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Tye was back in the plane’s cockpit with Jonah bumping along the runway as she took them up. Soon Guatemala’s lush landscape was dwindling to a green smear through the windows.
    â€˜Looks so peaceful from the air, doesn’t it?’ said Jonah, looking down over the hills and inlets of Puerto Barrios.
    â€˜I guess.’ Tye let her mind drift back to her smuggling days there, when
nothing
was peaceful. No big funding and clever friends to fall back on when she was thirteen. Just her and a boy.
    A boy who’d promised her the world, then brought it crashing down around her ears.
    She glanced across at Jonah as she levelled out the plane. What would
this
boy wind up doing? It felt so weird, there just being the two of them on board. And what was weirder, now she actually had the time and space to talk to him in private, she couldn’t think of a thing to say.
    â€˜So have you often come up against armed guards trying to fill your back full of bullets?’ asked Jonah conversationally.
    â€˜Is that, like, a line?’ she asked, deadpan. He grinned and so did she, but she caught the anxiety in his eyes. ‘Yeah, I have, a couple of times. And yeah, itnever stops being scary as hell.’
    â€˜But still you do what Coldhardt says.’
    â€˜What else am I going to do?’ She shot him a look. ‘Anyway, you can’t be complaining about our latest assignment: Go back to the swanky new base in New Mexico and start mucking about with your precious computers –’
    â€˜Hey! I’m sorting out the computer hub, thank you, the heart of Coldhardt’s –’
    â€˜â€“
mucking about
with your precious computers in between lounging and doing nothing. Apart from fixing me drinks and food.’
    â€˜Oh yeah?’
    â€˜Yeah! Coldhardt’s not getting a cook in till next month!’
    â€˜Well, it’s lucky I make a mean Pot Noodle, then.’ Jonah smiled. ‘OK, I admit it – we didn’t pull the shortest straw. I’m in no hurry to meet this Kabacra guy with the others. Saw his picture in the containment vessel, and I’d rather look at Patch’s bum anyday.’
    â€˜Oh yes?’ She arched an eyebrow. ‘Something you want to tell me?’
    He smiled, then blushed just slightly. ‘Lots,’ he said.
    Tye’s mouth went dry for a moment. ‘Well,’ she said briskly, ‘I’m supposed to be teaching you to fly this thing. Not that you really need me. You’re getting good.’
    Jonah grimaced. ‘Can’t drive a car to save my life but I’m OK in a plane. My life’s turned totally mental.’
    She put the plane on to autopilot. ‘But you’re happier than when you were in prison, right? All alone, no family, no –’
    â€˜Of course I am. With you and the guys, it feels like …’ He trailed off, self-conscious. ‘Suppose I’d be even happier without the armed guards, the bullets and all that.’
    â€˜Well, I guess we’d all like to make as good a living singing carols in old people’s homes and selling cookies door to door,’ said Tye. ‘But think how quick you’d get bored. Think how ordinary people must have it, doing the same dull stuff day after day.’
    â€˜I wouldn’t mind taking a holiday to Dullsville now and then.’
    â€˜Wise up, Jonah,’ she said, not unkindly, as she thought about her time running contraband between the Caribbean islands. ‘There’s a price on anything worth having.’
    â€˜Uh-huh.’ He looked out of the cabin window, lost in thought. Then he got out of the co-pilot’s seat. ‘So I suppose we should get on with the lesson. Can I take over here?’
    â€˜Go right ahead,’ she told him, rising to take his place. ‘You have control.’
    He smiled ruefully back at her. ‘I wish.’
    Coldhardt’s newly acquired base was a huge ranch in