"May I have your attention please, ladies and gentleman? Flight 94 to Toronto is about to begin loading. Please begin filing a line behind the flight attendant in red."
I gently tap my husband who has fallen asleep on my shoulder during our four hour layover. "Babe, wake up." I grab our carry-on bags and get in line while my husband yawns and stretches his arms above his head like an actor in a sleeping pill commercial. Sitting next to me on the plane is a burly man with a leather jacket and sunglasses on. He looks like a member of Hell's Angels, minus the motorcycle and embroidering on his back. He mumbles inaudibly to himself when he finds out he'll have to share his aisle space with someone else.
"Hello," I say with a bright smile; I definitely don't want to get on this guy's bad side, "What brings you to Toronto?" He looks up at me and then returns to his phone without giving an answer.
I raise my shoulders to my husband and whisper, "I tried." He chuckles and takes his seat. I wake up a couple hours later to find the mystery man beside me in the same position scrolling through some sort of coding on his phone. Curiosity gets the better of me, as usual, so I slowly lean to the side to see if I can get a better look at what he's doing. He must have sensed me getting closer, because suddenly he switches off his phone and stands up. When he makes it to the lavatory, I tell my husband about the codes, and he tells me that there's been a security breech in the Social Security branch; hackers gained access to thousands of SSA records and the FBI is trying to hunt them down. "But I'm sure that guy has nothing to do with it," he adds, and settles back in his seat for a nap.
An hour later, we arrive at our destination. My husband is here for business and I came along because I needed a vacation from the kids back home. Carl and I have been married for seven years and have two beautiful sons. This is the first time we have left them for more than a day, and even though they're safe with my parents, I haven't stopped worrying since we left for the airport.
Traveling takes all the energy out of my husband, so as soon as we get to the hotel Carl passes out on the king-size bed without bothering to pull down the covers. I snuggle in next to him, excited to finally have a few nights without the kids. While Carl quietly snores next to me, I read the local newspaper and a few magazines left in our hotel room. I begin dozing off just as the phone on the wooden nightstand rings.
"There is a car waiting for you outside. Get inside. You don't want to ignore this." Click.
My mind searches for a possible solution to what I just heard while my husband awakens and says, "Everything okay?"
I question whether or not I should tell him about the call; at this point, I'm not even sure that I'm going to go out to the car. "Yeah, yeah, everything's fine. That was just the hotel desk telling me I left my wallet downstairs. Go back to sleep."
A few minutes later, Carl falls asleep again, and I slowly climb out of bed, my heart pounding. I'm raking through every possible conclusion to who could be calling. Did they have the wrong number? Did someone overhear my conversation about the hackers? Was the man on the phone the same man sitting next to me on the plane? If so, what do I have to do with anything?
A yellow Mustang awaits me when I go through the revolving door of the hotel. A man dressed in black gets out of the driver's seat and opens the back door for me. All of my questions for the driver go unanswered. Twenty minutes later, we arrive in front of a huge glass building. The parking lot is empty except for another yellow Mustang identical to the one I arrived here in.
"Come with me," the man in black says. I nervously follow behind him as we go up two flights of stairs and through a narrow hallway without any doors except for one at the very end. When I enter, the man from the plane is sitting at one end of a very long conference table.
"Have a seat," he says, "and tell me everything you know about what you saw on my phone today." Suddenly, two large men appear from the dark corners of the room carrying guns.
My heart stops. "I don't know what you're talking about. All I saw were some numbers but I didn't know what they meant. I didn't mean to cause any trouble." I shoot him my best innocent smile, but I can tell by his demeanor that he's not falling for it.
"Come on, let's go," the driver says to me, pulling me out of my chair and down another long hallway just like the first.
This time when I enter the room the first thing I see is Carl.
"Oh my God, they have you too? What is going on?" I rush over to him but suddenly he lifts his arms from under the table and aims a gun at me.
And that's when I realize Carl is in charge.
No comments:
Post a Comment