Thunder filled the air around them, battering her eardrums.
A helicopter with only a few dim running lights screamed through the darkening air and landed in an empty field just outside the parking lot, skidding as it touched down.
Tristan pulled her along by her hand, crouching as they ran toward the aircraft.
Its side door slid open.
A blond man stood in the helicopter doorway, holding out his hand and yelling over the roar of the engines and blades chopping the air over their heads, “Come on, Twist!Get in the goddamn helicopter!”
Colleen stumbled on the gravel of the parking lot, but Tristan held her up by her waist.
Twist.The new guy had called TristanTwist.
She hadn’t needed any more proof, not after that throaty growl ofgood girland the way his body moved with such power and authority while they’d been escaping.
But there it was.
And all her other rationalizing about how Tristancouldn’tbe TwistyTrader collapsed into ash.
Tristan shoved her onto a seat, yelling,“Seatbelt!”as he reached past her to slam the door shut.
Colleen grabbed the woven strap and latched it around her middle as the helicopter tilted under her legs and butt, lifting off with a roar so loud that it felt like the rotors were bashing her on both sides of her head.
Tristan stumbled, windmilling his arms as the aircraft spun and pitched, but the new guy wrapped an arm around him and hauled him onto the bench seat. They buckled in while holding onto each other and the backs of the pilot’s seat and the other front chair.
The new guy handed out headphones with mics.
When Colleen jammed hers on, the terrible noise from the helicopter blades abated and was replaced by the new guy’s voice yelling, “Strap in and hang on!”
The helicopter rose nose-first higher into the air and then tipped the other way, flying low over the buildings with its rotors biting the air and nose pointing toward the ground.
Colleen grabbed the harness flopping over her shoulders but missed because she was dangling from the seatbelt around her waist.
Water droplets fell from her soaked hair, splattering the seatback in front of her and the wall of the helicopter as it banked into a tight turn. The direction ofdownchanged.
The two guys braced their long legs on the front seats as the sunset outside the front window tilted precariously.
Her seatbelt buckle had been stiff, and it sat at an odd angle like she’d jammed it while trying to make it latch.
It wasn’t going to hold.
Colleen flailed, scrambling to find something to hang onto, because if her lap belt failed, she was going to pitch straight through the front windshield and plummet to the rapidly retreating ground.
Tristan’s arm shot out, and he grabbed a handle on the cabin wall beside her head and caged her body, pressing her back against the seat with his elbow.
Beside her shoulder, Tristan’s shirt sleeve had ridden up over his wrist.
Blue and green tattoo tendrils vined over his skin.
They were exactly like the tattoos she’d seen on Twist’s muscular arms in the video chat and when he’d rolled up his sleeves in the Devilhouse.
The night before, when she’d sneaked into his penthouse suite and bedroom, she hadn’t seen his arms. She’d insisted on turning the lights off because she didn’t want him to see her thigh hickey.
Oh God, she’d sent Twist a picture of her—
The horizon flopped in the other direction. Colleen grabbed the seat and Tristan’s muscular arm.
Outside the window beside her head, the buildings shrank on the ground. People spilled out of the square restaurant from all sides.
