“What about when the captain arrived?”
“She acted confident. Like she expected him to support her.”
Thomas leaned back.
“Confidence can come from arrogance. But it can also come from advance reassurance.”
“You think someone promised her the seat?”
“Possibly.”
Over the next two days, Thomas reviewed the available boarding records, crew communications, and security footage that Northstar had retained under its incident investigation procedures.
On Monday morning, he called.
“I found something you should see.”
An hour later, we sat together in a private conference room.
Thomas opened a video file.
The footage showed the gate area before Flight 418 began boarding.
Passengers moved through the terminal.
A gate agent checked documents.
Then Victoria appeared.
She wasn't alone.
Standing beside her was a man wearing a charcoal-gray suit.
He appeared to be in his early fifties.
They spoke for approximately two minutes.
The man handed Victoria something.
A small rectangular object.
Possibly a card.
Then he walked away.
Victoria glanced down at the object, smiled, and entered the priority boarding lane.
“Who is he?” I asked.
Thomas paused the video.
“His name is Adrian Cole.”
I recognized the name immediately.
Adrian Cole was Northstar Airways' senior vice president of corporate partnerships.
He was one of the executives responsible for the Meridian Project.
I stared at the screen.
“Why was he at the airport?”
“According to his calendar, he was supposed to be in Chicago that morning.”
“Was he flying?”
“No record of a departure from Atlanta under his name.”
I looked at Thomas.
“So he came to the airport, spoke privately with Victoria, and left?”
“That's what the footage shows.”
“Can we hear their conversation?”
“No. The camera has no audio.”
I folded my arms.
“What did he hand her?”
“We can't tell.”
Thomas closed the laptop.
“But there's something else.”
He opened a separate document.
“Victoria Harrington's event-planning company received a consulting payment from a firm called Meridian Advisory Group eleven days before the flight.”
I stared at him.
“How much?”
“Twenty-five thousand dollars.”
The room seemed to grow quieter.
“Was it legitimate?”
“We haven't established that.”
“Who owns Meridian Advisory Group?”
Thomas met my eyes.
“That's what we're trying to determine.”
For the first time since receiving the anonymous letter, I felt something colder than anger.
Because if Adrian Cole had paid Victoria to create a disturbance, the incident on Flight 418 might have been part of a much larger scheme.
And I was beginning to suspect that the real target hadn't been my seat.
It had been me.
Victoria Harrington had spent most of her adult life believing that appearances were everything.
She lived in a sprawling house outside Atlanta, drove a luxury SUV, and filled her social media accounts with photographs from exclusive restaurants, charity galas, and private events.
To the outside world, she was successful, glamorous, and well connected.
But her business was in trouble.
Thomas discovered that Harrington Premier Events had lost three major corporate contracts during the previous year.
Its credit line was nearly exhausted.
Several vendors had filed collection claims.
And Victoria had quietly placed her vacation property on the market.
The twenty-five-thousand-dollar payment suddenly looked more significant.
Thomas called me with the update.
“Financial pressure can make people vulnerable to bad decisions,” he said.
“Do you think she was hired to provoke me?”
“I think someone paid her company shortly before the flight. We still need to establish why.”
“Has she been contacted?”
“Not yet.”
“Why?”
“Because I'd prefer to understand the payment before asking questions she can prepare answers to.”
That afternoon, Victoria made a mistake.
She called Adrian Cole.
Thomas learned about the call later through records obtained with the cooperation of a company involved in the investigation.
The call itself wasn't recorded.
But its timing was revealing.
It occurred less than an hour after a representative of Meridian Advisory Group received a formal request to preserve financial documents.
The next morning, Victoria sent an email to a former employee.
She asked whether the employee still had access to old client invoices.
The employee no longer worked for her.
And instead of helping Victoria, she forwarded the message to her attorney.
The attorney contacted Thomas.
Within forty-eight hours, the investigation had acquired a new witness.
Her name was Lauren Price.
She had worked as Victoria's executive assistant for nearly four years.