“Everyone, seat belt on!” March orders as the Ekranoplan stirs at last.
The Emirati are in for the shock of their life when this marvel takes off. I carry the youngest brother to the row of seats lined up against the wall. His big brown eyes widen in fear when he starts to feel the acceleration. The eight turbojets sitting on the craft’s short wings roar to full speed above our heads, making the entire cabin rattle. He tries to reach for his father in the seat next to his while I tighten his seat belt. “Papa, werden wir sterben?” Daddy, are we gonna die?
March, whose German was always vastly superior to mine, winks at the boy, his expression softening a fraction. “Nein. Dies ist das schnellste Schiff der Welt. In weniger als zwei Stunden sind Sie in Indien.” No. This is the fastest ship in the world. In less than two hours, you’ll be in India.
His brother holds on tight to the thick shoulder straps of his seat belt. “Aber ist das nicht ein Flugzeug?” But is it not a plane?
“Weder noch. Das hier ist das Kaspische Seeungeheuer,” his father breathes, a trembling smile carving deep lines around his mouth. Neither. This is the Caspian Sea Monster.
My lips twitch in response, and my heart goes out to this stranger, this fellow engineer who recognizes two hundred and thirty thousand pounds of thrust when he feels it. I barely have the time to jump in my own seat at March’s side before I feel my insides smash against my spine. Jan is hitting the gas hard, and I can’t begin to imagine the coast guards’ faces while their ship is being whipped and tossed around by the tons of water we’re lifting in our wake.
The initial acceleration recedes; at last, I release an exhausted breath. We’re gliding thirty feet above the water and under radar detection at over three hundred miles per hour. March lets go of Frederick’s shuttle at last and discreetly produces a tiny bottle from his pocket—hand sanitizer, because he made prolonged contact with Frederick’s cage, which is full of gerbil germs, poop, and innumerable microorganisms that March must be mentally picturing as he rubs the pads of his fingers insistently. It’s his cross to bear: March has been suffering from OCD since adolescence, and while it’s gotten better over the past few years and he tries hard to keep it in check most of the time, some triggers simply cannot be ignored—the faint smell of urine surrounding Frederick’s pet shuttle being one of those.
Now properly decontaminated, his hand sneaks to graze mine between our seats—he wouldn’t indulge in anything more in front of our clients. Our fingertips seek each other in a practiced dance, sparking warmth and electricity everywhere our skin touches. My gaze lingers on his profile: the strong jaw and the aquiline nose I love to kiss, thin lips that rarely smile in public but grin when it’s just the two of us. Every line and every crow’s foot. Him.
According to my tablet, I’ve read 2,811 romance books since I open the first one at the age of eighteen—Slave to The Rich and Sexy Vampire, memorable sex scene inside a coffin, by the way. None of them prepared me for March, for a happy ending of my own, and the simple certainty that I’m not alone: somewhere on earth, there was a soulmate for me, a man who reads Wikipedia a lot too and doesn’t need big words to connect with me. How strange to think that against killer platypuses, supervillains, and every imaginable odd, we found our way to each other.
“Happy birthday, biscuit,” he murmurs with that faint British accent he inherited from his father. A better aphrodisiac than Nutella, in my humble opinion.
“What happened? You were late.” He knows there’s no bite to the question, only the lingering terror of losing him.
“I’m sorry. We ran into some trouble at the Omani border.”
I glance at Rotwang, who’s busy cooing reassurances to his shell-shocked family. “Did you have to . . . ?” I whisper.
No need to elaborate. My former hitman boyfriend knows exactly what I’m asking. He flashes me a penitent smile as we undo our seat belt and move together toward the cockpit. “No. There were a few scratches, but nothing—”
I slant him a suspicious look. “Scratches?”
He clears his throat. “Possibly a few broken bones. Someone crashed a cargo full of watermelons into a control post.” When my face starts to pinch, he quickly confesses. “And that someone planted a fragmentation grenade among the crates. I never suspected a flying cucurbit might have such tremendous stopping power.”
“Oh my God . . .”
“That’s what they all scream,” a husky voice remarks as March opens the door to the cockpit.
I glower at Jan, whose hands are barely grazing the yoke while in the copilot’s seat, Andrea is munching on what appears to be potato chips, judging by the crumbs clinging to the worn fleece cover he rests on. March’s nostrils flare in silent disapproval.
“Will they try to follow us?” I ask Jan.
He shrugs and motions at the cloudy night bleeding into the black line of the horizon ahead. “We’ll reach Gujarat long before those guys back there can call for backup. They probably don’t even know what they saw.”
“What about the Emirati air force? The Indian navy?” I counter.
March bends to me, his warm chuckle raising a trail of pleasurable goosebumps down my nape. “Valuable as he may be to his sponsor, Mr. Rotwang is no royal princess. I doubt either the UAE or India will get their F-16 off the ground tonight. Not over crepes.”
Too true. To the best of my recollection, the last time the UAE and India went through the trouble of a joint operation in international waters, the unfortunate fugitive was the daughter of the prime minister of the UAE himself. That was worth an aerial reconnaissance, two warships, and at least fifteen commandos, all of which easily caught up with the princess’s chosen means of escape—a sailing yacht that couldn’t have cruised at over seven knots. She hasn’t been allowed in public on her own since . . .
The Ekranoplan is fifty times faster than that, I remind myself—my father never did things by half. Tension fizzles away in my limbs, and I could almost believe it’s over, until a high-pitched scream bursts from the other side of the cockpit door. “Frederick! Frederick!”
Jan watches over his shoulder as March and I rush back to the cabin. The two boys are huddled around the pink pet shuttle March placed on one of the seats earlier, their chubby faces struck with horror. Mrs. Rotwang kneels between her boys and exchanges a saddened glance with her husband. I sit down and hunch over the shuttle to take my first good look at our tiniest passenger. Oh, crap. I don’t think it’s supposed to lie on its back with its tail all limp and its legs sticking straight up like that . . .
TWO
Intensive Care
You and I are spinning around, Cheyenne. Love is a wheel you can’t escape.
—Crystal Viper, Undercover Shifters #2: Bite of the Billionaire Gerbil
Maybe it was the acceleration during takeoff. Or the boat chase with the coast guards. In any case, Frederick didn’t make it.
Fat tears immediately build in the boys’ reddened eyes. “Frederick ist tot!” sobs the youngest. Frederick is dead!
His brother remains quiet, but he swallows over and over, his jaw tight from the effort not to bawl in unison.