I Hijacked a Plane for My Missing Daughter

Evangeline's POV

Thirty thousand feet in the air, inside the sealed cabin of a commercial airliner, my five-year-old daughter vanished into thin air while I took a thirty-minute nap.

I tore through the lavatories, the galleys, and every overhead bin. The only thing I found was her stuffed bunny, the one she never let out of her sight.

What was even more terrifying was the crew and the passengers. As if perfectly rehearsed, they all insisted I had boarded the plane alone. They even gaslit me in front of everyone, claiming I was mentally unstable and had hallucinated a daughter.

They took turns pushing me, trying to force me into self-doubt and submission. Not a single person offered to help me look. The entire plane was covering up a sinister crime.

If this plane was going to hide my child and protect the guilty, then I would tear this hypocritical aircraft apart with my bare hands.

"Lila? Lila!"

I ripped off my seatbelt, my eyes frantically scanning the narrow aisle. The seat next to me was totally empty. Even her little pink jacket was gone.

I had only closed my eyes for half an hour.

"Ma'am, please return to your seat," Renata, the chief flight attendant, approached with a cold, professional smile.

"My daughter is missing. Just now!" I grabbed her wrist. "Five years old, blond curly hair, wearing overalls!"

"Ma'am, you boarded alone." Renata pulled her hand away, raising her voice loud enough for the first two rows to hear.

"Are you kidding me?" I grabbed the shoulder of a middle-aged man reading a newspaper in the row ahead. "You saw her, right? She was just kicking the back of your seat!"

Without even hesitating, he brushed my hand off, his answer way too smooth. "I haven't seen any kid, ma'am."

Too fast. It sounded like a rehearsed line.

I scrambled to dig through my bag to shove her boarding pass in their faces—but my hand froze at the bottom. Before we boarded, Lila had insisted on holding her own ticket.

I pushed past Renata, frantically searching row by row like a madwoman. The lavatories, the galleys, the gaps between the luggage... Nothing.

Just as I felt like I was suffocating, my eyes locked onto the floor beneath the jump seat near the rear emergency exit. A dirty, yellow, plush lump.

Pip. Lila’s stuffed bunny. She slept with it; she never let go of it.

I grabbed it, sprinted back to the front cabin, and shoved it right in Renata's face. "What is this, then? Some trash I brought on myself? My daughter is on this plane!"

Renata looked at the toy without a hint of surprise. She picked up the intercom, listened for two seconds, and then looked at me with a sickening gaze of pity.

"Ms. Evangeline, ground control just sent a message. I'm so sorry." She lowered her voice. "Your daughter passed away in a car accident six months ago. You've never been able to accept it. You're mentally unstable."

Gasps echoed through the cabin. The looks from the passengers shifted from confusion to fear.

"What kind of bullshit is that?!" I laughed out of pure fury. "She’s five! Two hours ago, she was begging me for ice cream in the terminal!"

"Dylan! Subdue her, she’s lost her mind!" Renata shrieked.

An undercover air marshal, Dylan Hunt, lunged from the front row.

The moment he pounced, I kicked over a beverage cart to block him and snatched a butter knife from the scattered trays. I had worked around airplanes for ten years; I could find the release catch on these knives with my eyes closed.

With my other hand, I ripped a wall panel open and pulled out a bundle of exposed wires, wrapping them around my wrist. Nobody knew what I was doing, and that unknown threat brought a dead silence to the cabin.

In the next second, I grabbed the middle-aged man who "hadn't seen a kid" and pressed the edge of the knife hard against his neck.

"Back off!" I roared. "Nobody moves! Bring Lila to me, or I cut him first!"

Dylan stopped dead in his tracks, hands raised halfway. Slowly, he drew his gun, but didn't point it at me, keeping it flat at his side. "Okay, okay! Evangeline, calm down—drop the knife, let's talk!"

"I'm done talking," I said, cold and deliberate. "If I don't see my daughter before we touch down, I start with him."

The man in my grip was shaking violently, but deep in his eyes, I saw something more than panic. He looked like he was waiting for someone to give him an order.

Facing a cabin full of screaming, terrified people, Renata seemed pushed to her limit. Instead of panicking, she showed a flash of malicious rage, pointing right at my nose.

"Are you done with this crazy act?! This crew is clean! Who the hell would bother kidnapping the daughter of a convict rotting in a jail cell?!"