He had never thought about it again. The owner was Mr. Kessler-Ward. The owner was a man he had never met and had built in his head out of the hedge fund guy and his own father and every principal he had ever flown, and the man did not like to be kept waiting, and the man sat in 1A.
At 12:40 he walked out to the airplane.
The ramp at Meridian Aviation Services was wide and bright and smelled of jet fuel and cut grass from the strip along the fence. N417KW sat with her nose toward the FBO and her main door open and the air-stair down, and the April sun lay along her fuselage in a long white line. Fifty-one million dollars new. Thirty-eight used, which was what the owner had paid, which Gerald knew because everyone at Altitude knew, because the number had gone around the company the week the management contract was signed.
Toby Reinholt was already aboard. Gerald heard him before he saw him, the first officer's voice coming out of the flight deck in the flat Minnesota way that made every sentence sound like a question he already knew the answer to. Toby was twenty-nine, two years with Altitude, four months on the airplane. Good kid. Careful. Read everything twice. He was in the right seat with the before-start checklist on his knee and the trip sheet open on his own iPad, and when Gerald came through the door and dropped his flight bag behind the left seat, Toby looked up.
"Morning, Gerry."
"Afternoon."
"Afternoon." Toby glanced at the clock. "Dispatch wants us off at 2:30. I've got the slot, I've got the fuel. Catering's aboard. Danielle's in the galley." He tapped the iPad. "Pax is N. Kessler-Ward plus one, TEB to PBI, 2:30 local. You want me to—"
"I know who's on it."
Toby paused. It was a very short pause. Gerald did not notice it, because he was already settling into the left seat and reaching for his headset and the pause was the kind of thing you only noticed if you were listening for it.
"Okay," Toby said.
They ran the preflight. Gerald was good at this part and he knew it. Twenty-six years of hands on switches, and his hands did not shake and did not hurry and did not miss. Fuel quantity, hydraulics, the APU coming up with its low steady drone that you felt in your back teeth before you heard it. Toby read, Gerald responded, and for forty minutes the airplane was the only thing in the world and Gerald was the only thing in the airplane, and his chest loosened the way it only ever did here.
At 1:50 the dispatcher texted again. Gerald read it on his phone with the screen tilted so Toby couldn't see. Pax ETA 2:00. Confirm ready. He typed Ready and sent it and did not add anything.
At 2:05 the car came onto the ramp.
He saw it through the left-side window of the flight deck, a dark Volvo station wagon, not new, pulling up to the cone line where Meridian's line tech was standing with the chocks in one hand. Gerald frowned at it. He had expected a Suburban. He had expected a driver in a black suit. He watched the driver's door open and a woman get out, and he watched her go around to the passenger side and open the door and help an older woman out of the seat, and he watched the two of them walk slowly toward the air-stair with the line tech falling in beside them carrying nothing, just walking, the way you walk beside people you like.
Two Black women. One young, in a green suit that caught the sun at the waist. One old, in a cream cardigan, with a careful walk that favored one side.
Gerald turned back to his instruments.
Here is what he thought, and he thought it in order, the way a man builds a wall one block at a time without ever stepping back to see what he is building.
He thought: the plus one.
He thought: Mr. Kessler-Ward's party. The dispatcher had said party. A party came ahead of the principal sometimes; he had seen it on the hedge fund guy's airplane a dozen times. Staff first, to set up. An assistant with the briefing books. And the older one would be — what. A nurse? A relative somebody was doing a favor for? The principal's mother-in-law going to Palm Beach for the season? He had flown stranger cargo.
He thought: so where is he.
He looked out the window again. The Volvo sat on the ramp. No second car. The line tech had gone to the car and was pulling a single small roller bag out of the back, and a garment bag, and that was all.
He thought: he's meeting the airplane at Palm Beach. Or he's late. Or he's coming in a different car. The dispatcher's note said party. The man's name was on the sheet. He'd be along.
He heard them come up the air-stair. He heard Danielle's voice from the galley, bright, a laugh in it, and the older woman's voice answering lower, and then the sound of someone moving aft, slowly, and Danielle's footsteps going with her. The divan, then. The old one was going to lie down on the divan. Fine. That was what the divan was for.
Then he heard the younger one sit down, and he knew which seat it was by the sound. The forward club seat. Left side. Facing forward. The cream leather gave under her with the small sigh it always made, and he heard the click of a handbag clasp, and then nothing. She was just sitting there.
In 1A.
He thought: she's sitting in his seat.
He thought: she's going to sit there until he gets here and then there's going to be a scene, and the scene is going to happen on my airplane, with my name on the release, with twenty-three minutes to wheels-up and a dispatcher writing on whiteboards, and I am going to be the one who has to explain to Mr. Kessler-Ward why his assistant was in his chair when he boarded.
He thought: or he's not coming, and she's taking liberties.
He thought: either way.
Toby said, "Gerry, you want me to go back and do the briefing, or—"
"I've got it."
He unstrapped. The seatbelt buckle made its clean metallic sound against the seat frame. He stood, and bent under the overhead panel, and stepped past Toby's knees into the vestibule, and he was aware of his own uniform the way he was always aware of it when he walked back into a cabin — the navy jacket, the white shirt, the black tie, and the four gold stripes at each cuff that had taken him twenty-six years to earn and that he had earned, every one of them, from a company that at least had known what rank was.
It was 2:12 p.m.