Justin
Did I say I wasn't going to kill Kayla? I lied. When I noticed the time and realized that at that moment I should be proposing to Jhondie instead of peering through a chain link fence at an abandoned airport, I knew then I was going to choke Kayla to death. With a smile on my lips. I should have been watching starlight making a center diamond glitter with a thousand prisms of light. Instead we had slipped past a burnt hulk of a car, some embers still glowing inside of the remains. The license plate was still partially readable. GR8 L was uncharred. It didn't take a genius to figure out that Katrina was really going to be pissed she had ever got caught on that tape with Kayla.
Later, I thought it was kind of funny how adept we had gotten at changing clothes in a moving vehicle. Jhondie changed first and then held the wheel so that I could take care of matters. Changing your shirt is easy. Managing to change from slacks into jeans without taking a foot off the accelerator takes some serious practice. I normally made some flirtatious comment towards Jhondie when she was half-naked in my car, but this time, I couldn't think of anything but how much I wanted to beat the holy hell out of that little brat we were off to save.
"Some people in the building," Jhondie whispered. The airport was small, just one runway and an admin building next to a hanger that could probably hold maybe two of the size planes like the one on the runway. We had parked about half a mile away and jogged up. Too bad Kayla hadn't thought of doing that. Or maybe she should have just driven up and honked the horn a few times. Then she wouldn't have had time to call and interrupt us before she got caught.
"Can you see Kayla?" I asked. Since we were here, I guessed that we might as well get the kids back.
"No, three men though. They look like they're arguing about something."
Probably debating on if they should kill Kay and Kat. I totally understood how they felt, I really did. I looked up at the eight-foot fence. "Shouldn't be a problem to get in. Can you see in the plane?"
She shook her head. "Not enough. There's a guy in the cockpit, probably a couple more in the plane guarding the shipment."
"Then let's see if we can get the three in the building down before they can call for help." She nodded, gathering herself in a crouch and then launching up in a smooth coil of muscle. It really sucked to have to slowly climb a fence so that you don't make noise, and your girlfriend is over it in literally a single bound without so much as making a pebble scrape on the other side. I slipped over the top of the fence and dropped to the ground below. And I would like to point out that the few times I had seen Jhondie actually climb a fence, I was much quieter than she was.
We stayed low, moving around the perimeter to keep in the shadows. Jhondie suddenly stopped, both of us dropping to the ground. The front door opened and two of the men exited. We were closer now and the wind was blowing right so that we could hear their words. One of the guys said he still wanted the usual rates for those two. The other one protested that they weren't shipped like the others. The first one shrugged and then said pointedly that with more weight, calculations should be redone. Could take some time. Might not make the connector. The other man glared at him and then offered seventy-five percent. The first guy smiled and said that would work.
Blood. They were shipping blood, right? That's what the boss had said. That's what we were expecting. That's when I had a sudden epiphany. What was broadcasted was always right, but sometimes even Eyes Only got bad information and spread it to his operatives. They had two. Two young girls, that is. Others. As in other young girls. Yeah, they were shipping blood all right. It was just still in the packaging.
"It's a white slavery ring," I muttered. "We got to stop that plane."
The third man exited the building and the first one made a gesture. The planes engines cranked into life. And that was when we saw Kayla and Katrina coming out, their wrists bound in front of their bodies. A door on the side of the plane opened and a man looked out.
"Hurry it up!" he shouted over the rising whine of the engines. "Mr. Bronck said these bitches better be out of the country tonight!"
Jhondie jerked and I had to grab her fast before she bolted into the middle of that mess. "No," I hissed. "Go around the building. I'll go around the plane. We'll take them from the middle."
"My sister..." she started to say, desperation in her voice.
"Is going to get taken anyways if you get killed trying to save her," I broke in. "What would you do if you didn't know them?"
Jhondie hesitated for a second. "See you in the middle." That's my girl.
Both of us went into motion. There was a small hedging on the far side that I went behind and moved to the other side of the plane, keeping low while Jhondie used her incredible speed to get around the building so fast they didn't even notice she was there. The noise from the engines was blocking any little sounds we were making and I guessed the pilots weren't going to turn on any lights until they were ready to take off. Worked for me.
Jhondie and I had done this move plenty of times before to the point that there was no need to discuss what we were going to do. We would circle and then I would come out first. They would focus on me and then Jhondie would nail them from the rear. With her speed and strength they wouldn't be able to get a shot off before she was done with them. That's the way it always worked. It was a good solid plan. It worked great. That night I learned it only worked when dealing with human beings. When you add teenagers to the mix, it all goes to hell in an instant.
The girls were mostly to the plane by the time Jhondie and I could get into position. I had swept out past the plane and was on the tarmac. I didn't like being so exposed, but I was dressed in dark clothes and all of the focus was on what was happening between the building and the plane. It was safe enough for me I supposed, but then even over the engines I heard Katrina suddenly scream out that they could go to hell, they blew up her car and she wasn't going anywhere with them. I could see the scene pretty well from underneath the plane and all I could think was the kid was one hell of a scrapper. Not very bright, but a scrapper.
She kicked the guy that was closest to her square between the legs. The air whooshed out of him and he doubled over. That brought Kay to life and she kicked the guy holding her in the knee. She was a little thing, but I guess dance had been really giving her some strength because the guy collapsed instantly, screaming and grabbing his leg. Katrina jumped on her guy's back, her bound hands making a nice noose as she tried to strangle the life out of him. He fell back, landing on top of her and she went limp as her head hit the pavement. I could hear screaming from inside the plane and knew that an insurrection might be mounting.
The guy that was in the plane suddenly fired several shots in the air. Kayla went still and the girls in the plane went quiet. Katrina's victim got up and dragged the dazed girl to her feet. Jhondie and I were both frozen. Anything happen now and they were poised to shoot everything and get a fresh load that wasn't a bunch of trouble.
"My knee!" the guy on the ground screamed. "Bitch broke my knee!"
The guy in the plane sneered at him and then fired three more shots at his now ex-partner. The screaming stopped and that took the remaining fight out of both Kayla and Katrina. "Get them in!" he shouted from the top of the stairs. "These two need a lesson. I think they're just right for the Malaysian patron." Whatever that meant, the other two guys thought it was amusing.
I moved in closer. The girls were at the stairs. That plane was not going to take off. Period. It would be easy enough for Jhondie to save Kayla at this point and the plane would be ordered to take off rather than waste anymore time trying to get these two little bits of trouble. But there was a load of other girls on board and they were not going to be sacrificed. I moved in fast, coming around the underside of the plane and Jhondie had kept to procedure and watched for my move rather than focusing on her sister.
As soon as I went under the plane to come out on the side facing the building, Jhondie went into motion. She came out; grabbing the guy that was closest to her and in general making him wish he had never gotten out of bed that morning. The guy at the top of the stairs grabbed the two girls and yanked them in, shouting to the pilot to take off now. I raced up the stairs, hearing several gunshots from outside, but I had to trust that Jhondie was still Jhondie. She could dance around flying bullets and them make the shooter regret every single one of them.
The guy in the plane was shouting orders, his back to me when I grabbed him. The look on his face would have been comical had the situation not been so dire. He didn't have a moment to react as my fist made contact with his face. I realized the pilot wasn't looking back and just following orders as I shouted to lower the stairs that had started to rise when the pilot began to taxi out. He hit the descend button or whatever it was and then turned to question.
I wasn't sure how I might have been able to handle both of them, especially when the pilot pulled out a gun. I had the other guy's gun. We both pointed in a Mexican standoff. Crap. The other guy was starting to come to a little. Kat was near him and snarled something incomprehensible at him. She shoved him as hard as she could and he suddenly rolled out of the open door and down the steps.
"Stop the plane!" I shouted.
"I'll shoot them!" he threatened. "You just out or they all die!" We were still moving forward, gaining speed.
"You'll only get one or two before I take you out," I snapped back.
He smirked. "That's more than your boss will allow," he sneered. Oh, that was not a good thing to hear. I don't know how things would have ended if I had been by myself. Probably with a couple of injured or dead girls. But the pilot had no idea that my backup put to shame anything that he might have had to deal with in Seattle.
There was a thump on the nose of the plane, making it dip down, startling everyone, including the pilot. He looked forward to see what happened and was not prepared for a fist to come flying through the windshield, slamming into his stunned face. He still had one hand on the controls and when he was thrown backwards, the controls pulled back and lifted us into the air. The plane immediately started angling towards the left, knocking Jhondie off balance and she slid off of the side. I didn't think we could be that far up to hurt her in a fall, but when Kay screamed out that Jhondie was on the stairs, I still felt better. I wasn't sure how she pulled off that move, but there was the little problem with the whole, we're still going up thing to deal with.
I jumped into the co-pilot's seat next to the unconscious pilot. Okay, time to remember that game I used to play, Flight Simulator. Except now there were lots of buttons and knobs and none of them were conveniently labeled "land" for me. There wasn't a retry button either. Crap. I didn't know it then, but all planes are engineered around a guiding principle of inherent stability. They want to fly straight and level. All I needed to do was put the controls horizontal and the plane would level itself out. Good thing to have known then. Unfortunately, I didn't.
I knew we were climbing and needed to turn around. I had controls in hand and pedals at my feet. I grabbed the controls and turned the plane to the left while pressing the left pedal, hoping that one of them would make the plane turn around. It did. Just not that nice smooth turn that is seen in normal flight. No, this was a nice sharp bank and suddenly the back of the plane was a chorus of screaming girls. Crap.
"Katrina!" Kay's voice cut through the shrieks of the other girls and I glanced back to see Jhondie hanging half out of the open door, Kayla and another girl holding her legs.
"FOR THE LOVE OF GOD STRAIGHTEN THE PLANE!" Jhondie shouted at me. My foot came off of the pedal and the bank ended, going back into the soft curve I wanted. Jhondie jerked back, hauling Katrina back into the plane from where she had slid out of the open door. Diving after her must have been more instinct than thought, but still, I had a little problem. We needed to go back down.
The pilot had turned on the light in the front of the plane and the landing gear was still down. Those were the two things that saved us that night because I had no clue what I was doing. The only thing I knew for sure was the button that the pilot had pushed to make the stairs go up and down. Now that Jhondie was in the plane, I pressed it and felt a small amount of relief when the stairs started to move. Now all that was needed was a nice landing and we would be fine. Sure. No problem. I pushed the controls forward and the plane started angling down. I had seen enough movies to know that I needed to aim for the yellow line down the center of the runway. They just never said what a pain it was to get into that position. We were swinging to the left and the right until I thought I was going to get airsick. Jhondie stumbled up to me, but one glance at her face said that she had no idea how to get this thing down any better than I did. Guess piloting was advanced Manticore training. One more time, crap.
I remembered something from that game I used to lose all of the time that one of the knob things had to be pulled out to slow down enough to land. Silver or orange? The silver one was closer so I pulled back on it tentatively, almost cheering when the RPM's fell and the speed began to decrease. The ground was rushing up in front of us and it was do or die time. Bad phrasing, I know, but that's very accurate to what was going to happen.
"Hold on to something back there!" I shouted. Jhondie grabbed onto the pilot's chair and the wheels touched, jarring us violently and bouncing back into the air as I fought with the controls. Planes inherently want to get in the air and stay there. That's the way they are built and at the time I didn't know what the phrase "trimmed for takeoff meant". This plane was ready to stay up and I had to shove the controls down, forcing us to stay down as we bounced down the runway to a symphony of screaming young girls.
"Fence!" Jhondie almost squeaked out. "Fence ahead! Justin, stop this thing!"
Easy for her to say. Nothing on this thing said, "push to stop". I yanked out the silver knob all the way, but that wasn't going to slow us down in time. On my flight simulator game I had held down the control key while pressing 'B'. I didn't see a 'B' anywhere on this thing and God forbid a simple control key be present. Maybe on the ground pedals were different. I pushed the right one and was rewarded by a veer to the right and a fresh chorus of screams from the back. I let up on it quickly, trying to push the left one to compensate and it felt like the plane dipped roughly onto its right side. In absolute desperation I hit both pedals at the same time and an odd thing occurred. The top of the pedals dipped forward and I heard one of the most beautiful sounds on Earth: tires screeching as breaks were applied to them.
The plane came to a halt. For a long minute there was just the sound of some light sobbing from the girls. I looked back into Jhondie's white face. "Any plans for the summer?" I asked lightly. She looked at me like I was nuts. "Want to learn how to fly a plane?"
"I don't think I'm ever going to get on another one as long as I live," she practically whispered.
I smiled weakly and then continued as if I hadn't heard her comment at all. "Good. But why don't we start next week?"
Perfect. One day I was going to learn. Whoever had written the dictionary had gotten a few definitions so far wrong it just wasn't funny.
Did I say I wasn't going to kill Kayla? I lied. When I noticed the time and realized that at that moment I should be proposing to Jhondie instead of peering through a chain link fence at an abandoned airport, I knew then I was going to choke Kayla to death. With a smile on my lips. I should have been watching starlight making a center diamond glitter with a thousand prisms of light. Instead we had slipped past a burnt hulk of a car, some embers still glowing inside of the remains. The license plate was still partially readable. GR8 L was uncharred. It didn't take a genius to figure out that Katrina was really going to be pissed she had ever got caught on that tape with Kayla.
Later, I thought it was kind of funny how adept we had gotten at changing clothes in a moving vehicle. Jhondie changed first and then held the wheel so that I could take care of matters. Changing your shirt is easy. Managing to change from slacks into jeans without taking a foot off the accelerator takes some serious practice. I normally made some flirtatious comment towards Jhondie when she was half-naked in my car, but this time, I couldn't think of anything but how much I wanted to beat the holy hell out of that little brat we were off to save.
"Some people in the building," Jhondie whispered. The airport was small, just one runway and an admin building next to a hanger that could probably hold maybe two of the size planes like the one on the runway. We had parked about half a mile away and jogged up. Too bad Kayla hadn't thought of doing that. Or maybe she should have just driven up and honked the horn a few times. Then she wouldn't have had time to call and interrupt us before she got caught.
"Can you see Kayla?" I asked. Since we were here, I guessed that we might as well get the kids back.
"No, three men though. They look like they're arguing about something."
Probably debating on if they should kill Kay and Kat. I totally understood how they felt, I really did. I looked up at the eight-foot fence. "Shouldn't be a problem to get in. Can you see in the plane?"
She shook her head. "Not enough. There's a guy in the cockpit, probably a couple more in the plane guarding the shipment."
"Then let's see if we can get the three in the building down before they can call for help." She nodded, gathering herself in a crouch and then launching up in a smooth coil of muscle. It really sucked to have to slowly climb a fence so that you don't make noise, and your girlfriend is over it in literally a single bound without so much as making a pebble scrape on the other side. I slipped over the top of the fence and dropped to the ground below. And I would like to point out that the few times I had seen Jhondie actually climb a fence, I was much quieter than she was.
We stayed low, moving around the perimeter to keep in the shadows. Jhondie suddenly stopped, both of us dropping to the ground. The front door opened and two of the men exited. We were closer now and the wind was blowing right so that we could hear their words. One of the guys said he still wanted the usual rates for those two. The other one protested that they weren't shipped like the others. The first one shrugged and then said pointedly that with more weight, calculations should be redone. Could take some time. Might not make the connector. The other man glared at him and then offered seventy-five percent. The first guy smiled and said that would work.
Blood. They were shipping blood, right? That's what the boss had said. That's what we were expecting. That's when I had a sudden epiphany. What was broadcasted was always right, but sometimes even Eyes Only got bad information and spread it to his operatives. They had two. Two young girls, that is. Others. As in other young girls. Yeah, they were shipping blood all right. It was just still in the packaging.
"It's a white slavery ring," I muttered. "We got to stop that plane."
The third man exited the building and the first one made a gesture. The planes engines cranked into life. And that was when we saw Kayla and Katrina coming out, their wrists bound in front of their bodies. A door on the side of the plane opened and a man looked out.
"Hurry it up!" he shouted over the rising whine of the engines. "Mr. Bronck said these bitches better be out of the country tonight!"
Jhondie jerked and I had to grab her fast before she bolted into the middle of that mess. "No," I hissed. "Go around the building. I'll go around the plane. We'll take them from the middle."
"My sister..." she started to say, desperation in her voice.
"Is going to get taken anyways if you get killed trying to save her," I broke in. "What would you do if you didn't know them?"
Jhondie hesitated for a second. "See you in the middle." That's my girl.
Both of us went into motion. There was a small hedging on the far side that I went behind and moved to the other side of the plane, keeping low while Jhondie used her incredible speed to get around the building so fast they didn't even notice she was there. The noise from the engines was blocking any little sounds we were making and I guessed the pilots weren't going to turn on any lights until they were ready to take off. Worked for me.
Jhondie and I had done this move plenty of times before to the point that there was no need to discuss what we were going to do. We would circle and then I would come out first. They would focus on me and then Jhondie would nail them from the rear. With her speed and strength they wouldn't be able to get a shot off before she was done with them. That's the way it always worked. It was a good solid plan. It worked great. That night I learned it only worked when dealing with human beings. When you add teenagers to the mix, it all goes to hell in an instant.
The girls were mostly to the plane by the time Jhondie and I could get into position. I had swept out past the plane and was on the tarmac. I didn't like being so exposed, but I was dressed in dark clothes and all of the focus was on what was happening between the building and the plane. It was safe enough for me I supposed, but then even over the engines I heard Katrina suddenly scream out that they could go to hell, they blew up her car and she wasn't going anywhere with them. I could see the scene pretty well from underneath the plane and all I could think was the kid was one hell of a scrapper. Not very bright, but a scrapper.
She kicked the guy that was closest to her square between the legs. The air whooshed out of him and he doubled over. That brought Kay to life and she kicked the guy holding her in the knee. She was a little thing, but I guess dance had been really giving her some strength because the guy collapsed instantly, screaming and grabbing his leg. Katrina jumped on her guy's back, her bound hands making a nice noose as she tried to strangle the life out of him. He fell back, landing on top of her and she went limp as her head hit the pavement. I could hear screaming from inside the plane and knew that an insurrection might be mounting.
The guy that was in the plane suddenly fired several shots in the air. Kayla went still and the girls in the plane went quiet. Katrina's victim got up and dragged the dazed girl to her feet. Jhondie and I were both frozen. Anything happen now and they were poised to shoot everything and get a fresh load that wasn't a bunch of trouble.
"My knee!" the guy on the ground screamed. "Bitch broke my knee!"
The guy in the plane sneered at him and then fired three more shots at his now ex-partner. The screaming stopped and that took the remaining fight out of both Kayla and Katrina. "Get them in!" he shouted from the top of the stairs. "These two need a lesson. I think they're just right for the Malaysian patron." Whatever that meant, the other two guys thought it was amusing.
I moved in closer. The girls were at the stairs. That plane was not going to take off. Period. It would be easy enough for Jhondie to save Kayla at this point and the plane would be ordered to take off rather than waste anymore time trying to get these two little bits of trouble. But there was a load of other girls on board and they were not going to be sacrificed. I moved in fast, coming around the underside of the plane and Jhondie had kept to procedure and watched for my move rather than focusing on her sister.
As soon as I went under the plane to come out on the side facing the building, Jhondie went into motion. She came out; grabbing the guy that was closest to her and in general making him wish he had never gotten out of bed that morning. The guy at the top of the stairs grabbed the two girls and yanked them in, shouting to the pilot to take off now. I raced up the stairs, hearing several gunshots from outside, but I had to trust that Jhondie was still Jhondie. She could dance around flying bullets and them make the shooter regret every single one of them.
The guy in the plane was shouting orders, his back to me when I grabbed him. The look on his face would have been comical had the situation not been so dire. He didn't have a moment to react as my fist made contact with his face. I realized the pilot wasn't looking back and just following orders as I shouted to lower the stairs that had started to rise when the pilot began to taxi out. He hit the descend button or whatever it was and then turned to question.
I wasn't sure how I might have been able to handle both of them, especially when the pilot pulled out a gun. I had the other guy's gun. We both pointed in a Mexican standoff. Crap. The other guy was starting to come to a little. Kat was near him and snarled something incomprehensible at him. She shoved him as hard as she could and he suddenly rolled out of the open door and down the steps.
"Stop the plane!" I shouted.
"I'll shoot them!" he threatened. "You just out or they all die!" We were still moving forward, gaining speed.
"You'll only get one or two before I take you out," I snapped back.
He smirked. "That's more than your boss will allow," he sneered. Oh, that was not a good thing to hear. I don't know how things would have ended if I had been by myself. Probably with a couple of injured or dead girls. But the pilot had no idea that my backup put to shame anything that he might have had to deal with in Seattle.
There was a thump on the nose of the plane, making it dip down, startling everyone, including the pilot. He looked forward to see what happened and was not prepared for a fist to come flying through the windshield, slamming into his stunned face. He still had one hand on the controls and when he was thrown backwards, the controls pulled back and lifted us into the air. The plane immediately started angling towards the left, knocking Jhondie off balance and she slid off of the side. I didn't think we could be that far up to hurt her in a fall, but when Kay screamed out that Jhondie was on the stairs, I still felt better. I wasn't sure how she pulled off that move, but there was the little problem with the whole, we're still going up thing to deal with.
I jumped into the co-pilot's seat next to the unconscious pilot. Okay, time to remember that game I used to play, Flight Simulator. Except now there were lots of buttons and knobs and none of them were conveniently labeled "land" for me. There wasn't a retry button either. Crap. I didn't know it then, but all planes are engineered around a guiding principle of inherent stability. They want to fly straight and level. All I needed to do was put the controls horizontal and the plane would level itself out. Good thing to have known then. Unfortunately, I didn't.
I knew we were climbing and needed to turn around. I had controls in hand and pedals at my feet. I grabbed the controls and turned the plane to the left while pressing the left pedal, hoping that one of them would make the plane turn around. It did. Just not that nice smooth turn that is seen in normal flight. No, this was a nice sharp bank and suddenly the back of the plane was a chorus of screaming girls. Crap.
"Katrina!" Kay's voice cut through the shrieks of the other girls and I glanced back to see Jhondie hanging half out of the open door, Kayla and another girl holding her legs.
"FOR THE LOVE OF GOD STRAIGHTEN THE PLANE!" Jhondie shouted at me. My foot came off of the pedal and the bank ended, going back into the soft curve I wanted. Jhondie jerked back, hauling Katrina back into the plane from where she had slid out of the open door. Diving after her must have been more instinct than thought, but still, I had a little problem. We needed to go back down.
The pilot had turned on the light in the front of the plane and the landing gear was still down. Those were the two things that saved us that night because I had no clue what I was doing. The only thing I knew for sure was the button that the pilot had pushed to make the stairs go up and down. Now that Jhondie was in the plane, I pressed it and felt a small amount of relief when the stairs started to move. Now all that was needed was a nice landing and we would be fine. Sure. No problem. I pushed the controls forward and the plane started angling down. I had seen enough movies to know that I needed to aim for the yellow line down the center of the runway. They just never said what a pain it was to get into that position. We were swinging to the left and the right until I thought I was going to get airsick. Jhondie stumbled up to me, but one glance at her face said that she had no idea how to get this thing down any better than I did. Guess piloting was advanced Manticore training. One more time, crap.
I remembered something from that game I used to lose all of the time that one of the knob things had to be pulled out to slow down enough to land. Silver or orange? The silver one was closer so I pulled back on it tentatively, almost cheering when the RPM's fell and the speed began to decrease. The ground was rushing up in front of us and it was do or die time. Bad phrasing, I know, but that's very accurate to what was going to happen.
"Hold on to something back there!" I shouted. Jhondie grabbed onto the pilot's chair and the wheels touched, jarring us violently and bouncing back into the air as I fought with the controls. Planes inherently want to get in the air and stay there. That's the way they are built and at the time I didn't know what the phrase "trimmed for takeoff meant". This plane was ready to stay up and I had to shove the controls down, forcing us to stay down as we bounced down the runway to a symphony of screaming young girls.
"Fence!" Jhondie almost squeaked out. "Fence ahead! Justin, stop this thing!"
Easy for her to say. Nothing on this thing said, "push to stop". I yanked out the silver knob all the way, but that wasn't going to slow us down in time. On my flight simulator game I had held down the control key while pressing 'B'. I didn't see a 'B' anywhere on this thing and God forbid a simple control key be present. Maybe on the ground pedals were different. I pushed the right one and was rewarded by a veer to the right and a fresh chorus of screams from the back. I let up on it quickly, trying to push the left one to compensate and it felt like the plane dipped roughly onto its right side. In absolute desperation I hit both pedals at the same time and an odd thing occurred. The top of the pedals dipped forward and I heard one of the most beautiful sounds on Earth: tires screeching as breaks were applied to them.
The plane came to a halt. For a long minute there was just the sound of some light sobbing from the girls. I looked back into Jhondie's white face. "Any plans for the summer?" I asked lightly. She looked at me like I was nuts. "Want to learn how to fly a plane?"
"I don't think I'm ever going to get on another one as long as I live," she practically whispered.
I smiled weakly and then continued as if I hadn't heard her comment at all. "Good. But why don't we start next week?"
Perfect. One day I was going to learn. Whoever had written the dictionary had gotten a few definitions so far wrong it just wasn't funny.
