Tessa removed the finger from her lips and grinned happily.
I rose from the chair, noticing that my left thigh had been dressed and bandaged. I kept my weight on my right leg and sat beside Tessa, kissing her with great passion, so ecstatic that she was alive that I almost whimpered in ecstasy.
When we finally separated, Tessa pressed her lips to my ear. “Whisper,” she said, ever so faintly. “They don’t expect you to be up yet. When they laid me on the bed, I pretended to be unconscious. So we should have time to talk.”
I nodded, keeping our heads nearly touching so we could hear the faintest of whispers. She was right to warn me to keep it down. Lu had likely posted guards just outside the door, and it was best not to alert them that we were both awake.
“Where are we?” I whispered back.
“Inside a Gulfstream G-1000 Widebody.”
My eyes widened. Of course. Not the strangest hotel room ever built, after all. Instead, we were inside the fuselage of a private jet. One costing tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. I knew these craft were luxurious, but I had no idea they contained private bedrooms.
But why not? Air Force One had been sporting one of these for a long time. The president’s jumbo jet dwarfed the largest Gulfstream, but that didn’t mean the private jet company couldn’t offer a scaled-down version of the president’s master suite.
As if to prove to me that we were really in flight, Tessa pressed a button on the armrest of the chair I’d been in, and all four blinds slowly and noiselessly inched their way up to uncover the windows. I looked out of the large, oval panes of acrylic on opposite sides of the tube I was in, and was greeted by a wing both times, outlined in lights, driving the jet through a bottomless night sky.
“How many men beyond this door?” I asked.
“Colonel Lu and four others.”
“Are you okay? How are you feeling?”
“Surprisingly good,” replied Tessa. “They must not have hit any arteries. They sewed me up, administered antibiotics, and infused several pints of blood.”
She paused and then looked at me with an awestruck expression. “You were amazing, Jason. You saved my life.”
I beamed, trying not to dwell on the fact that the state of being alive would likely be temporary—for both of us.
“You moved like a trained commando,” she whispered. “I was sure I was dreaming when you got the drop on Lu. How did you do that?”
“When they threatened to kill you I lost my mind. I guess there’s something to be said for raw, unbridled animal instinct.”
“I guess,” she replied. “However you did it, thanks! And here I thought I’d fallen in love with a civilian geek.”
She had, but no need to burst her bubble. No need to tell her it was a one-in-a-million fluke, a lucky burst of unexpected courage and competence, which would never repeat itself.
“I passed out right after they darted you,” continued Tessa. “And didn’t regain consciousness until they set me down on this bed. But, apparently, they took the Amazon van as you suggested.”
“How do you know that?”
“I heard them speaking when they thought I was still out.”
“In Mandarin?”
“Of course in Mandarin,” she replied, breaking into a broad grin. “Did you think they’d be speaking in Latin?”
I smiled sheepishly. Another stupid question on my part.
“From their conversation, I learned that they had a medic patch us up inside the van while they drove, and administer IV antibiotics and blood. Apparently, it took them a few hours to eventually get to this jet, and we’ve been flying now for about two hours more.”
Tessa paused. “Finally,” she continued, “they don’t expect you to come to for at least another few hours. Maybe all that adrenaline you had in your system muted the effect of the drug.”
I nodded. Maybe so.
“While I was waiting for you to come to, I’ve been thinking through our options. They aren’t great.”
I nodded miserably. I was well aware. But something else was pressing on my mind. “Before you continue,” I whispered, “I need to ask, was what you said true? Were you raped as a prisoner?”
I gazed at her with loving, concerned eyes. “If so, I am so, so sorry. I can’t imagine how horrible that must have been.”
Tessa shook her head. “It never happened,” she replied. “It was a bluff. Sorry that I went there. But I needed to keep my knife-throwing hand free. That was the best strategy I could think of on the fly.”
I closed my eyes in relief. Thank God it wasn’t true. The thought of her suffering through such a despicable violation had plunged a dagger into my gut. But now that I was certain it was a bluff, I had to hand it to her. She had come up with a brilliant and effective ploy on very short notice.
“I’m so glad to hear that,” I whispered. “You were incredibly convincing.”
“Yeah, sorry again,” she replied earnestly. But after a brief pause an impish smile came over her face. “But did you like the part where I threatened to rip his tiny manhood right off his body?”
I grinned. She had found the humor in a dark and serious subject matter to try to cheer me up, taking emotional lemons and making lemonade. “I did,” I replied with a twinkle in my eye. “And I’ve also learned something new about you. That you refer to your right hand as your knife-throwing hand. Really? Who does that?”
“You have one too,” replied Tessa, flashing a million-gigawatt smile. “It’s just you’d probably never hit anything with it.”
“I can’t argue with that. But you, on the other hand, must have been the best knife thrower in the history of the Deltas.”
“I don’t know about that,” she replied in amusement, “but it’s probably best if you don’t get me angry while I’m chopping celery in the kitchen.”
I almost laughed out loud. “Good tip,” I replied. “So you could have taken out Chen at any time?” I asked, serious once again.
“Yes. I waited so I could learn as much as possible. The same reason Chen waited so long before derailing Ming.”