"Understood," I said. My phone vibrated violently against my palm.
I looked down at the screen. It was an automated notification from the airline's mobile application. But it wasn't a boarding alert or a gate change: ALERT: YOUR RESERVATION HAS BEEN CANCELLED AT PASSENGER REQUEST. STANDBY STATUS: DENIED. CANCELLATION PENALTY APPLIED: $1,140. 00.
Someone was sitting at a terminal right now, actively systematically stripping my digital footprint from the flight to cover the paper trail before Miller could verify the logs.
"Captain," I said, showing him the glass screen. "They didn't just void my seat. They just wiped the entire reservation out of the central database. Look at the timestamp on the app. It happened forty seconds ago."
Miller looked at the screen, and for the first time, a muscle twitched in his jaw. He reached for the wall-mounted interphone next to the forward galley jumpseat, flicked the toggle to ground operations, and pressed the direct button for the gate podium.
The line clicked twice, followed by the dull buzz of a terminal phone ringing unanswered. Miller let it ring seven times before slamming the receiver back into its metal cradle.
"Craig, watch the door," Miller ordered. "If anyone tries to pull this jet bridge while my bag is blocking that sill, pull the emergency cabin buzzer."
Miller stepped past me, heading out of the aircraft and onto the sloping carpet of the jet bridge. I didn't hesitate. I ignored Craig's outstretched hand and followed two steps behind the captain, keeping my feet firmly on the metal transition plate so I was legally within the aircraft threshold.
Fifty feet up the tunnel, at the glass door leading into the bustling terminal concourse, a man in a high-visibility ramp vest and a pressed company windbreaker was leaning over the gate counter. A woman in a customer service uniform stood beside him, her hands hovering nervously over the keyboard while he pointed at the glowing monitor.
As our footsteps echoed on the metal floor of the tunnel, the man in the vest looked up. He didn't look flustered. He reached over the gate agent's shoulder, pressed a key sequence with one finger, and pulled his personal keycard from the terminal's magnetic reader, dropping the screen instantly into an encrypted blue standby lock.
CHAPTER 2 CONTINUED
"Why did the main cabin door get pulled while my flight crew was still clearing safety briefings?" Miller countered, stopping six inches from the podium counter. His flight bag was still wedged down in the aircraft threshold behind us, visible down the fluorescent incline of the tunnel. "And why is my manifest showing thirty-six paid economy passengers flagged as unassigned standbys?"
Vance didn't glance at me. To him, my navy blazer, my badge lanyard, and the torn thermal boarding pass in my fist were simply parts of an inconvenience he intended to sweep away. He looked past my shoulder, nodding toward the young gate agent whose fingers were still trembling near the locked keyboard. Her name tag read Teresa Morales, and her eyes darted between Miller's four stripes and Vance's badge like a soldier caught between conflicting commands.
"The ground crew received a mechanical hold alert from dispatch ten minutes before scheduled boarding," Vance said evenly. "Aircraft 408 had a scheduled avionics software patch flagged overnight. Protocol requires clearing passenger allocations so the tail number can be swapped without reissuing two hundred manual vouchers if maintenance grounds the airframe. Standard equipment protection."
"Don't quote fleet maintenance protocol to me, Donald," Miller said, his voice dropping into a register that made the glass panels behind the desk vibrate slightly. "I personally signed off on the maintenance release log in the cockpit forty minutes ago. There is no avionics hold on tail 408. The logbook in my jumpseat is stamped clean by regional line maintenance. Furthermore, protocol requires notifying the pilot in command before unassigning a single revenue ticket."
"Things move quickly during summer bank operations," Vance replied. He turned slightly, resting one forearm on the metal edge of the gate console. "Teresa here was processing the reassignments under my direct instruction. If there's an administrative discrepancy with passenger seat allocations, station management will audit it in the morning. Your job is to board the cleared manifest, close that L1 door, and depart before our runway slot is revoked by tower control."
"Teresa," I spoke up, stepping forward until my hands rested on the cool laminate of the podium. My voice shook with exhaustion, but the words came out measured and clear. "Did my seat get reassigned because of a maintenance alert, or did someone override my corporate corporate-rate ticket from an administrative terminal?"