“Especially because it’s true. Untwist your knickers, babe.”
Niki hauled her purse up from the floor. It was a big purse, the kind you could carry a toddler in, if you really had to. “I have a suggestion.” She reached over and smacked a button to turn off the monitor. “Log off and look away, would you? Let’s call it a day. We can get poké around the corner. First bowl’s on me.”
“I have to stay here and work.”
“Work on what? Do your other clients need anything right now?”
“No.” Leda sulked. “The other two are on their Alaskan cruise. They should be fine.”
Niki frowned. “Three clients total? That’s all you’ve got?”
“Small business is hard, Nik.”
“A small travel business even harder, I guess,” she said in a pointed fashion. “In this day and age where anyone can do anything on the internet.”
Leda sighed. “Not everyone does everything on the internet. Corporations use travel agents. Conventions and conferences use travel agents—and so do people who attend them, like Mr. Merritt. Older people who hate the internet and couldn’t use Expedia if you held a gun to their heads… they use travel agents. But real-life human travel agents are getting harder and harder to find.” Then she added, halfway between defiance and surrender: “It sounded like a good idea at the time.”
“Then you’ve really got to scare up a few more of those, and fast. How much does this office cost you every month?”
Leda reached down and picked up her own purse. It was stashed under the desk, next to her feet. “So much money, you don’t even know.”
“I could help.”
“You can barely keep yourself afloat, and I’m supposed to be the responsible one,” she said, except neither of those things was exactly true. “I cashed out my 401(k) from that couple of years I worked at Amazon, got a small-business grant, and took out a loan. Don’t worry about it. I can keep the lights on for another three months, at least, before I default and the bank takes… whatever it can.”
“You don’t have a house. Your car is a thousand years old. What will they come for, your fish?”
“God help them if they come for Brutus,” she said solemnly. “I will lay waste to them.”
“You spoil that fish.”
“Yeah, well. Maybe in my next life, someone will spoil me.” Leda slung her bag over her shoulder. “Screw this, you’re right. I can’t deal right now. It’s too late for breakfast, it’s too early for lunch, and I don’t want poké anyway. I can’t tell if I’m hungry or nauseous, and I’m too freaked out to go home and take a nap.”
“Does that mean it’s alcohol time?” Niki stood on her good foot and let her busted foot hang like an anchor. “Because, honey, this day was made for mimosas. Let’s go to Geraldine’s for calories and adult orange juice. We’ll pretend that none of this ever happened, until we can’t remember that it did.”
“You’re terrible, and I love you.”
Niki grinned and held the door open. “Yeah, well. That’s what friends are for.”
2.
Detective Grady Merritt of the Seattle PD stood by the window at gate thirty-six, staring at the giant marshmallow roast at the end of the runway. The fire was bright, but the smoke was dark as it billowed across the tarmac. Visibility was low and sketchy for the wailing emergency vehicles, the scrambling luggage carts, the men and women in vests with neon orange guide cones in hand, the security personnel, and everybody else who had some reason to be running back and forth outside the safe, smoke-free confines of the terminal.
He watched as sooty ex-passengers careened down the emergency chutes. Some tumbled like dolls. Some were carried. One guy clutched a pet carrier, checking its contents repeatedly.
A twinge of concern for the mystery pet penetrated Grady’s stunned, baffled fugue. His own dog was home with his daughter, and he would’ve never fit inside that little carrier. Note to self, he thought, never fly with Cairo in the cargo hold.
The dog’s name was Molly’s fault. She was the one who claimed the yellow mutt they’d found in a Target parking lot. At the time, Molly was thirteen years old and the pup was maybe six months of gangly, dirty, lost, adorable puppy. It was love at first sight. Now she was a senior in high school, and the dog was four. They were both at home in Seattle, in the north end neighborhood of Ballard.
Safe.
Waiting for him to come home.
On cue, his phone began to ring, and Molly’s junior-class picture appeared, demanding a response.
“Oh shit.” He fumbled for his phone. “Hey, baby,” he told her, before she could get a word in edgewise. “I was just about to call you.”
“Dad!” she shrieked. “I saw the news! From the airport! The plane blew up! Dad, it’s all over the news!”
“Yeah.” He struggled to sound cool and unharmed. Unrattled, even. Thank God she wasn’t standing right there in front of him. He’d never pull off the bluff that way. With his best and most practiced calm, responsible, authoritative law-enforcement voice, he said, “Honey, I missed the flight. I made it to the airport just in time to see it explode without me.”
Just this once, Molly was not trying to sound cool. She was chattering on the razor’s edge of hysteria. “You weren’t on board? You didn’t even get inside it? You didn’t escape down the big yellow slide? I’m watching it on the news, Dad. I was looking for you, but I didn’t see you come down the slide—you didn’t come down the slide. Where are you? What happened? Are you dead? Oh God, please tell me you’re not dead.”
Before she could cram in another question, he said, “This is not a recording, and I am not dead. I swear to God, I missed all the action. I don’t even smell like smoke, all right? Anyway, it only just now happened. How did you even hear about it so fast?”
“A friend of mine got a news alert on her phone. She said there was a plane crash in Orlando, and you were flying back from Orlando today… and then I got my phone out to check your schedule, and…”
She was about to start crying. He could hear it in her voice. “I know, I know. But don’t worry, okay? I never made it to the plane, and hey—I can see the whole thing from here. A bunch of people survived. Maybe everybody.”
“Everybody?”
“Don’t quote me on that, but I’m watching them take people away. There are ambulances and everything. I’ve seen plenty of people coughing, and a few limping, but I haven’t seen any bodies yet.”
“They’re probably still inside the plane! Dead people don’t get to ride on the big yellow slide, Dad!”
Jesus, sometimes he wished she wasn’t quite so smart. “Like I said, I see a bunch of people who are definitely alive. Don’t panic, all right? Stay cool, and I’ll be home as soon as I can. Listen, I’m already booked on another flight, connecting out of Atlanta later this afternoon.”
“Atlanta?”
“Apparently, if you die and go to hell in the South, you have to stop in Atlanta first.”