Velocity To Never Exceed

Chapter 24

"You're here!" I shriek, gripping her waist tighter. "You have no idea how happy I am to see you!"

Heather freezes, unsure what to do as some seemingly strange girl assails her. Finally, she finds her voice. "Miss, stop. Let go of me."

Rion's pulling me back now. He peels me off her waist awkwardly, one arm at a time. "Sorry about this," he apologizes to Heather.

"I'm just... you look... so... so... alive!" I croak.

Heather eyes me, like she found a tarantula in her bedroom. "Um. Do I know you?" she asks with a voice that says, I definitely do not know you.

"Yes. No. Sort of. Hard to explain," I sigh as the relief soaks in, calming my frayed nerves. "I'm just so glad to see you!"

Rion chimes in, "Sorry, my friend here, she's a terrible flyer. She took some anxiety pills – some combo of lavender and magnesium, I think – and it made her a little out of it."

He's trying to make this situation a smidgeon less uncomfortable than it already is, and while I appreciate the inside joke about Margaret's pills, I honestly couldn't care less if this is uncomfortable or not. I don't care about anything at this moment except for the fact that Heather's alive. That's all that matters.

The thoughts cycle through my head so fast it's hard to keep up.

The loop didn't actually kill her.

In fact, it saved her.

For now, at least.

Until it might kill us all.

Heather flashes Rion a look as if to say, no shit she's out of it. She positions her features in a perfectly stellar bitch face. It only makes me love her more.

She passes us and continues down the aisle. I turn to Rion, feeling a bit more buoyant knowing Heather's okay. But we have to figure out some way to stop that from happening again.

"I need you to give me a play-by-play of the last loop." he insists. "Tell me everything."

I jump right in, telling him my story of what happened. I don't leave anything out. I describe the bags of white substance packed inside the black duffel bag, and how Jack Greene is one mean drunk and I hope his new wife annuls the marriage pronto.

And then Rion tells me his version of the loop. He explains what Heather said in the intercom to the cockpit, confirming my suspicions.

"Contraband. So, it was drugs." I mull the new information over. "My first thought when I saw the baggies was that it was probably the eco-teens."

"Who?"

I shrug. "I don't know what else to call them. That kumbaya teen team-building ziplining crew. I thought that maybe they're all in it together. They look so squeaky clean and if I've learned anything from young adult mystery movies, it's always the squeaky-clean ones."

"There's something else-" Rion begins.

But I'm mid-thought and I cut him off. "But after I saw that guy in the bathroom, I realized it wasn't the eco-teens," I plow ahead. "It must've been him, right? He must be the guy who's smuggling the drugs, which is why he flipped out when he heard Heather."