Page 66 of Air Force One (Miranda Chase #16)

“Inessa, you need to change.” Mike seemed to be the keeper of logistics. “Get your blue case and dress very warmly. Put only what you must keep in that knapsack. Will there be plenty of other evidence that you were on this flight?”

By the time she nodded, Mike had disappeared into the cockpit.

Holly ducked outside. As Inessa proceeded to the luggage area at the back, she could see Holly clearing the electrical cable from the plane, tossing it on a heap of others, then tossing aside a pair of wheel chocks.

The outer door thunked shut before she even had the blue case opened.

She hurried through the change, though she stumbled many times as the plane maneuvered along the taxiways. The pavement had been bumpy on arrival, but not this bad. Maybe Mike was using a different taxiway.

They sat still at the end of the runway long enough for her to put on every layer until she felt as fat as a sumo wrestler. She would soon expire of the heat if this took too long.

Back in the cabin, she pulled her laptop and her black address book from her handbag and put them in the knapsack. When she began to add her phone, Holly shook her head.

“Anything critical on there?”

“No. Just my normal list of addresses and phone numbers.”

“You’re dead, you don’t need them anymore. But, they need to see your phone never move again after this flight.”

Inessa set it back on the table with great care. She set her favorite handbag next to it.

Holly was giving the pilot another bluish drink.

“Will you overdose him?”

“I don’t think so. My friends were fairly clear on what I should do.”

“Your friends?”

And Holly didn’t answer. Of course not. Because Inessa had taken neither the blue nor the red pill, neither illusion nor reality. Instead, she had crossed into a limbo land where assistance came from people she’d never met and whose names she would never know.

She finally nodded her understanding. The only sound was the idling of the jet’s engines and a soft adenoidal snore from the pilot. “Is there a reason we haven’t departed yet?”

“Mike!” Holly called out.

“Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I’m going already.” But still it was thirty long seconds before she heard the engines begin their spin up to full speed.

“Nerves,” Holly rolled her eyes.

“Nerves?”

“He’s a bit freaked out by your plane. He’s never flown one this big before.”

“He—what?”

At that moment, he released the brakes and the plane jerked forward. She waited through the long takeoff roll, but the climb out was smooth. Wobbly, but smooth.

“Well, I hope that’s the worst of it.”

Holly’s smile said quite the opposite. “How much do you know about parachutes?”

“All I know is that people use them to avoid plummeting out of the sky.”

“Precisely.” Holly’s smile grew bigger.