Chương 2
Heller had been moved to an interview room and relieved of his duty belt. He had asked for his union representative. He had also begun telling anyone who would listen that Mara had interfered with screening, refused lawful directions, and “came at him.”
“Did you?” Darius asked.
Mara looked up at him.
He was tall enough that the LED strips caught the sharp plane of his cheekbones. His dark suit remained buttoned. His tie had shifted half an inch during the restraint, which on Darius looked like evidence of an explosion.
“Did I what?”
“Come at him.”
“One step.”
“With your hands up?”
“One hand.”
“Pointing?”
“Indicating the bin.”
“You raised your voice?”
“No.”
He glanced at the emergency technician kneeling beside her. “She hit her head?”
“I’m sitting here,” Mara said.
The technician, a woman with tired eyes and a green pen tucked into her sleeve, looked from one of them to the other.
“No obvious head injury,” she said. “I’d like to finish checking her without cross-examination.”
Darius moved back a pace.
The technician listened to Mara’s breathing, checked her pupils, and pressed carefully along her ribs. Mara answered questions about dizziness and nausea while watching Dana pace near the closed lane. Every few seconds, Dana looked at the service corridor where Heller had disappeared. She was not frightened for him. She was calculating distance: between the assault and her office, between federal authority and airport authority, between what had happened and what might be proved.
“Pain here?” the technician asked.
“Yes.”
“Sharp or dull?”
“Sharp when I breathe deeply.”
“Any cardiac history?”
“No.”
“Family history?”
Mara hesitated.
Darius noticed.
“My mother,” she said. “Heart attack. Forty-seven.”
The technician’s expression changed, not dramatically, just enough. “I want a hospital evaluation.”
“I want the equipment sealed.”
“The equipment will still be here.”
Mara looked at Dana.
Darius followed her gaze. “I’ll handle the seal.”
“You don’t know which records matter.”
“I have your preservation list.”
“You have the list I said out loud.”
His jaw tightened. “And you have trouble breathing.”
The technician raised her eyebrows as if the argument had become medically useful.
Mara looked down at her hands. They had started trembling. She curled them around the edge of the bench until the movement stopped.
“Lane Four’s local terminal maintains an override cache,” she said. “It may not sync with the central system until the end of shift. The maintenance port is behind the rear access panel. Photograph every cable before disconnecting anything. The violet tape on the conveyor leg may identify the contractor who serviced it. Don’t remove it.”
Darius’s expression shifted.
“You saw tape while you were on the floor?”
“It was there.”
“And that’s why you wouldn’t let the paramedics take you?”
“It was something I could look at.”
He studied her for another second, then unbuttoned his jacket and crouched so they were nearly at eye level.
“Mara.”
She disliked the way he said her name when nobody else was supposed to hear it.
“What?”
“I was six steps away.”
“I know.”
“I saw his hands go on you.”
“You stopped him.”
“After he put you down.”
The technician turned away to rearrange equipment that did not need rearranging.
Mara’s fingers loosened from the bench. “You couldn’t have known.”
“I knew he was escalating.”
“So did I.”
“That’s the problem.”
Dana approached before he could say more. Her pace had steadied, and she had clipped her badge back into place.
“The airport director is on his way,” she said. “Our legal counsel wants to establish who has control of the scene.”
“This is not a scene,” Mara said. “It’s an active federal compliance investigation and an assault investigation.”
Dana’s chin lifted slightly. “Airport police have jurisdiction over an assault on airport property.”
“Then airport police can investigate the assault. My team is preserving evidence related to the checkpoint review.”
“What review?”
Mara watched the smallest muscles around Dana’s eyes tighten.
“The one you were informed about three weeks ago.”
“We were informed that your office might conduct routine observations.”
“This wasn’t routine.”
Dana looked toward Darius. “She was operating undercover?”
“Unannounced,” Mara said. “Not undercover.”
“She concealed her credentials.”
“I did not display them.”
“That distinction won’t matter when the passenger videos circulate.”
Darius rose to his full height. “Manager Keene, return to your office and preserve every communication concerning Lane Four, Supervisor Heller, override rates, passenger property complaints, staffing targets, and maintenance delays for the last eighteen months.”
Dana gave a small, humorless breath. “You think you can order me around because three agents tackled one of my supervisors in front of two hundred people?”
“No,” Darius said. “I think I can order you to preserve records because a federal investigator just identified a compromised lane, and your first concern was how the video would look.”
Dana’s mouth closed.
The technician began attaching leads to Mara’s chest.
Dana looked at them, then away. “I’ll notify counsel.”
“Notify whoever you need,” Mara said. “Do not touch the records.”
The ambulance ride lasted fourteen minutes. Mara spent most of it staring at the ceiling while the city flashed white and silver through the rear windows. She disliked ambulances for the same reason she disliked elevators: both required surrendering movement to someone she could not see.
Her phone vibrated twice in her bag. Once from her division director, Rebecca Sloan. Once from an unknown number. She ignored both.
The emergency technician sat across from her and entered numbers into a tablet.
“Your blood pressure’s improving.”
“Was it bad?”
“It was excited.”
“Professional term?”
“No. Professional term has more syllables.”
Mara almost smiled. The movement hurt her chest.
May you like
At the hospital, imaging showed no fracture, no internal injury, and no cardiac event. The physician called it a chest wall contusion and a mild hip strain. Rest, ice, anti-inflammatory medication, return immediately if the breathing worsened. The instructions were ordinary enough to feel insulting.
Darius waited in the hallway with two coffees and did not offer her either one.
