“Even Leo,” Leo confirms from behind.
We land at the private airfield the Levin family maintains, and disembark the plane. I am looking forward to being swept back home. Happily ever after is so within reach I can practically taste it—right up until two black vehicles come charging up menacingly. It’s not often you see cars driven in such openly hostile ways, with tires screaming.
“Get down!” Aiden shouts.
It happens so quickly. In the real world it probably all takes place in under sixty seconds. In the moment it seems to last forever.
Gunfire bursts across us, the fuselage of the plane peppered with bullet holes.
I have a strange feeling of being almost entirely calm. I know I should be panicking, and I know that the feeling of out-of-control anxiety will come later. Maybe much later. Maybe years from now it will hit me like one of these bullets, but for now I am calm because my body knows how to keep me safe.
I see the same fixed expressions on everyone else’s faces too. Thank god Leo is still in the back and still strapped in with the doctor beside him.
“Take off!”
Aiden and Luke haul the plane door shut again, and the pilot treats the private jet like it is a fucking fighter plane. I had no idea how fast one of these things could taxi, or how steeply it could take off. We have to grab for the seats as they turn almost horizontal with the angle of the incline.
The plane levels out and for the moment, the danger is over. It doesn’t feel like it though. It feels like the world is ending and it will never be the same, and if only I had made different choices, everything would have been okay.
The pilot, a man who has up until this point not really existed at all as far as I was aware, suddenly becomes extremely relevant. The door to his cockpit is open, and he talks back over his shoulder.
“Secondary landing spot? We’re going to need one soon. I think the fuel tank was hit, and if we don’t explode in a ball of flame, we’re going to need somewhere to put this thing down.”
Aiden goes up to the pilot and starts talking to him. I sit down and put my seatbelt on, which feels stupid, but there’s nothing else we can do.
Aiden’s back out in a moment or two, and goes to check on Leo.
“Doctor’s been shot,” he says.
One of the bullets has gone straight through the plane and hit the doctor, who is doing an admirable job of patching himself up.
“We’ll double your fee. I’m sorry. We didn’t anticipate that kind of hostility on home ground.”
The doctor shrugs and keeps working.
“Everybody is being shot,” Leo says.
“It’s very in right now,” Luke chimes in.
The doctor seems to have just been grazed, but that doesn’t mean he likes it. This is madness. I wonder what it must be like to live in some normal version of the world where the worst thing that happens is a parking ticket. Then I wonder if that normal version of the world really ever existed at all, or if it was just made up to make everyone feel like the strangeness they’ve been experiencing day in, day out, for their entire lives was an anomaly. Nobody I know, or have ever met, really has a normal life. Everyone is constantly beset by oddness.
But this is beyond weird, even for me, even for these men.
“Looks like we’re not going home yet,” Aiden says grimly.
“We know who did this,” Leo says.
“Mr. Red. We denied him what he wanted, so he deployed a kill team,” Luke says. “What an absolute bastard. He’s obsessed with you, Aiden. I swear to god, he loves you.”
“He doesn’t love me. He’s not capable of love. He’s capable of fixations. He wants what he wants, and if he can’t have it, then it can’t exist at all. Standard abusive behaviors.”
“So are you going to kill him?” Luke questions.
“It’s not as simple as killing him,” he says. “Eric is better connected than most people. He might be better connected than anyone. He makes BP look like a complete amateur.”
“What, then?”
“We’re going to have to negotiate,” Aiden sighs.
