Chapter 7 - WHY SUSAN TOOK MY DAUGHTER’S SEAT
Once Susan understood she was no longer bluffing her way out, the story changed again.
The tears stopped.
The hostility came back.
But now it had teeth.
“I wasn’t after the kid,” she muttered.
Nobody had said she was.
That was telling.
Megan crossed her arms.
“Then why take her seat?”
Susan looked away.
The off-duty officer answered for her.
“Because that pouch was hidden there.”
Emma stared.
Susan had boarded before us, settled into 11A, and planted the pouch beneath the seat frame where she thought she could recover it mid-flight or keep it under control until landing.
When Emma arrived holding the boarding pass for that exact window seat, Susan did the only thing she could do quickly—she tried to bully a child out of the location.
Everything rude after that had been strategy disguised as personality.
The kicked backpack.
The trapped armrest.
The spread-out coat.
The bag crushed over the badge.
She had not just been entitled.
She had been protecting a stash.
Megan asked the obvious question.
“How did you get the pouch on the aircraft?”
Susan said nothing.
The second crew member answered from the galley.
“If she had Tara’s airport badge, she could’ve moved through secure areas without getting screened the same way passengers do.”
Megan looked disgusted.
“And boarded under a purchased passenger name.”
Susan muttered:
“You don’t understand.”
This time I spoke.
“Then help us.”
She looked at Oliver sleeping against my chest.
Then at Emma.
Then at the off-duty officer.
And maybe she realized there was no angle left.
“They were going to arrest me in Milwaukee,” she said.
“That is not our problem,” Megan replied.
“I needed to get to Raleigh.”
“For what?”
Susan pressed her lips together.
Then:
“To meet someone.”
The off-duty officer’s expression didn’t change.
“But you needed three names and a stolen crew badge to do it?”
She said nothing.
May you like
That silence told us enough.
Whatever waited in Raleigh, it was not an innocent explanation.
