Chapter 6 - WHAT WAS UNDER SEAT 11A
The lead flight attendant arrived with the off-duty officer and another crew member.
Susan was told to keep her hands visible.
She began crying almost immediately.
Not the kind of crying that comes from shame.
The kind meant to introduce doubt.
“I have anxiety,” she said. “This is humiliating.”
Megan remained expressionless.
“So is stealing a crew badge.”
“I didn’t steal it.”
“Then explain it.”
Susan did not.
Instead she kept glancing at the area below Emma’s seat.
The off-duty officer noticed.
So did Megan.
So did Emma.
“There,” Emma said.
“She keeps looking there.”
The officer knelt and reached beneath seat 11A.
His hand came back with a zippered cosmetics pouch duct-taped beneath the metal frame.
The cabin gasped.
Susan closed her eyes.
Inside the pouch were:
two additional airport access stickers,
three credit cards with different names,
a folded stack of cash,
a small bottle of pills without a prescription label,
and a passport.
Not Susan Blake.
Not Sandra Bell.
Another woman entirely.
The lead flight attendant looked at Megan.
Megan looked sick.
“This isn’t random,” she said quietly.
I believed her.
Susan began shaking her head.
“I can explain.”
“No,” the officer said. “You can explain to the authorities when we land.”
The captain came over the intercom two minutes later with the careful tone people use when trying not to terrify two hundred strangers.
He said there was a “security matter” being handled in the front cabin and the flight would continue to Raleigh as scheduled.
No one complained.
Half the cabin had their phones out now, though discreetly.
May you like
The other half were pretending not to stare while staring continuously.
And my daughter, who should have been reading a library book beside the window, sat very still while a federal-level mess unfolded because she had noticed the wrong woman had the wrong badge.
