The Confession (33 page)

“Believe me,” said Alec's old boss. “I don't want to do any of this. But you've put me in a position where I don't have much choice.”

I was hauled onto my feet, and automatically gripped a small stationary table as the plane continued to ascend. Stein forced the Taser from my hand and from the sounds of it, shoved it into his pocket.

“Put the gun down,” said Alec, balancing against the back of a seat. “You can't fire it in here anyway. You'll risk blowing out a window, destabilizing the cabin pressure.”

“And then we'll all lose consciousness and the plane will crash,” finished Stein, and at the mention of crashing, Alec's jaw clenched. “I taught you that, remember? I taught you everything you know. I paid for your goddamn college degree, Alec. I made you a king in this company.”

“There was only one king,” said Alec harshly, never taking his eyes off Maxim's. “Everyone else was a pawn.”

Behind me, Stein scoffed. “You didn't seem to mind until she came into the picture.” I bit my tongue as Stein bumped the barrel of the gun against my head. “Don't be noble and try to tell me she had nothing to do with it. I know you, Alec. I've known you a long time.”

“No, you're right,” said Alec. “She had everything to do with it.”

He took a step closer, and there was a fire in his eyes I'd only seen traces of before. There was no way Maxim couldn't feel the power coming off of him. It terrified me, and Alec was on my side.

“If she wasn't around,” Alec said in a low voice, “I wouldn't care what you did. I wouldn't care what
I
did. But she makes me decent, Max, and that was something you never tried to do.”

He moved closer.

I could hear Max's clothing rustle as he shifted, feel his movement in the gun pressed to the back of my head. I kept my eyes on Alec's, not allowing myself to wonder what would happen if he decided we'd done enough talking and pulled the trigger.

The plane hit a patch of turbulence, and Alec's jaw clenched. My dad tilted again to the floor, and grunted in pain as he fell on his wounded shoulder.

“I tried,” said Maxim, voice raised. “But I failed. You betrayed me, Alec, and you won.” He laughed dryly. “My lawyer called just after you finished testifying. You know what he told me?
Get your affairs in order.
The jury will finish deliberating tomorrow, but they will find me guilty, and when they do, I'll be ruined. Done. Because of you.”

“You ruined yourself,” said Alec, now only six feet away. I wanted him closer, so that I could touch him, run my hands over his chest. Feel him, if only for the last time.

Another bump in the plane. And this time Alec gripped the leather seatback with both hands. Sweat dripped down his jaw as he forced a shaky breath.

Maxim leaned forward, so that his chest came flush with my back.

“And now I'll ruin you,” he said quietly, slipping the barrel of the gun down to the back of my neck. I shivered as I felt a puff of breath against my neck. “Anna knows it's nothing personal. We've had this conversation before. Her skin really is quite soft, Alec.”

His eyes narrowed, but his rage felt like nothing compared to mine. It took over my body in a flash, and before I could think it through, I threw my weight backward and swung my elbow into his ribs.

The next moments happened so fast, they barely had a chance to lodge into my memory.

Maxim fell, though not because of me, but my father. He'd kicked Maxim hard in the back of the leg, and as he tumbled forward onto his knees, I was thrown to the ground.

“Move, Anna!” shouted my dad.

Alec charged just as I rolled to the side. He crashed into Max head-on.

“Mom?”

I looked back, just in time to see Jeremiah shaking his mother's still form. When she remained limp, he dropped her, and stared at her in shock for one blank second. Then he turned, rage in his eyes, and clambered toward the other men. I saw him reach for the gun in his waistband, despite the fact that he'd been the one to yell at his father for firing earlier.

“No!” I screamed, and pulled myself up to my feet.

Jeremiah swung the gun in my direction, but it was knocked out of his hands by Alec, who'd turned when he heard my voice. Alec shoved me hard to the side, and I landed in a seat just as the plane hit another bump that threw everyone to the right.

In horror, I glanced up at the open, swinging door of the empty cockpit.

Before I could rise, or speak, or even join the scuffle, there came another shot. I clapped my hands over my ears, hearing nothing but ringing as the plane lurched through another bout of rough air.

Jeremiah fell to the ground, bleeding from a wound on the left side of his rib cage. He threw back his head, gasping, revealing the full outline of the black star on his pale, white neck.

Our pilot had been shot.

“J
eremiah?” Maxim's voice was the first sound that broke through the rush in my eardrums. He still held a gun, and it took a moment to realize he'd been the one to fire, not Alec. My gaze tore around the cabin, searching for a hole in a window, trying to assess what the destabilization of cabin pressure would feel like.

There was no sign we were going down. Not yet anyway.

Maxim dropped the weapon as though it were burning hot. It skittered across the floor in my direction, and I scooped it up fast. Before Stein could rise, Alec grabbed him around the throat and slammed him back against the side of a seat.

“Stop!” I shouted. “Alec, the plane. No one's flying the plane!” I searched for the other weapon, and found it behind my father on the floor.

Alec didn't release Maxim Stein.

“Anna, my hands,” said my father. “Untie them. Hurry.”

I rushed around Jeremiah to my father, finding his wrists rubbed raw from the rope that bound them. It took my fumbling fingers too long, but finally I freed him. He flexed his hands, shook them quickly to regain the circulation, and then took the gun.

It took some prompting for Alec to loosen his hold, but when he finally did, I tied Maxim's wrists together as firmly as I could, and took the Taser for myself.

“Jeremy?” A weak female voice came from a seat down the aisle.

Alec's expression was torn as he looked over Jeremiah Barlow, now shaking and curled into a ball on the floor. This man had stabbed him in prison, taken the woman he loved—I was sure there was nothing he would have liked to do better than let him die.

But he knelt, and reached beneath the man's shoulders to pull him up. Jeremiah groaned in pain.

“What happened?” Jessica was closer now.

“Get up, you son of a bitch,” muttered Alec. “You've got a plane to fly.”

“He's not flying anything,” said Maxim grimly. He sank into a seat, paying no attention to my father, or the gun now trained at his chest.

“What did you do?” demanded Jessica. “Alec? What did you do?” Her voice hitched.

“I didn't do anything,” Alec muttered. “Ask your boss.”

“Max?” She was standing now, and walked toward us on wobbling legs, gripping seats on either side of the aisle. She fell to her knees beside Jeremiah, hands out to the sides, as if she wasn't sure what to do with them.

“He can't fly,” I said quietly, watching as a cough wracked through Jeremiah's body. The blood on his chest made the bile crawl up my throat, or maybe it was the knowledge that we were thousands of feet above the ground without a pilot.

I didn't want to die.

Alec rose quickly. He glanced at me, just long enough for me to see the terror in his eyes before he spoke to my father.

“You've got this, Ben?”

“I got it,” Dad answered. “What's the plan?”

Alec siphoned in a breath, as if preparing to jump into cold water.

“Sit down, all of you.”

I didn't listen. I followed Alec right to the front of the plane. He didn't look surprised when I took the small foldout seat behind the pilot's chair. The dashboard blinked with lights—red, green, white. There were dials and buttons, all of which I had no idea what to make of. A wide window wrapped around the front of the cockpit, the night beyond our view black as coal, the land thousands of feet below us twinkling with city lights.

It was almost beautiful, but for the knowledge that we might be very soon crashing headfirst into it.

The autopilot light was glowing from the center of something that looked similar to a steering wheel.

“I don't know what I'm doing,” Alec confessed.

“You took pilot's lessons,” I said.

“I never got out of the simulator.”

I swallowed. “You probably could have not mentioned that.”

“Anna . . .”

“Land the plane, Alec. You can do this.”

I wished I felt as confident as I sounded. I reached around the back of his seat, squeezing his shoulder. He touched my hand briefly, then took a deep breath and picked up the radio.

“Mayday, Mayday,” he said. “This is . . .” he clicked the button. “Where's the number?” He must have found it somewhere, because he pushed the Talk button on the radio again. “This is N-two-nine-four-six. Our pilot's been injured.”

A few seconds later someone responded.

“N-two-nine-four-six, this is air traffic control. Identify yourself.”

“Alec Flynn,” he said. “I'm . . .”

“We know,” interrupted the operator. “What's the status of your crew?”

“Two shot,” said Alec. “One restrained.”

A woman came on the line.

“Alec, it's Janelle,” she said, and I'll be damned if I wasn't happy to hear her voice. “Local PD alerted us that you'd reached the airfield.”

Marcos. He must have arrived shortly after we'd taken off.

“Is Stein with you?” she asked.

“Stein, Barlow, and Rowe,” answered Alec.

The radio turned to static for a few seconds before she returned to the line.

“One big happy family. A private investigator called me earlier with information linking them all together.”

My father. I nearly smiled.

“I'm turning back to Tampa,” said Alec.

She put someone else on the line. An experienced pilot, who assured us he'd given enough flying lessons to get us down safely. He guided Alec through a series of tasks I didn't understand. First, to locate the airspeed indicator, and make sure we didn't fall below one hundred and forty knots. When Alec took the jet off autopilot, I bit the inside of my cheek hard and squeezed his biceps.

“So far so good,” I whispered to him.

“I fucking hate flying,” he responded.

Alec redirected our course and turned the plane back to Tampa. I dug my heels in as the force pulled me against the safety harness. It wasn't the smoothest transition, but we had yet to make a nosedive.

“How's it going up there?” my father called.

“We're still in the air, aren't we?” I shouted back.

As we closed in on the Tampa airport, the bright lights of the city gave way to the black waters of the Bay. Even from this high up we could see the long string of red markers lining the runway.

The operator on the line had gone quiet, waiting for us to make our descent.

“Talk to me,” Alec said quietly.

I didn't know what to say. I wished there was something encouraging I could tell him, or something that reflected the intensity of what I was feeling as I looked down on the hard ground below.

Instead I said the first thing that came to my mind.

“I want to get married on the beach. That beach you took me to when we first got together. I'm going to wear the prettiest dress you've ever seen, and underneath, I'll have on blue panties.”

“Blue?” I could hear the smile in his voice.

“For my something blue,” I said. I knew practically nothing about weddings, but I knew that much. “Paisley will be a flower girl. And after, I want to spend a week in bed with you.”

“That can be arranged,” he said.

“And I want a house,” I said, my words growing stronger. “It doesn't have to be big, but I want a nice kitchen where I can cook. And I want our families to come over for barbecues. And if I ever run away I want you to chase me. That's what I want.”

“I love you, Anna,” he said.

He might as well have said
I'm sorry
.

“Hey,” I said, squeezing his shoulder. “We're here because of Maxim Stein. He's here because he lost the trial. He
lost
, baby. That means we won. That means we're done with him, and you own one of the biggest private aviation companies in the world.”

“That's worth approximately six dollars.”

“Well,” I said with a watery laugh. “Then you can sell it and buy a Big Mac.”

The stars above twinkled, just like the lights of the city below. They were hypnotizing, I couldn't look away.

Alec shifted in his seat.

“We're going to bring it back,” he said.

There was a familiar confidence in his voice.

“You and me,” he said. “We're going to rework the whole company. Start from the ground up. Take it in the direction Max should have years ago.”

“I'm in,” I said.

“I love you,” he said, and this time I heard the voice of the man who could have moved mountains if someone gave him a shovel.

“Land this plane and marry me, Alec Flynn.”

“Yes, ma'am,” he said.

The pilot returned to the line then, and walked Alec through the landing procedures. Alec lined the plane up with the red flashing lights, and began our descent, pulling back on the throttle to reduce the power. It felt like we were free-falling at one point, and I had to bite back the scream. But Alec held fast, knuckles white on the stick. He extended the flaps and lowered the landing gear as the ground came closer and closer, and the engine roared louder, and in the last seconds before our wheels touched the runway, I loosened my belt and reached around the seat, holding on to his shoulders for dear life.

We bounced, and then bounced again. And then the plane slowed.

And then the plane stopped.

From outside I could hear the sirens. Flashing red and blue lights barreled in our direction.

“We're alive?” I couldn't let Alec go. I doubted he could breathe with how hard I was squeezing him.

“Why does that sound like a question?” He gave a shaky laugh. I released the seat belt and jumped into his lap, kissing him all over the face. He still gripped the throttle with one hand.

“I don't think I can get up,” he said.

“You don't have to,” I told him. And then I kissed him some more.

*   *   *

The police were the first to board the plane, followed closely by the FBI. They took Maxim and his secretary into custody, and Jessica bawled while they were read their rights. Before the end, she was already ratting him out, trying to make a deal with the FBI to get her sentence reduced.

I really hoped that wasn't an option.

The paramedics came and took Jeremiah. My father went as well, though in a different ambulance. He made certain to shake Alec's hand before they loaded him into the truck. We told him we'd be right behind him.

Before we could follow, Janelle took our statements, and told us that they'd found the airport security guard passed out in the trunk of the white sedan. She was looking for the prosecution to add assault of a federal employee to Maxim's long list of charges.

“I treated you like a son, Alec.” Maxim's voice cut through the sirens, through the other voices, through all of it. The sound had been permanently ingrained into my mind, like nails on a chalkboard.

I turned before Alec. He'd heard it, but seemed to be debating whether or not to give the man who'd nearly killed him the time of day. Marcos had cuffed him and was loading him into the back of the police car. I had no doubt the arrest of an escaping Maxim Stein was going to boost his stock around the department ten times over, and I was glad for that.

“You tried,” said Alec.

He glanced back toward the ambulance, where the gurney holding Jeremiah Barlow was currently being loaded. Maxim followed his gaze, hunching in his seat. All traces of the billionaire business tycoon were gone, and left in its place was a desperate, shriveled old man.

Alec placed his hand in mine, and led me away from the planes and the flashing lights. Away from Maxim Stein. Away from all of it.

Toward something better. The unknown.