5. Garrett

5

GARRETT

I wasted precious seconds staring at the hole. Behind me, the blonde woman was wailing, yelling Kristina’s name over and over again.

Think! Not what I’m good at. But I had to think of something because if I couldn’t, she was dead. And I wasn’t willing to accept that.

I thought about the explosive the assassins had used. This must have been the plan all along: kill the Princess, then escape by blowing the door and jumping out.

Which meant the assassin I’d fought, the one who’d jumped out, had been wearing a parachute.

Which meant the other one must be wearing a parachute, too.

I half-slid, half-scrambled down the aisle, my heavier body, making it easier for me to fight the wind. I hauled myself over to where the old guard and the young guard had restrained the other assassin. They were pretty much sitting on him, the only way they could pin him down and still have hands free to cling onto something themselves. Both of them were staring in horror at the hole. “ Move!” I snapped.

They were too shell-shocked by what had happened to argue. I wrestled the assassin onto his front. Bent over him and strained my eyes against the wind. Was it just a backpack, or…. Please be right, please be right—

Yes. A parachute.

I pushed a knee into his back to pin him down, undid the buckles and wrestled the thing off him. He let out a yell of pain as I bent an arm the wrong way in my hurry, but I really didn’t give a damn. I got to my knees so that I could pull the parachute on. As soon as I took my weight off the assassin, the wind snatched him away. He shot across the cabin, pinwheeling in the air, and disappeared through the hole.

I stood up and ran, still fastening the parachute’s buckles. Within a few steps, the wind took me and feet left the ground. As I was sucked towards the hole, I curled myself into a tight ball.

And then I was outside in the vast, freezing sky. The plane shot away from me, shrinking to a speck in a few seconds. Meanwhile, I was falling towards the earth at a hundred miles an hour.

I straightened my body into a dart, arms behind me, and pointed myself at the ground. And I willed myself to go faster.