"My granddaughter's flight touches down in Chicago in three hours," I said, holding my palms flat on the stainless counter so my arthritis tremor would not look like nerves. "I packed one suit, two dress shirts, and a photo album. You have already run the case through the dual-view scanner twice."
Gregson did not answer. He angled his body between my chest and the open bag, shielding his right hip from the overhead lens, and wrenched out a sealed foil brick the size of a paperback novel. The heavy package hit the metal surface with a dense, hollow thud. It had come from beneath the bottom liner—a space separated from my folded clothes by a factory seam that had been sliced open with a razor and held together by fresh electrical tape.
"Call regional dispatch," Gregson barked toward the secondary lane officer, though he never looked back to confirm she was moving. "We have an unmanifested Class A narcotic cache concealed behind the structural frame."