CHAPTER 2: Gregson Locked The Glass Partition While Vance Watched The Tarmac
The snap of the metal detention latch cut through the terminal drone, sealing me inside the baggage annex before I could pull my boarding pass back from the counter. Through the reinforced pane, Officer Gregson stayed between the inspection table and the security queue, his gloved fingers flattening the evidence tape over the seam of my torn suitcase. Travelers in the adjoining lane shuffled past the scanners with their eyes glued to the floor, hurrying toward their gates to avoid looking directly at an elderly man trapped behind glass. Fifty feet beyond them, framed by the floor-to-ceiling concourse windows, Martin Vance stood near the Gate B7 podium, speaking into a slender silver smartphone while his eyes remained fixed on the regional turboprop fueling outside.
"Sit down on the wooden bench, Mr. Mercer," the female secondary officer said from the intake desk behind me. Her name tag read K. Nolan, and her voice had the brittle stiffness of someone reading from a laminated checklist she had never expected to use on a Tuesday morning. "King County Sheriff dispatch has been notified. A deputy is en route from the central precinct."
"Officer Nolan," I said, leaning both palms against the administrative counter so the tremor in my knuckles would stay flat against the faux-wood laminate. "Check the outer baggage tag currently resting on Officer Gregson's desk. Don't look at the plastic brick. Look at the baggage strip looped around the side handle."
Nolan didn't move. Her right hand hovered two inches above the computer mouse, her screen displaying an empty incident narrative form with my driver's license number already auto-filled across the header. "Federal intake regulations prohibit an officer from handling active evidence once the primary screener has called an interdiction hold. You'll have an opportunity to make a statement when the arresting agency arrives."
"I am not asking you to seize the evidence," I told her, keeping my voice low and level, pitching it beneath the mechanical rumble of the baggage conveyor belt groaning below the floorboards. "I spent forty-two years managing line shifts at the West Seattle rail yard. I signed off on six hundred intermodal freight transfers a month. Look through that window at the barcode sticker on the lower right corner of the foil block. A genuine narcotics confiscation package from the airport task force uses a serialized green intake stamp with a micro-perforated border. That sticker is fluorescent red, printed on thirty-pound gloss stock with a thermal transfer head that needs cleaning."
Nolan blinked, her gaze involuntarily flicking through the interior glass toward Gregson.
On the other side of the partition, Gregson was not filling out a chain-of-custody ledger. He had pulled a civilian manila folder from beneath the lane podium and was currently sliding my opened carry-on into a heavy polyethylene evidence bag. Yet instead of sealing the top with the tamper-evident yellow cable tie clipped to his duty belt, he left the mouth folded loosely over the metal frame. He stepped toward the corridor doorway, glanced once over his shoulder at the security camera mounted above the x-ray tunnel, and handed the unsealed bundle directly to a man in a navy blue ramp-service windbreaker who had just walked through the employee bypass door.
The ramp worker didn't wear an airport badge on his chest lanyard. Pinned to his collar was an embroidered oval patch: Vance Logistics & Freight Operations.
"Officer Nolan," I said, my pulse knocking hard against my collarbone as I tapped the counter glass with my index finger. "The evidence chain is leaving the sterile corridor right now. That isn't an airport baggage handler taking that bag down to the holding locker. That is Martin Vance's private terminal liaison."
Nolan stood up from her rolling chair, her radio antenna clipping the underside of the desk lamp as she moved toward the glass divider. "Gregson!" she called out, pressing the red intercom toggle beside the door frame. "The sheriff hasn't logged the intake package yet. Where is that bag being routed?"
Through the glass, Gregson didn't turn around. He simply pushed the heavy fire door open with his hip, allowing the ramp worker to carry my suitcase out into the private baggage ramp leading down to the service apron. When the fire door clicked shut on its hydraulic arm, Gregson turned back to face the glass, his face entirely blank, his thumb resting casually on the plastic speaker grill of his shoulder microphone.
"Routine transfer to secondary holding in the basement annex, Nolan," Gregson's voice crackled through the small ceiling speaker above our heads. "Terminal congestion protocol. Clear the lane and prep the suspect's paperwork."
"He just broke the federal custody seal," I said quietly, watching Vance walk away from the boarding gate window and disappear into the jetway tunnel with his leather briefcase tucked under his arm. "If that suitcase goes down the service ramp into the freight staging bays, the red depot tag will be stripped off before the sheriff's car reaches the perimeter gate. By the time I am booked into county lockup, the only thing in the official police report will be my name, an opened suitcase, and two pounds of unmanifested contraband."
Nolan looked from the empty spot on the inspection table to the blank screen on her desktop. A line of fine tension creased her forehead, her thumb lingering on the intercom button. For four decades on the freight spurs, I had seen that exact expression on the faces of young shift inspectors when an unlogged boxcar rolled past the scale house without a manifest—the sudden, sickening realization that a routine procedure had been turned into a private transaction while they were looking at the paperwork.
"You said you managed freight routing," Nolan said, her voice dropping into an urgent, hushed whisper as she turned back to the desk. "Vance Logistics runs the bonded cargo warehouse on the north apron. They have an unmonitored employee service door connecting the baggage sub-level directly to the tarmac freight docks."
"I know that warehouse," I said, reaching into my cardigan pocket with steady, deliberate slowness so she wouldn't mistake the movement for a reach. I pulled out my folded paper boarding pass and the carbon-copy receipt from the long-term parking garage. "And I know why Martin Vance needs an open criminal indictment against me before noon."
I unfolded the receipt. Pressed inside the crease was a miniature digital voice recorder, its casing worn down to the bare aluminum around the microphone grill—the recorder I had carried in my shirt pocket when Vance came to my kitchen table last Thursday to demand that I surrender my brother's share of the north freight terminal.
"My brother didn't die of a heart attack in that cargo office three weeks ago," I told Nolan, watching her eyes widen as she saw the small red indicator light on the recorder casing. "He was killed because he refused to sign a fraudulent hazardous-material manifest that allowed uninspected sea containers to clear the port without customs screening. Vance thinks he can bury the estate claim by locking me in a felony cell before I can present my brother's private shipping logs to the Port Authority commissioners at their two o'clock hearing."
Nolan stared at the small metal cylinder, then back out through the glass partition toward the corridor where Gregson was already returning, a fresh pair of blue latex gloves snapped over his wrists.
"The gate agent just called final boarding for Chicago," Nolan whispered, her hand dropping onto the computer keyboard as she pulled up the internal terminal camera directory. "If Vance boards that turboprop, he takes the company seal with him to the corporate office in Minneapolis. But if that bag was taken to the north apron..." She paused, typing three rapid commands into the terminal interface. "The freight dock cameras aren't controlled by airport police. They run on the county maritime port authority network."
She clicked an icon, and a grainy, monochrome video feed flickered to life on her left-hand monitor.
On the screen, the blue-windbreaker ramp worker was hurrying down a concrete loading tunnel beneath the terminal, my green suitcase bouncing against his leg. But he wasn't heading toward the airport police evidence vault. He was walking straight toward the open bay doors of Cargo Shed 4, where Martin Vance's personal company courier van was idling with its rear doors swinging open.
CHAPTER 3: The Freight Manifest Held The Missing Line
The metal latch on the intake booth rattled as Officer Nolan twisted the thumb-turn from the inside, dropping the heavy deadbolt into its strike plate with a sharp, dry snap. She did not look at the corridor windows where the morning travelers kept shuffling toward the concourse shops. Her uniform shirt had dark rings of sweat pooling beneath the ballistic vest straps, but her fingers moved across the dispatch terminal with the steady, mechanical cadence of an operator who understood that every unrecorded keystroke was an actionable breach of airport protocol.
"The freight bypass gate uses two-way badge logging," Nolan said, her eyes fixed on the low-resolution video stream showing Cargo Shed 4. "Gregson didn't swipe his Port Authority credential at the outer door. He used a contractor guest key issued by the north terminal maintenance division. That means the central security server didn't trip a red flag when the vestibule door clicked open. To the automated monitor, that doorway was opened by an air-conditioning mechanic checking a condenser pump."
"He didn't run the suitcase down the maintenance shaft alone," I told her, stepping to the side of the console so my shadow would not block the small monochrome display. "Look at the van's rear bumper. That isn't an airport baggage tractor idling beside the cargo bay. It’s a commercial delivery chassis registered to Vance Maritime Forwarding. Martin Vance doesn't leave his private fleet on airport concrete without an approved freight release manifest already signed by a customs broker."
Outside the glass partition, the concourse public address speakers chimed three descending electronic tones. This is the final boarding announcement for Flight four-seventy-one with service to Chicago O'Hare. All ticketed passengers must be on board at this time. The jet bridge doors will close in three minutes.
Through the wide terminal windows behind the passenger stanchions, the silver twin-engine turboprop sat bathed in the flat, gray light of the Puget Sound morning. A yellow ground-power cart had just uncoupled from the forward fuselage, its black umbilical cable recoiling onto the tarmac like a severed tendon. In the passenger cabin, four rows back from the cockpit windows, a figure in a tailored charcoal suit adjusted an overhead reading light before pulling the narrow window blind half-shut. Vance was already in his seat. He had not waited for the local sheriff to arrive at the checkpoint. He had not waited to hear whether I was being moved to the county jail or the terminal holding cells. For Vance, the transaction was finished the moment Gregson dropped the latch and carried the scuffed bag past the sterile perimeter.
Nolan’s mouse clicked against the plastic desk pad, splitting her screen into four synchronized security panels. "The baggage conveyor system down in the basement operates on optical package counters. If a handler lifts an item off the belt before it strikes the secondary bar-code bridge, the line controller logs an unrouted reject error. It doesn't sound an alarm; it just writes the parcel weight into the overnight diagnostic error ledger. What was the exact gross weight of your carry-on when you checked it at the curbside scale?"
"Thirty-two pounds four ounces," I answered without hesitating. "The scale operator stamped the weight on the back of my yellow baggage receipt before he handed me the claim stub."
I pulled the creased carbon slip from my cardigan pocket and laid it flat beside her keyboard, pressing the curled edges down with the rough pads of my thumbs. Across forty years on the West Seattle freight spurs, you learn that paperwork is the only thing that survives an executive's word. A supervisor can look you in the eye and deny he told you to uncouple a damaged flatcar, but he cannot erase the ink ribbon impressions pressed through three layers of pressure-treated carbon paper once the yardmaster signs the daily turnover book.
Nolan took the slip, held it under the gooseneck desk lamp, and typed the eight-digit luggage tracking number into the terminal's internal sorter diagnostics. The monitor went white for two seconds before spitting out a single line of green system text:
BAG-TRK-992014 -- WEIGHT AT CURB: 32.25 LBS -- STATUS: DIVERTED TO MANUAL INSPECTION.
Then, four lines below it, an automated timestamp from the sub-level transfer junction appeared:
MANUAL CLEARANCE -- BAY 3 -- REMOVAL WEIGHT: 34.60 LBS -- HANDLER ID: GUEST-PASS-NORTH-04.
Nolan let out a long, slow breath through her teeth, her hand freezing on the desk edge. "The bag gained two pounds four ounces between the curb and the inspection table. That brick didn't come through the public terminal scanners, Mr. Mercer. That extra weight was added to your luggage inside the baggage basement before Gregson ever brought it up the service stairs to my table."
"And that weight difference matches the foil package sitting in Vance's courier van right now," I said. "He didn't want the police to find drugs in my living room. A search of an old machinist's house takes two weeks to schedule, requires three signatures from a municipal judge, and gives my brother's lawyer time to demand an inventory audit of the north freight docks. But an airport interdiction at a security checkpoint is public, immediate, and impossible to walk away from. If the evening news runs a story about an elderly man caught with two pounds of compressed narcotics in his carry-on, the probate court freezes my brother's estate executor rights before dinner."
The internal phone on Nolan's desk buzzed with two sharp, insistent rings. The caller-ID display showed the three-digit extension for the airport police supervisor's annex down on the baggage concourse: SGT. R. GREGSON - LINE 1.
Nolan did not pick up the handset. She reached across the desk, toggled the speakerphone button, and let her finger hover over the small red mute tab.
"Nolan," Gregson's voice came through the small plastic speaker, sounding flat, hurried, and clipped by the tinny microphone in his radio cradle. "The King County patrol unit just pulled into the commercial taxi loop at the south entrance. I'm meeting the deputy at the lower curb to brief him on the interdiction before we bring him up to the holding cage. Keep that door locked and don't let the suspect touch his personal phone. If he asks for an attorney or complains about chest pains, tell him the county medic will check his vitals during the initial booking intake."
"Officer Gregson," Nolan said, keeping her tone completely flat, matching the administrative indifference she had used all morning. "Where is the physical evidence chain? The county deputy is going to need the primary package seals logged before he accepts custody of the prisoner."
A short pause lingered on the line, long enough for the distant hiss of runway air compressors to leak through Gregson's connection.
"The evidence is being processed in the regional holding vault behind Cargo Shed Two," Gregson replied, his voice dropping an octave, tightening around the words. "The Port Authority interdiction team had another field testing kit staged down there. The preliminary field test was positive for synthetic opiates. I've got the test strip and the weigh receipt right here. Just keep the old man in the chair until we come up the stairs."
The line went dead with an abrupt, mechanical click.
Nolan slowly took her hand off the desk, her face pale under the fluorescent bulbs. "He lied. Cargo Shed Two hasn't had an active evidence locker since the airport remodeled the south concourse four years ago. It’s an empty pallet staging dock used for broken baggage carts."
"He isn't testing the package," I said, pointing toward the monitor where the blue-windbreaker worker was now closing the rear doors of the commercial courier van. "He's handing it off. Once that van clears the north cargo perimeter, the original bag with the red Vance Logistics tag disappears forever. Gregson walks back in here with an empty police evidence envelope, a signed lab receipt from an off-site testing van, and a sworn incident narrative that claims the contraband was found inside my personal luggage before it was transferred to county custody."
Nolan stood up, walked to the narrow metal locker behind the intake desk, and pulled a heavy black keycard on a coiled lanyard from the top shelf. "The terminal security protocols allow a secondary screening officer to halt an interdiction transfer if there is an unverified weight discrepancy in the chain of custody. But if I file an emergency manifest stop, Gregson’s union representative will have my badge by noon tomorrow. He has seventeen years on this force. I’ve been on the concourse for fourteen months."
"You don't need to file an emergency stop, Officer Nolan," I said, reaching into my cardigan pocket and pulling out the small carbon slip I had kept tucked behind my brother's obituary notice. "You only need to run the automated safety audit on the north perimeter gate."
She looked at me, her eyes narrowing in confusion. "The perimeter gate? That’s four hundred yards away from this checkpoint."
"Vance Logistics holds a specialized federal bonded carrier license for handling trans-Pacific sea cargo," I told her, my voice dropping into that calm, immovable rhythm you learn when an eight-ton crane cable starts to groan under an uneven load. "Under the Maritime Transportation Security Act of 2002, any commercial vehicle departing an airport sterile zone while carrying an unmanifested airframe component or cargo diversion must pass through an automated radiation and weight sensor at the perimeter exit boom. That sensor takes a high-speed digital photograph of the truck's cargo bed and logs the vehicle's total axle weight directly into the United States Customs database in Washington."
Nolan’s mouth parted slightly. "The customs database isn't controlled by the airport police."
"No," I said. "And Martin Vance doesn't have an uncle or a golf partner on the federal maritime board. The minute that courier van rolls across the exit sensor with my green hard-shell case inside, the discrepancy between the van's morning gate pass and its departure weight will trigger an automated federal cargo hold at the barrier arm. That truck cannot leave the airport property without a physical inspection by a federal customs officer."
Outside the window, the engines of Flight 471 began to whine, a high-pitched turbine whistle that cut through the double-pane glass and shook the metal stanchions in the passenger lane. The ground crew pulled the wheel chocks from the turboprop's main gear, and the aircraft began its slow, deliberate pivot away from the terminal wall, its silver nose pointing toward the taxiway leading out to Runway 16 Left.
Nolan didn't waste another second. She sat down at her terminal, swiped her black keycard across the administrative sensor, and pulled up the regional customs clearance portal. Her fingers moved with frantic speed across the keys, entering the license plate number of the idling courier van shown on the Cargo Shed 4 video feed: WASHINGTON COMMERCIAL -- 4419-VJ.
Across the screen, three red status blocks blinked into life:
CUSTOMS ENTRY: VANCE MARITIME FORWARDING.
ORIGIN: DOCK 14, TERMINAL 3.
STATUS: EXIT PENDING.
AUTOMATED SENSOR ALERT: WEIGHT MISMATCH DETECTED AT BARRIER ARM 2.
On the video feed, the courier van had reached the south exit boom, where a heavy steel barrier arm remained firmly lowered across the asphalt lane. A uniformed officer from the Department of Homeland Security stepped out of the concrete guard shack, carrying a digital clipboard and an industrial flashlight, his hand raised to command the driver to turn off the engine.
At the exact same moment, the heavy fire door at the end of the intake corridor swung open with a resounding bang, and Officer Gregson strode into the hallway, followed closely by a King County deputy with a pair of nickel-plated handcuffs already drawn from his leather holster.
CHAPTER 4: What The Perimeter Recorded
The hydraulic barrier arm at the north cargo gate stayed parallel to the wet asphalt, its red clearance lights painting the windshield of Vance’s delivery van in long, scarlet bars. Through the reinforced plate glass of the second-story inspection office, I watched two federal customs agents in high-visibility vests circle the stationary chassis. One held a sealed pneumatic manifest scanner against the driver’s side door, while the other crouched beside the rear axle with an extended mirror tool, checking the factory weld marks on the undercarriage spare mount. Gregson stood five feet to my left, his arms crossed over his chest, his duty radio squealing with fragmented bursts from the airport police primary desk that he no longer reached to answer.
Beside the central monitor desk, Deputy Miller from the King County Sheriff’s Office laid his nickel-plated handcuffs flat against the printed log sheets. He had not taken his sidearm out of its holster, and he had not asked me to place my hands on the wall. For twelve minutes, while the terminal public address system droned with final passenger calls for departing flights, the deputy had stood behind Officer Nolan’s shoulder, reading the green text running down the state logistics terminal. On that screen, the digitized chain of custody had broken into three distinct, irreconcilable timestamps.
"The curbside conveyor scale at three-four-zero logged thirty-two pounds four ounces at seven-ten," Miller said, his thumb tracing the blue ribbon imprint on my parking stub. "The secondary sorter bridge at baggage junction seven logged thirty-four pounds six ounces at seven-twenty-two. That’s two pounds two ounces of unaccounted mass introduced between the passenger check-in counter and the sterile loading tunnel. And the handler keycard used to clear that weight discrepancy through the manual bypass wasn't an airport employee badge. It was an unassigned vendor card issued to the north freight annex."
"That vendor card belongs to the refrigeration contractor," Gregson said, his voice flat, gravelly, and stripped of the easy authority he had carried when he cornered me against the stainless counter in the screening lane. "Contractors drop equipment cases into the service basement all the time when they’re servicing the galley chillers. You can't hang an evidence-tampering charge on an administrative gate card that thirty maintenance workers share during a morning turnaround."
"Contractors don't carry hard-shell Samsonite luggage into Cargo Shed Four," Officer Nolan replied without looking up from her keyboard. She struck the enter key, splitting the display into a two-screen comparison. "The optical contour scanner on the basement belt records silhouette profiles to prevent cargo jamming. Look at the perimeter feed from Gate Two right now."
On the right-hand panel, the federal agent on the tarmac pulled the roll-up rear door of Vance’s idling van open with a heavy metallic clatter. The vehicle’s interior cargo bay was illuminated by a single incandescent strip overhead. Rested squarely on the ribbed floorboards, positioned directly behind the spare tire jack, was my green carry-on case. The factory zipper track was still split down the middle where Gregson had forced it with his pocket pry, and the heavy plastic evidence sleeve was still draped loosely across the top handle, untied, unsealed, and bearing no official King County intake sticker.
Beside the suitcase sat the foil-wrapped package. In the harsh beam of the customs officer’s handheld lantern, the square red depot sticker on the lower corner flared like fresh blood.
"There is your chain of custody, Officer Gregson," Deputy Miller said, stepping away from the desk and turning his back on the window. "A Class A narcotics confiscation package from an active passenger checkpoint, sitting in the back of an unbonded commercial van outside the secure perimeter before the arresting deputy even cleared the passenger arrivals curb. The Port Authority police chief is en route from the main terminal office right now, accompanied by two investigators from the Department of Transportation Inspector General."
Gregson’s jaw tightened, his fingers digging into the fabric of his uniform sleeves. "You don't understand how the freight spurs operate around here, Miller. That old man’s brother left forty thousand square feet of dock space tied up in probate while three shipping lines are waiting on container staging. The family isn't running rail cars; they’re holding municipal property hostage while the regional economy moves around them. Vance was bringing private capital into an empty industrial siding."
"My brother didn't hold anything hostage, Gregson," I said, my voice cutting through the dry mechanical hum of the computer fans. "He kept forty local mechanics employed on fair wages while your logistics syndicate ran uninspected trans-Pacific containers through the north siding without paying the state port tax. He refused to sign the hazardous waste waivers for the chemical shipments you were moving out of Spokane. That's why he died alone on that office floor, and that's why Vance needed me in a county jail cell before the two o'clock probate hearing could unseal his corporate audits."
The heavy fire door at the end of the hall opened with a firm, measured push. Two Port Authority internal affairs detectives stepped into the room, their gold shields pinned to the lapels of dark civilian overcoats. Behind them stood an elderly man in a salt-and-pepper tweed jacket carrying a leather legal folder with the seal of the Washington State Superior Court embossed in gold leaf across the binding.
It was Arthur Pendelton, the probate attorney who had represented my brother’s machine shop for thirty-four years. He did not look at Gregson, and he did not glance at the monitors displaying the stalled van on the runway. He walked straight to the counter, pulled a blue-ink carbon document from his folder, and laid it flat beside my green luggage receipt.
"The emergency injunction was signed by Judge Alvarez at eight-fifteen this morning, Marcus," Pendelton said quietly, resting a spotted hand on my shoulder. "The court has frozen all transfer authority for the north freight depot. Every bank account, equipment lease, and customs access badge tied to Vance Logistics has been placed under court-ordered receivership pending a forensic investigation into the terminal manifests. Mr. Vance won't be closing his corporate buyout in Chicago today. In fact, he isn't leaving the gate."
Outside the terminal glass, the twin turboprop of Flight 471 sat motionless on the taxiway, surrounded by three yellow Port Authority security vehicles with their strobe lights flashing silently against the wet morning mist. A portable passenger stair truck was already rolling across the tarmac toward the forward cabin door, its steel steps rising toward the aircraft’s fuselage to escort Martin Vance back onto airport concrete under federal subpoena.
The lead detective tapped Gregson on the shoulder with two fingers. "Duty belt and sidearm, Sergeant. The King County prosecutor wants your preliminary statement logged before the morning shift change."
Gregson stood rigid for three seconds, his breath hitching behind his ballistic vest as if he were still calculating whether his contractor badge could open one more fire exit. Then, slowly, with fingers that trembled against the nylon webbing, he unclipped the heavy black belt and laid it on the desk beside the evidence forms. The steel handcuffs clinked against the faux-wood surface, settling between the carbon shipping receipt and the red-stamped package manifest that had undone him.
Ten minutes later, the freight bypass gate swung open to admit the Port Authority van carrying my suitcase back up the concrete ramp. The torn zipper was still held together by the electrical tape Gregson had applied, and the scuffed nylon corners carried the grease of forty miles of airport conveyor tracks. But as Officer Nolan handed me the heavy leather handle across the counter, she did not look at the tape or the damaged fabric. She looked at the small brass machinist’s tag my brother had soldered to the steel frame thirty years ago, stamped with his initials and the coordinates of the West Seattle yard.
"Your flight to Chicago has been rebooked for two-fifteen, Mr. Mercer," Nolan said, her voice softer now, her eyes meeting mine without the official distance of the security stanchions. "The gate supervisor issued a personal airline escort pass to clear you through the north VIP concourse. You won't have to walk through this checkpoint again."
I picked up the case, testing its thirty-two pounds of familiar, honest weight against my tired wrist. The pain in my arthritic knuckles was still there, sharp and steady beneath the skin, but my hands were completely still.
"Thank you, Officer Nolan," I said, turning the handle until the wheels aligned with the clean linoleum floor. "A good railroader always checks the weight twice before the train leaves the siding. It saves the bridge from coming down when the weather turns bad."
I walked out through the double glass doors of the terminal annex into the wide, sunlit concourse of Terminal 3. Outside, the rain had stopped, leaving long, clear puddles on the concrete apron where the morning cargo flights were finally spooling up their turbines. Across the central waiting lounge, past the rows of quiet passengers reading their newspapers, the departure monitors flickered green with on-time updates, their mechanical clicks rolling through the high ceiling like an old telegraph line working its way home.
FINAL THANK-YOU NOTE
Thank you for making room for these pages today.