Gus shot a bitter, rage-filled glance at Eric. He turned, and she started to shout a warning to whoever was trying to open the door.
But Gus dropped to one knee, hooking a finger in a small latch. With a twist, he unlocked and then opened a rectangular hatch in the floor. A second later, he slipped through into the belly of the plane.
The trap door snapped closed. Nikolett let out a sob as she stumbled over, falling to her own knees and twisting the latch to lock it closed.
Only then did she frantically make her way back to Eric.
“Eric, Eric. Please don’t leave me. I love you, please don’t leave me.”
She found his pulse, and when she pressed a frantic kiss to his lips, then his cheek, his eyes fluttered. A sob of relief mixed with one of terrible dread was ripped from her.
That was how the others found her after forcing the warped door open—bent over Eric, sobbing softly.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Two dead, ten injured, in Isle of Man plane crash.
Nikolett studied the news headline. Such simple words for such a traumatic event.
The pilot and Tobias, one of the Spartan Guard, died in the crash. Tobias had run into the cockpit to help the pilot when the onboard electronics suddenly failed. Together, they’d managed to crash-land the plane on Dreswick Point—a tiny bit of land that stuck off the south eastern coast of the Isle of Man. The crash was the result of every electronic system in the plane going dark at the same time. While the emergency lights had come online after a moment, the main onboard computer hadn’t ever come back. The pilot and Tobias got the landing gear down, but the place they landed was far from flat. The wheels broke off, leaving them to skid along the rocky soil, the plane ripping apart around them. With no way to steer, the pilot and Tobias had been unable to avoid a massive rocky outcropping. The front of the plane hit it, crumpling the cockpit and killing both men inside. That was also what made the plane tip up at the end.
“Tobias was thirty-nine,” Eric said softly when he looked over her shoulder at the headline. “He was going home to be married in six months.”
Spartan Guard only served until they were forty, at which time they went to their home territory and finally got married.
“The pilot had two kids,” Nikolett said as she scanned the article, though she’d learned that particular horrible fact yesterday.
The crash was two days ago, and this afternoon, for the first time, neither the authorities nor any doctors needed them for something.
She and Eric were two of the ten who were counted as wounded.
Eric had a whiplash concussion.
Her injury predated the crash, but the authorities had seen the blood that covered her—her wound had come open, the temporary stitches ripping—and shipped her off to the hospital too. The frazzled A&E department hadn’t asked questions about her ripped stitches, merely taken them out, then glued and stitched the flap of flesh back into place and sent her away with antibiotics and pain pills.
There were far more severe injuries than Eric’s and Nikolett’s for the doctors to focus on.
Zoran was in a coma from head and neck trauma. They didn’t know if he’d wake up.
Idir was in critical condition. A piece of torn hull had skewered him through the gut when a large chunk of the left side of the plane was peeled back. Doctors had repaired most of the internal damage. For now, they were fighting to stave off sepsis, hoping to get him stable enough to transfer him to a bigger hospital in either Dublin, Belfast, or Liverpool.
Eric scrubbed his fingers through his hair. “You ready?”
She nodded, rising but not looking at him.
“Nikki, come here.”
Nikolett kept her head down until he forced it up. It felt good to be alone with him, and she hated herself for feeling anymeasure of happiness, no matter how small, when other people had died.
“We’ll get him and then we’ll kill him slowly.”
She laughed softly, as she’d known he meant her too—though she was also very aware that his words were literal.
The past two days had been spent alternately dealing with British authorities, some of whom had far too many questions about the flight, given the scant paperwork, and trying to quietly find the Spaniard who’d slipped away from the wreckage. Air traffic to and from the Isle of Man had been shut down, but there were regular ferries from Douglas to Lancaster, Dublin, and Belfast.
She hoped he was gone. Hoped he’d slunk away to plot and scheme somewhere.
What she really hoped was that he’d stolen a small boat and midway across the Irish Sea, the whole thing capsized and he drowned.
