"There's none attached to your seats, just the gate agent's entry and the badge number he gave her." Nadia didn't look surprised, so it wasn't policy being followed. It was one person trusting a badge she had no way to check. That's what the audit trail shows. Naomi sat with that for a moment.
It confirmed something she'd already suspected since the gate, that no one had actually checked anything before taking their seats. Naomi and Nadia didn't hear about the ground request. Nobody told them and nothing in the cabin gave it away, which meant they spent the descent the way they'd spent the whole flight since the gate, watching the clock, thinking about the service they were trying to get to, saying nothing to each other that needed saying twice. At the front of the cabin, Reyes received a second message. This one from the liaison system's own compliance desk rather than the security channel.
Automated flag: liaison credential access recorded outside the credential's scheduled activation window. Preserve all associated records. Do not notify the subject pending review. Reyes read it twice. It didn't name anyone.
The flag was tied to a credential number and a time stamp. Nothing more. The seating log had a badge number logged at almost the same minute. The badge number he gave her. Reyes checked the credential roster as soon as the message came in.
If the number matched anyone she wanted to know before she did anything else. It took four minutes. The credential belonged to Daniel Doss. His badge number matched two separate records. One from the gate system logged when he presented it to the agent and one from the liaison system logged 11 minutes later when he accessed it on his own.
Two systems, two timestamps, the same badge number in both. She didn't say anything to the cabin. She sent one line back to the compliance desk. Confirmed match, awaiting review outcome and asked Kavolski to pull up the docket number from Doss's report. The airlines own lookup tool had it filed under an outdated reference.
A search through the public case index found the current record. When it did, Reyes read it twice. It wasn't a criminal matter. It was an administrative complaint from 2 years earlier filed over alleged discriminatory boarding treatment on a regional carrier closed after a settlement. The docket didn't list Naomi Bell as a party to the complaint.
It listed her in the investigation file as the compliance investigator who had built the case. Her name attached the way it would be on work she'd done, not on something she'd been accused of. Reyes sat with that for a moment. Doss had taken an investigator's name and read it as evidence against her. Marsh went forward to find the captain while the crew were busy prepping for descent and asked for 2 minutes anyway.
"I want to put something on record," he said. "Not about the passengers. About my partner." "Go ahead." "He searched a name he had no operational reason to search.
He filed a report built on a docket he never confirmed connects to her. He requested verification without confirming it, and the system flagged it for ground coordination on its own. I told him to stop before each step. He didn't." "Why are you telling me instead of him?"