Slowly, deliberately, Elena turned her head back to face Victoria. Her hazel eyes were no longer merely calm. They were cold. Frigid as the stratosphere thirty-five thousand feet above the clouds. A chilling stillness radiated from her.
Victoria stood frozen for half a second, her own hand stinging from the impact. A split-second of shock crossed her features—even she knew striking a passenger crossed an unforgivable threshold—but panic quickly morphed into defensive, feral aggression.
“You assaulted me!” Victoria screamed, clutching her own wrist and stepping backward toward the forward galley. “You all saw that! She grabbed me! She assaulted a flight crew member!”
Elena stood up.
She stood at five feet ten inches, possessing a natural poise that instantly shrank the aisle. She reached into her blazer, pulled out a small, pristine linen handkerchief, and lightly touched the corner of her lip where a tiny drop of blood had formed.
“I touched the handle of my own bag,” Elena stated, her tone flat, terrifyingly clear. “You have physically assaulted a passenger aboard this flight. Victoria Vance, you will stay right where you are.”
“Security! Code Red in First Class!” Victoria screamed into the galley intercom receiver, slamming it back onto its magnetic cradle. She turned around to face the cockpit door, pounding her fists violently on the armored reinforced barrier. “Marcus! Open the door! Marcus, we have a violent passenger! She hit me! Open the damn door!”
From the rows behind, whispers erupted into an anxious roar.
“Did she just hit her?”
“Bro, she slapped her across the face!”
“The flight attendant hit her first, I saw it!”
“I got it all on video. The whole thing. From the moment she asked for water.”
Victoria spun back around, her eyes wild, pointing a manicured finger at the entire First Class cabin. “Shut up! All of you, sit down and shut up! Anyone who touches their phone will be detained as an accomplice to a federal terrorist threat! You hear me? Put those phones away!”
Nobody put their phones away. In fact, three more passengers raised theirs.
A low chime sounded through the forward cabin. The armored deadbolt of the cockpit door disengaged with a heavy mechanical clunk.
Victoria instantly switched into full theater mode. She dropped to her knees near the cockpit entrance, clutching her chest, tears artificially welling in her eyes, her lower lip trembling as if she had just survived an armed hijacking.
“Marcus!” she wailed, looking up toward the opening cockpit door. “Help me! She went crazy! She attacked me because I asked for her ticket! She almost broke my arm!”
The cockpit door swung wide.
Captain Marcus Reynolds stepped into the galley. He was a veteran aviator in his late fifties, with salt-and-pepper hair, four gold stripes gleaming on the epaulets of his pristine white shirt, and a chest adorned with military flight ribbons from his time in the Navy. Behind him, the First Officer peeked out, eyes wide with alarm at the ruckus.
Marcus looked down at Victoria, who was groveling on the floor pointing hysterically toward seat 2A.
“She’s right there, Marcus!” Victoria sobbed, pointing directly at Elena. “Arrest her! Call ground marshals! Drag that animal off my plane!”
Captain Marcus Reynolds turned his gaze from Victoria to the woman standing in the First Class aisle.
His eyes found Elena Carter’s face.
He saw the dark blazer. He saw the quiet, unwavering posture. And then his eyes locked onto the bright, swelling red handprint marked across Elena’s right cheek.
