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“Your person?” Tabitha asked with warm amusement.
I rotated a look to Tabitha over my shoulder. “Do you have a problem with that?”
She sucked in a smile. “Definitely not.”
“We’ll be flying internationally,” I said to Nathan, taking the stairs two steps at a time. “I know you need time to authorize that.”
“I mean, yeah, and it kind of matters where, friend.”
I sighed through my nose, moving past Nathan at the top of the stairs with irritation pulling my features tight. “We’re working on that.”
“Oh, right, sure, that clears that up.” Nathan followed close behind me as I boarded the spacious plane and sat in one of the camel-colored seats. This jet was one of the more expensive ones I’d been on, and despite years of traveling, working for wealthy clients, and experiencing everything under Earth’s sun, I hadn’t been on a jet quite this expensive before. But the owner owed me several large favors.
Nathan had a friendly face with a wide jaw and flat nose that twitched when he was thinking. He kept his blond hair on the longer side and looked more like a gym trainer than a pilot. “I was surprised to get your message. Must be urgent.”
I yanked one of Tabitha’s computers out of the bag. “What do you know about Jonathon Cohen?”
Nathan rubbed his dimpled chin. “The billionaire? My buddy flies his plane.”
I looked up in surprise. “Seriously?”
“Yeah, I mean, it’s not like there are that many disgustingly rich billionaires flying around. And oh man, it’s a gorgeous aircraft. It’s a Falcon 8X that they decked out to the nines with—”
“We don’t care about the aircraft,” Tabitha snapped. “Has your buddy told you where his employer flies the most often?”
“Uh, Switzerland, I think,” Nathan said. “Goes there a lot. And California.”
“Not France?” I clarified, typing in the passcode on the computer.
“I don’t know.” He frowned in thought. “We just talked about Switzerland because airspace is easier than some of the other countries. And he’s got this girl there he sees when they visit. She keeps a teeny tiny bottle of vodka shoved up her p—”
“Nathan,” Tabitha and I said in unified exasperation.
“Sorry, sorry,” Nathan grinned lopsidedly. “I don’t know about France. Sorry.”
I kneaded my forehead with my fingers, staring at the social media sites we had pulled up on the browser tabs. They showed various pictures of Jonathon standing in front of monuments, attending events, and going on world-class excursions to exclusive locations. Very few of them showed him at his homes.
Tabitha sat down across from me, opening the other matte black laptop, but keeping her worried gaze on me. They both watched me, and I knew I looked more perturbed than usual. All I could think was that a lunatic had Mattie and I’d failed her. I’d promised to keep her safe, promised that if she was there with me, she wouldn’t be in any danger.
I’d lied. And her life was in danger because of it.
I stared at the computer screen, and with my brain spinning in dizzying circles, I covered my eyes with my hand. “Switzerland, then. It’s in a different country, it’s where he spends most of his time, and it’s where he was a year ago exactly on his socials.”
“Aye aye, Captain.” Nathan paused mid-turn. “Wait, that’s me.”
“Did you get this pilot from the Wish app?” Tabitha asked with wide-eyed incredulity.
Nathan laughed before heading back to the cockpit to arrange for airspace travel internationally. The problem with flying a jet from American airspace into another country was that it took some time to contact the right channels. Too long. No matter what I did while I waited, how much I tried to keep busy, my brain only seemed to twist itself into its own maze of confusion until I was exhausted, cranky as fuck, and fed up.
It was an hour later when I finally closed the laptop and stood, pacing again. Tabitha stood as well, her large, dark eyes watching me closely. “Kael, we’ll find her,” she assured me.
I took out my gun, and in a nervous habit, I emptied the chamber and released the catch on the magazine to take out the rounds so I could slide them back into place. “I fucked up, Tab. If I’d just been paying attention—”
“It was my fault,” she reminded me. “I told you to relax, and I completely gaslighted you. You knew something was off. Don’t blame yourself.”
I smashed the rounds into the empty magazine, stacking them neatly on top of each other. “You know I’m better than that. It shouldn’t have mattered what you said or didn’t say. I know better. I am better than this.”
“Yes,” Tabitha said slowly, coming to stand next to me. She laid her hand on mine, halting my nervous habit. “But when has anything ever gone according to plan with Mattie?”
