Lethal Consequences Read Free

ago. To being trapped in a dark, stale box. To not knowing if she was going to get out. To being convinced she was going to die.
    Her lungs constricted. Her palms grew sweaty. For a moment, the muscles in her legs shook with the remembered fear.
    You’re safe. This is a plane, not a box. Nothing’s going to happen.
    She drew a deep breath. Swallowed hard. Reminded herself that was over. No one was looking for her. What had happened before was never going to happen again.
    Heart pounding, she turned down the aisle and then glanced up at the interior of the aircraft. Not a box at all. Just a plane. Just like the one she’d stepped onto in Boise when she’d started this trip. She let out a slow breath. A plane that was as normal and ordinary and unimportant as her.
    She found her seat, stowed her bag in the overhead bin, and then settled in next to the window. She wasn’t convinced the therapy her sister had talked her into had done much good. She didn’t feel like a victim, even if she did have a few moments of panic now and then. But she did like her therapist’s suggestion of finding her “happy place” whenever she felt stressed or anxious or afraid. Mostly because her happy place wasn’t a place at all. It was a person. And hopefully, in a few hours, he’d be as excited to see her as she was to see him.
    A woman in her fifties with salt-and-pepper hair took the seat beside her. “You look American.” The woman’s accent was British. She leaned forward, pushing her purse under the seat in front of her. “First time in London?”
    “Yeah,” Olivia said, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. “It shows, huh?”
    The woman smirked. “A little.”
    Small talk. She could do small talk to get her through this flight. And to keep her from worrying about what Landon’s reaction would be when he saw her. “I didn’t get to see as much of the city as I would have liked. I was only here on a short layover.”
    “Oh, then you must come back. London is meant to be experienced, my dear, not laid over.”
    Olivia smiled. “I will. It’s a beautiful city.”
    The woman buckled her seat belt as passengers continued to board. “Are you visiting family in Spain?”
    “No. A friend.”
    When the woman lifted her brow, Olivia added sheepishly, “A guy friend.”
    “Ah.” The woman leaned her head back against her seat. “The city of counts. Your love is not a count, is he?”
    Olivia pictured Landon trussed up in a monkey suit in some fancy castle. Laughing, she said, “No. Not that I’m aware of. And he’s not my love. At least not yet.”
    A spark ignited in the older woman’s eyes. “Yet? Oh, there’s a story there, I can tell. Tell me all about him. Where you met and why he’s in Spain. We’ve got several hours to kill.”
    Several hours? Suddenly, that seemed way too long. Olivia’s stomach tossed and swirled, but she knew without a doubt that coming to Europe to see Landon was not a mistake—no matter what her sister would say when she found out Olivia had taken a leave from her job and emptied her savings for this trip.
    “Well”—that silly grin spread across her lips again, the one that popped up whenever she thought of Landon Miller—“we definitely didn’t meet in the traditional way.”

 
    H er hair is way too red. No way that’s natural.
    Landon leaned his elbow against the bar and tried to focus on what the woman in front of him—Shelby, Sharon, no, Chantal, that was it—was saying, but couldn’t keep his mind from drifting.
    She’d slid onto the barstool next to him about an hour before. The red hair had caught his attention. And the slinky black cocktail dress. Most women shied away from him on first glance thanks to his size and the scars on his face, but she hadn’t been the least intimidated. He’d offered to buy her a drink, and when she’d asked him what he was doing in the city, he’d made up some lame excuse about being a journalist on assignment, covering hotels