“Please,” Alea said, sitting up. “It smells wonderful. I hope you try it yourself.”
The hostess inclined her head in a show of deference. Staff tended to love Alea. “I would be thrilled to try it, Your Highness. You’re so kind. If you would gather around the table, I will serve.”
Dane frowned and closed the folder. “We’re going to get back to this. I’m not going to stop until we know who did this to you.”
“I’m sure you won’t,” Alea conceded. “But it can wait until after lunch. Poor Landon is practically fainting.”
Lan did look a little piqued. He stood up. “There was no meat with breakfast. It was all bread and stuff. I’m a carnivore.”
The hostess returned and set glasses before them, each filled with a deep, ruby red wine. “The pilot says that this vintage comes from the region of France in which he was born. Enjoy.”
Cooper took a long sip of the wine. It was rich and tasted just slightly sweet, with a hint of tartness. Like Alea. But he wasn’t much of a wine drinker. Give him a good beer any day. But so far, the flight attendant hadn’t given them water or anything else to drink. So he took another sip.
They sat down around the table, getting ready to partake of their first full meal as a family—whether Alea wanted to acknowledge that fact or not. They drank and talked, the minutes speeding by.
The first course was served, and Cooper felt his every muscle relax. He laughed at something Dane said, but suddenly sounds were strangely far away. So was everyone in his field of vision. Even his muscles felt heavy. In fact, he couldn’t quite lift the spoon.
Alea looked so happy, relaxed. And he felt so…weird.
He tried to push the glass away because something was so wrong, but his hands wouldn’t work. They kind of flopped around like fish out of water.
What the hell was happening?
“Sir? Sir? Are you all right?” He could halfway hear the hostess. She sounded like she was talking through a funnel.
Cooper tried to get up. His vision was narrowing, focusing in on one thing. Alea was asleep again. She looked so sweet, but…hadn’t she just napped? Why was her head at that unnatural angle?
He tried to fight, tried to stay awake, but he failed.
The last thing he saw as he fell asleep was an unfamiliar man in a white shirt standing over them, wearing a triumphant smile.
Chapter Six
Dane fought the darkness in his head as though his subconscious knew his sleep was unnatural.
He heard a low groan to his left before something rolled closer and closer, but he couldn’t open his eyes to see or move in time to prevent it from smacking his head. Pain flared.
What the hell had happened?
Using all his concentration, Dane shoved his lethargy aside and forced himself upright. His head throbbed as he reached up and wiped away a trickle of blood. He looked down at the wine bottle that had spun down the aisle and struck him. And now his head pounded. His tongue felt double its normal size and a bit furry.
Fuck, they’d been drugged. How long had he been out? He held up the bottle before it rolled down and hit anyone else. And he stared at it. Someone—the flight attendant?—had drugged them with this wine. The hostess had served the soup, but none of them had eaten a single bite of it before passing out. The good news was, Dane didn’t think any of them had imbibed more than a half a glass. He glanced at his watch. About an hour since he’d last looked. What the hell was going on?
“What the hell?” Lan moaned. “Did someone run me over?”
“Where’s Alea?” Coop asked, his words slurring.
Alea. Panic threatened to take over. They were on a fucking plane. Who would abduct her on a goddamn plane? And how?
They all looked around, groaning as they rose to their feet and stumbled around the cabin, searching for her. Shit, he felt like he was in a fun house that wasn’t a whole lot of fun. His vision was like looking through a tunnel, and the floor seemed to tilt down just slightly. He lurched forward and saw Alea, grabbing onto her seat for balance. Relief flooded his system, and his heart started beating again.
“Huh? I need to sleep,” she protested, all cuddled up in her chair, safe and sound and still in the drug’s happy place.
Dane started to relax. She was safe. Then, as his own head cleared, he realized something was really wrong. It wasn’t just his perception leading him to think the floor was tilting a bit downward. It actually was. The whole nose of the plane was, in fact. He had to get her—and all of them—out of here fucking fast.
“No sleep for you, baby.” He turned to Coop and Lan, who staggered behind him. “We’ve got to get her up. We’ve all been drugged. I don’t think we got much of it, but I have no idea how she’ll react to it. She weighs less than we do, so she won’t metabolize it as fast. I need you two to figure out how fucked we are. There’s no way we aren’t. So find out how far we’re about to take it up the ass.”