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."
Coop shuddered, obviously feeling the effects, but he rallied. "It had to be the pilot or the flight attendant."
Since one had brought the wine and the other had served it … "Yeah. Where the hell are they? I think the plane is diving, and if someone's going to try to kill us before we deal with that, I'd like to know."
He looked around the cabin, but he encountered nothing but the eerie white noise made by the engines.
Lan staggered, then forced himself to stand tall. He looked out the window. "Diving? Is the pilot trying to crash the plane? There's nothing but ocean. Where the hell are we?"
Coop ran a hand over his head. "It's been a while since I've flown and I'm not familiar with planes like this, but I'll figure it out. If the pilot doesn't shoot me first."
"Both of you gear up," Dane said, looking down at Alea. Her color was good, her lips curving up in sleep.
"My gun is still in its holster," Lan said, pulling his SIG Sauer from underneath his jacket. "Why would the person who drugged us leave us with guns? Why wouldn't they just kill us in our sleep?"
It didn't make a lick of sense. If whoever had poisoned the wine wanted them unconscious, why wouldn't they have used that time to disarm the three big bad soldiers? Or kill everyone since there'd be hell to pay once the drug wore off. What the fuck was going on here?
Coop took out his piece and started for the cockpit, his feet moving silently across the floor while Lan went in the opposite direction, gun drawn, in search of the hostess. Alone, he stood over Alea.