"No!" I said loudly, trying very hard to sound even a little bit calm. "No, please, calm down! He can't do that. Everything is pressurized. The door won't even open. Please, everyone, try to remain calm. I know that's hard to do, but it's the best thing we can do to help them."
The general upset didn't die down completely, but it was enough that I was relatively sure there wasn't going to be a stampede. Under the circumstances, I was happy just to have that. I started toward the front of the plane, where Tony had attempted to join the fray with a set of zip ties meant to restrain Stevens. Unfortunately for Tony, Stevens knew that was exactly what would happen, and he threw out a hard punch before Tony could even lay a hand on him, sending my friend flying and knocking him to the floor in a heap.
“Enough, Stevens!” Drew bellowed, the extent of his anger becoming clear to me, despite his impressively maintained calm. “That’s enough! You’re hurting innocent people now. You’re scaring people! Is that what you wanted? What you were aiming to get out of this whole plan? To turn yourself into some kind of comic book villain?”
“You know what I want, pretty boy. You’re just too much of a coward to give it to me. Only big and strong when you’re doing it behind somebody’s back, right? You’re no fucking better than I am!”
"Please," a little old woman cowering in one of the seats beside me moaned as she tugged on my sleeve frantically. "Please, you've got to make this stop. Somebody is going to get really hurt. I think that young man he knocked out probably needs to see a doctor. He's probably got a concussion, and nobody can do anything about it as long as that man is still terrorizing everyone!"
The mention of poor Tony, along with the clear danger Drew was still in, is what finally got me moving. Without thinking about what I was doing, I reached up into one of the overhead bins and grabbed the first thing convenient to me. It happened to be a rather heavy wooden cane, and I took off running towards Fred, going on blind faith that he would not turn and see me coming. I swung the cane as hard as I could.
All it took was one large crack over the head, using all the strength I had in my body, and Fred crumpled to the ground, every bit as unconscious as Tony was. Drew quickly grabbed the zip ties out of Tony's limp hands and bound Fred's wrists so that when he finally woke up again, he would find it a good deal more difficult to come after any of us.
“Jess,” he called out as he worked, a voice that seemed to be coming to me through a haze. “Jess, are you okay?”
“Fine,” I said. “Just fine.”
He took a second to grin at me. “Nice hit, slugger. I’m pretty sure that was a home run.”
“I broke the cane, though,” I said, turning back to the passengers around me. “I’m sorry. I don’t know who this belongs to, but I broke it.”
The old woman who’d tugged at my sleeve smiled at me. “That’s okay, dear. I don’t mind. If he moves, you whack him again!”
I laughed, even though I could feel the tears beginning to run down my cheeks. I almost didn’t notice the loud sound of raucous applause from the passengers.
Chapter 23: Drew
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“Please,” Jess said, barely out of the shower and wrapped up in a towel. “You have to stop asking me that. I swear, you’ve asked that same question a thousand times since we checked into our hotel.”
"I know,” I said, shaking my head. “I just can't stop seeing it, you know? I can't get the image of him holding you hostage out of my head. If he had done anything to you, if he had hurt you?" I stopped, unable to finish the thought.
"But he didn't, Drew. He didn't hurt either one of us. And we can't let him get to us like this, okay? If we let him get into our heads, it's kind of like we're letting him win, and I don't want to do that. He didn't win, right? We did. Wanna know how I know?"
“How?” I asked.
"Because he's in jail right now, and we're here. In what is easily the nicest hotel I've ever stayed in, by the way."
That was enough to get me smiling, which made her grin widely in return. Still wearing nothing but her towel, she sat beside me on the lavish king-sized bed and put her hand on my knee. I grabbed her hand, holding onto it so tightly that part of me was worried I might actually hurt her. All the while, she looked at me closely. I could tell she wanted to ask me something. All I had to do was wait.
"Drew? What's really going on here? I mean, I know what happened on that plane was terrifying, but I feel like there's something more than that. I wish you would tell me what it is. I'm only starting to worry more, and after all that drama, my goal is to worry less."
“It’s nothing, really. It’s just that this was supposed to be a special trip.”
"I'm not sure what you mean by that, but we both know this is something we won't ever forget. I bet you didn’t know you were dating a freaking ninja?"
I laughed at her in confusion. “What?”
She shrugged. “Come on, you saw my moves up there. Boom! I knocked his ass out with one hit. And he never even saw me coming, either. Cause I had the reflexes of a cat, the eyes of a hawk, and the, uh, cane of an old lady. Still, I was a total ninja.”
I couldn’t help but laugh at how proud of herself she was. Hell, I was proud of her, too. “I have to admit, that was pretty impressive, Jess. You were really brave.”
“Damn right,” she said. “I’m not letting anyone hurt my man. No way. Especially not some turd like Fred Stevens.”
I laughed. “Well, thank you again for that.”