Flight 219, Three hours later
Meredith stared wide-eyed at the man with the gun in his hand. This couldn’t be happening. She wasn’t even supposed to be on this flight.
Her ears still rang with the sound of gunfire.
“Five minutes until another hostage dies,” Bradley snarled over the passenger he just shot.
Before she grew Living Grace to the point where she could actually draw a salary from her work there, Meredith had made a living for a few years as a Christian counselor. She knew rage when she saw it. She knew instability.
She knew just how dangerous this man was.
The fact that they were flying over thirty thousand feet above ground made the experience all the more harrowing. Visions from September 11 flashed through her mind. Those poor passengers. The moment of impact playing over and over again on the news in a never-ending loop.
Through her work with Living Grace, Meredith had counseled hundreds of women, maybe even thousands, through loss, divorce, grief. Lately, she’d felt particularly burdened for women struggling with anxiety.
“Remember the Lord is always with you,” she’d tell them. “His word promises that we have nothing to fear.”
Nothing to fear. Those women probably should have just laughed in her face. Instead, they’d clung to Meredith’s words. Praised her for bringing them such a sense of encouragement and hope. Meredith was a speaker and teacher, a women’s leader. At least, she had been until yesterday.
It was funny, in a sad and pathetic sort of way, how when she’d boarded this flight — the flight she wasn’t even supposed to be on in the first place — she’d been broken and lost at the prospect of going through life, earning a living while no longer serving as the president of Living Grace. Three hours earlier, it was the most dejected she could remember feeling in years.
And now what did it matter? What did any of it matter — the board meeting, their decision to demand her resignation, the cowardly, averted gazes of men and women she’d previously considered her closest friends and allies …
There’s nothing like staring down the barrel of a loaded gun to put things into perspective.
Meredith didn’t know what was going to happen. Didn’t know if she would be the next hostage shot or if the plane would manage to land without anyone else getting hurt.
What she did know was that her concerns about her future sounded ludicrous now.
What did it matter if you lost your job if you’d end up dead the following day anyway?
If she survived this ordeal, maybe she’d be grateful for the mindset shift it provided.
If she survived …
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