Good, she said. She went back to her homework. He sat across from her and thought about tomorrow. About 7:00 a.m. at the Federal Field Office, about the investigation that was bigger than anyone had understood. On the morning, Victoria Sterling laughed at his invoice.
He thought about the circuit, about following every line, about refusing to assume that clean meant safe, about the things that hide in systems drawing power, creating heat, waiting for the stress that makes them fail. He thought about the men on every aircraft in Sterling Crown's fleet who had boarded thinking the machine beneath them was exactly what it was supposed to be. He thought about the fact that right now tonight because a woman had refused to pay an invoice and a mechanic had refused to sign a certificate. Every one of those aircraft was on the ground. He looked at his daughter.
He thought about his wife. I thought about 19 years and 312 pages and a key placed on a conference table without a word. He thought about the job and the job wasn't done. The Federal Field Office in downtown Dallas occupied the 14th floor of a building that smelled like recycled air and institutional coffee. Malcolm arrived at 6:53, 7 minutes before Delgato had asked for because being on time meant being early, and being early meant being prepared.
Rachel was already in the lobby when he walked in her tablet under her arm and a look on her face that said she hadn't slept much, but had spent the hours she was awake doing something useful. "They called me at 5:30," she said quietly as he came through the door. "Why?" "They want the original email records, the domain registration trace, everything I have on the inquiry that came in before the contract. Did you bring it?" She held up the tablet. All of it exported, timestamped, and organized.
He nodded once. That was Rachel. That was always Rachel. They went up together. Delgado met them in a conference room that had too many chairs and not enough windows. with him.
Him was a woman named Agent Sandra Cho from the FBI's Financial Crimes Division, not FAA, FBI, which told Malcolm that the scope of what they'd found in aircraft 11 had expanded overnight the way he'd expected it to. and two technical analysts who had apparently been working. Since 4 in the morning based on the coffee cups and the particular hollowedeyed focus of people running on caffeine and urgency. Delgado introduced everyone with the economy of a man who didn't waste words in rooms where time was the resource. "We pulled the email domain records last night," he said, looking at Rachel. The registration traces to a shell company with addresses in three states, none of which correspond to a physical location.
But the payment trail for the domain registration goes through a financial account that we've seen before in a different context. Rachel set her tablet on the table. Same account, same network, Delgato said. Different account, same network, which is how these things work. He looked at Malcolm. your theory from yesterday afternoon about the restoration being used as cover.
Our technical team spent the night running it against the timeline. And Malcolm said, "Agent Cho spoke from the first time. She had the clipped precision of someone who thought in sequences rather than narratives. 18 Months ago, Sterling Crown's avionics contractor performed routine maintenance on aircraft 11. The maintenance log for that visit is clean.
The work was performed correctly. documented correctly, signed off correctly. She paused. However, the maintenance window for that visit was 4 hours. The job log shows it was completed in 2 hours and 40 minutes, leaving an hour and 20 minutes unaccounted for, Malcolm said. During which the avionics bay was accessible, Cho said.
And during which, based on the access card data we pulled last night, two people entered and exited the hanger. One was the avionics contractor. One was a second individual using an access code registered to a Sterling Crown Facilities account that was supposedly inactive. Curtis Hayward's account, Malcolm said, not Hayward's personal account, Cho said. An account that Hayward administered.