Endworlds - Nicholas Read [6]
Hopes of seeing Paige and her new friends leap up from behind the last row to laugh and make faces at him faded swiftly as he neared the rear curtain. It was too quiet. Had all three of them been hurt and if so, how seriously?
“Paige, are you and your friends all ri—?”
The last word caught in his throat. He couldn’t tell if his daughter was all right or not.
Because she wasn’t there.
Neither were the other two young travelers, Emily and Alyssa. Like trail markers, open packages of candy and chips showed where they had been sitting. But of the girls themselves there was no sign. He frowned and looked around sharply.
“All right, Paige, ladies. Enough. Come on out from wherever you’re hiding.” Little girls and their games, he thought. His irritation increased as he commenced a search of First Class, checking under seats and behind rows as well as in front of them.
The bathrooms, he told himself. They had retreated, fled, or simply rushed to use the bathroom. That made sense. Both lavatories were in use. He waited patiently. But as adults emerged from each one his irritation grew. Maybe the girls had left First and gone back into the Business Class section. The most likely area was the upper deck. Climbing stairs inside a plane was still a novelty for children.
But they weren’t upstairs, either.
Paige had flown with him often enough to know better than to take off her seat belt and run around a plane while the Fasten sign was still illuminated. Maybe she or one of her friends had needed to use the bathroom real bad, and with both of the lavatories in First occupied they might have rushed aft no matter what the seat belt sign said. Muttering to himself, he returned to their row to await their return.
It was then that he saw it, almost hidden under a mess of scribbles and papers on their seats. Paige’s bronze and gold amulet. The one she never took off. It lay on the leather seat without the gold strand that normally looped through it, and without the girl it was ever attached to.
He picked it up, warm to the touch, then rang for the attendant.
“Where are my daughter and her friends?”
The stewardess blinked as she met the passenger’s gaze. Looking at the empty seats she replied: “Everyone was belted in for the storm.” She smiled professionally. “Kids that age are full of pent up energy. Probably running it off somewhere in back.”
He didn’t smile. “I’ve looked there already, and upstairs. What about the parents of the dark-haired girl, Emily? Check with them—and find all three girls right now.”
“Yes sir.” The attendant bustled away while Raef made another sweep of the economy cabin from fore to aft.
When the stewardess found him twenty minutes later it was with the head steward and the father of the other girl in tow. That was not encouraging, Eisman thought. They were accompanied by the co-pilot. That was downright ominous. Eisman’s gaze swept them all. They wore a unified look of unease. It was left to the steward to step forward.
“Sir . . . Mr. Eisman. We . . . we can’t find your daughter. Or the other two girls.” The other father was pale and agitated, eyes wide with concern.
Eisman’s voice was as cold as the air outside the plane. “What do you mean, you can’t find them?”
The steward wished to be anywhere else in the world but on that particular flight at that particular moment.
“We’ve checked every seat, both over and under. I had the crew make a full search of the plane. We checked everywhere, every possible hiding place in case the girls were playing a game. Under seats, every luggage compartment, every lavatory. We checked the crew sleeping quarters down in the tail, we even checked the empty serving carts in the galleys. On the unlikely possibility they somehow managed to access the cargo bay, the assistant steward and I put on masks and coats and went down there too. Of course we can’t check every piece of cargo while we’re in flight, but once we’ve landed we can . . .”
The co-pilot broke in. “I’ve already radioed