Page 20 of Antihero

“Like, VP: X Brand Management.”

“Joey.”

“X-Factor Director at Large.”

“Josephine!”

“What?”

“Check if there are emergency parachutes on board.”

“Why?”

He raised his head from the pillow, gave her a dead stare.

“Oh,” she said. “Okay. I get it. Haha. You want a little space then. You could’ve just asked professionally.”

When the door slid shut this time, he locked it.

Despite the Red Bull, Joey dozed off somewhere over Ohio.

When she woke up, Evan was sitting across from her, perfectly still.

She started. “What? What’s wrong?”

She sat forward. Her topknot had come loose, which was a pain since it’d taken her, like, eleventy hours on YouTube to figure it out and now she’d have to deal with it in the executive jet bathroom or whatever it was called.

“Josephine,” he said. “I’m glad you’re here.”

She braced herself. “I’m glad I’m here, too.”

“I don’t know what we’re heading into. Luke Devine is a dangerous man and he has dangerous people around him. He is not a man you allow inside your head. This is not a game. It is not training. All banter, all jokes, the human bullshit between us, that has to stop now. I love you and I’ll have your back.”

It was the first time he’d ever said it.

No buildup, no context, no depth of emotion in his voice.

Despite that, a giant cry-sob bloomed behind the surface of her face. She could see her reflection in the mirrored band of chrome backing the door to the cockpit. Eyes red and welling, her nose flushed alcoholically. But she did not blink and not a tear fell.

He’d just said it like it was nothing at all and now she had to pretend that it was all cool, that it was just something they both knew already, and said to each other whenever, like, normal people did.

He kept on in that dead-level Orphan voice. “He is not in control and there is a witness there who observed a possible kidnapping. Your job—your only job—is to have my back until I can figure out what is going on. That means you’re not to speak. That’s not open to interpretation.”

She regained an iota of her composure and then another. “Okay, you want me to be mute?”

“Not mute.”

She risked another glance at her reflection, proud to see that she had her face back under control already, and she thought, That’s right, bitches, I got some Orphan training in me.

She made sure that when she spoke, she sounded trés professional. “So I should be as silent as it’s possible to be without impacting the social situation.”

He hesitated and she could tell he was turning the Sixth Commandment over in his head: Question orders.

He said, “Yes.”

“So,” she said. “Some interpretation.”

“Which is now clarified.”