Two battered dog tags rested against the woman’s collarbone.
They weren’t hers.
They belonged to a ghost.
Dana sat perfectly still in seat 13F, staring through the scratched window as heat rippled above the Denver tarmac. Faded olive shirt. Dark, empty eyes. The kind of stillness that looked less like peace and more like something that had been broken, then put back together wrong.
“Unbelievable,” the man beside her muttered.
Bradley.
She had learned his name within thirty seconds because he had announced his Platinum status to the flight attendant like a threat.
“Forty-five minutes,” he complained. “Do you have any idea how much capital I’m bleeding while this tin can bakes?”
“Air traffic control,” Dana said without looking at him.
“It’s incompetence. If I ran my fund like these airlines, I’d be in federal prison.”
Across the aisle, Megan, the flight attendant, bounced a crying toddler against her hip. Dark circles sat beneath her eyes, and her hands had trembled while pouring water earlier.
Dana respected her.
Bradley earned nothing from her.
“Sometimes,” Dana said quietly, narrowing her eyes at a flashing light near the military annex, “things happen that are bigger than your portfolio.”
Bradley opened his mouth.
A roar swallowed whatever he intended to say.
The entire cabin shook.
Overhead bins rattled violently, several latches snapping open as screams broke from the rear of the plane.
Then sunlight vanished outside Dana’s window.
A gunmetal-gray F-22 Raptor had taxied within fifty yards of the airliner, its nose angled toward the cockpit.
A second roar followed.
Another Raptor moved into position on the opposite side.
They were boxed in.
By the United States Air Force.
“Oh my God,” Megan whispered as a cup slipped from her hand.
“Is it a bomb? Are we hijacked?” Bradley shoved backward, crushing into Dana’s shoulder. “Hey—stewardess!”
“Sir, stay in your seat!” Megan shouted.
Behind them, someone began praying aloud.
Dana didn’t move.
But jet fuel flooded her senses, and suddenly her heart—so unnaturally slow for two years—hammered against her ribs.
