“I’m sorry, Allison. None of us thought he would act so quickly,” Detective Hill says, sounding more like a person with emotions, as opposed to the stoic policeman from before. He turns around to face me, and before I can say anything, he’s pushing a bundle of cash into my hand.
“No,” I insist, refusing to accept it.
“Allison, we can’t take you back to the Omega Center.” He shakes his head as he talks, grabbing my retreating hand and pushing the money into it. “You need to disappear. And it needs to happen now.”
Gypsy passes over her bag, full of her belongings—a hoodie, a water bottle, wireless earbuds, and her goddamn phone. “Send it back, or don’t. But you need this, Allison. If you use my credit card for a while, too, it will make it harder for anyone to track you.” Her eyes jump to Detective Hill, but he’s not bothered by her suggestion I use her ID.
Looking around, I see where we are. Hill drove me straight to the airport, but it seems Gypsy was in on it too.
“Red-eye special,” she says quietly. “I booked you first class on one, coach on a couple of others. You choose which one to take, but make sure you check in to each one. If you wear my clothes, you won’t look at all yourself. You can do that, can’t you, Allison?”
“I hope you don’t mind,” Hill says, being careful in how he looks at me. “I also marked your situation as priority, which means we’re able to bypass a lot of the identification requirements with TSA. You’ll be fast-tracked through all checkpoints, here and wherever you land.”
I nod, my thoughts blank, before I look at them both, seeing their pity and fear. My tears restart, but I am so very grateful that I’m one of the lucky ones.
“Thank you,” I whisper.
Saying goodbye is easy. A couple of plainclothes officers follow me inside the terminal, making sure none of Rocco’s buddies are lingering in the shadows. I keep the brim of the cap low over my face, but avoiding the cameras altogether is as important as running is.
Luck seems to be on my side. After checking into all the flights, I’m nearly the last to board. Even before we take off, I’m under a pile of Delta Airways blankets, enjoying the first-class seat while having a quiet breakdown.
The white noise of the engines droning is therapeutic and keeps me company while the rest of the passengers enjoy refreshments. I stay huddled under the blankets as the chatter and activity in the cabin drops until almost all the passengers are sleeping.
Sitting up, I undo my belt and get ready to make a dash to the bathroom to freshen up, when a slow ripple of movement out of the corner of my eye makes me pause. A man across the aisle stares at me. His features and his presence are as cold as the suit he wears. The venomous look in his eyes has me unable to move a muscle.
Most people have a spark of warmth in their eyes, but this guy has nothing nice in his. My head swirls slowly, like I’m dizzy or tipsy, as I stay frozen like a deer in the headlights. If I could scent him, I’d be able to get a better read on him, but the suppressors I took earlier and the desensitizer lotion I used make it impossible to do.
My hands shake as I close the privacy screen, cutting off his glare. Breaking the hold he had on me comes with a rising humiliation from how he made me feel. When he saw the bruises and the cuts, he revealed no compassion. The opposite, in fact. I shouldn’t be worried about a stranger’s reaction, but I am, and I feel like I’m about to vomit. I search the seat pockets near me fora sick bag. I guess I make too much noise or something because, from over the top of my seat, one of the flight attendants interrupts my search, scaring the shit out of me.
“Try sucking on some ice,” she says, her voice at that level where you have to strain to hear it. It’s a good tactic, giving me something besides fear to focus on.
The flight attendant places a small bowl of ice on the table, along with a washcloth and a bottle of water. “I’ll get you some dry crackers too,” she says, and is gone before I can thank her.
I suck on the crushed ice, leaning my head against the window, hoping the darkness from outside the plane swallows my anxiety. I’m so thrown by the stranger’s reaction, but his judgment reinforces what I already know—there are some seriously fucked-up people in this world.
When my eyes start closing, I don’t fight it.
The drop in air pressure wakes me at the same time the lights in the cabin get turned on. I keep the privacy screen drawn, for so many reasons, but mainly because I don’t want to see his face again.
By the time we’ve taxied to the gate, the noise in the aircraft is full of passengers eager to get off, to make connecting flights, to get home. I start up Gypsy’s phone right away, and just as the attendant says we can start disembarking, a text catches my eye. It steals my focus, and I step into the aisle without looking.
“Do you want to make it any more obvious you’ve never sat in first before?” a woman snaps. Her cultured voice is full of judgment, even though she’s hiding her mouth behind her hand, as though she wasn’t the one who spoke. I didn’t notice her before because I had been so thrown by her traveling companion—the Alpha with the awful eyes.
She is one of those fake femme fatale types—with beauty and a murderous disposition, impossible to ignore, but if I were tobark in her face like the dog she assumes I am, she’d dissolve into dramatic sobs.
Normally, I’d let her cuntish behavior slide, but the two of them together twist my fear into something else. I take a small step, pretending I didn’t hear.
“Sorry?” I ask softly, hoping she’s hard of hearing and needs to lean in to hear me.
Behind us, the curtain to the rest of the aircraft, where the other passengers wait, is still drawn, giving some semblance of privacy to the first-class passengers.
“Get out of the way,” she hisses impatiently when I purposely block her entitled path. Thank god I took another dose of the suppressors and scent blockers when I woke up, because it would be my luck she’d be one of those bitches who smells like peach muffins or something, turning me off anything sweet forever. The medication is to help me deal with people’s designations – their scent and even their presence – while also masking some of my own Omega traits. Giving me a more stable and logical mindset. Well, that’s the aim of the suppressors and blockers, sometimes they don’t seem to working, like now.
I look away from them, acting like I’m conceding. As she steps into the aisle, I paste on a saccharine smile, waving her past, but look right into her eyes. “My apologies, shit before the shovel.”
She freezes mid step. Even in her rage, her lips don’t move, and neither does her forehead, which is mildly disconcerting.
I ready myself for her rebuttal, because it’s coming. Shooting me one last, malice-laced glare, she twists, talking to the Alpha behind her. “And some women wonder why they’re the victim.”
