to speak to me, the flush on my face as I apologized for disturbing her. “Should we storm the flight deck; should we stay here…” The doctor’s voice is whiny, a cruel mimic of our machinations. Unease darts through me. “Just do it. She’s going to take us down anyway.”
“Easy for you to say,” Jamie Crawford shouts across the seats. “You didn’t see the suicide vest she’s wearing. It’s rammed with explosives.”
The doctor throws back her head and laughs. The sound is manic, and slowly the truth dawns on me. I’ve been reassured by the presence of a doctor on the plane. I thought how she’ll help us save people, how she’ll protect the injured and do her best with the dying.
“Have you any idea how hard it is to get explosives on to an aircraft?” she continues.
I look at my watch. Two hours until our scheduled arrival in Sydney. In the cabin, everyone’s looking at the doctor, hoping for a plan, for something that will save us.
“It’s fake, you idiots,” she says. “We don’t have explosives—it’s just wire and plastic bags. There is no bomb.”
We don’t have explosives.
She’s one of them.
There’s no time to think about what that means—about who else might still be sitting among us, hiding the truth.
Missouri’s bomb is a fake.
If we can get into the flight deck, we can overpower her, and Cesca can take us safely down.
We still have a chance.
I can still keep my promise to Sophia.
FORTY-TWO
5 A.M. | ADAM
I’ve fucked up. Again. Just when it didn’t seem possible that things could get any worse, that I could do any more damage to my family—to myself—than I’ve already done, I fuck up even worse.
“Is Becca coming back?” Sophia’s sitting up, her voice steadier now. She’s far from her usual self, but who could be themselves, down here?
“No, pumpkin, I don’t think she’ll be back.” Shit, shit, shit. I’m cursing myself for shooting my mouth off. I wanted to frighten Becca, sure. I wanted to show her she’d be easy to find so she’d come to her senses and let us out. And it felt good, that I was back on top of my game, doing my job, the way it felt before my head was full of debt and my failing marriage. I caught a glimpse of the old me, and I let my mouth run off, and now I’ve made it worse…far, far worse.
I wonder where she’s run to. She might have a car, parked out of sight. She told us she didn’t drive, but she told us a lot of things. I picture her getting home, letting herself into her parents’ house, and creeping up the stairs. Lying on top of the covers, fully clothed, waiting for her pulse to subside.
Maybe she’s not such a kid as I think. Maybe she doesn’t live at home. Tesco could have been a holiday job, a temporary fix—a cover story even. I imagine her in her own place—some squalid room in a shared house—throwing meager possessions into a rucksack. Where will she go next? Where do these people go, these professional protestors? I remember reading about some corporate bigwig so incensed by the European referendum that he jacked it all in and moved down to London. Sold all his possessions, sofa-surfed with friends, and spent the next three years shouting into a megaphone outside the Houses of Parliament.
I don’t understand it. I get that people feel passionate about certain causes, that they want to see justice done—I wouldn’t be a police officer if I didn’t care about putting things right. But these people dedicate their lives to their beliefs; they go to prison for them.
The hijackers on Mina’s plane must know they’re going to die. They’re taking hundreds of people with them, and presumably they’re okay with that—a small battle lost in the midst of a war. I can’t imagine what I could ever feel so passionately about.
Yes, I can.
Sophia.
I would fight for Sophia. I will fight for her.
But how? I’ve pulled at my cuffs so hard, there’s no skin left around my wrists, and the pipe on the wall isn’t budging. If I could get myself free, I could break down the door at the top of the steps, it would be easy…
A news bulletin breaks into the playlist, and I feel Sophia tense, as I do the same. Please, I beg silently. Don’t let it be this way that she hears she’s lost her mother.