Chapter 1

The hand came down like a steel trap.

Aya felt the fingers dig through the thin knit of her lilac cardigan, into the soft flesh of her left shoulder, and haul. Her body jerked sideways in the seat, her head snapping off the warm, solid surface it had been resting on. The choked sound that left her throat was half gasp, half cry, and her eyes flew open to find a wall of charcoal-gray suit and a black earpiece hovering over her.

"Boss, shall we remove her?"

The voice was urgent, a harsh whisper that cut through the pressurized hum of the cabin. The man attached to the hand — broad, towering, with a buzz cut and small, close-set gray eyes — was already leaning into the row, his weight behind the pull. He was going to drag her out of the seat like a piece of luggage.

Aya's right hand flew up, fingers clamping around his thick wrist. It was instinct, a pathetic, feeble resistance against a man who could have snapped her arm without noticing. Her shoulder screamed. Her neck ached from the jerk. Every muscle in her body, already strung tight from forty-eight hours without sleep, burned with a fresh, sharp fire.

The cabin around them had gone silent.

She could feel it, that sudden vacuum of sound. The murmurs, the clink of cups, the rustle of magazines — all of it died in the space of a heartbeat. She was aware of the weight of dozens of eyes on her back, on her hands, on the scene unfolding in the aisle. They were all watching, waiting, bracing.

Waiting to see what the man in the window seat would do.

She hadn't looked at him. Not once, not since she'd stumbled down the aisle with her worn denim tote, apologizing to the air as she'd tripped over a carry-on strap. She'd seen only a broad shoulder in a midnight-black suit, an armrest, a window shade half-lowered against the dusk. She'd mumbled an apology, stowed her bag, buckled in, and let her eyes close before the plane had even finished climbing.

She was a pediatric nurse at an underfunded clinic in the city. She'd been on shift for two days straight, covering for a colleague whose father had died, because the clinic was three nurses short and the administrator had begged her. She hadn't slept. She hadn't eaten anything but a vending-machine granola bar. Her mother, two hundred miles away in the old family home, was in the ICU with a heart that was failing and a doctor who had stopped using the word "recover."

Aya had spent her last dirham on the cheapest ticket she could find. There had been no time to choose a seat. There had been no time for anything.

Her head had hit the stranger's shoulder somewhere over the clouds, and she had been gone.

Now she was being hauled out of her seat by a guard who looked like he could break her in half, and the man she'd been sleeping on was going to watch it happen. She knew the type. They all knew the type.

The guard's grip tightened. He gave another sharp pull, and Aya's body came up a few inches, her spine protesting, a tear of pain glistening at her lash line.

Then she saw it.