"There will be an investigation. It will be thorough. It will be fair." Daniel hesitated. "I wanted you to hear it from me, not from a lawyer."
"Why?"
"Because for two years you were the closest thing I had to a mentor," Daniel said. "And I think that part of what I learned from you was how not to become you. I wanted to say thank you for that, even if you would rather I did not."
Sterling gave a short, hollow laugh. "You are a strange young man."
"So I have been told," Daniel said, and he almost smiled.
CHAPTER 14: THE GROUNDED AIRCRAFT
At two o'clock in the morning, while the city slept and the rain thinned to a drizzle, a team of inspectors walked across the wet tarmac toward an aircraft that had been scheduled to carry two hundred and six people into the dawn.
It stood alone at the end of the apron, white and enormous, its tail fin glowing faintly under the floodlights. The inspectors were quiet and methodical. They carried flashlights, clipboards, and long tubes of diagnostic equipment. They had been told that the matter was urgent, but not why, and they asked no questions.
Imani walked with them. She had changed out of the formal uniform into a plain gray work jacket, but the gold wings still gleamed at her chest. She had not gone home. She did not think she could have slept if she had tried.
The lead inspector, a stocky, soft-spoken woman named Priya Venkataraman, climbed the mobile stairs and opened the access panel beneath the left wing. She shone her light into the dark interior, and for a long time she did not speak.
"Captain," she said at last. "Come and look at this."
Imani climbed the stairs. Beneath the panel, in the glare of the flashlight, she saw a hydraulic line, a flexible hose as thick as her wrist, braided with steel wire. Near its fitting, the braid had begun to fray. A thin, dark residue stained the metal, and when Priya touched it with a gloved finger and held it to the light, it glistened.
"Fluid," Priya said. "It has been weeping for some time. Look at the discoloration. Days, maybe weeks." She straightened. "If this had gone another few flight cycles, the hose would have failed completely. In flight."
Imani said nothing. She stared at the frayed steel, at the dark gleam of the leak, and she thought of a field of frozen mud, and of an old man's voice whispering in a hospital room.
"How long would it have lasted?" she asked quietly.
"Hard to say. One flight. Ten. Maybe it would have held for a year." Priya shrugged. "That is the cruel thing about these faults. They do not announce themselves. They wait."
"And if it had failed at altitude?"
"Then the crew would have had about ninety seconds to react," Priya said. "I would not have wanted to be in that cockpit."
Imani nodded. She laid her palm against the cold aluminum skin of the aircraft, and she stood there for a long moment, breathing slowly, while the drizzle ran down her face and dripped from the end of her nose.
"Thank you," she said, to no one in particular. It might have been addressed to the inspector, or to the night, or to a man who had been dead for seventeen years.
Behind her, on the wet tarmac, Daniel Hale stood with his hands in his pockets and his collar turned up against the rain. He had followed her out, quietly, and had watched the whole scene from a distance. When she turned and saw him, he gave a small, awkward wave.
She laughed, a tired, genuine laugh, and walked down the stairs toward him.
CHAPTER 15: A CONVERSATION IN THE RAIN
They stood together under the broad overhang of the hangar, watching the inspectors work. The floodlights painted long pale shapes across the wet concrete, and the air smelled of jet fuel and rain.
"I owe you an apology," Daniel said.
"For what?"
"For not speaking sooner. For sitting at that table, nodding, for two years. If I had acted earlier, you would not have had to put yourself at risk."