She felt the first stirrings of unease then—not fear, exactly, but the sense that she’d stepped slightly out of alignment with something she couldn’t see. But she shrugged it off as tiredness and unnecessary paranoia. They had asked her to remain seated.
Midway down the aisle, a flight attendant stopped abruptly and began counting rows under her breath. Not casually. Carefully. Finger moving from seat to seat. When she reached Alyssa’s row, she paused longer than necessary before continuing, her expression tightening as if the numbers no longer added up.