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Inside the clinic, the two men bring out the body and Juniper hooked to a lead, and place them both in the car in front of us.
Whatever happens next, I don’t know.
I watch my clinic through the drizzling rain and wonder whether I’ll ever see it again.
3
Etta
‘Come Fly with Me’ - Ruelle
The iPad in my hands is dead.
I’ve watched four movies consecutively. Toy Story. Tangled. Finding Nemo, and lastly, Up. Bad decision on my part. I cried during every single one.
I don’t know who owns it, but I can’t imagine the three men that surround me having a thing for Disney/Pixar. Maybe they have kids. For the sake of the children, I really hope not.
I’ve been confined to the same chair on this luxury jet for several long hours. I slept for some of it, and used the iPad for the rest. Every time I’ve needed to use the bathroom, I’ve been escorted by either of the two henchmen. Bolt has had his back to me since the moment we got on the plane. He hasn’t gotten up to pee once. I presume he has a special bottle handy for these sorts of occasions.
“I need a charger,” I say to the guy sitting in the chair opposite me. He’s the slimmer of the three, but his height makes up for the lack of muscle mass. He’s dressed in a suit, all business, no time for pleasantries. His glasses are tipped forward on his nose, his black hair cropped short against his scalp, his skin a warm russet brown. He’s been on his laptop the entire flight—type, type, typing away. Intent to ignore me, it seems.
The other man is the shortest out of the three—though not by much—and has to be some kind of hired muscle judging from the way his sun stained skin is stretched beneath his clothes. He’s been reading a book with at least a thousand pages and he’s hardly put it down. His hands are so big they’d easily fit around my throat, strong enough to snap my neck with one well-placed twist.
“Hello?” I try again. I cling to the blanket around my body, pulling it up to my chin as I stick my arm out and shove the iPad in laptop guy’s face. “Hello?I need a charger.”
Finally, he lifts his gaze. His attention lands on me, thick brows rising high on his forehead.
“I said I need—”
“I heard you.”
“Then why—”
“We’ll be landing in less than an hour. Not enough time to watch a full movie.”
I bristle, the headache that has been steadily pounding against my skull increasing its tempo. “Can I please just…” I sigh, too tired and too overwhelmed to argue. “Can I go to the bathroom again?”
He matches my sigh. “Fine.”
Placing his laptop by his feet, he re-adjusts his suit jacket and reaches to undo his seatbelt.
A semi-familiar voice speaks across the aisle. “I’ll take her.” The man opposite us has put his book down and marked his chapter with a dog ear on the page. I’m not much of a reader, but surely that constitutes a place in hell.
As he bends his arms, I notice a flash of black ink along veiny skin. A skull. A hammer. A lion. A rifle.
Great. Bodes well for me.
I fling the two sections of the seatbelt away, but keep the blanket wrapped around my shoulders. I’m just rising to my feet when another harsh voice cuts through the cramped cabin.
“I’ll do it.”
Bolt is standing next to my tan-leather chair. His posture is slightly hunched since his size doesn’t cooperate well with the low ceilings. It’s both humbling and incredibly intimidating.
Now that he’s closer, I can study him in more detail. His remaining eye is a crisp gray. Almost unnatural. Like they had once been blue, but slowly over many years, the brightness was leached from them. It contrasts starkly against his brown hair streaked through with bits of blonde, the color more obvious in the stubble across his chin.
Even without an eyepatch, he has a kind of terrifying beauty. The kind where you want to stare at it from behind bulletproof glass. There’s no softness, no vulnerability. Just a cold-blooded murderer with a killer jawline and a permanently fixed expression of disdain.
He’s currently staring at me like I’m nothing more than a cockroach that found the entrance to this stunning private jet, crawled in and decided to make myself at home.
