Chapter 9 - THE RABBIT IN THE LIGHT
The cabin went deathly still once again.
Vincent slowly lowered his head, his dark eyes shifting from Frankie’s trembling face down to where Maya lay sleeping peacefully in the front row cream seat.
Maya was curled on her side, her thumb tucked into her mouth, her tiny hands holding the threadbare, old stuffed rabbit tightly against her pale pink dress.
The rabbit was old, its brown fake fur worn thin at the seams, its stuffing lumpy from years of being squeezed, washed, and dragged across bedroom floors. One of its felt ears had been torn off long ago and reattached with rough, uneven pink thread.
Vincent’s gaze locked onto the stuffed rabbit.
He stepped away from Frankie, leaving Marco to pin the struggling traitor against the wood paneling. Vincent walked slowly over to the front seat where the three-year-old girl lay asleep.
He lowered his massive frame, kneeling down on the carpet beside Maya’s seat. He reached out his right hand—the hand covered in dark tattoos and heavy steel—and gently touched the threadbare fabric of the stuffed rabbit’s belly.
He didn't pull it away from the sleeping child. He simply pressed his thick fingers gently into the worn cotton stuffing.
Deep inside the rabbit’s chest, buried beneath layers of old polyfill foam, his fingertips hit something hard, cold, and rigid.
It wasn't a toy speaker. It wasn't a plastic rattle.
It was a solid, rectangular object made of heavy metal, wrapped in thick plastic tape.
Vincent slowly lifted his hand back, looking over his shoulder at Leah.
Leah was watching him. She didn't look surprised. A single, silent tear finally slipped down her pale cheek, tracking through the fine dust of the daylight streaming through the oval window.
"She put it inside Barnaby," Leah whispered softly. "The night before she disappeared. She told Maya never to let anyone take Barnaby away, no matter what."
Vincent stood up slowly.
He looked at the tiny black disc still resting in his pocket, then at the stuffed rabbit in the sleeping child’s arms, and finally at the traitor pinned against the bulkhead wall.
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The mystery was no longer a mystery. It was an active, high-altitude warzone occurring at thirty-five thousand feet inside a luxury commercial aircraft. The black disc in Baby Luca’s blanket hadn't been planted to hurt the baby; it had been planted as a short-range tracking beacon, pinpointing the exact location of the aircraft and the cabin where Sarah Carter’s daughters were traveling with the key to an empire.
And Frankie had been broadcasting their location since they took off from Teterboro.
