The Rose Ransom (Girls Wearing Black: Book Three) (7 page)

On a private plane for one of
the girls wearing black, the newest, nicest, jet in the world, on a clear
night, and the wireless isn’t working. It doesn’t make sense.

“It’s okay, Nicky,” Ryan said.
“You don’t have to tell me about your dad if it’s too hard.”

“No, it’s not that, it’s--”

It’s the questions spinning
in my head. Questions like, Who could arrange for the wireless to go down? Who
would benefit?

“Hang on a second, Ryan,” she
said. “I just need to talk to Heather one more time.”

“Talk to Heather? Can’t it wait
until we’ve finished this conversation?”

“No, I’m sorry. It can’t.”

Ryan gave her a look that was
becoming familiar. She had disappointed him.

“I’m sorry, Ryan. I’ll be right
back.”

“Take your time,” Ryan said. “I
think I’m gonna get some sleep.”

“Ryan, I just need--”

“No, forget it. You obviously
don’t want to talk about this now and I’m not going to make you.”

“I do want…I mean, I…”

She couldn’t even say the words
for fear they were just another lie. Did she really want to tell him? The more
she thought about it, the more it seemed like a bad idea, at least right now.
With no wireless, she had no idea what was happening on the ground, no clue how
things were going back at the mansion, where Gia and the rest were on a nightly
lookout for Melissa Mayhew.

If something went wrong between
now and the end of the year, the vampires would round up all of Nicky’s
supporters and look in their minds. If that happened, Ryan’s best chance to
survive would be his own ignorance. The vampires would make him tell the truth.
They would learn he knew nothing about the mission. They would find a guy who
got involved because he liked Nicky Bloom. An innocent victim, strung along so
the Network could access his money.

“I’ll be right back,” she said.

Ryan shook his head and turned
away.

Twenty minutes later, Nicky
having thoroughly grilled both Heather and the co-pilot about the wireless
situation, Nicky returned to the bed to find Ryan fast asleep. She lay down
next to him and let her hand fall into his.

He interlaced his fingers with
hers.

Hours later, Nicky having gotten
lost in the dream about the silver sphere and her mother, Heather opened one of
the blinds on the windows, allowing daylight to flood the cabin.

“I’m so sorry to wake you,” she
said, “but the captain is beginning his final approach. You’ll need to get
strapped in your seats.”

Nicky and Ryan said nothing as
they moved from the bed to the row of chairs on the wall. Nicky held up her
phone, waiting for the plane to get low enough to pick up a cell tower signal
from the ground.

Right as they touched down, the
phone updated its time and location.
Milan. 2:30 pm
.

A backlog of messages started
showing up. Turning her phone so Ryan couldn’t see the screen, Nicky brought up
a text message from Jill.

Two words in the text jumped out
at her.

Code Orange
.

“No,” she whispered. “Can’t be.”

“Is everything okay?” Ryan
asked.

Ignoring him, Nicky yanked up
the blind and pressed her face against the window. She scanned up and down the
runway. Nothing but clear road to the east, to the north, to the south…

No, there was something coming
from the south end of the strip. The reflection of the runway was so bright it
was hard to see. Nicky cupped her hand over her eyes and tried to get a better
view.

A car. A van. A black van. There
was a black van driving across the tarmac.

She went back to her phone and
brought up the whole message from Jill.

Code Orange.  Have the pilot
take you to a different airport. You will have trouble waiting for you when you
land.

“The wireless,” Nicky whispered.

“What’s that?” said Ryan.

“They wanted to make sure no one
could tip me off.”

“Tip you off? What are you
talking about?”

She undid her seat belt.

“Nicky, I think they like you to
keep your seat belt on until the plane…hey, where are you going?”

She ran to the front of the
plane, where Heather was strapped into a chair on the wall.

“I’m sorry Sweetie,” Heather
said, “but the rules are you have to stay--”

“Tell the pilot to take off
again. I’ve changed my mind. I want to go to a different airport.”

“A different airport? I don’t
know that we can do that.”

“I’m the girl wearing black.
This is my plane. Tell the pilot to go back to the runway now and take off.”

Flustered, Heather undid her
seat belt, got out of her chair, and grabbed a phone on the wall.

“The passenger wants to go to a
different airport,” she said.

Nicky couldn’t hear what the
captain was saying back to her, but she knew what the answer was.

“The pilot says we’ll need to
refuel and get clearance to take off again,” the attendant said. “It will be at
least two hours.”

Clearance. That was the sticking
point. Nicky wasn’t really in charge of this plane. Neither was the pilot.
Someone from the Samarin clan had given the order that this plane wasn’t going
anywhere.

She ran back to her seat.

“Nicky, what the hell’s going on
with you?” Ryan said.

Ignoring him, she pressed her
face to the window. The black van was a hundred yards away and closing. She
went to the other side of the plane and looked out that window.

“Clear on this side,” she said.

“You know you’re acting like a
crazy person, don’t you?” Ryan said.

“Listen to me,” she said,
getting close to Ryan and looking him in the eye. “We’re in big trouble. I
don’t have time to explain everything, but there’s a black van out there
waiting to take us away. When this plane comes to a stop, a team of men in gas
masks is going to come inside and flood the cabin with knockout gas.”

“Knockout gas?” Ryan’s eyes
drifted down to the phone in Nicky’s hand, then he turned and looked out the
window. “Nicky, this is an airport. Vans like that…maybe it’s just for luggage
or something.”

“It’s not for luggage,” Nicky
said, reminding herself that Ryan had no context for any of this. He grew up in
a mansion in Potomac. He had no more idea about the black vans that stole
people away than little Nicky Allen knew about Coronation contests and girls
wearing black.

“What kind of trouble are you in
here, Nicky?”

“It’s not just me,” Nicky said.
“They’ll take all of us.”

She was looking around for
something she could use as a weapon, but there was nothing to be found. It was
an airplane, after all, with all the usual security. No knives, no guns, not even
a pair of scissors.

“What do you mean take both of
us?” Ryan said. “What’s happening?”

“We’re going too slow,” Nicky
said. “Feel that? The plane is about to stop. We’re nowhere near the airport.”

“Sometimes we have to stop
during our taxi to the gate,” Heather said. She was speaking in a soothing
voice, the way one might talk to a crazy person.

“They’re going to take you too,”
Nicky said to her.

“I’m sorry, what?” said Heather.

Nicky was standing in the middle
of the aisle now. She had nothing in her hands. The plane had come to a dead
stop in the middle of the runway. Outside, the black van was pulling up next to
them.

On the speakers there was a
quick bell chime, then the captain’s voice came on.

“Hi friends, we’ve been asked to
stop here and await further instructions,” he said. “Apparently there’s some
sort of mixup at the gate. I’m sorry about this. It will be just one minute.”

Nicky ran to the window. The van
was twenty feet away from the plane.

“What’s got you so spooked out
there?” Heather said as she approached the window. Unlike Ryan, this woman
seemed to recognize the danger. As soon as Heather saw the van, she backed away
from the window, her eyes wide with fear.

“That van is exactly what you
think it is,” said Nicky.

“I don’t think it’s anything,”
Heather said, her voice trembling.

 “I’m in trouble with the clan
back home,” Nicky said. “That van is here to take us away. They’ll take all of
us.”

Heather was shaking her head.
“No, it must be something else,” she said.

“Hi again folks,” came the
captain’s voice over the speakers. “The airport has kindly provided
transportation to the terminal. Cabin, please prepare the doors.”

Heather let out a nervous laugh.

“Hear that? The van is going to
take us to the terminal. That’s all it is. Oh my God, you really had me spooked
there for a minute.”

Nicky brushed past her, went to
the front of the plane, and pulled the phone off the wall. There was a brush of
static, a quick beep, then the pilot’s voice came on.

“What can I do you for,
Heather?” he said.

“That van isn’t here to take us
to the terminal.”

“Heather?”

“This isn’t Heather. This is
your passenger, Nicky Bloom. When you open that door, men in gas masks are
going to rush the plane with canisters of Addonox.”

A few seconds of silence on the
other end of the line, then, “Why do you think that?”

“Because I’m an agent of the
resistance. I am in the Network. I posed as a Thorndike student to get close
enough to a vampire to kill him. I just got a message from my colleagues that
I’ve been found out and there will be people waiting at the airport to take me
away.”

More silence. Nicky turned back
to the cabin to see Ryan and Heather staring at her, dumbfounded. When the
captain came back on he said, “Please give the phone to Heather.”

“I need you to understand that
you’re in danger too,” Nicky said. “I can help you, but only if you get us out
of here. There’s still a chance, but the longer we wait, the worse it becomes.
If you start rolling now, if you take off now, we can go someplace safe. I have
friends all over the world. We can--”

“Hang on, the tower’s buzzing
me,” the captain said.

A click, some static, and then
the other side went blank. Nicky pulled the phone away from her ear and looked
at it.

“He cut me off,” she muttered.
“How do I get him back on?”

Heather and Ryan were standing
in the aisle, staring at her.

“Is that true, Nicky?” Ryan
said. “Are you in the Network?”

The look on his face was equal
parts fascination and anger. It wasn’t that different than the look he wore
when Nicky arrived at the Masquerade in a black dress.

“What have you done?” Heather
whispered. “You’ve killed us all.”

“Only if we stay on the ground,”
Nicky said. “We all need to work together to get through this. Listen to me.
Under no circumstances can we open the doors. We must convince the pilot to
take off again.”

“But where would we go?” Heather
demanded, her voice breaking like she was about to cry. “What would we do?”

“All we need to do is get to
another airport. The plane will outfly any attempts to get another van there to
meet us. Once we land somewhere else, anywhere else, I can get all of us
someplace safe. The Network is active in every country in the world. I can get
help for us.”

“But then what? Do we run for
the rest of our lives?”

Heather was about to flip out on
them. Who could blame her? The vision Nicky was presenting was one where
everybody on this plane had their identities wiped by the Network. It was a
brutal, unreasonable proposition.

In truth, it wasn’t necessary
for someone like Heather. The pilots and flight attendant would be kidnapped
with the rest of them, but once the vampires had a look in their minds, they
would wipe their memories clean of all of this and send them on their way.

Nicky was hoping that neither
Heather nor the pilot would understand this. She was hoping that fear would
cloud their judgment and they’d get the plane in the air before they thought it
through.

The alert bell chimed and the
pilot’s voice came over the speakers, filling the cabin.

“Okay everyone, the tower’s
getting antsy for us to open the doors,” he said. “However, they said some
things to me that have us convinced up here that our passenger is…well, that
she’s telling the truth. We’ve decided to take off. We don’t have any clearance
so we’ll need to move quickly before the runway gets blocked.”

“Dear God,” Heather whispered.

“I’ll need for both our
passengers to take a seat in the back and fasten their belts. Expect this
takeoff to be rough.”

“Takeoff. No, this is a bad
idea,” Heather said.

Nicky put the phone back in the
cradle and approached Heather.

“It’s the only way,” she said.
“We’re all dead otherwise. This is the right decision.”

A mascara stained tear streaked
down Heather’s face.

“Just go get in your seat,” she
whimpered. “I want to talk to the captain.”

“I don’t think there’s time for
that,” Nicky said. “You need to get strapped in too.”

As if the captain were
eavesdropping on their conversation, he said over the speakers, “Heather,
please pick up the com.”

Heather pushed Nicky aside and
ran to the phone.

“Please Roddy, don’t do this
yet,” she said. “We can talk to them. We can tell them we’re innocent. We
can--”

She stopped talking and started
listening. Nicky really wanted to know what the captain was saying to her.
Heather pushed the air with her hand, waving Nicky off and mouthing the words,
“Get back. Get in your seat.”

Nicky had already decided she
wasn’t getting in her seat until the plane was actually moving.

“Okay,” Heather said between
sobs. “Okay. Yes, I understand. I’ll….okay.”

She tried to hang up the phone
but her body was shivering violently and she couldn’t do it. The receiver
dropped against the wall, hanging by its cord. Heather left it and started
pulling down a seat from the wall.