Brooks wanted them kept at cabin temperature.”
“That is standard protocol.”
“It has never been our protocol.”
The baby stirred in my arms.
Ethan crossed the space between us instantly, but he stopped before touching her.
“Is she all right?”
“She’s waking,” I said.
“She may need to feed again soon.”
His expression tightened with helplessness.
For all his money and power, he could not force certainty into that moment.
The security agent picked up the guard’s phone with a handkerchief and placed it in another evidence bag.
“We also found an unauthorized navigation tablet in the rear service compartment,” he said.
“Someone entered coordinates for a private airstrip sixty miles south of our filed emergency alternatives.”
Ethan’s gaze returned to the guard.
“You planned to create a medical emergency.”
“That’s absurd.”
“And then divert my aircraft.”
“You’re taking the word of a grieving stranger and a flight attendant over your own security officer.”
The word grieving struck me like a slap.
I had told no one aboard the jet what had happened to my family.
Ethan noticed my reaction.
“How do you know she is grieving?” he asked.
The guard’s confidence flickered.
“I read the passenger brief.”
“There was no passenger brief,” the agent said.
For the first time, the guard looked toward the cockpit as though measuring the distance.
The second agent blocked the aisle completely.
Ethan moved closer to me.
He did not touch me, but his body formed a barrier between the guard and the baby.
“What do you know about Nora Vance?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
“You just referenced her private history.”
“I heard her speaking to someone before departure.”
“I spoke to no one,” I said.
The only words I had spoken before standing were the ones I had whispered to myself.
The guard looked at me with open hatred now.
The polished professionalism had vanished.
“This woman appears from nowhere, takes your child into a locked room, and suddenly I’m the criminal?”
“You were the one who insisted on the locked room,” the flight attendant said.
“You ordered me to take them there instead of the rear lounge.”
His head whipped toward her.
“You said it was for privacy,” she continued.
“But that room has no cabin camera.”
The agent opened the report again.
“There’s more.
The internal access log shows his credential opened the supply compartment thirty-seven minutes before boarding.
It was opened again after the bottles were loaded, then the digital record was manually cleared.”
“Credentials can be copied,” the guard said.
“Not the biometric confirmation.”
A heavy silence followed.
The guard’s breathing changed.
His shoulders rose, and the tendons in his neck tightened.
Ethan saw it too.
“Do not make another bad decision,” he warned.
The guard laughed once, but there was no amusement in it.
“You think you’re untouchable because people fear your name.”
