Chapter 6 - Behind Double Locked Doors
My hands shook so hard I nearly dropped the phone.
I hit the green accept button and switched to speaker. The screen flared with light, revealing Paige sitting in a white silk dressing robe, her dark hair half-pinned with pearl clips, a flute of orange-tinted mimosa resting on the dressing table behind her.
“Hannah!” she yelled, her voice bursting through the phone’s tiny speaker with enough force to echo off the departure gate windows. “Where are you? The tracker says your flight hasn't even left the gate! Please tell me you didn't pick up a shift. Please tell me you’re not sitting in the ER breakroom right now!”
The sight of her—so bright, so safe, so completely insulated in her world of lace and flowers—felt like looking into another dimension through a dirty periscope.
“Paige,” I said, my voice cracking slightly. “I’m at the airport.”
“Why haven't you boarded?” Her face changed, the bride’s impatience turning into genuine worry as she caught the background of my video feed: the yellow hazard tape, the empty concourse, the federal agents in windbreakers. “Hannah... why are you in a t-shirt? Where is your cardigan? Who are those men behind you?”
“There was... an incident at my gate, Paige,” I said, trying to keep my voice from trembling. “A medical emergency. A passenger collapsed.”
Paige let out a long, ragged groan and threw her head back against the vanity mirror. “I knew it. I knew it! Hannah, you promised me! You swore you wouldn't get involved! There are three hundred people in an airport! Why does it always have to be you?”
“Because nobody else moved, Paige!” I snapped, the stress of the last forty-five minutes finally breaking through my professional restraint. “He was dying! Right in front of me! What was I supposed to do? Look at my boarding pass and watch his heart stop?”
The silence that followed was heavy and bitter.
On the screen, a pair of manicured hands reached in from the side, placing a warm hand on Paige’s bare shoulder. It was our mother. I caught a glimpse of her coral mother-of-the-bride dress, the pearls she only wore to funerals and weddings.
“Hannah,” my mother’s voice came through, quiet and disappointed in that specific way that cuts deeper than any scream. “The ceremony is at four. The car leaves for the church at three. If you aren't in that dress by two-thirty, you can't walk down the aisle. Your sister has waited three years for this day.”
“Mom, the entire concourse is locked down,” I said, tears finally spilling over my lashes. “The FBI is here. They won't let anyone out of the terminal. It’s a hazmat quarantine.”
Paige leaned closer to the camera, her eyes wide. “Hazmat? Hannah, what did you touch?”
Before I could answer, Agent Cross reached out and gently tapped the glass of my screen. He took the phone from my hand, turned the camera toward his badge, and held it steady.
“Ma’am,” Cross said, his voice dropping into that deep, authoritative register that brooks no interruption. “This is Special Agent Marcus Cross, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Cleveland Field Office. Your sister has just saved the life of a key federal witness in an active national security investigation. She didn't seek this out. She performed her duty under extraordinary circumstances.”
Paige stared at the screen, her mouth slightly open, the mimosa glass frozen in mid-air.
“However,” Cross continued, looking down at his watch, “due to biochemical protocol, this gate is currently under federal containment orders. Nobody enters. Nobody exits. Her travel is suspended indefinitely.”
“No,” Paige whispered. “No, no, no...”
“I will do what I can, Mrs... Ms. Mercer,” Cross added, his tone softening just a fraction. “But right now, your sister is our primary medical witness. I have to take her downstairs.”
He cut the call.
The screen went black.
“You didn't have to do that,” I said, wiping my cheeks with the back of my bare wrist. “You could have let me explain.”
“Explaining doesn't change physics, Nurse Mercer,” Cross said, handing the phone back to me. “You’re in the hot zone. Until the field team finishes swabs on the latches, the floor tiles, and your skin, you don't leave this terminal. Period.”
He gestured toward the secure service door beside the jet bridge.
“Walk with me. We have some people in an interrogation room downstairs who need to see your face.”
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“Why?” I asked, following him as Sergeant Miller and his Malinois fell into step beside us.
“Because,” Cross said, pulling a heavy brass keycard from his pocket and sliding it through the magnetic lock, “the man who poisoned Stephen Vance didn't just leave a trap in his briefcase. He’s currently sitting in the Terminal C executive lounge with a first-class ticket to Zurich, waiting to see if Stephen’s flight took off without him.”
