Chapter 8 - TARA KEENE
During the remaining hour of the flight, I learned more than I ever wanted to know about airport identities.
Tara Keene, the woman on the stolen badge, had been found disoriented in a restroom before boarding. Not unconscious, but sick enough to miss the flight. Her crew bag was intact. Her badge was not.
Megan suspected the pills in Susan’s pouch would eventually explain that.
Tara had apparently reported the missing badge, but by then Susan had already used it.
The second badge—Sandra Bell, SkyBridge Catering—was worse in a different way.
It showed Susan’s real face attached to a legitimate airport vendor credential belonging to a woman who had been removed from contracting months earlier.
Megan recognized the company name.
“That badge should have been deactivated.”
The lead flight attendant said:
“Unless she kept it.”
“Or copied it,” the officer added.
Three names.
Two airport identities.
One stolen crew badge.
A hidden pouch.
And my daughter at the center of the unraveling because Susan had assumed children could be shoved aside like luggage.
At one point Megan crouched beside Emma.
“You okay?”
Emma nodded.
“You were very brave.”
Emma thought about that.
Then said:
“I was mostly annoyed.”
The man across the aisle laughed out loud for the first time all flight.
Even Megan smiled.
That broke something in me a little—not from fear, but relief.
May you like
Because I had spent the first fifteen minutes of the incident worrying whether Emma was frightened.
Instead, Emma had been busy solving it.
