It fluttered face-down onto the dirty commercial carpet beneath the seat in front of him, resting in the dust beside a discarded pretzel bag.
Mason’s hazel eyes slowly turned toward mine.
The color did not drain from his face slowly; it vanished in a catastrophic, instantaneous collapse, leaving his young skin the exact, translucent shade of skim milk.
His lips parted, trembling in a silent, spastic, uncoordinated twitch: tick-tick-tick.
“Mom…?”
Mason whispered.
His voice was so small, so razor-thin, that it seemed to come from the bottom of an abandoned well:
“Who is Vanessa…?”
A high-pitched, metallic ringing whistled through my inner ear, drowning out the engine whine, drowning out the cheering passengers, drowning out the hum of the air circulation vents.
My name is Clara Vance-Mercer.
I am thirty-four years old, a senior forensic intelligence auditor for the United States Department of the Navy, and the sole registered fee-simple Chancellorship Trustee of The 1944 Mercer Sovereign Lineal Charter.
