Panic Button (17 page)

The two men swung their weapons simultaneously - the bottle clipping Max’s head as the axe blade landed full-force in Dave’s cranium.

Dazed, Max slumped to the floor. His vision lurched and tilted.

Dave lay flat on his back, dead. Blood leaked from his battered skull.

Somewhere behind him, Max heard the girls’ horrified gasps.

“What have you done?” Gwen said, shocked.

 

“He... wasn’t going to stop,” Max murmured.

He looked up at Gwen and Jo blankly. They didn’t look so sure.

Little white reading lights flickered into life, cutting through the red haze of the cabin. The speakers crackled gently, and Alligator addressed them once again.

“Thank you for a very enjoyable game. Do, or die. Now you’re getting it.”

Max’s eyes searched Jo’s and Gwen’s for some sign of support; receiving none. He’d done merely what he had to do, even though it meant playing into Alligator’s loathsome machinations.

Jo and Gwen both looked away, leaving Max right next to Dave’s ruined body.

He stood up carefully and navigated around the deep crimson pool of blood that had soaked into the aisle carpet.

“Unfortunately,” Alligator continued, “Dave failed his task - and so poor Sarah will have to go after all.”

Alligator’s words chilled each of them to the bone.

They froze in horror as the touch screen displays switched to a video window showing Dave’s fiancée in the dingy garage, the noose around her neck. Muffled cries of terror came from beneath the thick gaffer tape clamping her mouth shut as the killer-cameraman approached her. He kicked the high stool away from under her feet. Her body dropped violently, stopping just a few inches above the floor with a hideous crack. Her legs twitched in a macabre Saint
Vitus
Dance, then swung limply above the floor.

Jo removed her knuckles from her mouth; suddenly
realising
she was biting down on them so hard she was almost drawing blood.

“They killed her anyway!” she said, thinking of her poor daughter all alone in that dingy cell - all alone save for the camera eyes watching her.

Max looked at her, subdued, not knowing what to say.

“He died for nothing. For nothing...” Gwen muttered in disbelief.

Jo reached out to Gwen, placed her hand on her shoulder. They needed to stick together, to make sense of all the carnage. But Gwen brushed Jo’s hand away and retreated to the bathroom, shutting the door behind her.

Jo looked again at Max, unable to conceal her disdain at what he had done.

“What?” Max asked, “You’d rather I’d just let him kill me? Is that it?”

“I don’t even know who you are,” Jo said.

Gwen locked the door behind her and made her way to the sink, splashing cold water on her face. Brushing away her tears, she looked at herself in the mirror. More tears welled up and flowed from her swollen eyes.

How could she have failed Emily so badly? Her task had been simply to seduce Dave, but now he was dead, Alligator would surely kill her sister - just as brutally as he’d
despatched
Dave’s poor fiancée. Like her, Emily had nothing to with this either. It was she, Gwen, who had been foolish enough to believe the winner’s email from All2gethr. It was she who’d insisted her father check things out and
allow
her to go, despite his initial misgivings. And now it was she who had signed her sister’s death warrant.
And for what - because of her scruples?

Gwen slammed her fist against the bathroom sink. It felt cool, indifferent to her touch; just how Emily had described Gwen on more than one occasion. “You need to lighten up sis,” Emily had said, “life’s too short, you should have some fun for once.” When the offer of the flight came along, Emily had been as excited as Gwen, chatting excitedly over All2gethr Messenger. ‘DON’T DO ANYTHING I WOULDN’T DO!’ Emily had typed, making Gwen giggle.

But Gwen knew she could never do the things Emily did. Going with boys, smoking drugs; those were places Gwen didn’t feel ready to go right now - if ever. But if she had, would she have been able to save her sister? Knock back a few drinks, and seduce that awful sneering lump of a man with his cheap tattoos, dodgy piercings and horrid porn - all for the voyeuristic entertainment of their captor. Gwen’s mind reeled. Her principles of abstinence until marriage had always made her feel better than everyone else, if she was brutally honest. But now she felt worthless, impotent in the face of what Alligator intended to do to Emily.

The big TV screen flickered to life behind her, reflected in the mirror. Alligator’s voice boomed out over the speakers, startling her.

“Put the headset on.”

Gwen looked terrified. So that was it, he was going to light the match, burn her death. And it was all her fault.

“Put it on.”

Reaching out fearfully, Gwen placed the headphones over her ears and sat down on the closed lid of the toilet seat. She looked up at the screen, red eyes glazed with tears.

“I can’t do what you told me...” She tried to find the words. “He’s... dead.”

“Yes, I saw that Gwen,” Alligator said without emotion, “but don’t worry, your sister has a fighting chance. You are being reassigned.”

Gwen bowed her head as Alligator continued his instructions.

“Your new target is Max,” he said.

Max stood in the corner of the cabin, over Dave’s lifeless body.

Jo was sitting on the couch near the bar area, staring at the empty seat in front of her, a haunted expression on her face.

“Will you... help me to move him?” Max asked.

Jo blanked him, staring stoically ahead.

“We can’t leave him there. I can’t... look at him.”

Jo glared at him. Now was not a good time for making such demands of her. All she could think of was Sophie and Dawn.

“You saw him. He was going to kill me if he could!”

“And now they’re both dead,” Jo said, “Why just kill her like that with Dave... gone?”

“I don’t know.”

Max sighed, and stepped over Dave’s dead body. He took a wrist in each hand and started dragging him to the front of the plane, but his own shoulder wound forced him to stop. The axe had gone deep and he was still bleeding out.

Gwen emerged from the bathroom. She looked at Jo, then Max, with tear-swollen eyes. Seeing Max struggling, she walked up the aisle, grabbed hold of Dave’s ankles and helped carry him. Dave’s back dragged on the cabin floor slightly leaving a slick of dark blood trailing after his corpse.

With some effort they lifted him a little higher, through the curtain and bundled him into the staff prep area. Gwen stood back, wiping her hands on her skirt absent-mindedly as Max tore down the dividing curtain and placed it gently over Dave like a shroud. As he stood up, Max moaned with pain as his shoulder
twinged
beneath his bloodstained shirt.

“Let me take a look at that,” Gwen said.

Max covered the wound with the flat of his hand. “Hurts like hell.”

Gwen pulled his hand away from the wound, took it into hers and led him away from Dave’s body.

“Come with me,” she said, pulling him towards the bathroom.

“What are you doing?” Jo asked as they passed her.

“There’s a first aid kit in the bathroom,” Gwen said.

Jo caught a shifty look in Gwen’s eyes. She looked edgier than ever to Jo, as though she were planning something. Gwen was quick to avert her eyes from Jo’s questioning gaze, shutting the door behind her and Max.

Outside, thunder rumbled as the turbulent weather system rolled in around the jet plane.

All alone in the cabin, Jo stared at the bathroom door. She felt she had no idea who the man on the other side of that door was anymore. When they’d first boarded the flight Jo had felt an instant kinship, a bond, with Max. She’d warmed to his gentle nature and apparently easygoing personality. He had seemed relaxed and unperturbed by anything, just living life for the moment. Jo guessed she was attracted to him because that was how she wanted to be in her heart of hearts - relaxed and carefree. If she was honest, she had hoped to get closer to him during the trip, much closer. But now she wasn’t so sure of her instincts. Max had killed Dave in self-
defence
; she knew that, but what about her attraction to someone who was still, in the eyes of the law, a murderer? Could she have even let someone like him into her life, which was all about control? Her life had to remain that way, a constant, or she’d unravel and be back at square one.

Maybe Max had simply lost his control as events
unravelled
around them - maybe, as he’d said, Dave wouldn’t have stopped until he’d killed him. And, in the cold light of day, Max was more important to her than Dave. She had to find a way of working with him to find a way out of the nightmare in which they had become ensnared.

Jo looked at the empty bottle of champagne on the floor and the bloodstain next to it where Dave’s lifeless body had been lying. She picked up the bottle, felt its dead weight in her hand, and studied it in quiet contemplation.

she thought grimly,
it’ll all be over soon, one way or another.

Tap water swirled into the sink as Gwen grabbed the first aid kit from the bathroom cabinet.

“Shirt off.”

Max removed his torn and bloody shirt, grimacing with pain as he lifted it over his shoulders.

“Sit down.”

He sat on the toilet seat lid, wincing.

“Hold still.”

Gwen soaked one of the plush hand towels under the tap and crouched down in front of Max. She started cleaning his wounds as best she could. The axe cut just below his shoulder had bit deep into the tender flesh between his chest and armpit. The bleeding had slowed but hadn’t quite stopped. Gwen took an antiseptic wipe from the first aid kit and pressed it over the wound.

Max groaned through his teeth at the sudden stinging sensation. As it subsided, his body relaxed and Gwen affixed an adhesive bandage over the wipe, which was already staining with fresh blood.

As she worked, she looked Max straight in the eye.

“Do you think we’re all going to die on this plane?”

Max looked back into her eyes. She looked fearful, but resolute.

“I don’t know... maybe... yes.”

As his voice trailed off, Gwen leaned forward between his legs and kissed him full on the lips. Max felt her warm body against his exposed skin, smelled her hair, her perfumed skin.