Alara was alone again, but she wasn't relaxing. Her mind, honed by years of scientific research and corporate warfare, was connecting dots. Ryan Sterling had been too defensive. It was one thing to be a snob. It was another thing to be terrified. When Alara had threatened to call Marcel Thorne, Ryan hadn't just looked worried about his job. He looked like a man who was afraid of going to jail. Why? Alara looked around the cabin. It was immaculate. But something felt off.
She stood up and walked toward the master stateroom at the back of the jet. She opened the closet where she kept her personal items. Her expensive toiletries were there. Her spare clothes were there. But on the top shelf, pushed all the way to the back behind a stack of towels, she saw something glinting. She reached up and pulled it down. It was a bottle of tequila. Don Julio 1942. Alara didn't drink tequila. She hated it. And she certainly didn't stock it on her plane.
She turned the bottle over. It was half empty. She looked closer at the shelf. There was a faint circular stain on the wood, a water ring from a glass that had been set down carelessly. Alara's heart began to beat faster. This wasn't just about a rude crew. Someone had been using her plane. Someone had been partying on her $73 million asset without her permission. She needed proof. And she had 7 hours to find it.
Alara sat back down in the club chair. But this time, she pulled up the aircraft's onboard management system on her laptop. As the owner, she had administrator access that bypassed the crew's interface. She pulled up the flight logs. According to the official manifest submitted to Marcel Thorne's management company, the Obsidian King had been grounded in Teterboro for the last 10 days for routine avionics maintenance. Alara cross-referenced this with the engine cycle data. The Bombardier Global 7500 transmits engine data in real time to the manufacturer for diagnostics. It's hard to delete that.
She scanned the dates. October 12th, engine start, duration 4 hours 20 minutes. October 15th, engine start, duration 4 hours 15 minutes. The plane hadn't been in maintenance. It had flown somewhere 4 hours away, stayed for 3 days, and flown back. Alara opened the GPS history map. It was password protected. She typed in her master override code. The map loaded. A bright red line traced a path from Teterboro, New Jersey, south over the Atlantic Ocean, landing in Nassau, Bahamas.
Alara felt a cold fury settle in her stomach. They had stolen her jet. Ryan Sterling and Tara Blair had taken her aircraft on an unauthorized charter. This is known in the industry as a ghost flight. Unscrupulous pilots will take cash under the table from shady clients, drug dealers, disgraced celebrities, people who don't want to be on a manifest, and fly them using the owner's fuel and the owner's plane, pocketing the cash tax-free. It was highly illegal. It was dangerous. And it voided her insurance. If they had crashed in the Bahamas, Alara would have been liable for millions, and her reputation would have been destroyed.
She looked at the dates again. The flight to Nassau happened last weekend. Alara stood up and walked to the cockpit door. She didn't knock. She keyed in the access code on the keypad, a code Ryan probably assumed she didn't know. The door clicked and hissed open. Ryan jumped in his seat so hard he knocked his headset askew. The cockpit was dark, lit only by the glow of the instrument panels and the stars outside. "Ms. Banks," Ryan gasped grabbing the yoke. "You... You can't be in here. Federal regulations state..."
"Save the regulations, Ryan," Alara said stepping into the small space. She closed the door behind her. The hum of the wind was louder here. "We need to talk about Nassau." The silence that followed was heavier than the plane itself. Ryan's face illuminated by the green glow of the radar turned a sickly shade of gray. He didn't speak. He stared straight ahead at the artificial horizon. "I checked the engine cycles," Alara lied smoothly. "And I have a friend at Nassau air traffic control who just sent me a picture of my tail number on the tarmac last Saturday." She didn't have a friend in Nassau. But Ryan didn't know that.
"I... I can explain," Ryan stammered sweat beating on his neck. "Who was it?" Alara asked softly. "Who did you fly? Was it a bachelor party, a drug run, or just some friends of yours?" "It... It was a charter," Ryan whispered his resistance crumbling. "A private cash charter, a rapper. He... He needed to get to a festival and his plane broke down. He offered 50,000 cash. Cash, Ms. Banks?" "50,000," Alara repeated. "You risked a 70 million dollar asset for 50,000 dollars? I have debts," Ryan snapped his voice cracking. "My alimony, the house. I needed the money. We didn't hurt the plane. We cleaned it perfectly."
"You didn't clean it perfectly," Alara said. "You left a bottle of tequila in my closet. And you treated the owner of this plane like a stray dog because you were paranoid I was someone investigating you." Ryan turned to look at her, tears in his eyes. A grown man, a captain reduced to a weeping child. "Please, Ms. Banks. I'm begging you. If you report this to the FAA, I lose my license. I go to prison. I'm 58 years old. I have nothing else." Alara looked at him. She thought about the rain. She thought about him blocking the stairs. She thought about him shoving her.
"You should have thought about your debts before you put your hands on me, Ryan," she said coldly. "What are you going to do?" he asked, his voice trembling. Alara looked at the navigation display. They were 3 hours from Paris. "Keep flying," Alara said. "Get us to Le Bourget. Land this plane smoothly. If you bump the tires on the runway, I will be very upset." "And then?" "And then," Alara said, turning to leave the cockpit, "justice will be served." She walked out and closed the door.
She went back to her seat. She didn't sleep. She opened her laptop and composed an email. But she didn't send it to Marcel Thorne. She sent it to the French National Police, La Police Nationale, and CC'd the FBI International Operations Division. Subject: Urgent unauthorized use of aircraft, grand larceny. Incoming flight N7 from 0AB. She attached the engine logs. She attached the video file from Tara's phone. Then she sat back and waited for the sunrise. The karma wasn't going to be hard. It was going to be nuclear.