Hitched!

Rand laughed. “Clementine? She’s been in trouble since the day she was born, but probably not the kind of trouble you mean.”

“Clementine. I don’t believe I’ve ever heard of anyone with that name. Except, ‘Oh, my darling,’ of course.”

“She used to hate it, but now that she’s older, she kind of likes it.”

“Older like…?”

“She’s twenty-one.” He knew she wasn’t interested in hearing about his sister, but he was struggling to keep the conversation going. “How old are you?” About his age, he figured.

“I’m twenty-five.”

“No kidding.” Idiot. You can’t tell her you thought she was at least five years older than that. Damn shame Clemmie couldn’t get hold of Maxine for a few hours and do something about that frumpy exterior.

“Excuse me, sir.”

Rand glanced around to find one of the ashen-faced flight attendants standing in the aisle, holding a basket with cans of soda and tiny bags of pretzels. “Would either of you care for a drink or a snack? It’s not much, but this was supposed to be a short flight.”

“They wouldn’t let you use that big cart, huh?” Rand guessed.

She nodded. “He said if they needed to get through the plane in a hurry, they didn’t want that thing in the way.”

“Which makes sense, I suppose.” He took a couple of cans from the basket and handed one to Maxine. “How’s it going up front?”

The flight attendant licked her lips. “Okay, I guess. They’re obviously doing drugs, though, and you never know where that will lead.” She made a face.

“Maybe if they get enough of that junk in them, they’ll fall asleep.”

“God, I hope so, but it just seems to make them more squirrelly.”

The beefy man across the aisle—an insurance salesman from Dubuque, Rand recalled, Larry something-or-other—leaned into the quietly spoken conversation. “Why doesn’t the captain do something?” he demanded, his face reddening. “We’ve got them outnumbered, for God’s sake.”

The woman in the maroon-and-gold Alar uniform was rendered speechless by this asinine criticism, so Rand jumped in.

“Good idea. You make the first move.”

“Me? I—we—ah…” The man’s bluff had been called and his bravado evaporated.

A bit of color had returned to the flight attendant’s cheeks and she gave Rand a grateful glance before moving on.

Rand turned around to Maxine, who studied him without expression.

“Maybe we should gang up on those hijackers,” she said defiantly. “If we’re going to die anyway—”

“Nobody’s going to die,” he said, appalled.

“Is that a promise?”

“It’s a prediction. Why don’t we just settle down and—”

“May I have your attention, ladies and gentlemen.” The pilot’s voice burst from the intercom. “Time to buckle up. We’ll be landing in about twenty minutes at—”

The sound was cut off to a chorus of “Landing where?” Maxine and Rand looked at each other. He smiled. She didn’t.

“See?” he said encouragingly. “In an hour we’ll be off this plane and going about our business again.”

“From your lips to God’s ear,” she said with feeling. “In the meantime, keep talking, will you? Tell me the story of your life…anything to keep my mind off them.”

THE HIJACKERS apparently changed their minds with disturbing frequency because minutes stretched into hours while the plane continued on a meandering course through the sky. After a while, Rand found himself running out of things to say and he still couldn’t loosen Maxine up enough to do more than nod or answer “Yes” or “No.” She did show an annoying tendency to ask personal questions, however, which he turned aside with growing impatience.

He wasn’t a man who talked about his personal business, especially when he was ashamed of it.

The hijackers took turns exploding out of the cockpit to wave guns and grenades around, to make threats. Singly, they’d stalk to the back of the plane, get everybody all worked up to screaming and crying, then turn and stalk back, to disappear inside the cockpit again.

Finally the insurance man across the way got fed up for real. “We really oughta rush ’em,” he whispered hoarsely to Rand. “They’re gonna get us if we don’t get them first.”

That thought had occurred to Rand, too, but had quickly perished. Whatever those two hijackers were doing in the cockpit wasn’t making them sleepy it was making them mean—make that meaner. They gave every indication that they’d as soon shoot the passengers as keep an eye on them.

“Take it easy,” he tried to calm the jittery man. “Nobody’s been hurt yet. Why start something we may not be able to finish?”

“Yeah, well…” The man subsided, mumbling.

The next time one of the gunmen appeared, he took one look at the insurance salesman, apparently didn’t like what he saw, raised his pistol and fired point-blank.

At the same instant, the plane banked into a sharp descent, throwing the gunman off-balance. The bullet panged into a vacant seat in the first row, sparing the insurance salesman. The first-class cabin erupted in shrieks and cries, so the hijacker fired a couple more shots after the first, playing hell with the upholstery.

Rand shoved Maxine against the window and turned to shield her with his body. In the aisle, the hijacker was swearing and making all kinds of threats, ending with a bellowed, “You think I don’t know what’s going on out here? You want to jump me, right? Try it! I’m begging you to try it! Hell, I might just throw this grenade and get it over with.”

Fully believing the end was near either from bullet, grenade or a crash landing, Rand braced himself for the worst. So much for his own petty problems. He wasn’t going to live long enough to—

The wheels slammed down onto solid earth. The plane vaulted into the air and landed again, heavily. The odor of burning rubber permeated the cabin.

“Please!” The word was just a gasp from Maxine. “You’re crushing me! Let me up!”

Why the hell not? If the hijacker hadn’t thrown the grenade by now, maybe he wouldn’t. “Sorry.” Rand straightened. A quick glance forward produced an exclamation of astonishment.

The hijacker wasn’t there. And hurtling past the window was a landscape Rand didn’t recognize: sand and cactus and a few stunted trees.

But first things first. “You okay?” he asked Maxine. “I didn’t mean to crush you but I was afraid—”

“Shit!” The insurance salesman was hyperventilating. “He’s crazy! Did you see that? He tried to shoot me!”

Rand grimaced. “Buck up, fella. You survived to tell about it.”

The man groaned. “I think I’m gonna be sick.” He stumbled to his feet and staggered forward to the rest room, bouncing side to side with the motion of the plane.

Into a tense silence, a petulant voice intruded. “Grandma, I’m hungry!”

Jessica, the little girl in the seat behind them. A tug on his sleeve made Rand start; the child stood in the aisle, looking up at him plaintively.