“Quit staring,” he said, without opening his eyes.
“I thought you were military.”
That question cracked his eyes open. “What?”
“Why do you have long hair?”
He shut his eyes again. “I never said I was military.”
“You either are, or you used to be.”
“I have a job, and it’s not with the military.”
The door flew open, and the same crew member filled the doorway. “We just locked the doors. We need you to gear in for takeoff.”
Viktor moved off the bed with a speed that defied his size, and then he stood waiting for me. My sore body silently screamed in protest when I moved toward the door. We filed down the steep stairs.
When we reached the bottom, Viktor put his hand on my shoulder and gently pushed me toward the fold-down seats. When I turned around to sit down, I realized that he hadn’t followed me.
Instead, he stood talking to the guy. The engines of the plane had started, and the air vibrated with the sound. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but Viktor stood with his legs planted and his arms crossed. He didn’t look impressed by whatever the guy was telling him.
Lights flashed, and a buzzer sounded.
I held my breath as he walked toward me, holding my gaze. The lack of expression on his face made him look impossibly tough. Remembering our precarious situation earlier, I stupidly blushed and then stifled my surprise when he unexpectedly leaned over me and tested my straps.
“What did the guy say?”
He moved to his own seat and spoke over the roar of the engine. “They want us to wait onboard in the bunk room while they organize how they are going to get us past customs.”
Oh god, I can’t handle the closet again.
My voice hitched. “Like before?”
“Not the closets.” His expression barely changed, but I sensed his amusement. He wanted to smile, but he didn’t.
I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.
“How long will we have to stay in there?”
“We stay in there until they are ready for us.” He leaned back and shut his eyes. “Don’t get out of your seat. I wouldn’t want to mistakenly shoot you.”
His words shocked. “What?”
“I have a hair trigger when I sleep. Don’t move.”
I sat there waiting for the punchline, for him to open his eyes and tell me he was joking, but he remained completely still.
“That’s crazy,” I said over the roar of the engine.
“I can still hear you.”
I huffed and sat back in my seat. “Totally crazy.”
He let me get the last word in, which was almost worse, because I felt myself hanging there, waiting for him to respond. But he didn’t move.
This man and his world were not something I should be toying with. I needed to have better boundaries and keep my mouth shut around him. Things were confusing enough. I didn’t need to start to feel empathy toward him. I needed to remember that he was just as bad as the men who took my grandfather.
As promised, as soon as the plane landed, we moved back to the bunk room.
“Get on the bed,” Viktor instructed the second the door shut.
“What? Why?” I stepped back from him, tripping over the corner of the bed, which resulted in me sitting down. I hated to be too compliant with him. I didn’t want him to think he had all the control.
He does have all the control. Which was insane. I should have tried to escape. This entire situation was insanity.
His lips were moving. I forced myself to focus on his face.
“Still with me?” he asked.
“Did you say something?”
“I’m taking the floor, so I’m asking you to get off it.”
I hated that his request seemed so reasonable. For some insane reason, I wanted to argue with him. I scrambled further up the bed and sat with my legs crossed. I watched as he tossed his bag down and then moved out of sight. I listened hard, but I couldn’t hear him either. Was he sleeping? Lying there resting?
I peeked over the side of the bed. He was on his back with one hand resting on his chest, the other one behind his head. His eyes were closed, and his chest rose and fell in a steady cadence. Was he asleep?
I jerked back when he spoke. “If you don’t want to get shot, get back in your corner.”
I scrambled back to lie on the bed. I couldn’t understand a world in which people were ready to shoot someone in their sleep. My entire life, I had routinely set my alarm forty minutes before I had to get out of bed, because I needed to wake up slowly.
I assumed the corpse pose. I worked at the restorative, controlled breathing exercises that I learned in yoga.
Against my will, my mind started to wander. Where did Viktor come from? He said he wasn’t working with the military right now, but I knew he had some sort of formal training in his background. He also had a ruthlessness to him that only soldiers seem to get. I had been around bodyguards my entire life, and I could always tell which ones had a military background.
Viktor also had a Russian accent, so maybe he had served in the Russian military?
Focus on your breathing.
Why did I always want to get under his skin? Perhaps it was his stoicism in the face of my vulnerability that made me seek some sort of reaction from him.
Which is complete stupidity.
The door of the cabin flew open, and with one fluid moment, Viktor sat up and trained his gun on the door.
The crewman stood frozen in the doorway, his hands up by his face. I lay there, paralyzed with fear. A heartbeat later, Viktor holstered his weapon, seemingly unaware of our terror.
“What’s the plan?”
The guy slowly lowered his hands. “You both can walk out of here. They will have a cab waiting.”
Viktor stood up and motioned for me to get off the bed. “Do you have a hat we can borrow?”
“I have an old baseball hat.”
Viktor nodded. “We’ll take it.”
The guy ducked back out of the room without looking back at either of us.
“Come on, let’s go.”
We stood and watched as they lowered the back ramp of the plane. Heat rolled up. It felt like someone had opened massive oven doors. It was so hot it was moving my hair.
Instantly, it felt like my body was overheating. Victor’s oversized sweatpants didn’t help.
“What time is it here?”
The crew member answered my question from behind us. He was carrying a baseball hat. “Almost 6 p.m. here.”
I couldn’t remember what day it was. It felt like we had just traveled in a time ship to some other world. Viktor took the hat and handed it to me.
“Put it on.”
I opened my mouth to ask why but stopped when I saw his warning look. I gingerly perched it on the top of my head. I wasn’t really a baseball cap kind of girl.
Impatience flashed in his eyes. He stepped forward and pushed the hat down onto my head so the brim almost obscured my vision. “Tuck in your hair.”
He watched as I worked to shove my hair under the hat. Then he pulled out a hoodie and tossed it at me. “Put this on with the hood up.”
I gave him a tight-lipped smile. The guy had to be kidding. It was sweltering out. “I don’t need a sweater. It’s feels like it’s almost one hundred degrees.”