Chapter 3

Captain Ruth Amara came through the curtain already talking.

"-tell the ramp we need that door closed at ten-oh-five, not ten-oh-six-"

She stopped.

Forty-seven, navy uniform, four gold stripes, dark hair pulled back tight enough to look painted. She had the face of a woman who had the last word for a living, and she used it now on the aisle.

"What's the problem."

"Bin space," Renn said. "The passenger in 7K refuses to gate-check her case. Mr. Sloane's garment bag won't fit."

"He threatened to have me searched and removed," Iris said. Not loud. Not asking.

Amara's eyes moved to Victor - and Victor, being Victor, took eye contact as an invitation.

"She's in the wrong cabin," he said. "She won't give up the case. She won't open it. Look at her."

Amara looked at her.

Twenty-two years of flying had taught her that nine minutes could be spent arguing or spent moving, and that only the second kind existed. She also had, standing in front of her, a man with a platinum card who flew this route monthly, and a woman who had said four sentences in ten minutes.

"Ma'am," she said to Iris, not unkindly. "We're going to miss our slot. I need the case opened or gate-checked."

"Open it," Victor said. "Right now. That's all anybody's asking."

"All right," Iris said.

Renn exhaled.

She slid the key into the first brass latch and turned it. The click was small and final. The second latch. The lid lifted.

The case was full of paper.

Amara saw the top of it and understood nothing. Folders. An old envelope gone soft at the corners. A photograph lying face-down. And across the folders, inside a clear plastic sleeve, a laminated card.

Iris lifted the card out and held it at chest height, square to the captain, the way you hold a ticket out for a conductor.

The cabin had gone quiet again. Victor was still talking - "There, you see, it opens, that's all anybody wanted-" and then he wasn't.

Amara's mouth was open on a word that never arrived.

Photograph. Name. Title.

She read the name twice. Then she read the title, and something in her posture changed in a way that had nothing to do with the uniform.

Her eyes went up, over Iris's shoulder, past the open case, past the credential.

To the bulkhead beside the cabin door.

To the plate.

She had walked past it four times tonight.