"Because he's not going to stop on his own, and somebody needs to have said something before we land." Marsh paused. "I know how this looks. An officer reporting his own partner. I know what that can mean for both of us, whichever way this goes.
I'm saying it anyway." Reyes didn't tell him what she just found in the docket. That wasn't his to hear first. "Noted. It'll be attached to the file."
Marsh nodded once and went back to his seat. Doors saw him coming back and read something in his face immediately. "What did you tell her?" "That you searched a passenger without cause and filed a report you couldn't back up." "You went around me."
"I went to the person flying this plane." Marsh sat down. "You had four chances to stop. A docket you couldn't confirm was hers. A gate agent who admitted she never checked duty status.
Me telling you to close the app. You kept going anyway." "Because if I'm wrong about nothing, nothing happens to her." "You keep saying that like it's a defense. It's not a defense.
It's the bar you set for yourself." "And you're about to clear it and act surprised when it turns out you were wrong about something after all." Doss didn't answer that. He pulled his phone back out instead and opened the report, not to close it, but to add to it. "Update: Passenger's associate exhibited detailed knowledge of internal airline compliance procedure, inconsistent with an ordinary traveler.
Recommend both individuals be included in ground verification." He submitted the edit. The system logged it the way it logged everything. Original entry intact. The update stacked beneath it with its own timestamp.
Nothing overwritten. Marsh watched him do it and said nothing. He'd already said everything he had to say twice to the person who could have stopped this and the one who couldn't. The seat belt sign came on for descent. Through the window, Nadia watched Denver assemble itself below in pieces.
Runways, hangars, a couple of vehicles parked near a jet bridge that didn't look like they were there for baggage or fuel. "You see that?" She asked, leaning toward her sister. Naomi looked. "Could be anything."
"Could be." Neither of them said what they were actually thinking, which was that neither of them believed it. Naomi reached down and touched the strap of her bag, where her own boarding pass sat folded next to Nadia, both still creased from being handled at a gate 2,000 mi and several hours ago. She didn't know yet what Reyes had found, or that the docket Doss had built his report on carried her name for a reason that had nothing to do with guilt. She only knew the plane was descending and that whatever was waiting for them below, she wanted the record of everything that had already happened to still be exactly where she'd left it.