Page 71 of Taken

Jolie nervously bit at her bottom lip. “Are you sure? What if they do?”

I touched my hands to both sides of her face, tilting it upward. “I’m never gonna let anything happen to you. Anyone tries to touch you, I’ll kill them.”

Her eyes widened. “Really?”

“Yes.” I meant it. If anyone ever fucking tried to hurt Jolie, I’d hurt them right back, twenty times worse. Every last one of them. No regrets.

A small smile curved her pretty plump lips. “Okay.”

I led her down the maze of halls and turned into the wide stairwell which led up to the above ground church. Jolie squeezed my hand tightly as I helped her up the steps. “Where are we going?” she asked.

“There’s supposed to be a meteor shower just after two. It happens every year on this date,” I said. “I wanted to show you.”

“Oh. That sounds nice,” she replied. “But I can’t stay above ground for very long.”

“I know.”

I took her out of the church and walked her over to a large moonlit patch of grass and flowers. In the distance, the huge white mansion stood sentinel, wings sprouting everywhere like ghostly tree branches.

“It should start any minute now,” I said, glancing at my watch. It was almost 2:15.

Jolie tilted her face toward the night sky, eyes wide with anticipation. “I haven’t seen anything like this since I was a child,” she said. “Even then, all I ever really saw was the occasional shooting star.”

“This’ll be a whole lot more exciting, trust me.”

Around three minutes later, Jolie turned her head slightly to the left and pointed. “Is that it?” she asked breathlessly, her gaze following the flashing red and yellow lights. “Is that the first one?”

I didn’t respond. There was no meteor shower tonight. She’d realize that any second now.

I watched her expression change from excitement to confusion. “Wait… that’s not a meteor.” She turned to me. “Mason, what is that thing?”

“That’s American Airlines Flight 872, crossing over on its way from Miami to Houston,” I said calmly.

She shook her head. “What do you mean? American Airlines?”

“It’s a plane, Jolie. That particular flight crosses right over this part of Louisiana at 2:20 every morning.”

“But…” She hesitated and looked back toward the flashing light in the sky. I could see the pure shock in her gaze as her mind finally connected the dots, grasping and erasing years of lies. Before her very eyes, the world she knew was vanishing.

She didn’t speak for five whole minutes. Then she looked back at me. “There was no Great Reckoning, was there?” she asked in a flat tone.

“No.”

She took in a deep, juddering breath. “The world is the same now as it was back in 1999, isn’t it?”

“There’s a few differences, but for the most part, yes. It’s the same.”

“Everything that’s happened… everything that we’ve done…” She trailed off, and I took her hand.

“They weren’t sins. At least not according to me.”

She pulled away and keeled over like she’d taken a punch to the gut. With one violent contraction, the congealed contents of her stomach emerged in the moonlight, barely digested since dinner.

A second later, Jolie groaned and pitched forward again. I moved closer and rubbed her back. “It’s okay, baby. Let it out.”

Short, rasping breaths were the next sign of her shock. It sounded like the air was barely going in, as if her lungs had been clipped together by huge bands. Then came the rising panic that made her fall all the way to her knees, clutching at long grass as she gasped.

“It’s okay, Jolie,” I murmured, crouching beside her. “Take as long as you need.”

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