Chapter 8: Diverted Flight Plan
The word hung in the sterile air of the cabin like a physical weight. Rerouted.
“Rerouted where?” Marcus demanded, his eyes fixed on Sarah’s panicked expression.
“Not Zurich,” Elena interjected, stepping between Sarah and Marcus as if trying to buffer the escalating tension. Her face was flushed, the sympathetic warmth completely replaced by stark anxiety. “They’re diverting us to a private airstrip in the Black Forest. A secondary facility. The captain just got the encrypted override code from Vance’s chief of security.”
Marcus felt his jaw tighten. A secondary airstrip in rural Germany meant they were stepping off the grid entirely. No customs, no official reception committee, and no accountability. Vance wasn’t meeting them; he was hiding them—and by extension, hiding Lily.
“Did the captain verify the authentication code?” Marcus asked sharply.
“Of course he did!” Sarah snapped, her voice rising slightly before she caught herself and lowered it back to a tense hiss. “It’s Vance’s primary encryption key. Nobody else has it. We have to follow flight deck protocols, Marcus. We are crew; you are security. Stay in your lane.”
“My lane is protecting that little girl,” Marcus said, pointing a finger toward Lily, who was watching them from her seat with wide, anxious eyes. She had put her mug down and was clutching her brown bunny again, her knuckles white. She couldn’t hear their words, but she could read the body language of panic clearly enough.
Marcus turned and walked back down the aisle toward Lily. He forced his face into a calm, reassuring mask, kneeling beside her seat once more.
“Everything okay, Marcus?” Lily asked softly, her lower lip trembling just a fraction.
“Everything’s fine, Lily,” Marcus lied smoothly, placing a reassuring hand on her arm. “We’re just going to land in a slightly different place than we planned. A nice quiet spot in the mountains before we meet your dad.”
“Is it the house with the trees?” she asked, her eyes searching his face for any sign of deceit.
May you like
“Yes,” Marcus said, holding her gaze. “Just like your dad described.”
Lily nodded, seemingly satisfied, and leaned back into the leather upholstery. But Marcus’s mind was racing. If Vance was rerouting the flight to an unrecorded airstrip, it meant things at their destination had gone sideways. Law enforcement or rival corporate agents must have closed in on the Zurich estate. They weren't flying to safety; they were flying into an ambush.
