Tim rushed to the jet’s hatch and looked for a way to lock it. Nothing immediately presented itself. The soldiers outside could just turn the latch and open the door the way he had and there was no way to stop them.

He didn’t think they would come rushing inside, not with three armed, desperate people onboard. The boy soldiers were trigger-happy but he didn’t think they were stupid enough to poke their heads in a place where they were likely to get shot. He knew for a fact that Tony would just start shooting if they did.

That didn’t solve any problems, though. The soldiers could just sit out there and wait and eventually Tim and the looters would have to come out. The soldiers could call up reinforcements, and maybe heavy weapons. They apparently had orders not to damage the plane, but they could bring in tear gas or flashbang grenades or—or they could just pump liquid saxitoxin into the plane until the three of them were dead.

Eventually the soldiers would figure out a way to retake the plane. There was food onboard and plenty of water but long before they starved the soldiers would figure out something. Or they would just get bored enough to disobey their orders—especially now that Horne was gone and could no longer enforce those orders—and just blow up the jet. It was a losing proposition, no matter how Tim looked at it.

“So are you going to say thank you?” Tony demanded.

Tim glared back at him with wild eyes. Thank you? Horne had captured Tim, and yes, the looters had removed him from that situation. He couldn’t think of a single way in which his life was better than it had been an hour before, though. He couldn’t see any upside to what Tony and his crew had done.

Then again, Tony was probably thinking the same thing. He’d risked a lot—including his own life—to repay his imagined debt. As far as he knew he had saved Tim from a fate worse than death.

“Thank you,” he said, trying to sound sincere. “You have any ideas about what we do now?”

Tony raised the half-empty bottle of bourbon and waggled it in his hand.

Sasha clucked her tongue and climbed out of her chair. “I’m going to ask you one easy question, Kempfer, alright? Can you handle that, or are you too freaked out?”

Tim studied himself. His pulse was racing, he was breathing too hard. Fear—not the fear the droolers engendered, just normal, garden variety terror—had a hard grip on him. He forced himself to calm down. To swallow all the spit in his mouth. “Okay,” he said. “Alright.”

Sasha nodded. Speaking softly and slowly she asked, “You’re a bright guy. You seem to know a lot of things.”

Tim shrugged.

“Okay. Do you know how to fly a jet plane?”

He nearly laughed. He nearly fell down and cackled maniacally and lost it right then and there. Instead he closed his eyes and counted to ten. “No,” he said.

“Not even a little bit?”

He shook his head.

Sasha sat back down. “Then I’m out. I guess this is it.”

Tim sat down in one of the very comfortable chairs and put his face in his hands. He imagined the Learjet screaming down the runway, then lifting into the air on sleek wings and banking away high over Seattle. In his vision he had no destination in mind but he knew the plane was headed far, far away, away from everything that had gone so horribly wrong.

He dropped his hands. He looked into empty space.

That wasn’t good enough. Even if he could have flown the plane he knew he wouldn’t have done it. He wasn’t finished with Seattle. He wasn’t finished with revenge. Things had gotten—complicated. But the basic drive, his need, his duty to Karen and Jake was still there. He could still reach for it and it could still give him strength.

He stood up. Then he went forward and opened a thin door that separated the cabin from the cockpit. There were two seats in there and an enormous number of dials, switches, toggles, gauges, computer screens and unidentifiable controls. He saw two things, though, that he recognized. He saw a main power switch—it was clearly labeled—and he saw a control yoke.

“Strap yourselves in,” he told the looters. Tony looked at him in pure confusion but Sasha started reaching around the seat for her safety webbing.

Tim dropped into the pilot’s seat and switched on the power. The plane whined beneath him and lights came on all over the control console. He didn’t know what any of them meant but that didn’t matter. Through the windshield he could see the soldiers jumping away from the plane as if it had become electrified.

“Kempfer?” Sasha called from back in the cabin. “You doing something cool up there? Something I ought to see?”

“Just hold on,” he shouted. “And get Tony secured if he can’t do it himself. This is going to suck in a minute.”

He pushed forward on the control yoke. Nothing happened except a light started flashing on the board. He looked over and saw that it said SAFETY BRAKE ON. He pushed it and it went dark. Then he touched the yoke again.

The plane moved forward. Slowly, smoothly. The soldiers in front broke and ran. Tim gave the yoke another push and the plane sped up, taxiing up the runway, headed due north. An alarm went off and Tim panicked for a second—then found a light that said FASTEN SEATBELTS DURING ALL MANEUVERS. He cursed as he realized he hadn’t secured himself. With trembling hands he pulled a belt across his lap and another across his shoulder.

The plane kept speeding up. It accelerated much faster than he’d expected. The runway blurred under his wheels as more alarms went off and more lights lit up. Dead ahead he saw a fence coming toward him like a brick wall.