Riley gulped as he watched the man pull his knife. The thing resembled its owner; huge and intimidating and, somehow considering it was an inanimate object, vaguely insane. Riley couldn’t take his eyes off it; the way Reese twisted it in his hands and the sharp edge that glistened in the dim light of the cabin.
“I didn’t do that.” There was a deep set sincerity to the words which Riley accentuated with a slow shake of the head. Not that he was expecting the blood hound to listen to him or even care. All bounty hunters wanted was the money; they didn’t give a damn about right, wrong or justice. “But I gather that a rational, civilized conversation isn’t an option you’d consider…” Riley muttered.
The bounty hunter charged him, a blur of long hair and oversized muscles and Riley gave himself over to the age old flight or fight conundrum. He was no fighter, no skilled hero; hell he’d spent more time around computers than even in the vicinity of gyms, but when someone came rushing at him with a knife, he wasn’t about to stay still and invite them to stab him. Knowing that the only things he had going for him were his speed and his height – or lack thereof – he waited until the last moment and then dropped down low, the bounty hunter’s hand sailing through the air right where the scruff of his neck would have been. Riley didn’t try to barrel the man out of the way – that would be a pointless endeavour if he ever knew one – and instead settled for making himself as small as possible and squeezing his way out between the man’s leg and the side of the cabin wall.
Once at Reese’s back, Riley made a mad dash through the attendance storage area of the plane and into First Class, his feet propelling him forward with speed he didn’t know he had.