Hostage by Clare Mackintosh

TWENTY-THREE

8 HOURS FROM SYDNEY | MINA

There’s a collective stirring as Cesca follows me into the cabin, the way the atmosphere in the office changes when the boss walks in. I hear her saying hello, and I hope you’re enjoying the flight, and conditions are looking good—we might even get in early, and my head is heavy with guilt. I stop to let a passenger pass, and Cesca does the same, and for a second, we stand side by side, and I see her face on the edge of my vision. Older than me but still young, with high cheekbones and cropped, dark hair with a heavy fringe that sweeps across her eyes.

As the passenger passes, I catch a whiff of sweat and anxiety and too long in one place. It’s the Middle Eastern man from 6J, his hands gripping the back of each seat he passes, as though he’s climbing stairs. He doesn’t respond to Cesca’s greeting, continuing through the curtain. My pulse quickens. Is it him? He disappears into the galley, and I want to follow him, but we’re already at 4H, where Finley’s watching a Pixar movie. He takes off his headset.

“Did you fix them?”

I’m momentarily confused, then I remember the tangle of wires in my pocket. They seem to belong to another time entirely: a time when I was doing my job, and we were heading for Sydney, and no one was threatening my daughter.

“I’ll do it, I promise. I just—” I break off, think of all the times Sophia wants me to do something and I preface my answer the same way. I just need to phone work… I just need to finish this. Okay, I’ll play with you; I just need to do something else first. Why didn’t I just say yes?

“I hear you want to be a pilot?” Cesca crouches by his seat. Finley stares at her, confused, and beside him—finally conscious—his mother takes off her headphones. I leave before my lie is exposed, and because if I’m going to follow through with this—and I am, I am, because Sophia—I have to do it now. Blood roars in my ears, fusing with the noise of the plane into something unbearable, something that pushes at the insides of my skull hard enough to break through. I pull back the curtain between the cabin and the galley and almost cry out as I collide with the Middle Eastern man on his way back to his seat. He looks as scared as I am, mumbling an apology, then clawing his way back, one seat at a time.

Jamie Crawford and his wife are back in their seats; the Talbots and baby Lachlan are all asleep. I don’t see the journalist Derek Trespass or Jason Poke, and although I crane my neck to see the seats at the back, I can’t tell if they’re empty or if their occupants are lying down. Who is missing? Who is the hijacker?

Cesca is standing up. She’s still talking to the boy and his mother, and I wonder what they’re saying to her, if she knows that I lied and is wondering why. In the next few minutes—the next few seconds, perhaps—she’ll say she’d better get back and tell them to enjoy the rest of the flight. Maybe she’ll invite the boy to visit the flight deck when we land, to sit in the captain’s seat and try on her hat. He’ll look forward to it, think of the people he’ll show the photo to. Maybe he really will think about being a pilot, start dreaming of soaring above the clouds, of being in uniform, striding through the airport on his way to California, Mexico, Hong Kong, the way I once dreamed.

Guilt brings tears to my eyes. They spill onto my cheeks, hot and out of control, and I look for the lock on the door of the bathroom by the flight deck, wanting it to be vacant, wanting it all to be a terrible mistake. Let it be a training exercise, let it be a YouTube stunt. Let me be fired, pilloried, vilified forevermore as the woman who was ready to sacrifice hundreds of people to save her own child. Let it be anything, but please don’t let it be real.

The sign reads ENGAGED.

I walk toward it. My movements feel stilted, like the graphics of a computer game, every muscle tensed as though waiting for a bullet. I am inches away from whoever is in there, and I try to imagine what they’re doing, what they’re thinking. Do they have a weapon? Explosives? Sweat trickles down my spine, my shirt clinging to my skin as I turn.

The door is at right angles to the flight deck. I punch in the code, keeping my head low because surely it’s written all over my face, and as the beep of the door release sounds, I hear a click behind me. The bathroom door is unlocked.

I feel the weight of eyes on my neck, and I fight to keep a neutral expression on my face as I push open the door to the flight deck. Mike doesn’t turn around; he’s looking at a paper, doing the crossword. Mike, who may be a father, a brother, a husband. Who shook hands with all the crew, smiled for the cameras.

Mike, who is unlikely to survive the next few minutes.

I step to the side. Fix Sophia’s face in my mind as I commit the most terrible act I have ever done. Mike turns. His smile dies before it fully forms, features reflecting first confusion and then dismay, as he looks from me to the man with no manners, the man with the face full of angles, the man playing computer games. The door closes, and for that moment, only three people in the world know that Flight 79 has been hijacked.

I have followed my instructions to the letter. My husband and daughter are safe.

Everyone on this plane is in danger.