Evelyn didn't answer. Her silence was heavier than any denial. She looked past Reynolds toward the wide double doors that led into the airline's administrative back offices. The frosted glass door clicked open, and a tall, balding man in a charcoal suit and a yellow airfield security badge stepped through, carrying a clipboard and a company tablet. His badge read H. Arrington – Terminal Operations Manager. His gaze didn't stop on the line of passengers or on Reynolds; his eyes went straight to Evelyn, his head giving the barest fraction of a nod before he saw me standing with my hand clamped around the canvas bag strap.
"What seems to be the holdup here?" Arrington asked, walking behind the counter and positioning himself squarely between Reynolds and terminal four. "We have boarding announcements backing up across Concourse T. Officer Reynolds, if this passenger has an invalid ticket, escort him past the security turnstiles to the public ticketing lobby. We cannot allow unauthorized individuals to loiter at the first-class check-in counters."
"Mr. Arrington," I said before Reynolds could speak. "I'm David Mercer. My seat on Flight 840 was booked through the Department of Transportation’s regional technical assistance roster. You might want to ask Ms. Vance why her personal credentials were used forty minutes ago to override the manifest seat lock from an off-network terminal in the logistics office, three minutes before she personally denied me passage at this gate."
Arrington didn't flinch, but his eyes narrowed. "Any internal ticketing changes are internal company matters, Mr. Mercer. You have no legal standing to inspect our manifest controls."
"He doesn't," Reynolds interjected, stepping forward so that his broad shoulder blocked Arrington's access to the desk console. "But I do. And the Port Authority supervisor who is currently walking down this concourse with the TSA watch commander will have full standing. Neither of you touches that computer until Miller gets here. If that monitor goes black, I am treating it as intentional destruction of evidence under Georgia criminal code section sixteen-ten-twenty."
Arrington's posture shifted. The smooth corporate indifference cracked, revealing the hard, calculating edge underneath. He looked at Evelyn, who had finally dropped her hands to her sides, her fingers trembling slightly against the fabric of her navy blazer. She knew, and Arrington knew, that the audit trail on terminal four didn't just show a canceled seat—it recorded every command string, every keystroke, and the exact user ID that had authorized the remote access to our Huntsville server.
I looked down at my phone. Marcus had sent one more line: The download is sixty-eight percent complete. If it hits one hundred, the server automatically flushes the local encryption keys to prevent an overwrite. You have eleven minutes.
Eleven minutes before our three years of flight testing, our prototypes, and our legal defense were wiped from existence, leaving only a counterfeit paper trail that would paint Marcus and me as corporate thieves who destroyed our own company's telemetry out of spite.
"Officer Reynolds," I said quietly, leaning in so only he and the two managers could hear. "The flight to San Diego departs from Gate T-Nine in exactly sixteen minutes. You don't have to decide who owns the drives right now. But if you let them keep me on this side of the security stanchions until that jet pushes back, you become part of the obstruction chain. I am requesting emergency chain-of-custody transfer directly to the federal air marshal on duty at Concourse T."