Free Defying Fate by S. M. Reine Page B

I’m leaving, and I’m taking Malcolm with me. You can get out of the plane right now, or I can knock you out for the duration of the trip. It’s your choice.”
    “You destroyed half of Fallon getting arrested,” she said. “I saw the notice.”
    “That’s right.”
    That information seemed to be more than enough for Krista. She lowered her gun. “I’ll get off here.”
    James opened the sliding door and ducked behind the wall. The airstrip was moving more quickly underneath them now as they accelerated.
    There was no way to hear the shouting of the Union guards as the plane began to pick up speed. The engine was too loud. But Malcolm felt a pretty powerful surge of satisfaction at seeing them sprint after the plane with their hands waving over their heads. Especially when he saw the shock on Zettel’s ugly face.
    How funny. Malcolm’s sense of humor seemed to have returned.
    Bullets pinged into the side of the airplane.
    “Make it quick,” James told Krista. “We’re taking off.”
    She tossed the gun out the door first. “You owe me,” she told Malcolm, and then she leaped out the door, arm over her head and knees tucked to her chest.
    James slammed the door shut again. The plane accelerated.
    “Of all the people I thought might spring me, you weren’t one of them,” Malcolm said, helping James latch the door.
    “Don’t thank me yet.” James peered out one of the windows. There were three SUVs on their tail, including one of the fancy ones with the hood-mounted machine gun. “I only freed you for a favor.”
    “Naturally.”
    The engines roared. The flaps on the wings adjusted, and the pavement dropped out from beneath them.
    The plane bounced and shuddered, but it climbed. It climbed fast. Malcolm’s stomach lurched.
    James threw open the cockpit door and stepped inside. The pilot was a Union man with a shaved head and the look of someone who wasn’t happy to be there. He was also wearing a bathrobe—an actual bathrobe .
    But as they plunged into the gloomy gray clouds, leaving the Union behind them, Malcolm decided that he didn’t care if the pilot was a drunken horse with Alzheimer’s.
    He was free.
    The private jet flew into the silent night. Malcolm wanted to properly enjoy his liberation, but the mini-fridge in back wasn’t stocked with alcohol. He settled for distracting himself by annoying the pilot.
    “Zane St. Vil, right?” Malcolm asked, flopping into the copilot’s chair.
    St. Vil shot him a look. “The fuck are you?”
    “Ah, the dulcet tones of a blossoming Union recruit. Makes my heart give a little pitter-pat.” Malcolm jammed the copilot’s headset over his ears. It was silent.
    “They cut us off twenty minutes after we got off the ground,” James said from the cockpit doorway. “But not before I heard someone from Union control mentioning fighter jets.”
    That meant that things were going to get ugly in short order. Malcolm didn’t want to be in a tin can piloted by a bald guy when that happened.
    “Excellent,” Malcolm said. “Best rescue mission ever.”
    “Who are you?” St. Vil asked.
    “I’m hurt that you don’t recognize your traitorous former commander. Just hurt. Especially since I remember you—you were assigned to the Fernley base under my command. I think I’m the one who put you on Fallon patrol.”
    “What’d you do to be a ‘former’ commander?” he asked.
    “Pissed off Zettel.”
    St. Vil didn’t look like he believed him, but that was all right. If the Union had fighter jets coming in, they’d all be dead soon enough anyway.
    “Where am I going?” St. Vil asked James, shooting him a loathing glance.
    “Forward, for the moment. Maintain the trajectory toward Colorado.” James gestured to Malcolm. “We need to talk.”
    They propped the cockpit door open, presumably to keep an eye on St. Vil, and moved to the plush leather seats in back. The sky passing outside the windows was navy blue. Malcolm imagined that he heard the