Page 139 of Mile High Ruin

I pick up the tablet before the conversation deteriorates further. “What do we know about the staffing manager who called her?”

Iosef shifts back into business immediately. “Her name is Claire Bennett. Eleven years with the agency, no financial problems we can see, no unusual travel, no known connection to Petrov. She says Sloane was selected because the original attendant cancelled at the last minute and Sloane was one of the few experienced people available on short notice.”

“Why did the original attendant cancel?” I ask. “The first time we met her.”

Iosef glances down at his notes. “Food poisoning.”

“Have we verified that?” I ask.

“She used her medical insurance when she got admitted, so yes,” Iosef says.

“Check the cameras before Sloane got on the plane, and after,” I say. “We need to get to the bottom of this, there should be no room for ambiguity.”

Anton and Marek exchange a look.

I catch it immediately. “What?”

Neither answers fast enough.

My patience disappears. “What are you not telling me?”

Anton closes the laptop halfway and leans back in his chair. “The cameras on the aircraft were scrubbed.”

For a moment, I think I’ve misunderstood him. “Scrubbed how?”

“The onboard surveillance archive was wiped sometime after landing.”

I stare at him. “How is that possible?”

“The aircraft system keeps a local copy of the cabin feeds and uploads portions to a secure server depending on the flight profile,” Marek explains. “Someone accessed the administrative side and cleared the local footage before our team locked everything down.”

I look between them. “And you waited until now to tell me this?”

“We were confirming it,” Anton says. “I wasn’t going to walk in here and tell you someone erased footage until we knew it was intentional.”

“And now?”

“Now we know.”

I feel my jaw tighten. “Who had access?”

“That’s the problem,” Marek says. “Not many people. Someone would need flight-level credentials, familiarity with the onboard system, and access to the operational logs for that specific aircraft. This was not someone guessing passwords from a hotel room.”

Anton reaches for an evidence envelope on the table. “We also checked the access panel in the forward service compartment. It was opened manually.”

“Prints?”

“One usable partial.”

I look at Anton. “Whose print?”

“Hale’s.”

The room goes very quiet.

I look back at the photograph. Captain Warren Hale had access to the cockpit, the flight logs, the aircraft systems, and enough authority aboard that nobody would question him moving through restricted compartments. He also deliberately created a false turbulence warning so he could isolate Sloane, which means we already know he was willing to manipulate the aircraft’s procedures for his own purposes.

Now his print is on the panel connected to erased surveillance footage.