Contact by Susan Grant Read Free Book Online Page B

scrunchie and started over, scraping the entire thick mess into a hasty ponytail.
    “Oh, captain . . . my captain.”
    The slightly flirting, melodic voice caught Jordan’s attention. It was the red-haired Irishman who’d insisted that they fight back. He walked to her, flanked by several other disheveled men she recognized from business class. “What are you going to do when they come aboard?” he asked in his brogue. “They will, you know. We won’t be able to keep them out for long.”
    “You don’t know that.”
    He shrugged. “Pragmatism is my middle name. If they worked this hard to net the oyster, they’ll work just as hard to pry open the shell. You need someone like me to stop them.” He winked and gave her a killer smile.
    She hardened herself to his European charm. “Who are you, anyway?”
    “Ian Dillon—but I go by Dillon.” His hand was warm as he shook hers. “Senior Vice President of Network Global Technologies. Based in Dublin. Million-miler, many times over.”
    Jordan was so rattled, it took her a second to realize that he’d given her his frequent-flyer credentials. “And your area of expertise is?”
    “For one, I can take normal electronic gadgets and transform them into what might be useful to us.”
    “Like weapons?”
    “Like weapons,” he confirmed.
    She and Ben exchanged glances. Was Dillon’s plan rash? Maybe. Would it save them? It could. Or it might cause a lot more of them to wind up dead than if they simply cooperated. But maybe there wasn’t a right answer. Maybe she was going to have to rely on gut instinct and lots of prayers.
    “Okay. We don’t have a lot in reserve for defense. Anything extra will help. Go ahead and gather what information and helpers you think you need for manufacturing the weapons. Just don’t take any chances with my crew or the other passengers.” She held up one finger. “Any and all plans of action go through me. I make the final decision. The
only
decision, Mr. Dillon. This is not a democracy. Understood?”
    Ben appeared vaguely unsettled by her monologue. She could see why: she was beginning to sound like a character from an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie. Dillon, on the other hand, didn’t seem bothered by her abruptness. In fact, he appeared to approve. “Understood,” he said. “Now, Captain, I’d like to requisition the defibrillator for defensive purposes.”
    “The AED?” Ben frowned. “No dice. We might need it if someone has a heart attack.”
    “We do have two,” Jordan reminded him. “But, Mr. Dillon, the AED delivers a shock only if it detects that one is needed. You can’t use it to shock someone, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
    Dillon’s mouth tipped, and he jerked his chin in the direction of her holster. “Whatever I come up with will be better than that toy gun you’re sporting.”
    The man was right. If they were going to fend off an invading horde, they’d need more than a single stun gun. “Do it,” she said.
    Dillon gave her a two-fingered salute and walked back to his huddle of waiting businessmen. Jordan departed inthe opposite direction, her hand resting on the stun gun. Back in the cockpit, she settled into the captain’s seat—
her
seat now—and watched for any changes in the wide-open wall in front of the airplane. The wall was still too bright to look at directly and too intense to see past. So she sat there, waiting for something to happen, which was the worst kind of waiting there was.
    Her watch beeped, telling the hour. It was eight a.m. at Jordan’s parents’ house. By now, Boo would be eating breakfast and watching cartoons. Then she’d go off to school, expecting to find Jordan waiting to pick her up at three when the kids poured onto the playground. Only this time, Mommy wouldn’t be there.
    Jordan tipped her head back and closed her eyes. This wouldn’t be the first time that her airline job had wrenched apart her family. Craig, her deceased husband, had wanted to