Roxanne Neil-van Amsberg hated helicopters.
She had never mentioned her helicopter-phobia to her husband, Casimir van Amsberg, because it had rarely been a problem. She’d been Casimir’s paralegal assistant for years, and they’d traveled together all over the world for business. All that time, riding in helicopters as a means of transportation had never happened.
Planes, trains, yachts, and limos, sure.
Helicopters? Why on fiddle-dee-dee Earth would anyone need to ride in a helicopter?
“Nope,” she said to Casimir as they walked across the tarmac from the plane at the private airport terminal. A chilly December wind blew from the west, even in Nice, which lies on the Mediterranean Sea. “Nope. Not happening.”
He held her hand, smiling gently. He looked like the Scandinavian he was in the harsh lights from the streetlamps, with ice-pale skin and green eyes, a bit of auburn and blond streaking his brown hair. “Roxanne, my rock, my darling, you were the one who wanted to come along.”
Roxanne planted her feet on the asphalt. They’d just landed after a quick, one-hour flight from Amsterdam to Nice, France. Arthur and Gen had already been waiting in the terminal for them because they’d arrived from Paris, which was closer. She said, “I am not getting into that whirring death trap. Why didn’t we just fly on the plane all the way to Monaco?”
“Monaco isn’t big enough for an airport,” Casimir said, taking her elbow and nudging her toward the helicopter.
“You are not fooling me with that. Lots of people go to Monaco all the time.”
“Monaco is not physically large enough for an airport,” Casimir corrected himself as they approached the whirlybird. “A runway would take up half the country. One flies into Nice and then takes a helicopter or a car to Monaco. The road is narrow and winds along the edges of cliffs. The helicopter is much faster and safer than driving in the dark.”
“Everywhere in Georgia could have a runway even if they don’t actually have one! Why would anyone live in a place too tiny for an airport?” she argued.
“Because Max was born there, I imagine. Come on. Quentin is going to think that we’re not grateful for him sending a chopper for us.”
“Gen!” Roxanne called back to where Countess Genevieve Finch-Hatten, Arthur’s wife, was walking with her husband. “You’re not getting on that overgrown bumblebee, are you?”
In the early-morning darkness, Gen shrugged, her tent-like black dress flowing over her pregnant tummy. “Seems okay to me.”
“These things crash all the time! They’re fundamentally unsafe!” Roxanne yelled, struggling a little but not too much because she just wanted someone to tell her that it would be okay.
Behind her, Gen turned to her husband, Arthur. “Is that true?”
Casimir took Rox’s hand in his large, warm one and told her, “I promise that it’s perfectly maintained and will not crash. It’s a ten-minute flight, and we’ll be right there at the heliport, minutes from the casino, and we can start asking people what’s going on with Max.”
From behind her, Roxanne heard Arthur tell Gen, “If it were unsafe, I wouldn’t let you near it. It’s perfectly fine as long as Maxence himself isn’t flying it. He’s terrible at piloting anything.”
Gen asked him, “You’ll make sure he isn’t flying the helicopter, then?”
Gen’s little bit of native Texas accent soothed Rox. Just anybody Southern or Western did, these days. Sometimes, she felt like a tiny Georgia peach tossed into the ocean and floating around from shore to shore.
“We’re here to find Max,” Arthur said to Gen. “If Max is flying that helicopter, then we’ve found him, and we’ll go right back to Paris. I do need to get back to Paris. I didn’t get what I went there for.”
“What’s that?” Roxanne turned and asked them.
“Art,” Arthur said, as Gen called back, “Cheese.”
They looked at each other.
When Roxanne turned back, the helicopter was right there.
It lurked.
It loomed.
It hulked in the predawn sky, its blades chopping the darkness. “Caz, no.”
Near her ear, Casimir whispered, “It’s a ten-minute flight, and we need to find Maxence. Please get on this helicopter.” He backed off, and his emerald green eyes, just visible in the cabin light from inside, implored her.
Fine. Just fine.
“If we die,” Roxanne said as she clambered over the rail and toward the seats, “I swear on Baby Jesus’s tiny, holy toes that I will haunt you in this life and the next and you will never have any peace throughout all eternity.”
“Deal,” Casimir said as he handed her into the helicopter.
Roxanne buckled her seat belt and yanked the strap until she couldn’t breathe and probably wasn’t digesting last night’s supper, either.
The whirring of the helicopter blades above them took on more intensity, and the engine howled.
She grabbed both a handle on the ceiling and Casimir’s hand and clung to them for dear life. She wasn’t so much praying as wordlessly screaming for God to get her out of this insanity alive.