Coldbrook (Hammer)(83)

‘I think we’re beyond niceties,’ Vic said. ‘But we’re safe here.’

‘How do you figure that?’ Lucy kept her voice low, but he could see the tension in her face.

‘They can’t get in.’

‘And how much food do we have? How much water?’

‘Lucy—’

‘Enough water for a year, Vic?’

‘Mommy,’ Olivia said. She’d dropped the DS and pulled out her headphones, and she glanced back and forth between Vic and Lucy. ‘Mommy, why do we need so much water?’

Lucy’s face crumpled, but she did not move.

‘Please,’ Vic whispered as he moved past her, sweeping their daughter into his arms and pressing her head to his chest, wishing she could unhear and Lucy could unsay, and wishing with every atom in his body that he could undo.





7


Before they saw land beneath them, the other passengers made two attempts to get at Jayne. The first time Sean ushered her back into one of the toilets and closed the door, and she heard the shouting and screaming, threats and promises, and then the loud gunshot that silenced them all. A few moments later Sean opened the door and brought her out, never taking his attention from the aisle and the next compartment, curtained off once again. Jayne emerged expecting to see a body on the floor, but Sean had pointed his gun into the kitchen area. He’d fired into one of the food trolleys.

The second time, two men rushed them, hunkered down behind another food trolley. Sean crouched down in a shooting stance, but then the trolley caught a chair’s arm and jarred to a halt, and the men had been thwarted. They retreated back along the aisle, one of them dabbing a bloodied nose.

And now they were over the USA again, and their worries were starting all over again.

‘Why Baltimore?’ Sean asked. The stewardess had come to talk, informing them where they were and that they’d been instructed to land.

‘Closest airport. We’ll be flying on fuel fumes when we land.’ The woman’s stare kept flickering to Jayne, and Jayne offered her a smile. She’d taken some horse-strength painkillers and now the churu aches were more manageable.

‘Why can’t they just leave us be?’ Jayne asked. ‘Not as if I’ve tried to eat any of them.’

‘Most of them are scared,’ the stewardess said. ‘But there are a few who want to feel that they’re doing something.’

‘By killing an innocent woman?’ Sean asked.

‘I’m sorry,’ the stewardess said. ‘We’ll be landing in twenty minutes.’ She turned and walked back along the aisle.

Sean told Jayne not to strap herself in. He stood in the aisle beside her, gun in one hand, the other holding onto the seat in front of her. He no longer kept a watch on her. The man was tired.

‘So what happened to you?’ she asked.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean your . . .’ Family, she wanted to say. But she hardly knew him, and what right did she have to know? ‘Your story.’

‘Right,’ he said, glancing down at her. ‘Yeah. Well, been working the airlines since 9/11, the pay’s good, get to travel. My wife moved to France ten years ago with my daughter, and I only see them once or twice a year.’ He was staring along the aisle again, and his voice was flat and emotionless. Everything tied up inside. Jayne knew how that felt.

‘At least they’re safe,’ she said. ‘You should call them, now we’re close to land.’

‘If I hadn’t left my phone up there.’ He nodded along the aisle.

‘Oh, sorry.’

They were silent for a while, feeling the strange lifting sensation as the aircraft lost altitude in preparation for landing.

‘What should we do when we’re on the ground?’ Jayne asked at last.

‘I’ve been thinking on that,’ Sean said. ‘Mostly up to now I’ve just been acting for the moment. Keeping you safe.’ He looked at her, and she wondered how old his daughter was. ‘And, if you’ll let me, I’d like to continue doing that after we land.’

Jayne smiled.

‘So once we land, we need to slip away and—’

The shouting was sudden, and shocking. Some people were speaking, others simply crying out in despair, and Sean knelt beside Jayne and levelled his gun along the aisle. He looks terrified, she thought. It had been her own pain, the threat to her own life, that had obsessed her since she’d woken half-stripped and exposed from her churu blackout. But here was Sean, protecting her because he knew it was right. And she could smell his fear, sense the tension in his body as he aimed the gun.