Dragon Soul (Dragon Falls, #3)(3)
“How very tragic,” she repeated. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you,” I said, swamped with remembered guilt. “If he hadn’t taken the time to push me out of the way…”
Her hand moved again, as if she wanted to give me another reassuring pat, but stopped herself this time. “You can’t think like that. What ifs will always plague you if you let them. I’m sure your husband did what he thought was best.”
“Yes,” I agreed sadly, struggling with the secret fact that although I’d fallen hard for Jian, we had been together such a short time, I wasn’t sure anymore if I was grieving for his loss or for losing our potential life together. “It’s been a hard couple of years. He wasn’t American, you see, and I had no idea who his family were in China, and no way to contact them. I tried to go through the Chinese embassy, but they just said they had no record of him. I even hired a private detective, but he drew a blank as well, saying that Jian must have come into the country illegally.”
“Oh, my. That doesn’t sound…” She bit off the rest of her comment, no doubt aware it was less than polite.
“No, it wasn’t good. There I was, newly widowed to a man I barely knew, with no idea of who his family was or how to find them. I had quit my job to marry him, and the owner of the tour company was so pissed, he refused to take me back. Then things just kind of went to hell in a handbasket when the police were asking who Jian was, and why I had married him so quickly, and on and on.”
“You really have been through it,” Claudia said, stretching out and giving me another sympathetic arm-pat.
I shook off the old but familiar memories. “I have, but I feel like it’s time to put that behind me. I’m taking this job as an omen that things are going to turn around for me.” I gave her what I thought of as my brave smile. “And even if I don’t get to actually go on the Nile cruise, I will get to see Cairo. I’ll have a day there before I have to fly back home.”
To what? A little voice in my head asked. Back to the couch that your best friend lets you sleep on because you don’t have a job, or money, or any sort of a life?
I ignored the voice. I’d had long experience doing so after Jian’s death.
“I’m sure that will be a lot of fun,” Claudia agreed, and picked up her book.
I stared at mine for a while, not really seeing the words, but too tired to care. Memories of the events of the last ten hours flitted through my brain. Meeting Mrs. P at the hotel. Realizing right away that she had more character in her little pinky than most people have in their entire bodies, which was quickly followed by the awareness that her pinky—as well as her other nine fingers—were extremely sticky. And then there were the tales of her wild youth, with which she regaled me during the ride to the airport, and which I had a feeling were told in an attempt to shock me.
The drone of the engines and white noise of the air circulating through the planed lulled me into a half sleep. I must have dozed off because one moment I was mentally wandering in a bleak landscape made up of a pointless life, and the next, I realized that Claudia was gone and a strange man was leaning across me with one hand stretched out toward the sleeping Mrs. P.
“Hey!” I said on a gasp, instinctively jerking backward against my seat. “What are you doing?”
The man’s head turned, his dark eyes narrowing on me. There was something about his face that wasn’t… right. It was his eyes, I think. The pupils in them were elongated, like a cat’s. That and there was a sense of doom about him that had part of my mind screaming warnings.
“You have caused us enough trouble,” the man hissed, his voice pitched so low that only I could hear it. “Do not interfere again.”
That’s when I saw a glint of metal in his hand. I didn’t pause to think about how the man had managed to get a knife on board the plane, I simply reacted to a threat to a relatively nice—if somewhat confused—old lady who was in my charge.
“Terrorist!” I squawked, simultaneously pulling up my knees and using them along with my hands to shove the man into the seat in front of us. “Help! Air marshal! Someone help!”
He hissed again, not a normal sucking in of air, but an animalistic hiss, and jerked away. At least that’s what I thought he did, but I realized there was a second man beyond him, one who had evidently grabbed Hissy Narrow Pupils by the back of his jacket and pulled him off us.
I checked Mrs. P quickly to make sure she hadn’t been harmed, but her eyes were closed, her mouth opened a smidgen as she gently snored, and one earbud dangled free of her ear. Anger roared to life in me, sending me lurching to my feet to where the two men were standing.
“That man tried to stab my old lady!” I snarled, jabbing a finger toward the hissing man. He stood with his back to the dividing curtain, his head down as if he was about to charge, but the other man had a fistful of his jacket. “Are you an air marshal? I hope you arrest him, because he was clearly about to attack an innocent passenger.”
The second man turned his head slightly, just enough that he could look at me. He was a few inches taller than me, had short, curly, dark auburn hair, and gray-green eyes framed with the blackest eyelashes I’ve ever seen. It was like someone had dipped them in kohl. “I don’t think that’s very likely, do you?”