Chương 5
He looked at Emma.
She had lost two pounds during the month her mother died because Daniel had forgotten, repeatedly, that children did not automatically eat when adults placed food nearby.
For almost a year afterward, he had structured his life around never failing her that way again.
Night freight.
Morning breakfasts.
School pickups.
Parent conferences.
A ridiculous number of dance recitals for a child with no measurable interest in dance.
The Whitmore job threatened all of that.
It also paid enough to erase the credit-card balance left from Rachel’s final months, rebuild the savings account he had emptied, and stop pretending the refrigerator did not make a concerning noise every third Tuesday.
More than that, it offered flying that mattered to him.
He disliked how much that mattered.
Emma tapped the table.
“You’re doing the face.”
“What face?”
“The thinking face.”
“I have a thinking face?”
“You make your eyebrows ugly.”
“They always look like this.”
“No.”
She demonstrated by crushing her own eyebrows together.
Daniel laughed.
“You look constipated.”
“What’s constipated?”
“Forget I said it.”
“I’m telling Grandma.”
“You don’t have a grandma within tactical range.”
“I’ll call her.”
“That is deeply disloyal.”
Emma grinned.
Daniel looked back at Olivia’s message.
Does Saturday work or not?
He typed slowly.
Saturday works.
Seattle works.
Everything after Seattle gets decided one flight at a time.
The reply took longer.
Fine.
Then another message appeared.
You’re hired for the trip.
Not the job.
Daniel smiled.
Emma caught him.
“You got it.”
“One trip.”
“That means you got one job.”
“I suppose it does.”
She pushed the orange soup away.
“Do we get french fries now?”
“No.”
Her celebration ended immediately.
By Saturday afternoon, Olivia had signed the Seattle documents, rejected Richard’s revised proposal, and received a text from an unknown number containing a photograph of Daniel standing beside the Gulfstream with one engine cowling open.
The message read, Found a maintenance discrepancy during preflight.
Departure may be delayed.
Olivia called him.
He answered with engine noise behind him.
“How delayed?”
“Don’t know yet.”
“I have a meeting Monday at eight.”
“It’s Saturday.”
“I’m aware of the calendar.”
“Then we’re doing well.”
“This is not amusing.”
“I’m not joking.”
She heard him speaking briefly to someone nearby.
“What discrepancy?”
“Hydraulic seepage near the right-side service area.”
“How serious?”
“Could be minor.”
“Could be?”
“Could be more.”
“I was told the aircraft was inspected yesterday.”
“It was.”
“And?”
“And airplanes don’t care about paperwork.”
Olivia tightened her grip on the phone.
“When will you know?”
“When maintenance opens it up.”
“Give me an estimate.”
“No.”
“Mr. Carter.”
“Olivia.”
The use of her first name stopped her.
“You hired me for one trip,” he said.
“So for one trip, I’m going to do the job you hired me to do.”
“I need information.”
“I’ll give you information when I have it.”
“What I need is certainty.”
Daniel was silent for a beat.
“That’s not something aviation sells.”
Then the line filled with the metallic clatter of tools.
“I’ll call you when I know whether we have an airplane.”
Olivia lowered the phone and stared through the penthouse windows at the gray afternoon over Chicago.
For three minutes she did nothing.
Then she called Margaret.
“He delayed the flight.”
“He found a problem.”
“He found a possibility of a problem.”
“That is generally when people investigate.”
“I have a meeting Monday.”
“You have said that several times.”
Olivia turned away from the glass.
“Find me another aircraft.”
Margaret did not answer immediately.
“Margaret.”
“I heard you.”
“Then why are you quiet?”
“Because I’m deciding whether you actually want me to find one or whether you want to punish him for telling you no.”
Olivia’s jaw tightened.
“Those are not the same thing.”
“I know.”
“You’re becoming increasingly comfortable with insubordination.”
“I’ve worked for you seven years.”
“So?”
“So comfort takes time.”
Olivia looked at the clock.
It was 3:42.
The original departure had been scheduled for 7:30.
“Find options.”
“I’ll find options.”
“And don’t cancel this aircraft yet.”
“See?”
Margaret said.
“You do like him.”
Olivia ended the call.
At the hangar, Daniel stood beneath the right wing with Ray Delgado, the maintenance supervisor, while hydraulic fluid glistened faintly along a fitting that should have been dry.
Ray wiped it with a cloth, waited, and watched another bead form.
“Well,” he said.
“That answers that.”
Daniel folded his arms.
“Line or fitting?”
“Could be the fitting.”
“Could be?”
Ray gave him a tired look.
“You and your boss use the same language.”
“She’s not my boss.”
“Yet.”
Daniel ignored that.
“How long?”
“If the fitting is damaged, we have the part.”
“And if the line is?”
Ray tilted his head toward the hangar.
“Longer.”
“How much longer?”
“Depends how much you enjoy disappointing rich people.”
“Not at all.”
“That’s unfortunate.”
Daniel crouched to inspect the area again.
He could smell hydraulic fluid through the cold air and hear someone testing an auxiliary power unit two bays away.
The sound brought back a maintenance ramp in Qatar, then disappeared before the memory settled into anything useful.
Ray glanced at him.
“You really the eleventh?”
Daniel looked up.
“What?”
“Pilot.”
Daniel straightened.
“Who told you that?”
“People talk.”
“Apparently.”
“Ten guys passed?”
“Something like that.”
Ray shrugged.
“Never understood it.”
“You’ve worked with her?”
“Three years.”
“What’s she like?”
Ray laughed.
“What kind of question is that?”
“A normal one.”
“No such thing around here.”
He tossed the cloth into a bucket.
“She’s hard on equipment, hard on schedules, harder on people.”
“That sounds promising.”
“She pays on time.”
“Better.”
“She remembers everybody’s name.”
Daniel glanced at him.
Ray continued.
“She’ll also ask why a six-dollar gasket took forty minutes to replace and make you explain the labor.”
“Less charming.”
“She once sent my kid a chemistry set because she overheard me say he liked science.”
Daniel smiled.
“That doesn’t fit.”
“It fits fine.”
Ray pointed at the leak.
May you like
“That’s the trouble with people.”
Daniel’s phone buzzed.
