"It was a woman and a man, both tall and dark-haired. And here's my favourite part: they brought in a police sketch artist, and sent the pictures out to every airport in the country. And the woman… looked remarkably like you."

And he looked up at Miss Parker.

Miss Parker re-arranged her face into an expression of bewilderment and unconsciously shifted her weight onto her back leg, in case she needed to run. But there lay the central problem: there was nowhere to run. As she moved, she felt the solid weight in her concealed holster dig into the small of her back.

"That's the most interesting part?" she said, a little of her usual sardonic tone seeping through. "Many people look alike. A rooftop helicopter escape is a little more interesting than my having a doppelganger in Philadelphia, don't you think?"

Marc smirked. "Did I say they escaped from a rooftop, Marie?"

Miss Parker scowled.

"Where else would someone steal a helicopter from in the middle of a big city? What are you suggesting, I'm this woman on the news? Do you know how ridiculous that sounds?"

Marc settled back into his chair, lounging in his certainty that he had the upper hand.

"I'm not suggesting, I don't need to beat around the bush. You're the woman who escaped the police in Philadelphia. I have eyes, I can tell. Isn't that exciting, Sylvie? And what's more…" Here, he slid a gun out from a hip holster and pointed it at Jarod. Jarod glanced at the gun, but otherwise did not react. "You look enough like the male accomplice that I'm willing to bet you're him. Slap a beard on you, you're the spitting image."

Jarod leaned forward.

"Ah-ah," said Marc, twitching the gun in his grip. "No moving."

He might as well have threatened Jarod with a Nerf gun. Jarod gave him a quick glance and just as quickly dismissed him.

"I'm sorry you've stumbled into this," said Jarod. "It was not my intention to involve you in an on-going investigation. I would like to clarify with you what's going on, but it's classified."

A stunned silence followed this announcement. If you can't do anything else useful in your miserable lives, thought Miss Parker. Take his word for it and drop it.

They did not drop it. Christiane, of all people, was the one to turn the tide.

"So you're, what, you're conducting an investigation on Sylvie's plane? Without her permission?" she said, with the barest wobble of timidity in her voice. "Isn't that a violation of her third amendment rights?"

What the hell kind of French Canadian knows about the third amendment? Miss Parker fought the impulse to make the obvious snappish comment. This was the hardest part of a Pretend, she decided: when The Role required her to censor herself.

"I'm not a soldier, and this isn't a personal residence. Also, you're Canadian." Jarod's calm remained unruffled, but he'd made a crucial mistake. He'd allowed himself to be drawn into a debate. Shut up, shut up, Jarod, thought Miss Parker. Was there a subtle way she could kick him?

"Nonsense," said Marc. "You expect us to believe that with no further word on the subject?"

Christiane chimed in.

"You owe us some explanation. She —" Here Christiane nodded up at Miss Parker, not quite daring to meet her eye. "She killed someone. That's what the cops are saying. I say we contact the authorities in Oregon."

No. A call to the authorities would be disastrous. Authorities meant raising a stink, a stink the Centre could catch on the wind. Do something, Jarod, Miss Parker thought, willing Jarod to spontaneously develop a talent for mind-reading. Shut this down before I'm forced to break character and save both our asses. Jarod sighed.

"You're correct that Marie is a fugitive," he said. "She's in my custody."

Miss Parker searched his expression for any minute sign of how he intended to play the lie. She found she couldn't quite believe he would throw her under the bus, so she stayed mute and tried to look sullen. It wasn't hard.

Marc snorted.

"Do you usually let prisoners in your custody wander around without you? She boarded first, it was just me and her for a while."

"And why would you be going to Oregon?" asked Christiane. "Why not back to Philadelphia, where the crime took place?"

In retrospect, it had been a pretty half-assed lie. Even given that fact, it had fallen apart in an embarrassingly short span of time.

"Also, there's this," said Marc. His hand darted out and pressed a thumb into Jarod's thigh. He didn't quite hit the gun shot wound dead-on, but it was close enough.

"Uh!" Jarod groaned, and curled away from Marc's hand. Miss Parker hit her limit. She stepped towards Jarod involuntarily, feeling a bizarre urge to shoot Marc in the thigh and see how he liked it when someone stuck a thumb into the wound.

"Get away from him!" she bellowed, but Marc was too focused on Jarod to pay her any mind.

"That 'old wound' seems a little fresh, pal," he said nastily.

"Is that a clue?" said Yves, utterly enraptured, as if he were watching a live murder mystery being acted out for his entertainment.

"The escapees were at the hospital for surgery on two gun shot wounds," said Marc.

"Marc," said Chabot sharply. "Did you tell Portland International they were on board?"

Unlike the others, she looked more irritated than interested. Marc gaped and stammered.

"Well, I — I thought it would be best if the authorities knew —"

"Idiot," said Chabot. She sighed. "Well, I suppose it doesn't matter who's on the plane, does it?"

Miss Parker narrowed her eyes. With the con exposed, she threw all deferent hospitality out the window.

"What does that mean?" she demanded.

Marc caught Chabot's eye and they exchange a Significant Look, lending new weight to her comment — it doesn't matter who's on the plane.

"It doesn't matter?" echoed Christiane. She looked back and forth between Marc and Sylvie, mouth agape. "They killed someone! How does that not matter?"

"And he's armed," Yves pointed out, nodding jerkily at Jarod. His voice shook. "They could kill us and take over the plane."

The suggestion triggered a classic old western stand-off, where all parties froze and gazes darted from one face to the next. Marc was the one to act first: he aimed a second jab at Jarod's thigh and, simultaneously, reached for Jarod's shoulder holster. Small mercies, he reached for the holster which until recently held Miss Parker's gun, and his fingers groped for empty air.

Miss Parker closed in fast behind him and crammed the muzzle of her pistol into Marc's neck. He croaked in surprise.

She leaned close to his ear. "Give me your gun."

For a tense moment it looked as though he would refuse. Then, the gun swung in his grip and he tossed it over his shoulder. He jerked slightly, trying to throw her off balance as he ostensibly sent her reaching for the wild throw. Instead, he felt a second gun jabbed into the small of his back.

"OK, OK," he muttered.

"Step away from Jarod and come to the back of the plane," Miss Parker ordered. She held a gun in each fist. It wasn't as exciting as she might have expected it to be from the classic image in every 80s action movie. The stability of her aim felt wobbly twice over.

Christiane swore.

"She's going to kill him, oh God."

"I'm not going to kill him," said Miss Parker scathingly. She pushed Marc's chin higher with the gun muzzle. "Not unless he doesn't give me a choice."

Jarod got to his feet, putting all his weight on his good leg. He eyed Miss Parker warily.

"She won't kill anyone," he promised, and Miss Parker noted with no small amount of incredulity his slight stress on the word 'she'. She won't kill anyone, but…. All eyes in the cabin zeroed in on Jarod's gun, still holstered on his shoulder. The thought of Jarod killing someone, actually killing someone, was ridiculous, but if Jarod wanted to play good hijacker/bad hijacker Miss Parker wasn't going to stop him. She couldn't help thinking, however, that she'd been miscast.

"Do you have any cuffs in your kit?" she called to Jarod, keeping one eye on Marc all the while. He nodded and backed up to the carry-on storage rack. After some distracted rummaging, he emerged with two pairs of handcuffs and a bundle of zip ties, which he tossed Miss Parker's way. She made a face as she caught them.

"Only two pairs of cuffs?"

Jarod grinned manically. "Give me a break, Miss — ah, Marie. I wasn't planning on handcuffing an airplane full of people when I put that bag together."

Miss Parker busied herself cuffing Marc and zip-tying his cuffs to a chair in the back corner. He aimed an impotent kick her way. Miss Parker snickered.

There was a soft click. Jarod unholstered his gun and pointed it at Yves.

"Don't," he warned. Yves set the built-in phone back on its cradle, curbed in his attempt to call for help.

"You'll still be arrested when we land," said Christiane, buoyed by the strength of her self-righteousness.

Jarod didn't reply, didn't look at her. He seemed to be staring at Chabot, who hadn't spoken since… since "it doesn't matter who's on the plane". Miss Parker's stomach clenched. What could that mean?

"Two undamaged?" Jarod signed her way. Apparently they were thinking along similar lines. Miss Parker nodded. Two undamaged parachutes. The rest with sabotaged deployment mechanisms. One domino hit another, setting off a series of realizations in Miss Parker's head, each as worrying as the last: that must mean only two people were meant to get off this plane alive. Whoever had sabotaged the chutes must have known they'd be necessary.

"Who gets the two good chutes?" she continued. That was the easy part. After a pause, she finger-spelled: C-H-A-B-O-T and M-A-R-C.

"You know," said Chabot casually, breaking her silence. A hint of cold amusement coloured her voice. "You two are not the only ones here who understand American Sign Language."

Miss Parker's hands dropped. Down the aisle, Jarod watched Chabot like lynx watches a coiled snake.

"What?" said Marc, craning his head to look. "Sign language?"

"In Québec we have our own sign language of course, but it is much more similar to ASL than French is to English," Chabot continued. "You two picked the wrong getaway plane. You've stumbled into a lot more than you know how to deal with. If you've figure out as much as I think you have, you know you can't take out both of us. Not unless —"

"Not unless what?" said Yves shrilly. "What are you talking about, Sylvie?"

The phone at his elbow rang. After looking at it blankly for a moment, he picked it up.

"It's the pilot," he announced to their captive audience. "I'll put it on speaker."

"— ols are unresponsive. I will attempt to regain control, but in anticipation that it does not end up being possible, please ready yourself to brace for impact."

And he gave instructions for bracing for a crash. It should have been a stale repeat from every commercial flight Miss Parker had ever endured, the exhausted flight attendants brandishing laminated cards and silently demonstrating how to secure your own oxygen mask before helping those around you. The instructions had never seemed quite so tangible prior to this moment, however; at the same time, it felt like an anti-climax. Envisioning an impending crash, one might picture bodies being thrown against the walls, turbulence shaking the passengers' bones to the point of liquefaction, and most importantly, a steep, screaming descent. In actual fact, nothing in the cabin had changed too much except for the sudden stink of urine.

Chabot reached over and depressed the speaker-phone button. The pilot's voice cut off. In the silence that followed, Miss Parker heard a scraping sound and a muffled thunk from the back of the plane.

"Not unless —". Not unless you don't care whether this airplane lands safely. Not unless you want to be murderers four times over. Six times, counting the pilot and co-pilot, still doing their jobs in perfect ignorance behind the door to the cockpit.

The implication was clear. Either Chabot or Marc had wrested control of the plane from the pilot. Only they knew how to restore control. The plan had been to murder the passengers, but it worked just as well as a form of blackmail.

Miss Parker could see the plan clearly, insane though it was. Chabot and her head of security had planned to crash the plane, and parachute to safety themselves. Either Christiane and Yves would stay in the plane and crash, or they'd attempt to follow and find part-way down that their chutes were non-operational. It was an incredibly reckless plan, but then, Chabot had a life wish. Miss Parker chanced a brief glance through the window. They were below the clouds, which suggested they were on the descent to their destination. Miss Parker couldn't see where that might be — as far as she could tell, it was trees and mountains in all directions. How could Chabot know she would land somewhere survivable?

Jarod seemed to come to a decision, and walked over to carry-on storage. He rummaged around in his bag of tricks and emerged with a bulky hand instrument. Miss Parker parsed its unexpected shape: a nail gun. An alien thrill of alarm darted through Miss Parker's chest at the realization that, though as far as she knew Jarod had never killed someone in the course of a Pretend, he wasn't above pushing a mark to the edge. She'd spoken to enough marks after-the-fact to wonder how much of it was furious indignation pushed to exaggeration, and how much of it was Jarod.

"Sylvie," he said. His voice had changed, shifted from Federal Air Marshal Jarod Spencer to Jarod. "Get up."

Sylvie Chabot didn't move. Miss Parker poked her in the back of the neck with her spare gun.

"Move," she said.

Chabot rose from her seat with spindly, acerbic dignity and tottered up the aisle.

"Would you mind terribly tossing me a parachute, Marie?" said Jarod. He welcomed Chabot with a mocking smile.

Miss Parker sought to lock eyes with Jarod, to search his expression for whatever he might be planning, but his face gave nothing away. She grabbed a parachute and threw it towards him overhanded. Jarod caught it neatly and not-so-subtly examined the deployment mechanism.

"Not quite what I was looking for, but thank you. Could you toss me another parachute?"

Ah. Jarod had found that kernel of all effective Jarod Pretends, the ironic fate. Miss Parker held his gaze for a long moment, and some wordless communication passed between them. It was a bluff, it had to be. It was a threat, to startle the truth out of the woman. Right? As far as she was aware, Jarod had never killed a mark. On a roll of the dice, she turned aside and sifted through the parachutes, checking each until she found what she was looking for.

"You know what you're doing," she called as she tossed the second parachute Jarod's way. She hadn't phrased it as a question, but it was one. Give me a sign you're not just making up the rules on the spot. Jarod checked the second parachute and smiled. A shiver rattled its way up Miss Parker's spine. Jarod had been many things in the past: annoying, maddening, tempting, confusing. Never intimidating.

"Brace —" The pilot's voice crackled through the intercom speakers and was cut off as, just then, the plane dropped straight down like a dropped anchor. An unpleasant swoop in Miss Parker's stomach was the only warning she got before she was thrown over the back of an aisle seat. Her mind churned through a dozen prayers, curses and regrets before, just as abruptly, the plane leveled off again. She twisted like an upturned cat and landed in a sprawl in the aisle. The intercom sparked to life again.

"Apologies, Mme Chabot and guests. The sudden loss of altitude you have just experienced was the result of variations in air temperature, highly expected in this region of the state. We wouldn't normally be flying over this air space, but as mentioned, controls are unresponsive. I will continue to update you on the situation as it develops. Continue to be ready for an emergency landing if it becomes necessary."

Lying in the aisle with a chair leg digging into her hip, Miss Parker felt something in her head snap. She peeled herself off the floor.

"You morons, you're going to get us all killed!" she roared. Chabot flinched. Through the window, the rock-studded terrain below loomed larger and more distinct. How had Chabot removed control of the plane from the pilot? Miss Parker's mind reached back to earlier in the flight, and summoned an image of Marc bent over his lap, a laptop with the heft of a reference encyclopedia illuminating his snub nose from below. He must have done something, got his grubby fingers in some behind-the-scenes control system beyond her own understanding. She wheeled on Marc, who was wriggling in his chair. His face shone with sweat, his earlier bravado entirely dissipated. "What did you do, huh? Did your guests know what they were in for when they boarded this plane?"

"What is she talking about, Marc? Sylvie?" said Yves, his voice shaking.

"Tell them!"

Marc jumped at Miss Parker's strangled shout.

"I won't be scolded by hostage-takers," he said, in a mumble barely audible over the rattle of turbulence.

"Hostage-takers!" Jarod boomed. "I suppose we are. Hostage-takers have demands, and I have a couple. First, though —"

Chabot squirmed as Jarod bent to one knee at her feet. He seized one black, lace-strangled boot, moved it a foot to the right, and without ceremony shot a nail gun into the toe. Chabot screamed, wobbled in place and fell ass-first to the floor.

"Oh, don't be a baby," Jarod scolded. "I missed your toes completely. That's so you can't go anywhere for the moment, but please note, we can always untie your laces."

As he spoke, he busied himself with one of the parachutes, ultimately scavenging a long tether from its inner workings, which he attached to an unused anchor point embedded into the wall. The other end of the tether he looped around himself. He gave the side of Chabot's shoe a couple firm kicks to make doubly sure she was stuck to the floor. Once it was clear Chabot wasn't going anywhere, he seized the floor-level handle to the starboard-side external hatch and yanked upwards. Miss Parker realized what he was doing a fraction of a second too late.

"Wait, Jarod, no —!"

The sky rushed in.

They'd been on their descent to Portland International Airport when the pilot had lost control. Couple this with their several-hundred-yard unplanned drop, and the plane was now low enough that, if Miss Parker had bothered to record some pressure readings, they would tell her the pressure in the de-pressurized cabin was actually less than it was outside, prompting a sudden in-rushing of air instead of sucking air out when Jarod opened the hatch. She was a little distracted at the moment, however, so she did not note any pressure readings. Instead, she noted the lip-numbing rush of cold air filling the cabin faster than she could gasp. She noted the deafening roar of the wind, loud enough to drown out thought. And she noted Jarod and Chabot being thrown about like Raggedy-Ann dolls, the nail and the tether holding firm.

"What are you doing?" Miss Parker shouted. Her voice sounded oddly chorale, but no — Chabot had only hollered the same question at the same moment.

Jarod ignored the question. He seized the front of Chabot's vest, swung her around and dangled her out the window. Chabot screamed wordlessly, a blend of terror and rage. Her bugged-out glare could have ripped Jarod in two, bow to stern.

"Tell them!" roared Jarod.

"Tell who what, you maniac?!" Chabot stretched her fingers to their limits to grab at the edges of the hatch, but in vain.

"Tell Yves and Christiane what you were going to do to them."

Chabot gaped at him.

"Go to hell," she snarled.

"I'll meet you there for coffee," said Jarod. "Tell them or I start unlacing your boots."

"No!" Chabot stopped struggling and closed her eyes against the wind. "Don't. We — agh, tabarnak de câlisse. We were going to crash the plane, parachute out without them. They knew what… what Annick knew. There was a data breach. I couldn't take the chance that they'd tell the wrong person."

"You bitch!" shrieked Christiane. She wrestled with her seat belt, apparently in the throes of a half-formed idea to jump out of her seat. She abandoned the effort just as quickly. "You were going to kill me, after what I did for you? Why the hell would I tell —"

"You already told Yves," Chabot pointed out. Yves stayed silent, glowering mutinously at Christiane, presumably for involving him in the first place with her loose lips.

"Thanks very much," interrupted Jarod. "That's the first demand taken care of. Now, about that data breach. I'm going to need a log-in to your server with administrative permissions and a road map to the info Annick found."

"Now? The plane is crashing!" Marc shouted from the back of the cabin.

"And whose fault is that?" Miss Parker shot back at him. "Fix it, if you're so worried about it."

She pulled the security manager's bag towards her, unearthed his laptop, and opened it in front of him. He looked from his cuffs to Miss Parker, expectantly.

"You can do it one-handed," she said, oozing condescension. "I believe in you."

"Talk fast, Chabot," said Jarod, refocusing the lens back on his captive. The wind tore Chabot's glasses off, flinging them into the ether. "My fingers are getting tired." Jarod flexed his fingers and bounced Chabot from the grip of one hand to the other. She yelped.

"Why the hell would you care about Yalient data?" she yelled. "When I saw you two on the news, I never figured you for thieves. I'm not saying anything, this is nothing but a bluff. You're not going to drop me."

Watching the half-mad glint in Jarod's eyes, Miss Parker couldn't entirely convince herself it was a bluff. Considering she was in an out-of-control airplane, she was less frightened than perhaps she should have been. Maybe this wasn't so surprising, as she'd been in a crashing aircraft with Jarod on two previous occasions — one in the last twelve hours, even — and she'd walked away from both with only a scratch. If anything, she was more wary of this vengeful version of Jarod than of the fast-approaching ground below.

It hadn't even been his choice of mark, that was the funny bit. She'd had to ask him to play along.

"Um. I have administrative log-in credentials." It was Yves. His face had taken on a greenish hue.

"Yves, you shut your fucking mouth if you want to have a job when we land," Chabot snapped. The absurdity of the mundane threat coming from someone dangling over miles of empty air was evidently not lost on Yves.

"You think I want a job from you?" He giggled nervously. "You were going to murder me."

The built-in phone let out a shrill scream. Yves reached for the receiver, but Miss Parker beat him to it. She put one hand over the mouthpiece.

"You get to work on writing down that log-in information," she ordered.

As Yves scribbled on the back of a napkin, Miss Parker held the phone to her ear.

"Mme Chabot? This is Captain Hardy."

"She's busy right now," said Miss Parker. "This is the flight attendant. What is the situation in the cockpit?"

"The flight att— fine, OK. I have good news for you and the passengers, miss. I am back in control of the aircraft and we are rejoining our expected flight path. You can anticipate a safe landing in about thirty-five minutes. Please stay seated with your belts fastened from now until the plane comes to a stop on the runway."

Miss Parker looked over at Chabot's head of security in surprise. He gave her a weak wave. Miss Parker shot back a glare.

"Is everything OK in the cabin? I received a notification of an open hatch, I don't recommend sky-diving at this time. We haven't arranged a landing point."

"We're fine, thanks." Miss Parker hung up. She raised her voice over the wind. "Plane's fixed."

"We're not crashing?" said Yves.

"We're not crashing," confirmed Miss Parker.

"Lucky for you, Chabot," said Jarod. "All your messes cleaned up for you. Marc's given control of the plane back over to the pilot. Yves has given up the keys to the server. But what about Annick?"

"Drop her, Jarod."

The voice came from behind Miss Parker. She wheeled around and was met by the sight of Alex, red of face and soggy of foot but otherwise unharmed.

"Alex?" said Christiane, dumb-founded.

"Alex, where — where have you been, how did you get in?" asked Miss Parker. Alex jerked a thumb over his shoulder.

"Cargo hold," he said. He smiled. "Thank you. You said you would help, but when you said you knew a better revenge than a death by gun, I didn't believe you. This is better. Do it. Do it, Jarod. She should fall, for having my mother killed."

"It wasn't my —" Chabot protested. She held fast with both hands to Jarod's wrist. If he did let go — which was a big 'if' — he might be pulled along with her.

"Shut up," Jarod snapped, but he looked less than resolute. He couldn't quite hide the look of dismay that darted across his features on seeing Alex. Miss Parker's heart plummeted into her intestines.

He didn't know what he was doing.

She had assumed from the moment he'd stepped onto the plane that he was holding all the cards. Maybe it was too much to expect from the average person, but this was Jarod. His whole shtick was the capacity to acquire competence. She'd watched from her office at the Centre, from every post-Pretend lair, as con after con went off without a hitch. Things always worked out in his favour, he always had an extra card up his sleeve. She'd soldiered on when Marc had recognized them as fugitives, when Jarod had nailed Chabot's shoe to the floor, when he'd opened the sky-diving hatch and dangled the woman out of it… because she'd assumed he had a plan.

But what if he didn't? What if, after all this, he was just spit-balling?

From the corner of her eye, Miss Parker spotted someone else looking distinctly discomfited by Alex's arrival. Christiane was hugging her elbows, unprepared for the biting cold in nothing but a thin, floral blouse. She stared at Alex like he was the only cavity in an otherwise unblemished record of dental hygiene, the only C on a report card full of A+ grades.

"This is a threat, Alex," said Jarod, his voice hoarse with pain. "Do you know what blackmail is? I won't drop her. Not if she tells me the information we need to get your mother justice."

Chabot's eyes bugged out.

"What the hell is this?" she hollered. Half her syllables were snatched away by the wind. "Do racketeer murderers take grudge contracts from ten-year-olds now? What the hell is happening?"

Alex ignored her.

"What do you mean, 'justice'? What does that mean? She gets what she should get! Do you mean the police? I don't care about the police, that is nothing at all to me."

"I won't — I'm sorry," said Jarod, barely loud enough to hear. "You shouldn't have come, Alex."

Chabot managed to look slightly less terrified, if only briefly. Miss Parker saw Alex's gaze latch on Chabot's foot, but only put two and two together when he lunged past her.

"No!" she shouted. Her fingers scraped along Alex's retreating back as he tried his damnedest to reach Chabot. He skidded along the rug and had just closed his grip over her bootlaces when Miss Parker tackled him from behind.

Fighting a child was awkward and terrifying in equal parts. Miss Parker had fought many grown adults since she'd been old enough to throw a decent punch. Looking at her, people didn't tend to think she'd be any good in a fight. They invariably rued their underestimation of her when a full-bodied punch to the vomer bone changed the dimensions of their nose. Being able to throw a punch did not help, however, when fighting a child. The object was to restrain and to keep the child from being hurt, while at the same time avoiding being hurt oneself. The hardest part was quelling the instinct to fight back.

In the end, Alex lay flat on his stomach with Miss Parker pinning him down by his elbows. Even as he squirmed in her grip, his ragged fingernails tore at Chabot's bootlaces. Chabot reacted to this sequence of events as well as can be expected, which is to say, she screamed bloody murder.

"Let me go! Let me go!" Alex screamed. He called Miss Parker many names, most of which she did not understand but which sounded vaguely religious. She'd have to ask him later what 'ostie' meant.

Jarod turned back to Chabot. "I'll let him at you —"

"You will not," Miss Parker interrupted. Jarod glared at her, with a look clearly intended to shut her up. She glared right back. He was acting as if he had perfect control over the situation, but she — and probably everyone else in the cabin, now it came to it — knew better.

"Or maybe I'll let you parachute down with one of my spare parachutes. You're familiar with these, I take it?" Jarod brandished the parachute from which he'd scavenged his tether.

"If what? Or what? What are your damn terms?" The power had gone out of Chabot's screech. What would happen if she lost consciousness from fear and became a dead weight in Jarod's grip?

"Admit your involvement in the death of this child's mother," he said. "And I will pull you back in. I don't speak for anyone else here, though. You have a whole cabin full of people who'd like to see you dive out the window with a broken parachute."

Sylvie Chabot stared at the small fingers entangled in her boot laces. And gave in.

The confession was wooden and unapologetic. From the woman who'd concocted a plan to kill two witnesses via plane crash and escape by parachute, Miss Parker expected a much more elaborate plan. The death of Annick St-Denis had been contracted by her boss, Sylvie Chabot, when Chabot had been informed of the server hack. Once Annick discovered evidence of widespread fraud designed to advantage Yalient in cases against life insurance customers, she was a dead woman walking. Chabot had hired two unscrupulous types from her own company; there were always a couple of unscrupulous types around. They'd made it look like suicide by intentional overdose of acetaminophen.

"Tylenol," Yves supplied, in a deadened monotone.

"She was going to tell the authorities," said Chabot. Somehow, she'd managed to wring a few drops of self-righteousness from her situation. "It would have ruined us, nobody would come to us for insurance again. I had to think of my employees."

Alex had been still throughout the confession. When Chabot finished her excuse, however, he began to buck and heave. At first Miss Parker thought he was trying to escape, then a shamelessly noisy sob burbled from his throat. He beat his hands against the floor and clawed at Chabot's foot, the only inches of her he could reach. He ranted the horror and injustice in his heart, and not a word of it was coherent. Miss Parker tightened her grip and folded him into an unwilling hug.

The noise of the wind outside muted. Miss Parker looked up through her mane of wind-blown hair to see Jarod latching the sky-diving hatch. He still held the front of Chabot's vest, dangling her awkwardly in a one-handed grip. She looked only barely reassured now that she'd been dragged back inside. She flailed her arms around like an upended turtle, trying to grab at anything within reach, while Jarod used the back of the nail gun to draw the nail out of her boot. Jarod let go and she landed in an untidy heap. As distant as Miss Parker felt from Jarod in that moment, when he wordlessly extended his hand towards her, she knew what he meant. She drew the extra pair of handcuffs from the back pocket of her pants and tossed them his way. In a matter of seconds, Chabot was cuffed to the base of an airline seat, her shoulder bent at an odd angle to accommodate the awkward posture her predicament necessitated. Jarod turned to his accomplice.

His back to Chabot, Jarod was free to use ASL without fear of anyone "listening" in. He signed a short sequence. Miss Parker stared, her mind refusing to parse the signs. She understood, as well as if he'd shouted, but it was too ridiculous. Even for Jarod.

"We need to jump."