Red Alert(NYPD Red #5)(45)

“What do you think?” Matéo asked.

“Mind-boggling,” I said.

Kylie shrugged. “It’ll do.”

I could see in his eyes that Matéo, like men everywhere, was dazzled by her.

“Your flight will be approximately seventeen hours,” he said. “We have three pilots on board. Captain Dan Fennessy is in command. Normally there would be only two in the cockpit, and a second team would be flown commercially to relieve them when we set down to refuel. But Mr. Wells pulled this together in such a hurry that there was no time to get a relief crew in place.”

“Pretty sloppy way to run an airline,” Kylie said.

“I’ll make a note to management,” Matéo said, half smiling, half drooling. “Can I get you anything to drink before takeoff?”

“A glass of water,” I said, clearly disappointing him again.

“I’ll stick with champagne,” Kylie said.

We sat down, buckled up, and Matéo brought our drinks.

“Water?” Kylie said to me. “You’re an embarrassment to freeloading cops everywhere.”

Cheryl had given me an Ambien, and I popped it.

Five minutes later, we were airborne, and Matéo invited us to make ourselves comfortable in the main cabin, where he’d set out platters of cheese, caviar, and seafood.

“This looks great,” I said, “but I could use a before-dinner nap. Do you mind if I stretch out back there?”

“This is your airplane, Detective Jordan,” he said. “Think of it as a hotel at fifty-one thousand feet. There are fresh linens on the bed, and there’s an assortment of nightwear in the closet.”

“Zach, you are no fun at all,” Kylie said, spooning caviar onto a toast point.

“Wake me in half an hour,” I said. “I promise to be more fun then.”

I went to the bedroom and found a supply of men’s silk pajamas, all black. I changed, donned an eye mask and a pair of Bose noise-canceling headphones, and crawled into bed under a thick comforter.

People actually live like this, I thought as I drifted off. The next thing I knew, I was jolted awake. It took a few seconds to remember that I was on an airplane, and I figured that the bump I’d felt was turbulence. I took off the headphones, and I could hear the hum of the tires on a runway. We’d landed. I had no idea where or why.

I peeled off my eye mask and got hit by a second jolt. There was a body, also wearing black silk pajamas, lying next to me in bed. Kylie.

She put her hand to her head. “I think I drank too much.”

There was a knock on the glass bulkhead, and Matéo called our names.

Kylie muttered something that sounded like an invitation for him to come in. He did.

“Good morning, Detectives,” he said. “Welcome to Helsinki. Can I start you off with some coffee and fresh-baked korvapuustit?”

I didn’t answer. I was still staring at the woman in my bed.





CHAPTER 43



“Give us a few minutes, Matéo,” Kylie said.

Without a word, he backed away and eased the door shut with all the grace of an English butler who knows that what happens in the master bedroom stays in the master bedroom.

Kylie sat up, leaned back against the headboard, and drilled her eyes into mine. “And what are you staring at, Papa Bear? Goldilocks is sleeping in your bed? Is that a problem?”

Of course it was a problem. But not one I wanted to discuss with Kylie. “No,” I said. “More like a surprise.”

“What was your last partner’s name?” she asked. “Shanks, right?”

“Omar Shanks.”

“So if you were making this trip with Omar, and you rolled over and saw him asleep next to you, would you give him that same what-the-hell-are-you-doing-in-my-bed look?”

“It depends. Did Omar and I bang our brains out when we were in the academy together? Because if we did, I might give him a weird look if he suddenly hopped back into the sack with me twelve years later.”

“Oh please, Zach. Get over yourself. Don’t dredge up what happened a lifetime ago. Plus I didn’t exactly hop into your bed—excuse me—the bed, the only bed, which technically makes it our bed. I tried to wake you after a half hour, then I gave you another half hour, but you were lying there like a dead mackerel. So I had dinner and more wine than I should have, and I crashed. Remember, you’re not the only sleep-deprived cop on this airplane.”

And just like that, I’d been sucked into the exact high school, soap opera dialogue I’d wanted to avoid. I knew Kylie. She never met an argument she didn’t like to win. And now, here we were once again, all cozy in bed, tempers flaring, passions rising, and if I’d learned anything during our torrid affair, it was that this wasn’t a fight. It was foreplay.

Sex with Kylie had always been a twelve on a scale of one to ten. But some times were better than others. One was mornings. Especially if she woke up with her hair tousled, her eyes at half-mast, looking like a drop-dead gorgeous lost waif who’d wandered into my bed during the night. Our other best time was make-up sex. This was starting to feel a lot like both.

The black silk pajamas clung to her in all the right places, but she’d left the top three buttons open, and despite the fact that I knew every inch of her naked body, undressing her with my eyes was driving me crazy.