Page 68 of Hard Luck (Blackstone House)

Time to go back home.

Out with the new, in with the old.

CHAPTER 23

JEZEBEL

Shit, shit, shit.

I hop-ran-skipped from the escalator to the gate and made it just as boarding was ending. The crutches elicited zero sympathy from the agent behind the desk as she gave me a dirty look.

“The gate’s about to close.”

“Well, it hasn’t closed yet, has it?” I thrust my boarding pass at her and tried not to pant. “I got delayed in security.”

After the scanner, I’d been pulled aside for secondary screening, which had never happened before, but today it did. It must have been the cast because I wasn’t on the watchlist, and I didn’t fit any of the other criteria that they denied using. The agent said it was a random check, which it wasn’t, and it was also a little nerve-racking because I had a dozen rounds of ammo hidden in my chunky necklace and half a gun in my carry-on. Luckily, said gun was custom-made and disassembled, with each component disguised to look like an innocent object. The barrel was in a hair curler in my suitcase. The firing pin was in a pen, which theyactually looked at, scribbled with, and tucked back into my purse. Sure, I could have put a whole regular gun in my checked baggage and declared it, but where was the fun in that?

Anyhow, they were more interested in my crutches than anything else, but after they’d poked around and found nothing, and I’d not-quite-jokingly suggested they send me through the X-ray machine to verify the break in my leg, they finally let me go.

And then they’d offered to get a guy in a cart to drive me to the gate. Were they kidding? I wasn’t going to ride in a cart. I could get around fine, just not as fast as I usually did.

The gate agent grudgingly let me past, and I hustled along the skybridge to the plane, at which point a flight attendant confiscated the crutches and left me to hop to my seat. I needed alcohol. Lots of it. And preferably a towel because I had sweat dripping down the back of my neck and?—

Fuck.

“Bella?”

What the actual hell? Why was Cole sitting in the seat beside mine? My first instinct was to run, but the cabin crew had closed the door, and Cole would catch up with me anyway.

Fuck my fucking life.

Unless I wanted to cause enough of a ruckus to be arrested, I was stuck on an airplane for the next five hours. Hmm. Arrested? They’d probably just hold me for a few hours and give me a slap on the wrist, right? Demelza could send a lawyer, seeing as she was the one who’d gotten me into this situation in the first place.

“I thought I was never going to see you again,” Cole said.

Really? Ditto. But I didn’t say that because Cole hadn’tearned my snark, and how in the mother of all coincidences had I ended up in the seat next to him?

Then I realised.

I realised that I knew exactly how I’d ended up on this plane, next to this man.

And Echo was a dead woman.

I stowed my backpack in the overhead locker, fished out my phone, slumped into the seat, and scrolled through Cole’s latest “I miss you” message. Okay, so I’d cracked and read the rest of them, way to make me feel even guiltier than I already did.

Me

You’re not in Florida, are you?

Echo

I’m currently getting as far away from Florida as it’s possible to get without going into outer space.

Me

Wise move.

Then another thought struck me.

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