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“It depends on where the buyer directs Beechum,” I answered. I kept my eyes on the screen. The activity on the marketplace picked up. I had no way to determine which buyer Jelly Bean Jack would choose. “I’m sure they will come up with another cover story to redirect the flight to another airport.”
“Can you make us a buyer?” AJ asked. “We could get in on it. We can buy the Project Compass files and your safety.”
“I don’t see how. He’s verifying all the bids. I can’t create a shell fast enough that he won’t see right through it.”
“What about your personal accounts?”
I stared at him. “Are you crazy?” I stopped to lower my voice. “I’m not putting myself in that line of fire. And I’m certainly not linking my inheritance to the black market. No way. Besides, I have things scattered. It’s not all together. I don’t have that kind of time to transfer everything.” I didn’t like admitting how I had separated my inheritance so that it wasn’t vulnerable in one place.
“Even if it secures your freedom?” He raised his eyebrows.
“I’d give it all up if it was possible. It’s not,” I snapped. “I would need weeks to set up that kind of plan.”
“All right. All right. We’ll figure something else out.”
I was glad he had let it go. We needed to focus on something that would work. A way to keep the sale from happening. Or a way to intervene.
“I could try to hack into Beechum’s communication equipment. He has something in the cockpit, separate from the jet’s controls that is allowing him to receive orders. Maybe I could send him a message that he has been compromised. We could try to bring him over to our side and land the plane.” I considered what I was saying. “If we tell him we know what’s happening maybe we could be the ones to control him.”
AJ nodded. “Do it.”
“Ok. I hope he’s the kind of man who has a conscience.” I had a sickening feeling as soon as I said it, he wasn’t that kind of man.
I didn’t know where to start my route. I had to close out the marketplace and try to locate the channel Jelly Bean Jack needed for communication with the pilot. My available options were limited. That was the only good thing I had going for me.
“I’m going to do another sweep of the cabin while you work on that,” AJ explained. “See if I can find what’s knocking out my signal. We need it back up to start talking to forces on the ground.”
“Good idea.” I didn’t look up from my screen. Every second was precious at this point.
I could feel the time slipping away from us. With every announcement. Every loop the jet made. Every lie the crew told us. It was being yanked farther from our grasp. I had stopped fixating on the fact that AJ was here. Somehow, over the course of the flight I had accepted this was our experience. No matter how insane and inexplicable it was. We were in this together. Fighting for our lives. Fighting for each other. Fighting to save every single person on board.
Holy shit. I found it. I stumbled into a communication tunnel that landed me in a DOS text program that the captain and JBJ were using to communicate. I couldn’t believe it.
There were a hundred things I wanted to say to Beechum, but it was more important for him to listen to reason than for me to unleash my fury.
I had to work quickly. I placed a temporary block on Jelly Bean Jack’s signal and instead sent my own text straight to the pilot.
This is Silver Siren. You don’t have to do this. The authorities know what’s happening. You still have a chance to stay clean. Land the plane and walk away. No one else needs to know. We’ll keep this quiet.
I held my breath waiting for a response. How Beechum responded would affect every life onboard.
Chapter Seventeen
The summer I was eight was the first time I started to realize there were things that made me different from the rest of my family. It wasn’t like I didn’t know I was adopted. I did. I always had. My parents had been honest about it. They didn’t hide it from me or from anyone who asked. Something changed that summer. Maybe it was because Kelly had just turned one and my parents followed her around like the paparazzi. They said things like, “She has your eyes.” Or “I hope she doesn’t get your mother’s weird earlobes.” And they would laugh and look at each other with a knowing exchange.
There was an undercurrent that started they couldn’t prevent. A subtle message being created that Kelly and I weren’t the same. She had their DNA and I didn’t. They still said I was smart. They told me I was beautiful and a strong swimmer. They thought I was funny and creative. But I was never going to have my mom’s freckles, or my dad’s high forehead. No one could ever change that outcome.
Right before school let out for the summer my parents had a conference with my third-grade teacher. They wanted to discuss putting me in an accelerated math program for the following school year. I sat in the backseat on the ride home from school and heard them muttering to each other about how they wondered where my math ability came from. It was there too. The undercurrent. Something they couldn’t take biological ownership for even though they provided me with everything a child could want. Was I walking example of the nature versus nurture debate? Did they see me that way? Were they constantly trying to instill something inside me they worried wasn’t part of my original genetic makeup?
I had questions that would come and go. Questions that evolved as I got older. Questions I had decided could only be decided if I knew the most basic truths—who my parents were.
I had fantasies that my birth father was a brainiac math genius who had just invented a life-changing equation, and my mother wore a lab coat and goggles while she solved international formulas. I had no idea what those formulas would be, but that’s what an eight-year-old’s brain does. It goes to extremes to make wonderful scenarios seem likely.
If I was such a math genius in the third grade it had to be because my birth parents were busy saving the world. As a child that was the only scenario I could imagine that would make them give me up. Giving me up in exchange for saving the world was something my young heart could forgive. Anything else seemed senseless. Cruel.
But I kept those thoughts to myself. I didn’t tell my parents. I never told Kelly. It stayed bottled up. Eventually I learned how to push it so far down that I almost forgot to imagine my parents in their white coats.
I thought it would hurt their feelings, or they would worry I loved them less. Or maybe I kept the secrets because I was afraid they would laugh at me. They always told me they didn’t know who my parents were, but what if they were the ones living with the secret? What if they always knew I was wrong? That my fantasies were ludicrous?
