Chapter 6

She watched him work for several minutes before speaking. His movements were precise, methodical, the same quality she'd noticed in his flying. He wasn't just fixing things; he was understanding them."You know," she said finally, her voice echoing slightly in the vast space, "most people who saved my company's biggest deal would at least stick around for a thank you."The creeper board rolled out from under the aircraft. Elias sat up, wiping his hands on a rag, unsurprised to see her there. "You had a meeting to get to," he said simply."I did. Thanks to you." She moved closer, her heels clicking on the concrete floor. "I looked into your background."Something flickered across his face—not quite fear, more like resignation. "And?" he asked."Captain Elias Grant, Navy test pilot. Sixteen years of service, two Air Medals, honorable discharge three years ago following the crash of an experimental fighter over the Pacific." She paused. "The investigation cleared you completely. Mechanical failure. They said you saved a $100 million aircraft through exceptional skill."Elias stood, his expression unreadable. "They also said my co-pilot died because I chose to save the plane instead of ejecting when I had the chance.""The report doesn't say that.""The report doesn't have to." His voice was quiet but firm. "I was in command. I made the call. Lieutenant Marcus Webb had a wife and twin daughters. He was 32 years old, and I'm the reason he didn't make it home."The raw honesty of it struck Vivian like a physical blow. She'd spent three years building walls around her own grief, her own guilt about her brother's death in one of her company's jets. She recognized the architecture of blame in Elias's words, because she'd constructed the same prison for herself."My brother died in a plane crash," she said, the words coming out before she could stop them. "Four years ago, prototype testing. He was CEO then; I was just VP of operations. He took the test flight himself because that's who he was—always hands-on, always proving the product was safe." Her voice remained steady, but something in her eyes betrayed the cost of that steadiness. "The investigation found a flaw in the engine management software. We fixed it, paid the settlements, moved on. But I took over his company, and every day I walk through these hangars wondering if I am just prolonging something that should have died with him."They stood in the shadowed hangar: two people who'd built their lives around different forms of the same grief, seeing each other clearly for the first time."Why are you working as a janitor?" Vivian asked softly."Because planes took everything from me," Elias said. "And because they're all I know. So I stay close, but not too close. Close enough to remember, far enough to keep my daughter safe from who I used to be."

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