“Keep going,” I urged.
“He wanted my dad to join, but my dad decided at a young age that he was a pacifist. Drove my grandfather nuts.”
“Sounds like it made for a testy upbringing for your dad.”
“You’d think, but no. Not really. Plus, when I went into the Academy, it satisfied the dream my grandfather had for someone in the family to carry on serving the country.”
I barked a stiff laugh. “This shitty fucking country?”
His head drooped a little further, nose brushed the hollow of my neck. “Yeah. Job’s not exactly what I pictured.”
“What, drugging women and sending them into a panic attack at 30,000 feet up in the air wasn’t something little James had in mind when he thought about being a big bad agent?”
He took a pause, the soft part of his jaw clenching beside my cheek. “No. It isn’t.”
A thunderous rock shook the plane, and I squeezed Agent Reyes’ knees. My breath cut. My eyes pinched. Tears sprouted like lilies under a hot sun. Reyes’ breath warmed my skin like the very same sun.
“Breathe,” he soothed, folding his hands overtop of mine again. Another terrifying shake came and I death-gripped his fingers through mine, holding onto him like if the plane fell out of the sky right now, I could cling to him and make it out safely.
“Oh god, when are these pills gonna kick in?”
“Should be soon.”
Oh fuck, it didn’t matter. If it wasn’t now, the panic would get me first. I could feel it all over again, tapping fingernails up my esophagus. Soon those prickling fingernails would turn to rusty nails diving into my flesh and puncturing holes for oxygen to spill out of.
Agent Reyes must have sensed the attack coming head-on because he turned my hands over in his and tried his hardest to divert my attention to the drawings on my wrists.
“What’re these?” His thumb grazed the ink marring my wrists in elegant swoops and dark lines that I’d put there last night. Another quake of turbulence jostled the plane and my head fell forward with a whimper.
“Scarlett, look up.” He squeezed my hands in his, tone unyielding, and in the state I was in, I obeyed.“Tell me what these are. What’d you draw?”
“It’s the Aconite flower.”
“Wolfsbane?”
“How’d you know?”
He paused. “Boy Scouts.”
“Of-fucking-course.”
“Wolfsbane is poisonous,” he stated as if he was almost sure I already knew that.
“I like pretty things that are deadly.”
The blunt edge of his fingernail traced one of the petals I’d drawn of the lethal plant, curving down to the stem.
“You aren’t afraid of much, are you?” His tone was murmured curiosity against my shoulder as he continued to trace along the sketchings of the fatal flower.
“Only two things scare me. Now you know one of them.”
“What’s the other?”
“Uh uh. You tricked this one out of me with foul play. I want a trade for one of your fears to make it even.”
“You want to know what I’m afraid of?”
I nodded, feeling the heavy waves from earlier swathe back through my head, pulling my lashes down to droop. Fucking finally.