Broken Wings (A Romantic Suspense)(71)

“You saw her.”

“Yeah.”

“How is she?”

“She lives in a little house in a subdivision with her two daughters and her accountant husband and she’s goddamn happy, is how she is. Does that bother you?”

He sits back and doesn’t answer me.

“Two more f*cking hours to Philadelphia,” he grunts. “Fucking thing won’t go any faster.”

Frank looks at me and I look at him. He shrugs his gargantuan shoulders and turns around to sit facing forward.

The engines drone. Time ticks by like a dripping faucet that goes just fast enough to set me on edge. There’s no clock in here and I don’t have a watch. My phone is gone. No way to tell time until the pilot comes on the intercom and announces that we’re starting our descent into Philadelphia International.

Not fast enough, goddamn it.

Calm, Jack. She’ll land after we do.

The intercom crackles. “Sir, I need to speak with you after we land.”

My father gets up right this moment and rushes to the front of the plane even as the descent begins.

He charges back to his seat and throws himself in, clips his seatbelt, and pounds the armrest with his fist.

“They’ve already landed.”

“What? How?”

“I don’t f*cking know, some shit about a tailwind. What do I look like, a goddamn astronaut? When this son of a bitch gets us on the ground, we need to go.”

“I have a bad feeling about this,” Frank says.

“Shut the f*ck up,” Dad snaps. “For f*ck’s sake, did you really say that? I have a bad feeling about this? Thanks for the jinx, Frank.”

“Sir, may I speak freely once again?”

“Yes.”

“Fuck you, sir.”

“That’s why I like him,” Dad mumbles. “You ready to move? Sorry about having my guys rough you up, but I could tell you weren’t going to cooperate.”

I sit up and flex my arms. “Yeah, I’m ready to move.”

“Frank, you ready?”

“Fuck you, sir.”

“Okay, that’s enough of that.”

“Yes, sir.”

I grip the armrests in both hands, my heart pumping faster with each beat.

Frank isn’t the only one with a bad feeling. There’s a hook stuck in my soul and it’s tearing at my chest. Ellie’s in trouble.





Ellie





I can feel the hair rising on the back of my neck. Something is off. It’s not just the landing, either. I can’t stand to look out the window and see the ground coming up at me. When the plane actually touches down, I cry out. The whole thing fishtails on the landing and sends my stomach on a ride.

The tension eases just a bit when the plane actually stops and the engines start spinning down. Mom…

Jessica sits up and looks over at me, smiling.

“We’re home, honey. Let’s get back to the house.”

I drum my nails on the armrest and stand up when she does. She steps in front of me and walks down the stairs first. There’s a car waiting for us. I could run now, bolt and cry out for help, but Richard’s people would drag me back.

Maybe I could slip a note to one of them, or something. Not that they’d believe me. They’d probably jump off the roof if someone told them to. I don’t have much of a choice. I have to get in the car.

Fitzgerald. When I see him I’ll be safe. I’ll talk to him and get him to help me and he’ll help me get away. Something isn’t right. Maybe she knows I know. I keep glancing at her through the fringe of my hair, trying to catch some subtle cue in her expression or movements, but she’s the same as she always is. Same as she always was. A hint of crows feet around her eyes, but if there’s any gray in her silky blonde hair and her body is the same as she was when she married my father. It’s like she hasn’t aged at all.

It’s not a long ride home.

Home. It feels so strange coming back here. I feel like I left a thousand years ago. The city has become mythical, a dream. It’s like there’s another layer over the world, obscuring the truth beneath. I’ve only now noticed it.

The driver takes us right up to the house and stops, double parked. Jessica opens my door for me. I step out, and the air tastes familiar. I turn and look back at my childhood home, the house where I’ve spent about ten years without even really leaving more than a few times, and I’m stunned by how small it looks. Downright tiny, wedged between two bigger houses with its little alleyway backyard.

The world is so much bigger than this.

Fitzgerald. I walk steadily toward the door and step inside. Jessica converses with Richard’s people and follows me up.

“Fitz!” I cry out, “Fitz, where are you?”

“He’s not here,” she says calmly. “He let someone abduct you. He needed to be let go.”

“That’s not your decision. He works for me.”

She arches her eyebrow.

“What did you say?”

“This is my house. It’s my family’s house, not yours. You don’t live here anymore. You married another man. I want your things out of my house by tomorrow morning, if there’s anything left. You’re leaving. I’m calling Fitzgerald now. I’m rehiring him.”