Page 38 of Mile High Ruin

There. Problem solved.

She is competent. She already knows the aircraft. Continuity among cabin crew is useful. There are at least five perfectly reasonable explanations for what I have just done. None of them involve the fact that I want to see her again.

I tell myself that until I almost believe it.

7

SLOANE

The call comes three days later while I’m standing in my kitchen eating cereal directly from the box because apparently unemployment has stripped me of the last few respectable habits I had left.

My phone vibrates against the counter. I glance at the screen and nearly ignore it because I don’t recognize the number, then remember that private aviation appears to operate entirely through people calling at inconvenient hours and expecting immediate answers.

“Sloane Mercer.”

The woman on the other end introduces herself from the staffing agency and asks whether I’m available for an international assignment tomorrow morning.

My hand stills inside the cereal box. “Yes.”

“You don’t need to check?”

“I’m extremely available.”

There’s a pause that might be amusement. She gives me the reporting time, the airfield, estimated duration, and confirms the rate.

“Is this the same aircraft?”

“I don’t have the final tail assignment in front of me.”

“Same client?”

“I only handle crew placement.”

Of course she does.

I tell myself the question was practical. It’s not as though I’ve spent the last several days wondering whether I will ever see Vadim again.

I have not.

Mostly.

There have simply been unfortunate moments when my mind remembers things without permission. His hand around my waist. The way his eyes dropped to my mouth in the restroom. The fact that he could make a perfectly ordinary sentence sound indecent just by lowering his voice.

None of that means I’m hoping this is his flight.

I need money. That’s the reason I accept.

Nothing else.

By six the next morning, I’m back on a private jet.

Not the same one.

At least, I don’t think it is. The interior is similar enough that for the first few minutes I keep wondering whether rich people simply order aircraft from the same catalog, but the layout is different, the wood darker, the leather a pale gray instead of cream, and there is no rear bedroom.

That’s probably for the best.

The crew is entirely unfamiliar.