Chapter 12 - AVA’S HUSBAND CROSSED A LINE TOO
Ava spent a week not returning my calls.
Then she invited me to Boston.
Thomas's home office had been untouched since she sold the house.
Most boxes were in climate storage.
We opened them with the estate attorney present.
Thomas had kept copies he was not supposed to keep.
Passenger claim extracts.
Vendor invoices.
Internal SkyBridge reconciliation notes.
Some redacted.
Some not.
Ava sat on the floor.
“He told me he returned everything.”
“He didn't.”
“No.”
Her voice was flat.
Thomas had violated company data policy.
Maybe confidentiality terms.
Maybe passenger privacy depending on the documents.
His goal had been proving the pattern.
Still his decision.
Then we found his disciplinary notice.
A written reprimand.
Unauthorized live-system integrity test.
Retention of claim data outside approved systems.
Failure to disclose personal test bag before escalation.
Ava read it.
“I asked if he got in trouble.”
“What did he say?”
“He said legal yelled at him.”
Close.
Not the same.
Then another letter.
Thomas's response.
I accept that my test exceeded authority. I do not accept that this makes the vendor's disposition control reliable.
That sounded exactly like the man Ava described.
Stubborn.
Specific.
Then a notebook entry dated three months after Dad left Sentinel:
Peter won't testify. Understand why. Got photo copies anyway.
“Photo copies of what?”
We searched.
Nothing.
Then:
G says close unless new evidence. L says contract fix privately. Nobody wants hearing.
Grant.
Laura.
Then:
Met P in Boston. He brought RED pages.
I stopped.
Dad did meet Thomas.
Mom had been right.
“What did he bring?”
Ava turned pages.
Next:
Peter says don't use unless Sentinel repeats behavior. He doesn't want his name reopened.
There.
Dad had given Thomas red-book pages—
then told him not to use them unless the problem happened again.
Why?
He was tired.
Scared.
Needed insurance.
Did not want to spend years publicly reliving it.
I had been doing exactly what he asked Thomas not to.
Ava looked at me.
“You okay?”
“No.”
Good enough.
Then we found an envelope.
IF HUDSON RENEWS SENTINEL WITHOUT REVIEW
Inside:
Copies of the red-book pages.
Grant's draft.
Thomas's memo.
And one typed instruction.
Send to Laura first. If she does nothing, send to Claire Carter.
I stared.
Thomas had prepared a trigger.
But he died three years ago.
Who executed it?
The envelope had been opened before.
Recently.
Storage inventory showed the box was accessed six weeks earlier by an authorized archival retrieval vendor.
Requested by:
SkyBridge Legal.
But SkyBridge Legal had not requested it.
Someone spoofed an internal retention request.
That person got Thomas's package.
Now we knew where the anonymous evidence came from.
Still not who took it.
Then Ava found a yellow sticky note beneath the envelope.
Thomas's handwriting:
Claire doesn't know Grant was at the Boston meeting.
I froze.
“What Boston meeting?”
Ava shook her head.
“I don't know.”
Grant had told me he never spoke to Dad after the termination interview.
May you like
Thomas's note said Grant was present when Dad handed over the red pages.
One of those things was false.
