Page 22 of Meet Me In The Dark

All ten men sat across from them, silent and impassive. Conor needed to make a plan with Luke, but there was no way that was going to happen if they couldn’t talk alone. They had a mental connection, but they couldn’t actually talk to each other in their minds.

As if he’d heard him, and completely negating Conor’s previous thought, Luke coughed. Once, twice, three times. Four.

Conor remembered back to a mission about four years ago, when they’d been captured, and Micah had whisperedto them that coughing four times meantask for a piss break and use it to knock these fuckers out.

Conor coughed back, twice.

It’s too soon.

Luke coughed again, four times, this time louder.

Fucking fuck it. Luke said he wanted to lead for once, to plan: Conor loved the asshole, so he had to trust him.

“Yo, is there a bathroom somewhere on this plane?” Conor called out to their captors.

Yo.He sounded like a goddamned idiot, but then that was the point, wasn’t it?

One of his captors rolled his eyes. “You aren’t using the bathroom. You’ve gotta piss? Piss your pants, we don’t give a shit.”

“That’s the problem, though,” Conor called back. “I have to shit.”

Next to him, Luke choked on a laugh.

Conor continued. “As uncomfortable as it’s going to be, I’m really thinking of y’all. It’s going to stink like literal shit, and what, we’ve got at least three more hours on this flight? Four? Do you really want to sit in the stench? I’m telling you, it’s a bad one.”

Luke couldn’t hold back his laugh anymore. Under his breath, he murmured, “You’re overselling it.”

But the soldiers looked at each other, quietly conferring. Finally, one spoke.

“You can take a shit, but you try anything, and I shoot your friend in the head.”

Well, that sobered Conor and Luke right up.

Conor waited as two of the soldiers approached them. They wore nondescript camo that resembled military uniforms but were clearly knockoffs. Even so, the similarity to the way Conor used to dress made him swallow in sharppain. He didn’t miss the military; it had destroyed his life, had turned him into a man he didn’t like much. But it reminded him of a time when he’d been softer, gentler, kinder. A good man, if a naive one.

One who deserved the love of the people in his life.

Ah, fuck. Now was not the time for this maudlin bullshit.

“Don’t do anything stupid,” one of the guards warned him as he reached over to unlock Conor’s cuffs, the other guard training his gun on Luke’s face.

Luke coughed again, just once.

Game time.

Conor pulled his arms apart, as wide as they could go. The links between handcuffs strained in resistance before breaking with a loud snap and ping as one flew across the room and hit the metal floor of the plane. A second snap followed the first one as Luke broke his own cuff free from the chair.

Before the second soldier could pull the trigger, Conor shoved Luke out of the way. The gun fired, the bullet speeding through the air and lodging itself into the wall.

“We should’ve just hijacked the goddamned helicopter,” Luke grunted as he slammed his knee into the first soldier’s crotch and grabbed his gun.

“Good point,” Conor conceded as they took out another five guards, leaving three, who were firing back at them. If they weren’t careful, they’d shoot one too many holes in the fuselage, and they’d fuck up the pressurization system and lose cabin pressure.

Another shot fired, and next to Conor, Luke groaned.

“Fuck,” he said. Blood bloomed on his left shoulder. The one Kara hadn’t shot.

And Conor briefly lost the ability to breathe.

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