0545 hours.
Monica sat staring at the freeze-frame image on her computer monitor.
She had to tell someone.
She put her hand on her phone, then stopped.
Would he listen?
She had to make him listen.
She looked up his stateroom number, punched in the four digits. No answer. Shit. She’d have to leave a message on his office line. Looked up that number.
The phone picked up on the first ring. “Scott Angler.”
It took her a moment to realize it wasn’t a recorded voicemail prompt. “Scott? You’re there?”
“Long night,” said Scott. “What’s up?”
“Listen, it’s about Kris—” She heard his hiss of exasperation. “Please—don’t hang up. This is important!”
She heard him pause. “What,” he said, not disguising the impatience.
“The night she went missing, after we talked in the passageway, she went out to be by herself for a bit. Right?”
“Okay.”
“That night, there was a guy in the passageway, in goggles and a green jersey, a guy I didn’t recognize.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Scott—I don’t think he was a genuine handler.”
She heard him sigh. “Monica. You can’t expect to recognize every single—”
“I know them, Scott! I’m telling you, this guy was not a handler, he was just wearing the outfit! Scott—I think he may have been following Kris.”
There was a silence, so long she thought she’d lost her connection. Finally Scott said, “Papadakis ran, Monica. Guilty men run.”
Monica said nothing, just waited.
After another silence he said, “You’re sure about this?”
Monica swallowed, her throat dry as leather. “I am.”
“And you don’t know who it was?”
“No. But definitely not Commander Papadakis.”
“Okay.”
“Okay? That’s it?”
“I’ll look into this, I promise. I mean it. All right?”
“All right.” She felt hollow, the rough emptiness that followed an adrenaline rush. “Scott—”
“Hmm?”
“I’m sorry. For what I said.”
“Tell me over breakfast in Hawaii.”
He disconnected.
Tell me over breakfast in Hawaii. That would be nice. Monica almost smiled, but her face was too tired to make the shape.
She sat still for a moment, looking at the freeze-frame on her screen.
It occurred to her that she hadn’t told Scott just how she stumbled upon the unidentified handler in the first place. In fact, she’d been so focused on her revelation that this man was in that passageway the night Kris disappeared, she hadn’t stopped to ask herself the obvious question—
What was he doing there on the flight deck, just moments before Black Falcon 204’s final flight?
“Oh, God,” she murmured. A fresh stream of adrenaline surged through her body.
She reset the footage and went through it once more, this time frame by frame, following the movements of the unidentified handler. She saw him emerge from the right side of the frame and approach the bird. Duck under the main deck, by the fuel lines.
Wait.
She isolated a single frame. Something in his hand, something he was holding to the fuel line. A wrench? Screwdriver?
A pen?
Not a pen.
A hypodermic.
“Oh!” Monica gasped and jerked back, sending her chair rolling back a few feet. She stared at the screen in horror.
Not pilot error.
Sabotage.
She snatched at the phone and dialed Scott again. No answer. She hung up and immediately dialed back. It rang four times, then went to voicemail.