Chapter 193

I wake up a few hours later, my body tensing when I feel the plane shift, angling…downward? I guess? My breath hitches and I whip my head up to look at Frankie, who is already looking down at me.

“Easy, kid,” he murmurs, softly stroking my back. “Landing, not crashing. Nothing to worry about.”

“How do you know the difference?” I whisper, still kind of scared.

“Hmm,” he says, tilting his head up to consider it – an act which gives me no comfort. I gasp and then smack him on his chest when he starts laughing. “Honestly, Bambs! Its fine! Listen for the landing gear – it’s going to extend soon. That’s how you know we’re really close.”

“Well, how do you know we’re kind of close?” I whisper.

“Because,” he says, dropping another kiss to the top of my head like he can’t help it as he continues to stroke my back, “it’s been a little over seven hours. It would be very bad luck to crash now when we’re so close to our destination.”

I nod a little, bringing a hand up to rub at my eyes a little as I yawn, glancing down towards my feet which – as the man predicted – are freezing. “Where even is our destination?” I murmur, doing my best to pull my legs closer in towards my body but failing when I feel a twinge in my sore, tight muscles.

“Oh, let me just surprise you,” Frankie says, and I look up to see him grinning. “You haven’t asked this long – why ask now?”

“I only didn’t ask because you were so busy –“

“Come on, Bambs,” he says with a smirk. “Let’s see if you can guess.”

I twist my mouth to the side. “Is it at least warm?”

“Yeah,” he says, smirking at me. “It’s warm.”

“Oh, thank god,” I say on a sigh. And then, even as I hate to do it, I push myself up and away from Frankie’s warm body, starting to stretch myself in preparation for landing.

Landing the plane is, of course, terrifying. But Frankie holds my hand through it, laughing at me a little even as I stare at him like he’s crazy – because honestly, everything in this stupid cargo plane is shaking – and it’s so loud – and I did not run this far just to die in a big fireball of jet fuel –

But then it’s over, and the plane slows and pulls closer to…I don’t know, wherever it’s going. And then it stops.

“What happens now?” I ask, my hand tight in Frankie’s, staring at him.

“Now we are…very sneaky,” he says with a little grimace. “We’re sort of playing this part by ear.”

“What!?”

“Just kidding!” he says, giving me a broad grin. “I’ve got it all planned out.”

I lean closer to him, inspecting the too-stretched smile. “Oh my god, you’re lying,” I whisper. “We totally are playing this by ear!”

“Adventure, kid!” he says, giving me a wink and pulling me close. “Come on, lets get you those shoes before they open the door.”

Twenty minutes later, I do indeed have a new pair of sneakers – without any socks, though, which I hate – and Frankie and I are crouched behind a pallet of boxes with the backpack on Frankie’s back, me carrying nothing. Suddenly the door at the back cracks open, light shining through, and we duck lower. The back hatch of the plane swings open, a ramp wheeling up to it so that packages can start to be unloaded.

Frankie turns to me, perfectly silent, and raises a single finger to his lips – reminding me again, a bit needlessly, to keep quiet.

I nod to him, my hood up over my bright hair, giving him my sincere promise.

Over the next half an hour, Frankie leads, and I follow close behind, doing my best to simply follow his instructions and not interfere with his plans. He, after all, is the expert.

We stay crouched behind the pallet for a long time while Frankie gets the lay of the land, but eventually his plan becomes clear to me. There are only three guys loading the truck on the other end of the ramp, and they’re only taking some of the stuff that came in from Orlando – the fancy stuff, mostly, like the pallet of shoes from which we stole.

Quietly, I watch Frankie watch the men and the truck, putting together that his next move is to get on that truck as quickly and quietly as possible, completely unseen.

Finally, he spots his chance and gives me a single glance over his shoulder.

But I’m already ready.

As soon as the third guy passes us, heading deeper into the plane for another pallet of goods, Frankie moves. With one of my hands clasped tightly in his, we silently make our way forward across the ramp and into the back of the truck, where Frankie pulls me forward and then hauls me – a little roughly for speed – back behind another of the pallets.

He grabs me to him, putting a hand over my mouth – again, needlessly – and sinks down low with my back to his front, me crouched between his knees.

“Stay very still, and very quiet,” he murmurs. “If we’re lucky…we got in unseen.”

My heart pounds, my breath coming quick against Frankie’s hand, but I do as he instructs, staying perfectly still, half of me wondering…what the hell happens if we were seen.

I mean, we just smuggled ourselves into Europe without passports – how…how does he imagine this is going to work!?

But somehow, Frankie’s incredibly simple – probably reckless – plan does work. The three men continue to load the truck with the rest of the pallets in their shipment and then pull down the door in the back, latching it shut and leaving the pair of us in complete darkness.

Frankie exhales in relief, taking his hand from my mouth, his whole body relaxing.

“Is that it?” I ask, turning towards him as much as I can, my voice barely audible. “Are we…are we safe?”

“Bambs, we’re not even out of the airport yet,” he says, laughing a little and shaking his head – something I can only see by the light filtering in from some of the air vents at the top of the truck. “We have…a lot of ways to still get caught from here on out.”

“What!?”

“I mean, just kidding,” he says, his voice pretending to be light. “We’re fine! Just…stay very still and quiet for…for the fun of it…”

“Oh my god, Frankie,” I sigh, slumping back against him and letting him fold his arms around me again as he laughs quietly. “Just…tell me what to do.”

“Very wise choice, Bambina,” he murmurs, resting his cheek against my head.

It takes…hours. Hours of stop-and-go movement that I can only imagine the reasons for. Surely, there were checkpoints getting out of the airport and probably – I don’t know – customs?? At one point the back door again rolls open and there are footsteps inside of the truck, as well as murmured voices in a language I don’t understand. Frankie and I both go incredibly still at that, each of us trying to not even breathe, though I can feel his heart pounding against my back.

But not even that lasts long before the door is closed again and the truck drives off.

I can tell, though, when we get onto more open roads – both by the steady driving of the truck and by Frankie’s increased relaxation. “I think…I think we’re in the clear, Bambs,” he whispers to me at one point, falling back on his butt and leaning against the wall, releasing me from his arms.

I turn to him, studying the relief on his face. “Do I…want to know how precarious and dangerous that was?”

“No, babe,” he says, laughing a little and shaking his head. “You do not. Just…count your blessings that we are incredibly lucky that border customs were feeling lazy toady.”

“Seriously?” I say, my eyes going wide. “Frank, what were we going to do if –“

“It doesn’t matter,” he says, spreading his hands out with a smile. “We would have…figured it out. But we didn’t have to. Now we just…figure out the next part.”

I stare at him for a moment, a little appalled at the nonchalant way that he moves through the world, but then I laugh a little and shake my head, taking a deep breath. Because he’s right – even if it was luck that got us through…

We’re through now.

But…I mean. What happens next?

“Frank,” I whisper, turning to him with a frown. “When the hell do we get out of this truck?”

“Soon, I think,” he says with a frown. “We wait for cobblestones. And then…we jump.”

“Jump!?” I gasp, looking at him, appalled.