“Breathe, Nicolette.” I know she’s new to this, which has benefits of its own, but what I take for granted may frighten her. I’ll have to ease her in. I don’t want to scare her away.
I close the first aid kit while Thayer goes to talk to the flight attendant. They speak in hushed voices, and I take advantage of the momentary privacy to talk to Nicolette. “Alright, one thing at a time. First, we have a protocol for a situation like this. We’ll throw them off. I’ll have men stationed at that airport to make sure we don’t have an ambush waiting for us.”
“You have a protocol,” she repeats, then draws in a breath and lets it out slowly. “Of course you do. Alrighty then.”
“We have to. We fly often between Corsica and Paris.”
“Regular old business flight,” she mutters.
“Exactly. We have a secure line to communicate with ground control and will make sure they have our actual details. The flight is short, and we’ve managed to block anyone from tracking us. What was the next question?”
“Who did this?”
“Your guess is as good as mine, but we’d likely suspect it was whoever attempted to sabotage our flight on the way here. I’ll ask Thayer as well.”
I hear him walking over to us. He sits beside her, across the short aisle.
“That’s what I wondered as well. We didn’t know who attacked the plane the first time. Made sure we vetted our pilot and attendant, but other than that, we have no leads. We suspect we’ll find out more when we get to Corsica.”
I nod.
“Okay, so someone who wants to kill you—or, more accurately,us—tried to sabotage our plane and when that didn’t work, decided to send ateamto shoot us down.”
“Looks like it.”
“Grrreat.” She fingers the pearls at her neck, and Thayer makes a sound of disapproval.
I look sharply at him. “What?”
“So you two were responsible for the theft," he says. "I suspected that."
"Do you think this attack was related?" Nicolette asks.
"No, but it's something we’ll have to look into."
He looks sharply at me. "How much does she know?"
"Well, asking that question makes me realize there's probably quite a bit I don't know," Nicolette says. She looks out the window. "But I'm only here for a short time so I guess it doesn't matter.”
"She knows we're Corsican mafia. She knows we have friends and enemies, and that Napoleon’s talisman is coming to The Underground." I pause, letting the importance of my words shine through. I don't need to give him details, especially involving our cousins. “She knows that in exchange for information from Milo, we will be giving him something fromyour company. I have not told her what you do for work, that's up to you."
He looks from me to her. "How long is she working with you?"
Forever. She thinks that I'll let her go when our time is up. I do fully intend on paying her. I am a man of my word, and I always do what I say I will. But there is no way I am going to let her go after this.
No matter what. I'm on what I have to do. No matter what the stakes are.
“For the weekend,” she answers when I don’t, giving me a curious look.
I look away. Thayer looks from me to her then back again.
The plane cruises along, and from where we sit, I can hear the pilot calling in our fake landing.
There’s no point in hiding anything from her. I don’t want to live a life of lies any more. I want truth and authenticity. Transparency.
“Thayer’s in charge of a group similar to Corsica, but with higher stakes.”
She gives me and him a curious look, then brings her gaze back to me again.
