"The board met again at dawn," Margaret said. "We have established an independent safety committee. It will report directly to the board, not to management. Its chair will have the authority to ground any aircraft without approval from anyone." She turned. "We would like that chair to be you."
Imani lowered her cup. "I am a captain. I fly airplanes."
"You are a captain who walked into a room full of the most powerful people in this industry and told them the truth," Margaret said. "We need that. We need it badly. You would still fly, if you wished. But you would also have a voice."
Imani looked out at the runway for a long time. Then she smiled, slowly, with the wide, unguarded warmth of someone who has been carrying a heavy thing for a very long time and has just been told that she may set it down.
"I will need conditions," she said.
"Of course you will," said Margaret. "Name them."
CHAPTER 17: THE CONDITIONS
Imani's conditions were written on a single sheet of paper, in her neat, upright handwriting, and she presented them to the board three days later in the same glass-walled room where Sterling had been suspended.
She stood at the head of the table, in her gray uniform, with the sheet in her hand. The directors watched her in silence. Outside, the sky was a pale, scrubbed blue.
"First," she said, "any employee who reports a safety concern will be protected from retaliation, in writing, and the protection will be enforced by an external ombudsman, not by the department they work in.
"Second, no fault may be deferred without the written sign-off of the lead engineer and the captain who will fly the aircraft. Not a manager. Not an accountant. The people who will be in the air.
"Third, the financial department will no longer have the power to override a maintenance decision. If an aircraft is grounded, it is grounded. The cost is a cost of doing business, and it will be treated as such.
"Fourth, every pilot, mechanic, and dispatcher will be given a direct line to the safety committee, with a guarantee that their report will be read by a human being within twenty-four hours.
"Fifth, and last." She paused. "Every board member, including me, will spend one day each year working alongside the crews. In the hangar. In the cockpit. On the ramp. Decisions about people's lives should not be made by those who have never stood next to them."
She set the paper on the table. The room was quiet.
"That is all," she said.
For a long moment, nobody spoke. Then Cornelius Pratt, the elderly director who had cast the final vote against Sterling, cleared his throat.
"I have been on this board for forty-one years," he said. "I do not believe that I have ever heard a list of demands that I wished more fervently I had written myself."
A ripple of warm laughter passed around the table.
"All in favor?" Margaret asked.
Every hand rose.
"Carried," said Margaret, and she brought down her gavel with a crack that echoed through the glass walls. "Captain Okafor, welcome to the safety committee. I suspect we will regret how much you are about to change this company."
"I suspect," Imani said, "that you will not."
She picked up the paper, folded it once, and tucked it into her breast pocket, beside the small golden wings. It was a gesture so simple that nobody remarked on it. But Daniel Hale, watching from the back of the room, felt something tighten in his throat, and he looked away to hide the shine in his eyes.
CHAPTER 18: THE HEARING
The investigation lasted five months.
It was a long, patient, meticulous process, conducted in windowless rooms by people who spoke quietly and asked the same question in six different ways. Auditors combed through ten years of maintenance records. Lawyers interviewed mechanics, dispatchers, accountants, and the families of crew members who had left the company under unhappy circumstances. A forensic team recovered deleted emails from servers that had been hastily wiped on the night of the dinner.