Chapter 10 - THE PHONE INSIDE THE EMPTY PLANE
The cabin of Flight 718 should have been full.
Instead, every seat was empty.
Dinner trays remained locked inside the carts. Blankets lay folded across first-class seats. A child’s blue jacket hung from an armrest as though its owner had disappeared between one breath and the next.
Mara Quinn stepped into the aisle with Jonah Reed behind her.
“The passengers boarded fourteen minutes ago,” Jonah said. “The cameras confirm it.”
“Then where are they?”
Before Jonah could answer, a phone began ringing somewhere near the rear of the aircraft.
Mara followed the sound to seat 26A.
A black phone rested against the window. No number appeared on the screen.
She answered.
For several seconds, she heard only breathing.
Then a man whispered, “Mara?”
Her knees almost failed her.
Only one person had ever said her name that way.
“Elias?”
Her brother had been declared dead eighteen months earlier.
“Listen carefully,” Elias said. “The plane was never meant to leave.”
“Where are you?”
“You have eleven minutes before the airport locks itself.”
Mara glanced toward Jonah.
“What happens in eleven minutes?”
“Every door will open for the wrong people and close for everyone else.”
A metallic announcement echoed through the cabin.
It used Mara’s voice.
“Evacuate all security personnel from Customs Hall C.”
Mara had never recorded those words.
Elias spoke again, faster now.
“Do not let Lena take the children into that hall.”
The call ended.
Jonah checked the airport map.
Lena and the two children had disappeared from the holding room six minutes earlier.
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Their last known location was Customs Hall C.
Then every light inside the aircraft went out.
