Stop what?

Before anyone could process it, the cockpit door cracked open—just an inch. A crew member inside gestured urgently to Harper. Her face drained.

She turned to me and whispered, “He’s not lying. Ground security just sent an alert. Someone else on this aircraft is flagged as a threat.”

My blood ran cold.

It wasn’t him.

Someone else.

The man in row 18 looked straight at me. “You,” he said. “Your seat change—this morning. You were supposed to sit beside me so I could warn you. They told me someone might target this flight… and they’d sit near the emergency exit.” His finger trembled as it pointed at my seat. “Here.”

The device in his hand beeped softly. Harper gasped.

“It’s not a detonator,” he said. “It’s a scanner. A signal detector. There’s another device active on this plane.”

And suddenly every passenger felt the same terrible question tighten around the cabin:

Who here is carrying the real threat?