Chapter 2 - Grounded
The massive Boeing seventy-seven touched down violently on the tarmac at Heathrow Airport, the wheels screeching against the wet pavement.
Danielle had ordered the pilots to declare a faux medical emergency, ensuring that her private plane was directed to a secluded, heavily guarded hangar.
Nobody was allowed off this aircraft until she had answers.
Her security chief, a towering man named Marcus, stood furiously outside the locked lavatory door with his weapon subtly drawn.
"Open the door, or I will take it off the hinges," Marcus growled, his knuckles white as he gripped the handle.
Danielle stood a few feet away, clutching baby Liam tightly to her chest while she waited for the boy to surrender.
The lock finally clicked open, revealing the senior flight attendant standing alone in the cramped space.
"Where is he?" Danielle demanded, pushing past the woman to stare at the empty bathroom.
The flight attendant offered a cold, defiant smile, refusing to speak a single word to the billionaire.
Marcus immediately noticed the maintenance access panel in the ceiling had been pushed aside, revealing the dark crawlspace above the cabin.
"He went into the ventilation shaft, but he cannot get off the plane without triggering the exterior alarms," Marcus reported quickly.
Danielle ordered her men to tear the aircraft apart, piece by piece if necessary, until the boy was found.
As she turned back toward her seat to calm her racing heart, her shoe kicked something heavy resting beneath the last row of economy seats.
It was the boy's worn canvas backpack, completely abandoned in his desperate rush to escape the guards.
Danielle knelt down and unzipped the main compartment, ignoring the complex physics textbooks and pulling out a small, locked metal box.
Using a heavy metal pen from her purse, she viciously pried the hinges apart until the lid snapped open.
Inside rested a tiny, faded hospital bracelet from fifteen years ago, bearing the name Ethan Whitaker.
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But what made Danielle's blood run completely cold was the signature on the attached transfer documents.
It was the unmistakable handwriting of her ex-husband, Richard, authorizing the removal of a supposedly dead infant.
