Something in that response began to shift the way Grace saw him, though he remained careful to keep a professional distance. He still addressed her as Ms. Bennett and made no effort to soften the formality between them.
Grace invited him to attend an internal meeting to walk the leadership team through what he had found. Lucas again declined any financial reward for his time, but agreed to attend on one condition: that Jason be present alongside him.
When word of the invitation reached Connor, his composure began to crack in small, almost imperceptible ways: a pause before answering a question, a tightness in his voice that had not been there before. Grace noticed it without fully understanding what it meant yet.
What had started as a story about a humble technician turning down a fortune was beginning to look like something else entirely. Grace found herself reconsidering not just the man standing in front of her, but the years of decisions that had kept someone with his experience working far below where his skills belonged. The realization sat uncomfortably alongside her growing curiosity about what else Connor might have been hiding behind carefully worded rejections and thin paperwork. She thought about how many other applications might have crossed his desk over the years, quietly filtered by standards that had nothing to do with actual competence.
It was an unsettling thought for a woman who had built her reputation on trusting the judgment of the people beneath her, and it would not be the last uncomfortable thought she had that week.
At the technical meeting, Lucas laid out the chain of causes in plain, measured language. He was careful not to point fingers at any single person in the room. Instead, he asked a question that landed with more weight than any accusation could have: why did a maintenance item that had clearly been reopened show no complete inspection record to match it?
Jason admitted, somewhat reluctantly, that his team had been pushed to finish that particular service cycle well ahead of the original schedule. Connor jumped in immediately to dispute the claim, suggesting that Jason was simply looking for someone else to blame for his own team's oversight.
Lucas asked Grace to pull three specific records: the supply schedule for replacement parts, the login history for the maintenance tracking system, and the digital signatures used to close out each work order. Grace agreed, and what came back over the following hours troubled her far more than the connector fault ever had: several maintenance items had been marked complete at times when the technician credited with the work was logged in on an entirely different aircraft across the hangar.