“So, not that I’m not enjoying this close proximity chat and all, but if you’re getting paid to save the day and all, what the hell are you waiting for?”

He smirked.

“Seems to me,” I continued, “If there’s a chance we’re gonna get shot down by our own fucking government, we might want to move the whole process of saving our asses forward a little faster.” I shrugged my shoulders with false casualness. “Just food for thought.”

“You’re something else,” he whispered as his eyes searched my face.

“I hear that all the time,” I said on a nod. “You’re different. Interesting. Quirky. All of these things are just nicer words for weird. Off-putting. Bitchy.”

He chuckled nearly silently, but I could see his throat move with the motion of a laugh. “I can’t argue with that.” I rolled my eyes. “You’re all of those things.”

“Thanks,” I snapped sarcastically.

His lips dipped all the way to my ear. “But I didn’t mean any of those things. I meant to say that you’re something
special
.”