Marissa was quiet for a moment. Then she looked at Richard Haw. “Rich, I need the complete supplier file on Veritech. Every contract, every payment record, every communication, and I need the personnel records for everyone listed on that safety review.” Haw nodded and started typing. She looked at the lawyers. “Get me outside counsel, not the regular firm, someone with no existing relationship to the company. I want clean eyes on this.” Then she looked at Gavin. “I’m going to ask you to do something,” she said. “And I want to be clear that you have every right to say no. You’ve already done more than anyone could reasonably expect. You have no obligation to this company.” “What do you need?” he said.
She studied him. “I need you to lead an independent technical inspection of the full CS7 system, not just the TF90. Everything. I need to know if this is one component issue or if the suppression of that safety review created downstream problems we haven’t found yet. I want your findings documented separately from our internal records filed with an independent engineering authority and delivered directly to the FAA.” “That could take several days.” “I know.” “And whatever we find, you might not like it.” “I know that too,” she said. “I need to know regardless.”
Gavin looked at the centerpieces on the table. The little chrome Sterling Crest logos still standing there incongruously celebratory in the middle of everything. “There’s something else you should know,” he said. “Tell me.” “The forged records they used to terminate me 3 years ago. The emails, the access logs. I’ve had time to look at some of them carefully. The construction of those documents required access to internal HR systems, the engineering file server, and the corporate email archive.” He looked at her steadily. “That’s not something one person does alone, and it’s not something that gets done without someone in a position of significant system access.”
Marissa’s expression didn’t change, but something behind it did. “You think there’s more than just Derek.” “I think Derek is not the only person who had a reason to want that safety flag buried,” Gavin said. “Because burying it wasn’t just about avoiding a delay in certification. Someone made a lot of money on the Veritech supply contract. I don’t know who yet, but the money always leaves a trail if you know what you’re looking for.” The room was very quiet. Through the glass wall, Gavin could see the tarmac. The CS7 Meridian was still sitting where it had been all morning in the same place, catching the same light, patient and beautiful and grounded. A ground crew member was walking a slow perimeter around it. The routine visual inspection that happened whenever an aircraft sat unflown past its scheduled departure.
Gavin thought about the 43 people who’d been redirected to the hospitality suite. He thought about the coastal approach, 60% load sustained for 12 minutes, the stabilizer drifting outside the envelope, while the indicators said everything was fine. He thought about Mia, 6 years old, asking for pancakes on a Wednesday morning, 3 days after the worst thing that had ever happened to either of them, because children have a genius for insisting on ordinary life, even when ordinary life feels like an insult to grief. He thought about the faded jacket on the hook by the door and why he’d put it on this morning anyway. “All right,” he said to Marissa Sterling. “Let’s find out what’s actually in this plane.”
She nodded. She didn’t thank him. Not yet. Not in words. But she looked at him with something that was more honest than gratitude, which was the look of a person who’d made a mistake and was still early enough in the reckoning to feel the full weight of it. That was enough, more than enough. He pushed back his chair, picked up his phone, and walked back out toward the aircraft. Outside, the morning had gone fully bright. The kind of sharp, clear light that showed everything exactly as it was, without the softness that early morning or late afternoon could put on things. The kind of light that didn’t forgive anything and didn’t ask you to look away. Gavin Holt had never had much patience for looking away. He climbed back aboard the CS7 Meridian, rolled up his sleeves, and got to work.
The independent inspection took 3 days, not because the aircraft was large. It wasn’t by commercial standards, but because Gavin refused to move faster than the work required. He’d seen what happened when people moved faster than the work required. He was standing next to that aircraft right now as a direct consequence of it. Marissa had given him access to everything. That was the word she’d used, everything. And she’d meant it in the way that people mean it when they’ve decided that the cost of not knowing is higher than the cost of knowing. She’d issued a facility-wide directive that Gavin Holt had full authorization to access any documentation, any system, any component log on the CS7 program. She’d done it in writing with her signature distributed to every department head. Gavin had read the directive twice before he started, not because he doubted her, but because he’d learned to get things in writing.
Aldrich stayed with him for the full 3 days. The lead systems engineer turned out to be exactly what his first impression had suggested. A man who’d been doing his job in good faith inside a structure that had been quietly corrupted around him, which was a particular kind of awful because it meant he’d been an unknowing instrument of something he’d have rejected outright if he’d seen it clearly. Aldrich worked through that quietly in the way that competent people work through difficult realizations by putting his head down and doing better now that he knew. They brought in two outside engineers on day two. Marissa had arranged it through the independent engineering authority she’d contacted, a firm out of Houston with no prior relationship to Sterling Crest Aviation, which was the point. Their names were Patricia Dunn and Marcus Oay. And they were the kind of engineers Gavin trusted immediately because they asked the same questions he would have asked. And they pushed back on his preliminary findings the same way he’d pushed back on theirs, which meant they were actually looking and not just validating.