Spell of the Highlander

Page 57

The woman glanced up, the hint of a muscle contracting between her brows.
Yes—Cian was close! Improvisably close.
I can do this, I can do this, I know I can, she told herself. She stared down at the floor for a few seconds, steeling her nerve. Then she turned and began walking away from the counter.
Behind her, the woman muttered snidely, “About time. And good riddance to you, you spoiled little—”
The rest of it was muttered too low for Jessi to hear, but she didn’t need to, she’d already picked up on the general gist of it. Oh, you are going to be sooo surprised, she thought just as snidely. She didn’t mind people getting upset with her when she’d done something to deserve it, but she’d not done a thing to earn this woman’s animosity, other than being young and curvy. And she couldn’t help being either of those things. It wasn’t as if either of those things had ever gotten her anywhere in her life. Hard work had. Boobs certainly hadn’t. In fact, were she pushed to divvy up percentages, she’d attribute 90 percent to aggravation and 10 percent to pleasure.
Wiggling her shoulders to make sure her backpack was snug enough, she glanced behind her, assessed the distance to and height of the counter, and took a deep, fortifying breath.
Then she whirled around, took a running leap, and catapulted herself into the air.
She managed to pump up more speed with her short dash than she actually needed, and upon clearing the exterior wall of the counter, she couldn’t check her forward momentum. Skidding pell-mell over the veneered surface on her hands and knees, she crashed to the floor, taking down two mainframes and a stack of manuals with her. She hit the floor so hard it made her teeth clack together.
“Oh!” the woman shrieked. “Out! Out! Out! You are not allowed back here! Only airport employees are permitted behind the desk!”
Jessi didn’t waste breath replying. Scrambling to her feet, she clambered over monitors and manuals, and pushed through the half-opened door. Her heart was pounding and adrenaline was rushing through her veins, making her feel shaky, yet intensely, aggressively focused. It was no wonder some people got addicted to adrenaline rushes.
“I’m calling security!” the woman screeched after her, snatching the phone from the wall.
“You just do that . . .” Jessi dropped her voice, but despite her best efforts, “bitch” didn’t come out quite as sotto voce as she’d intended. Oops. Darn it, now she was going to have to outrun security too!
But the woman’s nastiness worked to her advantage this time. Apparently, Stone-face had been secretly itching to take matters into her own hands and Jessi’s expletive was just enough to push her over the edge.
Slapping the phone back on the wall, Stone-face shot through the door after her. “I don’t need security, I can deal with you myself, you brazen little hussy!” Sharp orange talons closed on the fabric of Jessi’s backpack, yanking her to a halt. “You are not going back there!”
Jessi dug in her heels, scanning the corridor. It was roughly a hundred yards long, with a maze of hallways branching off it, and doors dotting both the left and right sides.
At the far end of the corridor, two tall steel doors gleamed, the kind that looked like they might open onto a warehouse. Near those doors, several carts and a small front-loader waited.
That would be where the mirror was, then, through those double doors.
She needed it. It was nonnegotiable.
And this red-tape-wielding, small-mean-souled twit clutching a fistful of her backpack was all that was standing between her and the small matter of her continued survival.
Her life depended on that crate.
And there was no other way she could get to it.
She twisted her shoulders, yanking her backpack from the woman’s grasp. When it tumbled down her arm, she caught the straps of it in her hand.
Bracing herself, she gulped yet another fortifying breath. She was going to need this one.
Muttering a silent prayer that it would work and not actually injure the woman beyond a temporary black eye, she swung around and coshed the woman in the side of the head with her thirty-eight-pound-Krispy-Kremes-earning backpack.
Much to her relief—she wasn’t entirely certain about doing it twice, no matter how nasty the witch was—Stone-face’s eyes glazed, she swayed woozily, and sank limply to the floor.
Glancing hastily around, Jessi spied a door labeled “Supplies” down the hall. Grabbing the woman’s feet, she hooked her ankles beneath her armpits and hurriedly slid her down the polished tile floor.
It took her a few moments to wedge her in with all the brooms and mops and cleaning supplies, but she managed it. Closing the door, she examined the handle. There was no way to lock it. That sucked.