Missing in Flight

CHAPTER ONE MAKAYLA

CHAPTER ONE

M AKAYLA

Present

The weight of her head bobbing to the side jars Makayla awake. The cabin is dark. She tilts her head to stretch her neck, suddenly aware of the sharp ache in her bladder. She’s still wearing her wrap, but when she looks down, Liam is no longer against her chest. Panic rises to her throat. Her gaze snaps to the bassinet against the bulkhead wall, and she remembers laying Liam down before drifting off to sleep.

She leans forward and exhales, seeing the outline of his sleeping form. He’s hardly moved since she last checked on him. She sinks against her seat, still in its upright position, and unbuckles her seat belt.

A glance at her phone tells her there’s nearly five hours to go. She bites her lip as she looks at Liam. There’s no way she can hold it that long.

I should’ve gone before we boarded. Sitting forward, she considers putting Liam back into the wrap and taking him with her to the lavatory. His pacifier lies beside him. She can’t imagine getting him back to sleep after waking him with the fluorescent lavatory lights and loud suction of the toilet flushing. Just yesterday, after she’d finally gotten Liam to sleep by taking him for a stroller walk along the downtown Anchorage harbor, a tugboat blared its horn and woke him, and she had to deal with his screaming for the next twenty minutes. She hates to disturb him while he’s adjusting to the time change in New York. Waking him now might even undo his new sleep pattern. If he sleeps through the rest of the flight, he’ll be back on his New York schedule.

Makayla leans into the aisle and looks around the cabin, which is quiet aside from the drone of the engines. The few passengers around her are asleep, except for the college-aged girl across the aisle who’s engrossed in what looks to be a thriller playing on the in-flight video screen. Makayla reaches up and presses the flight attendant call button. Surely, one of them wouldn’t mind standing by Liam for the few minutes it takes her to use the bathroom.

The minutes feel like hours as she waits for someone to come. Makayla presses her lips together, trying to think of anything besides how bad she has to pee. Hearing voices in the cabin behind her, she peers down the aisle. A male and a female flight attendant are helping an elderly woman back to her seat. Makayla recognizes the petite, white-haired passenger as the woman an airline employee had to assist onto the plane when she and Liam boarded.

The plane bounces from a bout of turbulence. Makayla inhales a sharp breath from the jolt to her full bladder as the flight attendants struggle to keep the woman from falling over.

“Let go of me!” As the elderly passenger jerks away from one of the attendants, she loses her balance.

Makayla pities the woman, who, from the look of confusion and fear in her eyes, has some sort of dementia. She faces forward in her seat, knowing those two flight attendants won’t be answering her call anytime soon. But maybe there is another in the rear galley that could watch over Liam for a few minutes. Although, she thinks, by the time I find someone to come watch over Liam, I could just use the lavatory.

After checking that Liam is still asleep, Makayla stands. She looks to the young woman across the aisle, who she recognizes from the boarding area, and taps her on the shoulder. The young woman lifts her head toward Makayla, making no effort to pull back her bright-pink headphones.

“Excuse me.” Makayla leans toward her. “Would you mind listening for my baby while I use the bathroom?” She points to the bassinet, then the back of the plane. “He’s asleep, and I’ll be right back. There’s a pacifier lying next to him if he wakes up.”

The girl glances in the direction of the rear lavatory before nodding. “Yeah.”

“Oh, thank you.” Makayla offers a smile, and the girl returns to her in-flight entertainment.

After getting the elderly woman to her seat, the flight attendants retreat behind the lavatories as Makayla hurries down the aisle. A cold hand encircles her wrist when Makayla passes the older woman’s row. Makayla gasps and yanks away, freeing her hand from the woman’s grip.

The woman holds a trembling hand toward Makayla. “Sarah, is that you? They won’t tell me where Roger is. Have you seen him?”

“I’m so sorry,” a tall blond flight attendant says to Makayla before stepping in between her and the elderly woman. The small diamond stud in the side of her nose reminds Makayla of her friend Cori, a new mother Makayla met before the start of the summer.

The old woman unbuckles her seat belt and shakily stands.

“Rose, I need you to stay in your seat.” The attendant’s voice takes on a firm tone as Rose makes an unsteady attempt for the aisle.

Makayla continues toward the lavatory as a male flight attendant, short and slightly pudgy, strides down the aisle from the rear of the plane.

“You need some help there, Britt?” he asks.

Makayla steps to the side for him to pass by her, reading the name she heard him being called when he came by earlier with the drink cart. It was pinned to his navy sweater-vest: Derek . Before opening the door to the lavatory, Makayla looks beyond the two flight attendants to her seat at the front of the cabin. There’s no movement or sound coming from Liam’s bassinet. The girl with the pink headphones turns in his direction before looking back at her screen.

Makayla steps inside the small bathroom, feeling a pang of guilt for leaving her baby in the hands of a stranger.

Liam’s fine, she reassures herself. Words from the therapist she saw after her mother died pop into her mind as she unzips her jeans. You should never feel guilty for taking care of your own needs.

When she sits on the toilet, she feels almost instant relief, knowing her therapist was right. This will only take a minute. And Liam won’t even know I was gone.

After drying her hands, Makayla tucks a strand of hair that’s fallen loose from her ponytail behind her ear and wipes away a small smear of mascara from beneath her eye. She unlocks the lavatory door and pushes on it. The lights flicker inside the small space, but the door doesn’t budge. Stemming her impulse to panic, she uses both hands to press her weight into the door. It opens with an audible crack.

From his seat across the aisle, Derek, the flight attendant, meets Makayla’s gaze when she steps out of the lavatory. She averts her eyes, shaking the uncomfortable sensation of the male attendant’s stare as she emerges from the bathroom. Spotting the side of Liam’s bassinet, she takes a deep breath, feeling the tension dissipate from her shoulders. He’s fine.

Taking quick steps down the narrow aisle, keeping her arms close to her sides, Makayla passes the row where the elderly woman is eating from a tiny bag of pretzels and calmly watching an episode of Friends on the seat-back screen in front of her. Makayla contains a smile.

In the next row, a retirement-age couple appears to be asleep, the woman’s head on the man’s shoulder. Makayla thinks of Jack, wishing he could’ve come with them.

When she nears the bulkhead, her eyes are drawn to the screen of the young woman across from her, showing a car’s headlights speeding down a gravel road at night. She touches the girl on the arm before sitting down.

“Thank you.”

The girl looks up, keeping her headphones on. “Sure.”

The girl refocuses on her screen as Makayla turns for her seat. She stops. Her heart somersaults. Mouth open and eyes wide, she steps toward Liam’s bassinet.

An airplane pillow lies in the place of her son, tucked into his blanket. She snatches the pillow, lifting it into the air as she spins around. Her eyes dart to the young woman’s lap as she lifts a pop can toward her mouth. Makayla yanks the pink headphones off the girl’s head. Her clear soda sloshes out from the can.

“Where’s my son?”

She lifts a startled gaze to Makayla. “Whoa! What are you doing?”

Makayla points to the empty bassinet. “My son . Where is he?”

The girl’s eyes trail in the direction of Makayla’s finger. Her brows knit together as she gapes at Makayla’s actions. “I—I don’t know.”

Makayla scans the sleeping passengers around them. “I asked you to watch him.”

The girl’s confused expression melts into irritation. “I thought you were asking if the bathroom was in the back.” She takes her headphones from Makayla’s grip.

Makayla clutches the pillow to her chest. “But where is he? Who took him?”

The girl glances at the bassinet. “I ... I don’t know.”

“Well, someone took him out of there.” How could the girl not have seen a stranger plucking him out of the bassinet?

“I didn’t see anyone.” She stares blankly at Makayla. “I was watching a movie.”

Makayla whips around, inspecting each sleeping passenger’s lap for a sign of her baby.

“Excuse me,” she calls, moving up the aisle. “Has anyone seen my son? My baby. I just went to the bathroom, and he’s gone.”

A few passengers open their eyes and shake their heads. Makayla is almost to the lavatories in the middle of the plane, and there’s no sign of Liam. She hurries toward the crew seat behind the bathroom, only to find it empty. She scans the rear cabin for someone holding Liam, but the spaced-out passengers all look to be asleep or engrossed in their screens. And she can’t see Derek anywhere.

Makayla turns. A few passengers have gotten up from their seats. Makayla recognizes two of them as the retirement-age couple she passed on her way back from the lavatory, and the other as the petite dark-haired woman who handed her Liam’s pacifier when they boarded, after her husband bumped into Makayla from behind with their dog carrier. Now, the neatly dressed, muscular man remains seated.

“Did you see anyone come through here while I was in the bathroom?” Makayla asks.

“No,” the man says.

The two women shake their heads. They each move up one of the aisleways, scanning the rows for a sign of Liam.

“I didn’t notice anyone besides the flight attendants helping that woman across from me,” the dark-haired woman says.

The older woman stops and turns to Makayla from the aisle on the other side of the cabin, her expression twisted in bewilderment. “Sorry, I was asleep.”

Makayla stands still, feeling the woman’s eyes on her as the other two passengers reach the rear of their cabin. Not finding Liam, they turn toward Makayla, the alarm on their faces causing a spike in her anxiety.

The blond flight attendant emerges from business class, making her way up the aisle on the other side of the plane. Makayla crosses through an empty middle row of seats and rushes toward the attendant, who stops close to Makayla’s seat. When Makayla reaches her, the blond steps to the side, making room for Makayla to move past her.

“Excuse me.” Makayla stops, aware of the panic in her voice. “I can’t find my baby—my son. He’s ... he’s not ...” She exhales in frustration as her words fail to come out right. “Someone took him.” She points to the empty bassinet affixed to the bulkhead wall.

Makayla thinks of Derek, now gone from his seat. Please say that one of the crew has him. That he was crying while I was in the bathroom. Instead, the attendant’s eyebrows thread together beneath her bangs as she eyes the empty bassinet.

“Someone took him and put this in his place!” Makayla grabs the pillow and holds it inches from the attendant’s face. Why isn’t she taking this more seriously?

Pink Headphones gapes at Makayla, eyes wide.

“Okay, we’ll find him. Try and stay calm.” The attendant raises her hands, palms out, and Makayla recognizes it for what it is—an attempt to calm a difficult passenger. “I’ll make an announcement. He can’t be far.”

“I don’t understand. I was only gone for a couple of minutes.”

“So, you weren’t here?”

Makayla grips the top of the seat beside her and forces in a breath, but her lungs won’t fully expand. “I just went to the bathroom. For like two minutes.”

The woman’s face relaxes. “Oh. Well, maybe someone tried to settle him while you were gone.”

Makayla shakes her head. “He was asleep.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll make an announcement.”

“Can you turn on the lights?”

“Yes.” The flight attendant turns and bumps into the woman who recovered Liam’s pacifier when Makayla boarded.

The woman looks between Makayla and the attendant. “I moved up and down the cabin with another passenger. We didn’t see your baby. Have you checked in first class?”

Makayla makes for the front of the aircraft, unsure if she responded to the woman trying to help her. The college-aged girl who was supposed to be watching Liam has resumed watching her movie beneath her pink headphones.

Makayla wants to shake her.

She flings the curtain open to business class, praying someone heard Liam crying and took him back to their seat when they couldn’t find her. It’s just as dark as the main cabin. In the three rows sectioned off by curtains at either end, Makayla spots only two passengers.

A middle-aged man wearing a suit sleeps with his head against the window. Makayla leans over and shakes him by the shoulder. His mouth closes with a snap as his eyes open.

“Hi, my baby ... my baby, Liam, he was asleep in the bassinet right behind your seat in the main cabin. When I came back from the bathroom he was gone. Have you seen him?”

He shakes his head, eyes groggy. “No. Sorry.”

A woman with a gray bob turns in her seat two rows in front of him. “Did you say you’re looking for your baby?”

Makayla exhales with relief. She steps forward, hoping to find Liam in the older woman’s lap. “Yes!”

Instead of Liam, the woman holds two knitting needles above a ball of yarn.

“I’m afraid there’s been no baby up here, my dear,” the woman says. “Did you check in the back?”

Makayla stares at the woman’s lap and the empty seat beside her before yanking open the curtain to first class, scanning the few sleeping passengers and empty seats for a sign of Liam as she moves between the leather chairs.

Liam couldn’t have been taken far—it’s a plane. Plus, she wasn’t in the lavatory for more than a few minutes. How is this even possible? Her lungs stiffen with fear, making it impossible to draw in a deep breath.

Where could he be? And why can’t I find him?