That deed—the blue-ribboned original, signed by our grandfather in 1974—was currently inside the zipped interior pouch of Toby’s backpack, resting against the stranger’s polished leather shoes.
The aircraft turned onto the active taxiway, its twin turbofans whining as the pilot spooled up the engines. I looked back over my shoulder through the narrow gap between the seats.
Fourteen rows back, Toby was wedged between a sleeping businessman and the aft lavatory door. His face was gray against the plastic wall. He was holding his ear, his jaw working rhythmically as the pressure began to build in the cabin. He had no water, no gum, and his prescription drops were sitting fifty feet away under seat 14A.
As soon as the climb out smoothed and the double chime released the cabin crew from their jumpseats, I unbuckled and stood up.
"Stay where you are," the man in 14A murmured without looking up.
I didn't answer him. I walked straight down the aisle to row twenty-eight.
Toby looked up as I reached his row, his eyes glassy with pain. He pulled his hand away from his left ear, his knuckles red.
"Ethan," he whispered, swallowing hard. "My head is pounding. I can't get it to pop."
"I know, kid. Hang on," I said, kneeling in the aisle so my shoulders blocked the view of the flight attendant jumpseat by the rear galley. "Listen to me carefully. When Flora came down the aisle before pushback, what did she say to you before I looked up from my phone?"
Toby squinted, trying to focus through the pain in his inner ear. "She didn't ask for my boarding pass at first. She asked if I was Toby Vance. Then she asked if our mother's maiden name was Kowalski."
My jaw locked. "Did you answer her?"
"I told her yes, because I thought it was about the ticket name match," Toby said, his voice trembling slightly. "Then she saw the folder sticking out of the top of my bag. The yellow probate label. As soon as she saw that, she told me the seat wasn't mine."
The knot in my stomach turned into lead. Flora Bennett hadn't bumped a teenager because the flight was full. She had scanned the manifest for our last name, matched it to the probate file number, and physically cleared row fourteen so her accomplice could secure physical possession of the original title documents before we landed in Chicago. If that bag stayed under 14A until arrival, the man in the charcoal coat would simply stand up, lift both bags under the guise of confusion, and disappear into the crowd at terminal three. By the time I could find an airport police officer to report a stolen school backpack, the chain of custody on our grandfather’s land would be broken forever.
"Stay right here, Toby," I told him, squeezing his knee. "Keep your seatbelt on. I’m getting your medicine."
"Ethan, she said she’d have the police meet the gate," he whispered, panic cutting through his exhaustion.
"Let her call them," I said.
I stood up and turned toward the front of the aircraft.
Flora Bennett was standing at the mid-cabin galley station, a metal service cart pulled across the aisle to block forward transit. She held a black plastic interphone handset pressed against her ear, her eyes fixed entirely on me as I started down the carpet. When she saw the paper slip gripped between my fingers, her lips thinned into a razor line.
She hung up the handset, gripped the handles of the forty-pound service cart, and shoved it forward into the aisle, locking the foot brake with a metallic crack that echoed above the roar of the engines.
"Row twenty-eight, sir," she said, her voice carrying down the center aisle. "Return to your seat immediately, or the captain will declare an emergency and divert this aircraft."
The passengers around us froze, forks and cups hovering in midair.
I stopped three inches from the steel cart. I didn't back down, and I didn't raise my voice. I leaned over the top tray and held the gate override slip right at the bridge of her nose, letting her see her own operator code stamped in dark red ink.
"Arthur Vance died four years ago at St. Mary’s Hospital," I said, clear enough for rows eleven through sixteen to hear every syllable. "Explain to me why he’s sitting in seat 14A holding my brother’s bag."
CHAPTER 2 CONTINUED
"Keep your voice down," she whispered, her voice dropping into a harsh, tight hiss. "You are thirty seconds away from a federal interdiction. You don't wave boarding slips in a flight attendant’s face, and you don’t stand in the aisle during an active service climb."