"The passenger?"
"Hollins."
"What's he asking?"
"He wanted to know who was flying. When Gerald told him—when he heard your name—his expression changed." She paused. "He looked like he recognized it."
Zariah didn't respond for a moment. Then she keyed the cabin PA, a short, controlled burst: "Ladies and gentlemen, this is Zariah. We are approximately 50 miles from our emergency landing site. I'm going to need complete quiet in the cabin for the next 30 minutes. That means seated, belted, and still. Your cooperation is the most important thing you can give me right now."
She released the PA. In the cabin, the murmuring stopped.
Gerald had made the mistake of letting Hollins see that the aircraft was still under control, still flying, still on course. The mistake was in not anticipating what that knowledge would do to a man whose plan was unraveling.
Hollins was calm when he spoke: unhurried, like someone delivering information they've been holding back for effect. "You know what's funny?" he said to Gerald, who was standing in the aisle beside him. "I knew her father."
Gerald looked at him.
"Marcus Washington." Hollins said the name plainly, the way you say the name of someone you don't feel anything complicated about. "Good pilot. Better investigator, as it turned out. He spent two years documenting what certain people had been doing to maintenance records in the regional carrier networks: falsifying service logs, clearing aircraft for service that hadn't been properly cleared—the kind of thing that saves companies money and costs passengers their lives, eventually."
He adjusted his seat.
"He was about to take his documentation to the FAA. He had a meeting scheduled." Gerald said nothing. "He never made it to that meeting," Hollins said. "His car went off a highway outside of Tulsa. Ice on the road, they said." He tilted his head slightly. "There wasn't any ice reported that night on that stretch of road."
Gerald's hands were at his sides. "Who are you?"
"Someone who was asked to make sure the story didn't get a second chapter." He glanced toward the cockpit door. "I didn't know about the girl. That was an oversight on someone's part. She wasn't supposed to be here. She wasn't supposed to be involved." A pause. "She has his eyes, you know. Same stillness."