Chapter 3 - The Broken Seal
The first-class cabin was eerily quiet. The passengers seated there, mostly corporate executives and affluent leisure travelers, had been instructed to remain in their seats with their tray tables stowed and their headphones off. None of them dared make a sound as Sarah escorted Emma, Oliver, and me past row three and through the galley curtain that led to the forward service area and the flight deck door.
The woman from row eleven was seated on a metal jump seat near the primary exit door, her hands secured behind her back with heavy-duty white plastic zip-ties. Officer Davies stood beside her, his arms crossed over his chest, his gaze never leaving her.
On the stainless-steel prep counter of the galley, an array of items was laid out under the harsh LED lighting.
There was the leather badge holder Emma had found, containing the Homeland Security clearance. Beside it sat the woman’s oversized designer handbag, its contents thoroughly dumped and categorized. A high-end smartphone with a cracked screen, three separate lipsticks, a compact mirror, a wallet containing several credit cards, and—chillingly—four different boarding passes printed on thick airport cardstock, each bearing a different name.
"Mrs. Bennett," Officer Davies said as we stepped into the small space. His voice was warm, but his eyes were sharp. "Thank you for coming up. And Emma... you did something incredible today, kiddo. But I need to ask you a couple of very specific questions. Can you handle that?"
Emma pressed against my side, her hand gripping my denim jacket. She looked at the badges on the counter, then nodded. "I can."
"Take your time," I told her, kissing the top of her head. Oliver shifted in his carrier, letting out a small sigh as he drifted deeper into milk-drunk slumber. I prayed he would stay asleep; the tension in this cramped aluminum tube was thick enough to choke on.
Davies picked up the leather credential holder using a clean napkin to avoid smudging any latent fingerprints. "Emma, when you first reached row eleven, where exactly was this object?"
"She had it under her right leg," Emma said clearly. "She was leaning over toward the window, pretending to look outside, but her hand was shoved down between the cushion and the plastic wall of the plane. She was pushing it down. Hard."
"Did you see where she took it from?" Davies asked.
Emma shook her head. "No. But when she saw me looking, she pulled her hand back real fast and covered it with her coat. Then she told me to mind my own business. But when the plane started taking off, the floor tilted back, and the little card holder slid forward just an inch. I saw the gold eagle on the front."
Davies nodded slowly, then glanced at the silver-haired purser, whose name was Evelyn. "Just as we thought. She wasn't trying to hide it on herself. She was trying to ditch it on the aircraft so it couldn't be tied to her person if she got stopped at O'Hare."
"I told you, I found it!" the woman shouted from the jump seat, straining against the zip-ties. Her hair had come loose from its elegant clip, hanging in greasy strands across her face. "Some idiot dropped it by the gate! I picked it up! That's not a federal crime!"
"Shut your mouth, Brenda," Davies said without even turning to look at her.
The woman froze. The color drained from her cheeks so completely that her dark lipstick looked like a fresh wound.
"You recognize her?" I asked, my heart skipping a beat.
"Not personally," Davies replied, keeping his voice low so only Evelyn, Sarah, and I could hear. "But our dispatch in Denver just pinged the flight deck. About twenty minutes before our flight pushed back from the gate, a TSA supervisory officer was assaulted in the secure corridor behind the international terminal security checkpoint. Stunned with an illegal disguised taser, dragged into a utility closet, and stripped of his master clearance badge, his emergency radio, and his security bypass lanyard."
A cold shudder ran through my entire body. I pulled Emma closer, my fingernails digging into the fabric of her sleeve. *Assaulted.* This woman had brutally attacked a federal officer in an airport terminal, walked through security bypass zones, and then had the audacity to sit in my daughter's seat and lecture me about parenting.
"Why would she do that?" I whispered. "If she had a ticket, why steal a security badge?"
"Because," Davies said, picking up one of the four paper boarding passes on the counter, "she didn't have a ticket. Not a real one. The name she used to board this plane—the seat she claimed was double-booked—belonged to a woman named Karen Miller who cancelled her reservation forty minutes before departure. Our friend here," he gestured toward the captive, "used the stolen supervisor badge to access the gate agent’s terminal while the agent was assisting an elderly passenger in a wheelchair. She printed a boarding reprint under the cancelled name, overrode the system lockout, and walked onto this plane just as the jet bridge doors were closing."
"She’s a ghost," Evelyn added grimly. "If this plane had landed in Chicago without anyone noticing, she would have walked off, bypassed customs and domestic arrivals, used that same master badge to exit through a ground crew service door directly onto the tarmac or the outer perimeter roads, and vanished."
"Vanished from what?" Emma asked innocently.
Davies looked down at my daughter, a mixture of admiration and sorrow in his eyes. "From the United States Marshals Service, Emma. She’s been running for six months."
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Suddenly, Brenda let out a harsh, bitter laugh that echoed off the stainless steel panels of the galley. "You think you're so smart, Davies? You think this ends at O'Hare? You have no idea what you walked into. None of you do."
***
