Part 2: The Race Against Time
My fingers trembled so badly I almost dropped my phone between my seat. The plane was at an altitude of thirty thousand feet, miles away from the ground, and I was trapped inside a metal tube while my son's life hung in the balance. The flight attendant walked calmly down the aisle with a drink cart, completely unaware of the hell I had just been plunged into. I looked desperately at my phone's display. No signal. Of course not. I feverishly pressed the button for the flight attendant.
When she came to stand next to me, I grabbed her arm. Her professional smile vanished instantly when she saw the madness in my eyes. "Ma'am, is something wrong?"
"I need to make a call," I rasped out. "It's an emergency. My son... my family is in danger. Does this plane have Wi-Fi? A phone connection?"
The flight attendant looked around, as if afraid other passengers would panic. "Ma'am, you need to stay calm. We have satellite Wi-Fi onboard, but the connection is very unstable at this altitude. You can try logging in through the airline's network."
With shaking fingers, I opened the settings on my phone. It felt like every second took a minute. I entered my details, paid the exorbitant fee for the internet connection without thinking twice, and waited for the icon at the top of my screen to turn green. As soon as I had a connection, I immediately dialed my mother's number.
The dial tone cut straight through my soul. Once... twice... three times... "Come on, Mom, pick up, please," I whispered pleadingly at the screen.
On the fifth ring, the connection went through. I heard a raspy, exhausted sound on the other end. "Hello? Emma?"
"Mom!" I almost screamed, though I tried to muffle my voice for the people around me. "Mom, listen to me very carefully! Where is the boy? Where is my son?"
An icy silence fell at the end of the line. My mother's breathing suddenly sounded very heavy. "Emma... what are you talking about? How do you know..."
"That doesn't matter right now!" I interrupted her fiercely. "My sister left me a letter. I know everything! But Mom, you have to leave the house NOW. Take him and run away! Someone is on their way to you. A man who wants to take him or... worse!"
"Emma, calm down," said my mother, but her voice didn't sound panicked. It sounded strangely flat, almost resigned. "No one is on their way. We're just home. Luuk is in the living room drawing."
Luuk. My heart leaped. For thirteen years, he had had a name I knew nothing about. Luuk. My son.
"Mom, listen to me!" I cried softly now, my nails digging deep into the leather of my armrest. "I mean it! I just got a call from a strange man. He said the person who wanted to make my baby disappear thirteen years ago is now on their way to your house! Who is that man, Mom? Who is his real father?"
At that moment, I heard a dull thud in the background. A sound like a heavy wooden door being kicked in, followed by the jingle of broken glass.
"Mom?!" I screamed. "Mom, what was that?!"
On the other end of the line, the loud, sharp sound of a barking dog suddenly rang out, followed by a boy's cry. "Grandma! Who are those people?!"
That had to be Luuk. His voice pierced my ears like a lightning bolt.
"Stay behind me, Luuk!" I heard my mother shout. Then heavy footsteps sounded on the wooden floor. Footsteps I would recognize out of thousands. They weren't the steps of a stranger. They were the familiar, rhythmic steps of the man I had once been married to.
A voice spoke close to my mother's phone. It wasn't the voice of the strange man who had called me on the plane. It was the voice of Mark. My ex-husband.
"You should never have let that letter be delivered, Sophie," Mark said very calmly, as if he were talking to my deceased sister. "Didn't I tell you this would destroy the family?"
"Mark, please..." begged my mother. "Leave the boy alone. He doesn't know anything!"
"Emma?" Mark's voice suddenly sounded very close. He had snatched the phone from my mother. "Are you there, my sweet Emma?"
My blood ran through my veins like icicles. "Mark... what are you doing there? Don't touch them! If you hurt him even a hair..."
Mark laughed. It was a dry, joyless laugh. "You've always been so naive, Emma. Did you really think your sister was a heroine? Did you really think she was protecting you? She lied to you for thirteen years. Not to save you, but to save herself. And as for this boy..."
He paused for a moment. In the background, I heard the crying of thirteen-year-old Luuk.
"This boy is a ticking time bomb, Emma," Mark continued in an ice-cold, soft tone. "If the world finds out whose blood actually flows through his veins, we all lose everything. I'll come see you as soon as you land. Make sure you're alone. If you call the police, you'll never see your son again."
The line went dead.
I stared at the black screen of my phone. The cloud decks outside the window seemed to swallow me whole. I was still at least two hours away from the runway. Two hours in which everything I held dear could be destroyed.
I turned toward the aisle and stood up. I wanted to walk to the cockpit, force the pilot to turn around, do something—anything. But as I put my foot in the aisle, a man blocked my path.
He wore a dark suit and stared at me coldly. He was the man who had been sitting in the seat across the aisle. He slipped his hand into his inner pocket and briefly revealed the edge of a silver pin on his lapel.
"Mrs. Van Dijk," he said in a tone that brooked no argument. "Please stay seated. The conversation you just had was intercepted. I work for an organization that has been keeping an eye on your ex-husband for thirteen years. And you need to listen very carefully to what I'm about to tell you, because your life is about to change."
