Page 75 of Tangled

43

Escape

Tristan

Tristen held Jian’s elbow and helped him up the ramp to the rented airplane.

In a tired voice, Jian said, “I have to liaise with the flight dispatcher and the Civil Aviation Authority. It’s still dark, and I don’t know how far we’re going. If it’s international, it has to be an instrumental flight plan. They take time to fill out.”

“I’ll do it,” Tristan told him. “Do you have a concussion? Did they hit your head?”

Jian shook his head, but he was looking at the ground as he did it. “I’m just exhausted. I need to sleep. I haven’t slept since they broke in over twenty-four hours ago, and honestly, I hadn’t slept much during the night before.”

“So, you’re just sleep-deprived,” Tristan said, confirming.

“I think so. And that medic gave me a pill he described as ‘the good stuff.’” He touched his side. “It is helping.”

Yeah, Tristan was going to keep an eye on Jian. “I can get the flight plan from the pilots and file it with the dispatcher. You are staying here on the plane.”

“If we leave soon, we won’t have flight staff, Mr. King.”

“Jian, we can manage without stewardesses.”

“The medic said I’m not to use this arm.”

“I wasn’t talking aboutyou.”Tristan flipped back one of the recliner-style seats into a bed like he’d seen Jian and the other flight staff do. “I’ll arrange for food service. Colleen and I will manage. You and Anjali are going to take naps, and we’re going to land at Newark for you to see a real doctor before we continue onward.”

“But your breakfast—”

“Jian, for the love of God, I will take care of it.” Tristan ducked into the galley kitchen, which was picked over, and took three bottles of water back to Jian. “Here.Hydrate.”

With Jian chugging water, Tristan checked on Colleen and Anjali. “I’m going to get the flight plan from the pilots to file and arrange for food for the flight. Everything okay?”

“But it’s the middle of the night.”

Tristan shrugged. “Even at four o’clock in the morning, if you have enough money, things can be arranged.”

Colleen nodded. “Okay, then. Anjali is a vegetarian.”

He asked Anjali, “Vegetarian or vegan?”

“Dairy is fine. I do not eat eggs,” she said.

“I’m sure flight catering has figured that out before. Colleen, check who’s outside the plane before you let anybody in.”

“Right,” she said. “Peephole.”

He smiled at her. “Right.”

The inside of the hangar was hot as Tristan trotted through it, the corrugated steel roof holding the desert heat from the day before. The mechanical smells of heated metal and kerosene fumed in the silver cavern.

In the private terminal, arranging food service and pilots took half an hour on the phone. The rental jet company assigned pilots to them, who contacted the flight dispatcher with the flight plan. After that, he went to the flight desk where Jian had previously arranged flights and talked to them.

Talking was easy. Tristan could talk a used car salesperson into payinghimto take a car off the lot.

While Tristan was negotiating with the Civil Aviation Authority and flight dispatcher for a place in line so they could leave, he watched over his shoulder for Butorin henchmen in ill-fitting suits as his brain churned.

Yes, they were flying that day to New Jersey in an attempt to get lost in the bustle of the United States, but ever since Mary Varvara Bell had sent Tristan that damned letter, he’d felt like he was navigating a rattlesnake den. As he’d crept through the tortuous tunnels of trying to procure the GameShack stock and yet keep his computer programs out of the wrong hands, every turn might reveal a rattlesnake.