Tears of Terror Read online

  God, I’m so sorry.

  Her prayer sounded pathetic. Ridiculous. And yet she held onto what her parents and pastor and youth group leader always told her growing up. You can be a thousand steps away from the Lord, but it’s only one step back.

  She knew she was a trope. Knew she was only praying this hard because it felt as if her life literally depended on it. But that didn’t change the fact that it was the sincerest offering she’d ever lifted up to heaven.

  God, I’m so sorry for not taking my relationship with you more seriously. I’m so sorry that I haven’t been living for you like I should. I’m so sorry for not being more thankful and loving and kind.

  I’m just sorry all around.

  She held her breath and waited. She’d never prayed that earnestly before in her life. Shouldn’t something happen now? The air marshal should wake up, break free, and overcome the hijacker. God could send an entire legion of angels to protect the innocent passengers. Or just strike Bradley down dead. Didn’t he do that once for one of the wicked kings in the Old Testament?

  Something.

  Anything.

  Instead, silence.

  Silence until Bradley snarled at the trembling flight attendant, aimed his gun, and stared at the cameras.

  “Remember, Mr. Weston, this is entirely your fault.”

  The shot sounded through the cabin, ringing over the screams of the terrified passengers, then the flight attendant fell to the floor.

  Chelsea turned around in her seat so she didn’t have to watch the blood pool.

  “That’s another soul on Charles Weston’s conscience,” Bradley declared. “Five more minutes, and if I don’t hear from you by then, another hostage dies.”

  CHAPTER 10

  Chelsea had covered a fair number of disturbing stories in the past. A Kenyan college student attacked brutally and without provocation by a white police officer. A murdered Boston politician, a Medford pastor shot in his own home. All around Massachusetts, children went missing, spouses got beat up, victims were abused repeatedly every single day.

  For most of her career, Chelsea found ways to separate herself from the trauma she covered. It was the only way she could keep on doing what she did. That didn’t mean she was without compassion or empathy. It was just that because she was so compassionate and empathetic, she had to come up with coping mechanisms to protect herself from the terror and crimes she reported about on a daily basis.

  Now, Chelsea wasn’t even thinking about herself as a journalist. It didn’t matter that her editor continued to give her bigger and more high-profile cases to cover. It didn’t matter that this trip to Detroit meant Chelsea was breaking out of her local sphere and into the world of national reporting.

  Who cared?

  And what was it all for if Chelsea was going to be the next person to die when Bradley’s timer went off anyway?

  He was continuing to pace the aisles when his phone rang. He pulled it out of his pocket and answered with a smirk.

  “This is Bradley.” He wasn’t what she would have expected a terrorist to sound like. When she looked at him, it felt as if she were staring at a man who could have been her third-grade teacher or the guy working on his laptop beside her at the corner café.

  Bradley’s phone was set on speaker, and Chelsea strained her ears to hear the lifeline whose voice rang out from the other side.

  “This is Frank,” the man said. “Brad, is that you? May I call you Brad?”

  Chelsea watched as the hijacker’s face and expression grew even more angry and irritated. “What do you want?” he growled. “I want to talk to the superintendent.”

  “I know, Brad. I know.”

  Chelsea tried to picture Frank on the other end of the line, tried to imagine who this man was, how he managed to get through to a cell phone on an airplane flying thirty thousand feet in the air. It wasn’t until she started to get lightheaded that she realized she was holding her breath. Would this Frank person, whoever he was, manage to convince Bradley to put down his gun and let them all go?

  Chelsea had never covered a real-life hostage situation before. Of course, she was familiar with the most famous cases. The Stockholm bank heist gone wrong. The Patty Hearst ordeal, where the victim ended up shocking the police and FBI by siding with her captors. Chelsea recalled details from a true-crime podcast she listened to where a rich young heiress was kidnapped, held for ransom, and ended up falling in love with her abductor.

  Of course, not every hostage developed feelings of dependency on their captors. Sitting where she was, cowering in fear and drenched in sweat, Chelsea wondered how anybody could sympathize with someone like this madman in their cabin.

  It certainly wasn’t the first time that Chelsea had felt scared during a job. There was that riot that broke out when she was covering what should have been a peaceful prayer vigil. In another instance, Chelsea had gotten threatening letters, strongly urging her in no uncertain terms to drop a case she was covering about a senator’s daughter who got kidnapped a few years ago.

  In each and every one of those situations, Chelsea had been able to convince herself she wasn’t in any real danger. People faced hazards at work no matter what career they chose. Chelsea’s job as a journalist was tame when you compared it to the risks that firefighters and soldiers and policeman, sometimes even public schoolteachers, took each and every day.

  The man on the other end of Bradley’s cell phone identified himself as a hostage negotiator, but Bradley refused to talk to anybody but the Detroit superintendent. Chelsea wondered how Selena felt, the superintendent’s daughter who had been kidnapped.

  Chelsea had never heard of any parent threatening anybody just because they were unhappy with school district policies. Of course, the scandal at Brown Elementary and its location on toxic soil was far more serious than whose child did or didn’t make it into honors band or whether or not high school seniors should be allowed to drive themselves off campus during lunch.

  If her editor realized she was here on this hijacked flight, he’d expect her to be taking notes, documenting the terror second by second. As Bradley got more and more agitated, arguing with the professional negotiator, Chelsea couldn’t think about work at all.

  She couldn’t think about the story she could write as a first-hand witness to Bradley’s murderous rampage. Couldn’t think about how much time and effort he and his men must have put into planning this takeover.

  In the grips of her terror and fear, Chelsea could hardly find the strength to pray.

  She wondered if her mom was watching the news, if her parents had any idea what Chelsea was experiencing right here on Flight 219. Were they praying for her? Did they even know? Maybe they were just going about their normal, everyday lives, completely unaware that their daughter’s plane had been hijacked. Chelsea thought about her friends. Of course, everybody at work would be seeing these events and covering them in real time, but had any of them put the puzzle pieces together to realize that one of their own was aboard this flight? What about Brie? Chelsea’s best friend was notoriously bad at keeping up with current events unless she stumbled across them in her Facebook feed. Brie was probably the last person to guess what was happening on this plane.

  Chelsea had lost the flow of Bradley’s conversation with the hostage negotiator, but his yelling snapped her attention back to the phone call.

  “You tell Weston that he calls me in two minutes,” Bradley snarled, “or another hostage dies.”

  CHAPTER 11

  Seconds passed. Chelsea tried to mentally calculate how much time was left, but in her terror, her mind could never count past five before she lost track of where she was.

  When Bradley’s timer beeped, shivers of panic cascaded down Chelsea’s spine, then circled around to her gut, where they sat like a monument to fear and terror.

  It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. She was supposed to land in Detroit in half an hour. Get off the pl
ane, check into her room, and prepare for the next few days of interviews and investigation.

  None of which she could do if she was dead.

  Bradley was marching to the back of the cabin.

  “Get up,” he ordered.

  Chelsea twisted in her seat and stared as a young woman with bright blue streaks in her hair stood up, her entire body trembling. It was the passenger from Alaska. She looked even younger than Chelsea.

  This wasn’t right.

  But there wasn’t anything Chelsea could do. Nothing but sit and stare.

  “What’s your name?” Bradley demanded.

  “Willow,” she answered.

  Chelsea wanted to turn around. Wanted to shut her eyes and pretend like none of this was really happening. But she couldn’t.

  “Willow,” Bradley repeated. His voice was disturbingly pleasant, almost charming. “Tell me something about yourself, Willow. Do you have a boyfriend?”

  She gave her head a slight shake.

  “Family, then? Parents?”

  The young woman nodded, and a grin spread across Bradley’s face.

  “Is there something you’d like to say to your parents, Willow? Any last words you’d like to leave them with?”

  Chelsea’s body was shaking in tandem with the victim’s. She tried to squeeze her eyes shut, unable to watch another passenger killed.

  “Put that gun away, young man.”

  Chelsea recognized the strong, bold voice even before the old woman stood up in her seat and stepped in front of Willow.

  “Put that gun away,” Grandma Lucy repeated.

  “And why should I?” Bradley snarled.

  “Because,” the old woman answered boldly, “if you’re going to kill anyone, it should be somebody who has lived a full and vibrant life and who is ready to meet her Maker.”

  Bradley stared at the tiny old woman and scoffed. “You must be out of your mind.”

  Grandma Lucy shook her head. She barely reached up to Bradley’s chest, and yet it somehow looked like she was the one staring down at him.

  “I’m not out of my mind,” she stated. Her voice was so calm and fearless that Chelsea found herself straining to hear better, as if the old woman’s words themselves could give courage to Chelsea’s soul.

  Grandma Lucy was standing between the young woman and her assailant. Willow took a few steps back until it was just Bradley and Grandma Lucy staring at one another in the aisle.

  Bradley had his gun aimed at Grandma Lucy’s head. “You must be crazy,” he snarled. “Either that or you’ve got some kind of a death wish.”

  Chelsea squinted, preparing to shut her eyes in case Bradley shot the old woman right there.

  Grandma Lucy’s voice didn’t falter. “It’s not a wish to die per se,” she told him, her eyes never leaving his. “But if you shoot me, I know that the moment my soul leaves this frail, old body that I’ll find myself in the presence of the Lord, where I’ll go on to worship Him eternally. In all honesty, I can’t think of a better way to end my life than to save this innocent girl here.” She gestured toward Willow, who was hugging her knees and shaking in her seat.

  Bradley stared at Grandma Lucy in bewilderment. In the silence, Chelsea could hear the pounding of her heart. For a split second, she was almost convinced that the old woman’s faithful conviction would change the hijacker’s mind. Chelsea held her breath. Was he going to lower that gun?

  Chelsea cast a furtive glance around the cabin. While Bradley was distracted, mesmerized by the spiritual force emanating from this little old lady, it was the perfect time for the other passengers to act. There were hundreds of them and only a few of the terrorists. If the passengers found a way to coordinate their efforts, they could regain control of the plane in a matter of minutes. But how many bullets did Bradley have left in that gun, and how many more lives would be lost in the effort?

  Chelsea had been a too young to understand the terrorist attacks of 9/11, but years later, she learned the story about the brave men and women who took down the plane heading for the White House. As far as Chelsea knew, Bradley and his men had no desire to crash their flight at all, but she imagined how much courage and determination it must have taken for the passengers on Flight 93 to do what they did. For the first time, she found herself wondering if everyone on board that day had agreed to the plan, or if some would have preferred to take their chances with the terrorists.

  Bradley’s apparent moment of wavering passed, and Chelsea watched in horror as he set his jaw and took a step closer to Grandma Lucy. He pressed his gun against her forehead. “Let’s see if this God you worship is powerful enough to stop me.”

  Chelsea scrunched down in her seat, trying to make herself as tiny as she could, her hands ready to cover her ears at the sound of a gunshot that never came.

  Bradley stared at his weapon and cursed.

  “The gun’s jammed,” someone shouted. At this declaration, the fear that had paralyzed every single passenger on Flight 219 dissipated in an instant. Several travelers jumped out of their seats, rushing Bradley and his assistant in the Hawaiian shirt.

  “We’ve got them,” a man announced victoriously.

  It all happened so quickly Chelsea hardly noticed that she had unbuckled her own seat belt and jumped into the aisle. The other passengers had Bradley subdued before Chelsea could do anything to intervene, and she felt somewhat embarrassed for thinking that with her tiny stature she could have done much of anything to help. Still, the passengers had won. The terrorists were caught and bound. The air marshal was awake now and trying to keep the passengers and criminals under control.

  Everything was going to be okay.

  “Well, folks.” The captain’s voice over the PA system was comforting and familiar. “It looks like the danger has passed, and we’ll be landing in Detroit in just a few minutes. Emergency personnel are already standing by, so once we land, let’s let them get on board to do their jobs as quickly as possible. I’d like to thank all of you for remaining calm in a very frightening situation,” he concluded, “and lastly, I’d like to thank God who allowed us to arrive in Detroit safe.”

  Bradley had been dragged to the back of the plane, where two passengers and a flight attendant guarded him with the gun.

  “Safe?” he spat, his voice carrying throughout the cabin. “You don’t know anything. You’re all about to die.”

  CHAPTER 12

  Once their plane landed, it was nearly impossible for Chelsea to recall the exact order of events. Weeks later, as she sat at her favorite café, trying to type out a single sentence to describe what she went through, she couldn’t even write one word.

  There were those few minutes of relief. The sense that the worst was behind them.

  Then Bradley’s dire warnings ringing and echoing throughout the cabin as he promised they were all about to die.

  At the time, Chelsea attributed his words to the ravings of a madman.

  That was before she smelled the smoke.

  After the ordeal, Clark told her it was understandable why she couldn’t stand the fireworks on New Year’s Eve that year. Why even the little poppers her nephew threw on the sidewalk made her cringe.

  Chelsea was scarred. That much was for sure. Weeks after that emergency landing at the Detroit airport, she was still having nightmares. Nightmares about smoke and fire alarms. Nightmares about watching innocent people shot in front of her.

  In most of her dreams, Bradley was pointing the gun at her, and it was Grandma Lucy who stood between Chelsea and her would-be murderer. After they landed in Detroit, while EMTs rushed to attend to the injured passengers and men in SWAT suits swarmed to arrest Bradley’s men, Chelsea had searched for Grandma Lucy in the ensuing chaos.

  The old woman was never found.

  “Maybe you could ask Google to find her,” Mom suggested.

  But Chelsea never did.

  She talked about Grandma Lucy so much during h
er coaching calls with Clark that she was sometimes self-conscious.

  “She obviously made a big impact on you,” Clark told her gently when Chelsea expressed her embarrassment. “There’s nothing strange or weird about that. It could be that this little old lady you met saved not only that young woman but the rest of you as well. Who knows how far Bradley would have gone if she hadn’t stood up to him?”

  Chelsea didn’t like to think about all the other what ifs. She was trying hard to move on. She’d written her article on the Brown Elementary School scandal. It wasn’t her best work, not by a longshot, but her editor went easy on her after all the trauma she’d gone through.

  Clark was willing to bump her up to three coaching sessions a week, stating that an anonymous donor was footing the bill. In all honesty, Chelsea thought he was just gifting his time to her.

  She wasn’t going to complain.

  In the aftermath of the hijacking, Chelsea had made it a point to start going to church more regularly with her parents. When she wasn’t spending Sunday mornings with them, she’d visit the church where Brie worked, and they’d go out for lunch afterward. Out of everybody she knew, Brie was the one who seemed the most comfortable letting Chelsea absorb the terror and fear she’d experienced in her own time and in her own way. They talked about Flight 219 every so often. Chelsea found herself particularly upset about the flight attendant who was killed, especially after news stories came out about the two little kids she’d left behind. Sometimes Chelsea felt guilty, as if there was something she could have done to help the passengers who never made it off Flight 219.

  But other times, she enjoyed sitting across the café table from her best friend, laughing about a silly Facebook meme or retelling a joke Brie’s pastor shared that morning in his sermon.

  There were days when Chelsea felt like her despair was getting the best of her, but she was learning to accept that even if she did have lots to be thankful for, there was no shame in feeling down. If anything, Chelsea would have thought that her near-death experience would give her a deeper appreciation for living, but that wasn’t always the case. The same inexplicable sense of sadness still impacted her. Not all the time, but enough that she was thankful for the extra sessions with her life coach, thankful for the new antidepressants her mom had encouraged her to talk to the doctor about.