Lightning Strikes (The Almeida Brothers Trilogy #3) (2 page)

Not now.  Now, the sheer black pantyhose that had once hugged her curvy legs so alluringly were stripped to the bone.  Runs assaulted the pantyhose all over, some deeper than others, giving hints of her milky white skin and even her red toes as she slowed to a stop in front of him.

“You don’t have any shoes,” Jack mumbled, looking up at her just as she bent down and took his arm.

“Get away from the plane,” she gasped, taking his arm and tugging with all her might.  She was half his size, certainly not strong enough to move him on her own, so he lifted a shaky leg out from under him, planting his shoe on the ground.  He looked down at the shiny Italian leather shoe just as a drop of red splashed onto the tip.  He frowned down at the sight.   Frown deepening, he reached up and touched his forehead, and when his fingers came back saturated with blood, he zoomed to a stand, stumbling.

“There you go,” the flight attendant said, her voice having grown calmer as she pointed a finger.

Jack followed her finger.  She pointed to a grassy area across the tarmac, hundreds of feet away, where dozens of people were gathered, watching the scene.  “That way, sir.  Please.  Get away from the plane.”

She set a hand on his back and gave him the softest push. Jack looked back to meet her eyes one last time, but she had already turned away from him, the thick chunks of red hair that had escaped her once flawless bun bouncing as she raced toward the inflatable slide at the rear of the aircraft.

Jack turned in a slow circle.  Emergency vehicles flashed their lights and sounded their sirens from every angle, zooming across the expansive tarmac.  Every other plane on the taxiway had come to a complete halt.  It gave Jack the distinct sense of being in the middle of an aviation graveyard.

“Holy shit!”

He jolted when a forest of wild curls came blasting into his view, and he didn’t even have time to process the Buffy the Vampire Slayer outfit before that outfit was flying toward him.  He barely had a moment to plant his feet when a pair of legs locked around his waist, slim arms around his neck.

They both pulled back at the same time, and Jack frowned into Nina’s dark brown eyes.

“My guardian angel,” she beamed, pressing a kiss square on his lips.  “You’re my hero!”

Jack gasped at the unexpected contact, pulling away before whatever feeling it had sent zooming through him had the chance to go any deeper.

As she smiled at him, having no idea that her kiss had zapped a realization through him that hadn’t hit him until that moment, Jack’s eyes searched the area again, and it all came flooding back to him.  His gaze flew back to her, and he forced her body off him.

“You,” he said, moving her father away from him, as far as his arms could reach, taking in her still smiling face.  How the hell was she smiling right now?  “You!”

The world spun, and a sudden bout of dizziness seemed to slice her body into five quadrants, all moving in different directions.  His vision cleared sporadically, just enough for him to see her smile dissipating as she pointed to her head.

“Hey, you’re bleeding,” she said.  “Kind of… like a lot.”

“Get away from the plane!”

They both jolted as a flight attendant approached, a young male this time, stumbling under the arm of the overweight, limping man he was supporting.

“Get away from the plane
now
!” he screamed.

Jack and Nina both moved back this time, slow at first, before breaking into a run, getting away from the flaming plane as fast as they could. The group of passengers who’d once been tiny specs in the distance grew closer and closer with each step they took.

***

Shouldering his way through the ticketing area that was swelling with abandoned passengers, canned in like sardines, Jack was borderline homicidal.  Frantic mumbles came from every angle; looping together and creating a chaos that reminded him of the Giants games his brother always dragged him to as kids.  He gritted his teeth to maintain control, maneuvering his body every which way while taking several elbows to the torso. He tried to ignore the plethora of questionable body odors violating his nose, and only gave the departure screen a second of his attention. One second was all he needed to see the word CANCELLED flashing next to every departure flight, stretching down the blindingly bright screen in bold red letters, almost taunting anyone who dared look at it too long.

A muffled, disembodied voice sputtered over the airport’s intercom, urging the melee of infuriated passengers to calm down.

Through the thick clustering of frantic people, Jack managed to find himself at the end of what he hoped was the line to the gate agent, and waited nearly an hour before he was finally at the podium.

When the heavyset gate agent, with a pink streak in her hair who couldn’t be a day over eighteen, looked up at him with the gall to sigh impatiently, Jack begged for patience of his own.

“Hi.”  He tried to smile, but it felt like a cringe.  “I need a seat on the next flight to New York, please and thank you.”

The gate agent exhaled, throwing him dreary eyes.  “Do you have your confirmation number?”

Jack returned the same blank stare she was giving him.  “You see, I was just involved in a plane crash where I nearly lost my life.  I careened down an inflatable slide at 50 miles per hour and bashed my head so hard I passed out.  Miraculously, I managed to do all this without losing every last one of my teeth although I’m almost positive I’m bleeding internally.  Somehow, in the fray, I managed to misplace my confirmation number.”

“Picture ID?”

“Sitting in the wallet I don’t have, right next to the confirmation number I don’t have.”

The agent sighed again.  “Name and birthdate?”

Jack shook his head at her.  Why had it taken her this long to ask for his name and birthday?  Surely, after being harassed by angry and terrified people for the last several hours, she’d have learned to go straight to name and birthday by default.  Apparently not.  This only confirmed to Jack that, somewhere deep down, she was enjoying the pain these passengers were in. Day after day of enduring passenger abuse had left her just as dead and empty inside as he was.  This must have been like Christmas day for her.

“Jack Almeida.”  He spelled his last name, and the agent typed away.  “April 15, 1984.”

“Well, that certainly explains it.”

Jack froze as a voice came in next to him. 
That
voice.  The voice he’d been sure he’d successfully ditched.  His jaw tightened, and he kept his eyes trained forward, at a loss as to why this infuriating human being wouldn’t disappear from his life for good.

Nina pressed up next to him at the podium.  “An Aries,” she continued, her voice going dry.  “Arrogant, stubborn…”

Jack’s lips tightened right along with his jaw, and he spoke to the agent, who was still pattering away on the computer, with clenched teeth.  “Faster?” he begged, catching the agent’s irritated gaze when she looked at him from under her eyelashes.  “Please.”  He still hadn’t decided what was worse.  Dying in a plane crash, or enduring Nina for another second.

“Oh yes,” Nina said. “Arrogant and stubborn to an almost unbearable degree yet, somehow, completely oblivious to it.  Aries are also amazingly courageous.”  Nina craned her neck in an attempt to catch his eyes.  “The most courageous of all the zodiacs, in fact.”

Jack’s gaze flew to the corners of his eyes, giving him a view of her bright red manicure.  She had long, claw-shaped nails, two of which hadn’t survived the crash, broken and jagged.

“Thank you,” Nina said.  “For saving my life, Aries.  I insist on making it up to you.”

“I must counter and beg that you don’t.” Jack looked out of the corner of his eye again when she dug her hand into the hunter green messenger bag on her hip and came out with a fist full of crumpled hundred dollar bills.  As a man who strove to keep his bills in numerical order and all facing in the same direction, he involuntarily flinched and met Nina’s eyes.

“I have money, see?”  She straightened.  “And I insist on paying for your hotel room tonight.”

“That really won’t be necessary.”

“I just heard you tell this lovely young lady.”  She motioned to the gate agent.  “That you lost your wallet.  How else do you plan on paying for a room?”

“I’m a big boy.  I’ll figure something out.”  His eyes went back to the agent.  “Besides, considering we almost just died under this charming airline’s watch, I’d assume
they’d
be the ones insisting on paying for my hotel room.”

This time, both Jack and Nina shot daggers at the agent with their eyes.

The agent made a face.

“What is that look?” Nina demanded, pointing at her.

“Well, see…” The agent’s cringe deepened.  “The airport has been completely shut down, and we’ve had more than a dozen diversions in the last hour alone due to the storm…”

“Don’t say it,” Jack begged.

“It looks like all the hotels are completely booked for the night.”

“You said it.” Jack nodded.

Nina laughed, leaning deeper onto the counter.  “Are you… are you…
fucking
kidding me?”

“I’m not.”  The agent slid four slips of paper toward them.  “I’ll give you the hotel vouchers anyway, just in case you get lucky and happen upon a room.  I’ll also give you a voucher for any seat on the Amtrak if you want to try your luck there.  First train leaves at six a.m.”

“Where the hell are we supposed to sleep?” Nina asked.

“We have cots set up in the main lobby…” The agent held up a finger while snatching up the two-way radio clipped to her belt, bringing it to her ear.  A few seconds passed with her listening to the grainy voice on the other end, and then the cringe was back.  “And it sounds like we just ran out of those, too.”

Jack breathed deep, clutching the counter.  “I’d like to be bumped to the first flight leaving this airport, and I don’t care where it’s going.  Just get me the hell out of here, please.”

“It’s a great plan,” the agent said.  “But unfortunately, the runway is still closed, and once it reopens every flight out is booked solid for the next three days.”

“I’ll sit standby.”

“Fair enough, but I feel it’s only right to tell you that the shortest standby list is a hundred people long—”

Jack pushed away from the counter without another word, clutching his vouchers, unable to hear a second more.

As he swept through the rapidly thickening crowd of people, he almost screamed at the voice that rang out behind him.

“Can you
believe
this?”

He didn’t look back at her as he swept out of the airport’s sliding doors, but even as he walked for nearly ten minutes, he knew she was right behind him.

The passenger pick-up area outside was just as much of a zoo as the ticket counter inside.  The lightning storm they’d been trying to escape had finally caught up with them, leaving hundreds of stranded passengers soaked in the pouring rain, most of them in the process of screaming at each other or someone else.  Rainwater flowed from the hems of heavy coats and the edges of umbrellas as they lunged for every cab that pulled up to the curb—apparently, they’d become a hot commodity.

“Looks like there are no cabs, either,” Nina said from behind him.

Jack froze and then turned to her.  “What, what,
what
is it going to take?”  He threw his arms out at his sides.  “To get you out of my life?”

Nina, who, sure enough, had been following close behind him, slowed to a stop, her brown eyes searching his, squinting against the spatters of rain that were managing to catch her, even as she tried to stay in the shaded area. “We’re two people who’ve been through a very traumatic experience together; we’re in the middle of a strange city—and we’re both going to the same place.  Judging by the way you’re dressed, I’m guessing getting to New York City is just as important to you as it is to me.”

“You guessed wrong.”

“I think we should stick together.”

“I don’t.”

She held up the wad of cash she still had in her hand, cupping it with both when a sharp breeze almost blew one of the bills away.  “I’m the only one with money.”

Jack studied the wad in her hand and then looked away with a frown.

“If there are no planes and no hotel rooms, then we’ll catch a train out of here, hitch a ride to the next city and then fly back to New York from there.”

“Oh, no one’s flying back to New York tonight!”

Their eyes flew toward the new voice, widening when they caught sight of an elderly white woman with grey dreadlocks, sitting in a broken down, hot pink cab.

Smiling, the woman leaned over and looked out of her passenger side window, showing them the gaping black hole where her two front teeth used to be.  “Storm’s been upgraded.  Full-blown hurricane.  The Jersey Coaster is gone, the subway is down, and bridges are lifted.  New York City is officially closed!”

Jack’s mouth fell open.

New York was officially closed, and as he cast a horrified look at Nina, he realized he was officially
screwed.