Chapter 8 - Thirty Seconds Missing
Malik landed in Denver to a dozen missed messages and one text from his father: GRANDMA IS AT ARRIVALS. I'M PROUD OF YOU.
His grandmother, Evelyn Johnson, hugged him so tightly that the photo album nearly slipped from his hands.
“You grew taller,” she announced.
“You saw me last month.”
“Then you grew taller in a month.”
He laughed and promptly cried into her shoulder. Evelyn didn't tell him to stop. She held him until he was ready to move.
On the drive home, Evelyn took the scenic route along streets lined with old cottonwoods. She pointed out the bakery where David had worked weekends and the little park where Malik's mother once taught him to ride a bicycle. Malik asked her to tell the bicycle story again. She did, including the part where he steered straight into a hedge and declared the hedge had moved. By the time they reached the house, he'd almost stopped gripping the seat belt.
At home that evening, Malik saw the video online. People were arguing about him as though he were an idea instead of a person. Some praised his courage. Others invented motives. Strangers demanded that Catherine be fired immediately or insisted the clip was staged.
“Turn it off,” Evelyn said.
“Are they mad at me?”
“People on the internet don't know you. I do.”
David arrived from Phoenix on a later flight. He found Malik asleep on the sofa, still wearing his navy sweater.
Evelyn pointed toward the kitchen. “Sit. Eat something. Then tell me what you know, not what you imagine.”
David recounted the duplicate ticket, the override, and the suspicious email. Evelyn listened without interrupting.
“Your company makes machines that stop vehicles from colliding,” she said finally. “Do you think money buys people permission to run over others?”
“No.”
“Then make sure this doesn't become a rich man's revenge story. Make it about the child who wouldn't have a CEO for a father.”
At headquarters, a security analyst pulled CCTV from the gate corridor. The camera showed Catherine speaking with Harold before boarding, then Harold handing her a folded slip of paper.
But the video jumped forward thirty seconds before she entered the plane.
“Corrupted file?” Selena asked.
May you like
“Possibly,” the analyst said. “Or someone exported an edited copy.”
The original recording had already been requested for deletion under a routine retention workflow.
