“Does he know?”
“Not yet,” Evan said.
“Will you tell him?”
“Eventually.”
Daniel looked at the other four protected bookings.
“Who were they?”
Privacy rules limited access.
But cybersecurity investigators obtained internal categories.
One involved an elderly passenger using oxygen.
Another a twelve-year-old traveling under airline supervision.
Another a federal employee under a security itinerary.
The fourth—
The investigator stopped.
“What?” Daniel asked.
“Passenger died before travel.”
Silence.
Maya felt cold.
“How?”
“Car accident.”
Daniel said,
“Name?”
The investigator hesitated.
Then turned the screen.
MICHAEL ROSS.
Daniel stood.
Maya had never seen her father look like that.
“Dad?”
He stared.
“Michael worked with me.”
The room changed again.
“How close?” Evan asked.
“Very.”
Michael Ross had been a software architect at Meridian Aviation.
He worked on Sentinel.
Three weeks earlier, he died when his car left an icy road in Vermont.
Police considered it an accident.
Daniel sat slowly.
Maya whispered,
“You don’t think it was.”
“I don’t know.”
He picked up his phone.
“Michael told me something before he died.”
“What?”
“That Sentinel had a flaw.”
Everyone went silent.
“What flaw?” Evan asked.
Daniel hesitated.
“Not safety logic.”
“Then?”
“A permissions problem.”
Sentinel protected passenger records by assigning several overlapping restrictions.
But executives with sufficient commercial authority could request exceptions.
Those exceptions were supposed to be logged and reviewed.
Michael believed someone had discovered a way to create temporary authority tokens that disappeared after use.
“Ghost permissions,” the cybersecurity investigator said.
Daniel nodded.
“If true, someone could alter bookings, fees, upgrades, cargo allocations or passenger flags without leaving a normal audit trail.”
Rachel frowned.
“Cargo?”
Daniel looked at her.
“Yes.”
That word mattered.
More than seats.
Passenger reservation systems connected indirectly with aircraft load planning, baggage routing and high-value cargo records.
If unauthorized access expanded—
Evan said,
“You could manipulate what appears on a flight manifest.”
Daniel nodded.
“Potentially.”
Maya looked around.
“Why would anyone care about moving seats?”
Her father answered.
“They wouldn’t.”
“The seats are tests.”
“Yes.”
“For what?”
Nobody answered.
Maya thought.
Then remembered Grant.
Corporate travelers.
International route.
High-value business accounts.
“What else was on Flight 408?”
Rachel looked at Evan.
He checked.
“Standard baggage. Mail. Priority freight.”
“What kind of freight?”
Evan paused.
“Medical components.”
Daniel stood again.
“From whom?”
Evan read.
“Holloway Biomedical.”
Maya stared.
“Grant’s company?”
“Yes.”
Everyone looked toward the door.
Grant Holloway had been annoying.
Arrogant.
Rude.
But suddenly he was relevant again.
Grant was found at the airport hotel.
He was furious about missing Seattle.
That changed when federal investigators entered the room.
Maya was not present for questioning.
Daniel was.
He returned after three hours looking exhausted.
Maya sat in the operations lounge doing homework she had not absorbed at all.
“Well?”
Daniel sat beside her.
“Grant lied.”
“About the seat?”
“No.”
“Then?”
“His company.”
Holloway Biomedical manufactured specialized diagnostic sensors.
Small.
Expensive.
Easy to ship.
Used in medical imaging equipment.
A shipment worth six million dollars had been booked on Flight 408.
Maya stared.
“Six million?”
“Yes.”
“Were they stealing it?”
“Maybe.”
Grant admitted his company had lost three shipments in eighteen months.
All officially classified as logistics errors.
Cargo routed incorrectly.
Containers missing.
Insurance paid.
Grant assumed theft.
He had pressured Northstar executives repeatedly.
Celeste Ward handled the account.
“She was suspended because of that?” Maya asked.
“Partly.”
An internal audit showed Celeste had approved unusual cargo modifications.
But before investigators completed the case, somebody accessed her account after suspension.
“Why promise Grant my seat?”
Daniel looked at Maya.
“To make sure he boarded Flight 408.”
She frowned.
“He already had a ticket.”
“Yes.”
“But he might cancel?”
“Or change flights.”
Grant had been threatening to take Holloway Biomedical’s business to another airline.
The fake Celeste message offered him personal attention.
Upgrade guarantees.
Seat preference.
A private meeting in Seattle after arrival.
It kept him on Flight 408.
Maya slowly understood.
“Someone wanted the shipment and Grant on the same plane.”
Daniel nodded.
“Why?”
“Possibly so suspicion would fall on him.”
Grant had complained publicly about stolen shipments.
If another shipment vanished while he personally traveled aboard the aircraft, investigators might suspect insurance fraud.
Maya looked at her father.
“And they used my seat to test the override.”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
“We don’t know.”
That night, Daniel and Maya stayed at a hotel near the airport.
Maya could not sleep.
At midnight she found her father sitting by the window with his laptop.
“You’re working.”
“Yes.”
“You tell me not to work after midnight.”
“You don’t have a job.”
“School.”
“Different.”
She sat across from him.
“Did Michael know?”
Daniel closed the laptop.
“Probably.”
“That’s why he died.”
“Maya.”
“What?”
“We don’t know that.”
“You think it.”
He looked away.
She knew him well enough.
“Yes.”
Daniel rubbed his eyes.
Michael had discovered ghost permissions months earlier.
He reported them.
Celeste’s account became a focus.
Then Michael died.
Daniel had assumed the concern ended with the internal investigation.
Now he realized Michael had sent him one final encrypted file.
He never opened it.
“Why?”
“I thought it was work documentation.”
“Open it.”
“It requires a key.”
“What key?”
Daniel almost smiled.
“That’s the problem.”
Michael loved puzzles.
Instead of sending passwords digitally, he often used personal references.
Daniel had tried standard possibilities.
Nothing.
Maya asked,
“What did the email say?”
Daniel opened it.
One line:
CHECK THE PLACE WHERE YOU FIRST SAID SENTINEL SHOULD NEVER TRUST POWER.
Maya frowned.
“What does that mean?”
Daniel stared.
Then laughed once.
“I know.”
“Where?”
“Chicago.”
Maya sighed.
“Of course.”
Years earlier, Daniel and Michael attended a conference in Chicago.
During dinner, they debated how safety software should handle executives demanding exceptions.
Daniel said:
A safe system should never trust power merely because power asks nicely.
Michael wrote it on a napkin.
Kept it.
The restaurant?
The Lantern Room.
Closed three years ago.
Maya said,
“That doesn’t help.”
“Maybe it does.”
Daniel searched old photos.
There.
A picture of the napkin.