"Gerald," Danielle said, "I'd like him moved to the bulkhead row where someone can watch him properly. And I'd like his bag checked."
The bag: Keely pulled it from under his seat. He didn't resist—which was interesting, which said he'd already removed anything incriminating—and went through it methodically: clothes, a laptop, a phone with a cracked screen, a slim folder of papers.
The papers were what mattered: they were aviation technical documents, maintenance procedure excerpts specific to this aircraft type. Three pages had annotations in the margins—handwritten, small, precise: system schematics with specific components circled—the pitch trim monitoring circuit, the left engine fuel control unit, the avionics cooling duct access point. Not one component: all three.
Keely brought them to Danielle with slightly unsteady hands. Danielle looked at them for a long moment. Then she said, "I need to get these to Zariah."
She pushed through to the cockpit quietly, tapped Warren on the shoulder, and passed the documents through. Warren spread them on his knee and looked at them. And the color of his expression changed in a way that said he recognized the level of knowledge they represented.
"Zariah," he said.
She was managing a slight heading correction, eyes on the instruments. "What?"
"Look at this when you have a second."
"I don't have a second. Tell me what's on it."
He described the documents: the three circled components, the handwritten annotations. She was quiet for a moment, hands steady on the side stick.
"The circled components," she said, "are the annotations targeting those components specifically for the failure modes we've been experiencing?"
"Yes. Precisely."
"So, whoever wrote those annotations knew in advance exactly how this aircraft would fail."
"Yes."