Leather jacket cracked and faded at the elbows. Silver rings on fingers thick as sausages. A face that looked like someone had carved it from old wood and forgotten to sand down the edges. His hair was brown, shot through with gray, pulled back in a short tail. And his eyes, when they lifted to scan the boarding area, were the pale blue of a winter ski.
Cold, watchful, missing nothing. Something in Sarah’s gut clenched. She’d spent 12 years in emergency rooms. She’d learned to read people fast to sort the victims from the threats in seconds flat. This man set off every alarm she had. He looked like violence waiting to happen.
Like the kind of stories you saw on the news, the ones that made you hold your children tighter and check the locks twice before bed. Please, she thought, please don’t let him be on my flight. The universe had stopped listening to Sarah Mitchell’s prayers a long time ago. Row 14. Seats. A Sarah guided Lily to the window seat, tucking the blanket around her shoulders, positioning the stuffed elephant she’d had since she was two.
Try to sleep okay. when you wake up will almost be at grandma’s. Will you sleep too, mommy? I’ll try. She wouldn’t. She couldn’t. But Lily didn’t need to know that. Sarah settled into the middle seat, arranging her purse under the seat in front of her, trying to create a small cocoon of normaly in the cramped space.
The leather jacket appeared in her peripheral vision. She [clears throat] didn’t look up, didn’t need to. She could feel his presence like heat from a furnace radiating into the narrow row. He lowered himself into 14C. The seat groaned under his way. Up close, Sarah could see details she’d missed fromacross the gate.
