Chapter 12 - The Passenger in 1D
The woman in 1D was Dr. Lena Ortiz, a pediatric surgeon flying home from a conference. She'd seen hundreds of frightened children in emergency rooms. Malik's stillness had caught her attention because it looked too much like shock.
“I should have spoken sooner,” she told David over a video call. “I kept thinking the captain would fix it. That's on me.”
“What did you hear?”
Lena had been waiting near the boarding door when Elliot approached Harold. They hadn't noticed her behind the partition.
“Elliot asked whether the passenger was traveling alone,” she recalled. “Harold said yes. Elliot said, ‘Then it won't be a problem. Who's going to argue for him?’”
David closed his eyes.
Lena had also recorded a short audio note to herself immediately afterward, intending to report the exchange. The timestamp lined up with the missing thirty seconds in the gate recording.
Rachel checked that Lena was willing to provide a formal statement and original file through the investigators. She was.
“Why didn't you just take a video of them?” Malik asked from behind David's chair.
Lena looked at him. “Because I didn't understand how serious it was until I saw what happened to you.”
Malik considered that. “You can still help now.”
“I hope so.”
The interview ended. David turned to find his mother watching them both.
“He has a better answer than most adults,” Evelyn said.
At Mesa headquarters, the independent security team recovered an untouched backup of the deleted CCTV segment. It showed Harold telling Catherine that moving Malik would keep a high-value investor satisfied. He had never mentioned a genuine identity issue.
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But the same restored footage revealed a second figure at the gate, briefly using Harold's workstation while he was away.
It was Selena Brooks.
