In the Likely Event Read Online Rebecca Yarros

Categories Genre: Contemporary Tags Authors: Rebecca Yarros Advertisement1

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I stared out over the crowd of waiting people and shook my head.

“I’m sorry, but we can’t wait.”

“I understand.” It was on the tip of my tongue to turn him down, to stay and do what I could for as long as I could, but the look on Nate’s face flashed across my mind.

I won’t be able to think, to focus, to walk so much as twelve feet away from you if I don’t know you’re headed to safety.

He’d spent the last eleven days risking his life to protect me.

Maybe I’d failed to bring Serena home, to help her interpreter, to help . . . any of these people. But I could make it so Nate wouldn’t fail.

“Okay.” I nodded, then took Taj’s visa and gave it to the embassy officer at the station next to me. Pulling my backpack on, I looked up at the man Nate had sent for me. The man he’d entrusted me to. “I’m ready.”

I wasn’t, but I would go. I would do it for Nate.

Because he loved me. Because he’d carried my ring for three years. Because he’d pulled me from that plane. Because I hadn’t held on to him when I should have, and I’d regretted that choice ever since.

I followed the nameless man through the airport and didn’t look away from the suffering, the fear etched into every face. I bore witness, letting each person’s expression touch me, mark me, because Serena wasn’t here to do so.

“I don’t suppose that if I wanted to give my seat to someone else, you’d let me do that?” I asked as he led me out onto the tarmac.

“I promised your man I’d tie you into the seat myself if that’s what it took to get you on the plane.” A corner of his mouth rose. “And you’ll find I’m not quite as moralistic as he is. I’ll do it.”

We walked across the scalding-hot concrete, and I looked through the shimmering waves of heat at the mountains I’d thought were so beautiful when we’d landed here eleven days ago.

Eleven days was all it had taken for my world to be shaken like a snow globe. Now all I could do was sit back and watch to see where the flurries landed and hope I recognized the landscape.

We walked silently toward a tall metal fence covered with a wind guard, and I wished like hell I’d developed Nate’s incredible skill of compartmentalizing. Instead, I felt an acute sense of loss with every step I took away from my sister, from Nate. How could I leave the two people I loved most in the world?

The man nodded to a guard, who swung open the left side of a massive gate to allow us passage.

An unmarked silver plane waited beyond the fence.

“It’s an adapted Hercules,” the man explained to me, even though I hadn’t asked.

“It’s lovely,” I answered, unsure of what to say.

He laughed. “You certainly are a politician, aren’t you?”

“Not really.” Even when I had been, I’d done it for all the wrong reasons.

He led me up the stairs and into the plane, which had been outfitted with not only air-conditioning but also a series of seats, three on each side, stretching back for a dozen rows. Almost every seat was already full.

“You’re there.” He pointed to the front row on the right side of the plane, where two seats remained open.

“Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it.” His brows lifted. “And I mean that. Don’t mention it.”

I nodded. I wasn’t so naive that I didn’t understand the repeated use of company when Nate told me about the flight.

The window seat was open, so I took it, just to prove to myself that I could. I’d flown all over this country looking out the window of a Blackhawk helicopter. Surely I could make it out of here sitting at the window.

I fit the seat belt over my hips and tried not to think about the fact that Nate and Serena were still out there. But there was an empty seat . . .

My heart screamed with longing. I’d been on too many planes with an empty seat over the last four years, constantly waiting for Nate to appear.

This time I knew there was no chance of that, and it somehow hurt even worse.

Unzipping my backpack for my headphones, I blinked at the book that had been shoved inside. It was Nate’s copy of The Color Purple, the one he’d been reading when I first arrived. I clutched the book to my chest and tried my best to smother a sob as someone closed the door on the right.

A minute or two later, the plane began to roll forward slowly, and my throat closed so tight it was hard to breathe.

“Forgive me,” I whispered, but I wasn’t sure who I was begging. Nate? Serena? Everyone I’d left behind who didn’t have a seat on a secret plane?


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