He entered and stopped near the galley.
My heart kicked hard.
A pause. The faint scrape of a shoe against the floor. Then silence.
He didn’t search the plane.
Moments later, the pilot announced through the intercom that we were cleared for takeoff. The plane lurched forward, rumbling across the private runway, accelerating so hard I had to brace my hands and ankles against the walls of the cramped compartment to keep from sliding out of my hiding place.
My breath caught as the floor slanted upward, the plane lifting off. My stomach flipped. My skin prickled. My heartbeat settled into a fast, but steady rhythm.
We were airborne.
The plane leveled out after that, and the engines quieted into a smoother hum. The cabin pressure equalized. And like every stealth attempt in every bad action movie, the second I thought I’d gotten away with it, everything went straight to hell.
Then Andrei’s voice drifted through the plane, deeper than usual, with an edge he rarely showed.
“Alright,” he muttered. “Where is she?”
My blood froze. I kept still, muscles burning from holding the same position for too long. Then came the sound of him searching the plane. It started with a panel sliding, then a cupboard door opening, followed by another compartment door snapping shut.
The next door he checked was two feet from my hiding spot.
Then the smooth wooden panel I was tucked behind ripped away so fast it knocked the air from my lungs.
Bright cabin light flooded in. Andrei’s face appeared in the opening, eyes blazing, jaw clenched so tightly it looked carved from stone.
“Well,” he purred, voice low and lethal, “would you look at that.”
He grabbed me by the arm and hauled me out of the alcove like I was no more than a child. The movement was so sudden I didn’t even have time to brace. My back slammed against the wall beside the galley, my breath leaving me in one quick burst.
He pinned me there with one hand around my throat. His other hand pressed a gun under my ribs.
His face was inches from mine, breath hot and furious.
“What the hell are you doing on my plane?” he snarled.
I glared back at him. “I can explain.”
“Explain?” He laughed once, the sound humorless and disbelieving. “You snuck out of the estate, hid in a luggagecompartment, stowed away like a feral cat, and now you want to ‘explain’?”
“Andrei—”
The hand around my throat squeezed a little tighter.
“No,” he growled. “You listen. This meeting is classified. Restricted. Revenant’s orders. You should not be here. This isn’t a misunderstanding. This is a direct violation of the agreement we made when we took you onto our estate. And the moment you stepped on this plane without permission, you broke that agreement.”
I lifted my chin. “Get your hand off my throat and I’ll talk.”
“No,” he snapped. “You start talking now.”
The jet hit a pocket of turbulence. The plane dipped, sending his body closer to mine. The gun stayed anchored beneath my ribs.
I locked my gaze on his.
“Andrei Dragunov,” I tried, my voice even despite his grip on my neck and the adrenaline pumping through my veins, “you’re not going to shoot me.”
His laugh this time was dangerous. “You want to bet your life on that right now?”
