Page 61 of Mile High Ruin

“What did you do down there?”

“For the first several hours?” I look toward the window. “I cried.”

She blinks. I can almost see her trying to reconcile the information with the man sitting beside her now.

“Then I became angry that I was crying, which made me cry harder.”

That does make her smile. Small, but real. “I’m having trouble picturing you crying.”

“I was a child, not born in a black suit.”

“I assumed you came out like this.”

“Silver hair included?”

“That probably arrived with the personality.”

I look at her. She looks almost guilty for teasing me, but the fact that she can do it at all loosens something in my chest.

“I spent years believing that the shameful part of that memory was being afraid,” I tell her. “Eventually I understood the shame belonged entirely to the man who put a child in a cellar.”

Sloane becomes quiet.

I don’t tell her what happened to my father years later.

That story would not comfort her.

Her gaze drops. “He turned the seatbelt sign on so everyone would stay away.”

“Yes.”

“I didn’t even realize.”

“You had no reason to.”

“I thought there was turbulence.”

“You trusted the captain of the aircraft to behave like a captain.”

Her mouth twists. “Apparently that was reckless.”

“No. What he did was calculated.”

I watch her absorb that. It matters, I think, that she understands this was not a failure of instinct or intelligence. Hale planned the circumstances around her. He used his position, isolated her, and counted on the authority of his uniform to make everyone else stay where they were.

“Why did you come looking for me?”

“I just wanted to check if you were okay,” I say. “I didn’t expect that bastard to have his paws on you.”

Sloane looks at me. “You’re doing it again.”

“What?”

“That thing with your face.”

“What thing?”

“The one where you look like you’re considering murder.”