Chapter 4 - THOMAS BENNETT’S NOTE
Ava's husband had been dead three years.
Pancreatic cancer.
No mysterious crash.
No airport assassination.
I was almost relieved when she told me.
At least one part of the story was allowed to be ordinary and awful.
Thomas Bennett had worked claims compliance for SkyBridge.
Not glamorous.
He audited expensive baggage claims, duplicate reimbursements, vendor responsibility and chain-of-custody disputes.
After the 2018 storm, fourteen passengers filed claims within one week involving property that should still have been sitting in Hudson's overflow system.
That caught his attention.
He pulled transfer records.
The records said Dad had scanned several bags hours later than they physically arrived.
Thomas assumed fraud at first.
Then interviewed him.
Ava still had Thomas's notebook.
She had not carried it on her flight.
It was in a bank archive box belonging to his estate.
But she had photographed one page years earlier because Thomas once showed it to her during an argument about why he was working past midnight.
She found the photograph.
Peter Carter:
Backdated 7 intake scans. Says backlog, not disposition.
Next:
Mason R. confirms manual backlog common after storm.
Then:
STATUS CHANGE happened 01:14–01:22. Peter off terminal 00:48. Need admin user.
I stared.
“What time did Grant's report say Dad changed them?”
Grant did not need to check.
“Approximately one.”
Ava looked at him.
“So you know.”
“I know what my report concluded.”
“You concluded his backdated intake activity created the pathway.”
“Because it did.”
“No.”
Ava's voice stayed controlled.
“It made the records messy. Someone else changed the disposition status later.”
Grant leaned back.
“That was Thomas's theory.”
“Was it wrong?”
“At the time we could not establish the admin user.”
“Because?”
“The contractor's server logs rolled after thirty days.”
Ava laughed.
“Convenient.”
Grant's expression tightened.
“Ordinary retention failure is not automatically conspiracy.”
Good answer.
Still ugly.
I looked at Ava's photo again.
“Thomas wrote ‘need admin user.’”
“Yes.”
“Did he find one?”
Ava hesitated.
“Maybe.”
“What does that mean?”
“Thomas kept a separate folder labeled Blue.”
Grant looked at her.
“Blue?”
She nodded.
I stared.
My father's carbon copy had been blue.
The anonymous text said:
Carter copy.
My message to Mason mentioned the original manifest.
But nobody outside Grant and me knew I had it.
Or so I thought.
Ava continued.
“Thomas used blue folders for unresolved vendor responsibility cases.”
Grant shook his head.
“That is not unique.”
“No.”
Then she looked at me.
“But one of his last notes before the case closed said:”
She opened another photo.
P.C. says ask about RED BOOK. Mason won't give.
My father's note:
MASON HAS RED BOOK.
Same thing.
Grant stared at the screen.
“I never saw that.”
Ava turned toward him.
“Thomas sent you a memo about it.”
“No.”
“He said he did.”
“Then show me.”
“I can't.”
“Why?”
“Because I don't have his work email.”
There.
No perfect archive conveniently on her phone.
Ava knew what Thomas told her.
Grant knew what reached his case file.
Those were not the same thing.
Then Grant asked:
“Why were you reopening Thomas's records today?”
Ava looked at him.
“I wasn't.”
“What?”
“SkyBridge contacted me last week because somebody requested access to his archived compliance box.”
I sat forward.
“Who?”
“They wouldn't tell me.”
“Why notify you?”
“Thomas kept some personal notebooks inside a company retention container after he retired. Legal wanted consent before separating them.”
Grant's expression changed.
“When was the request?”
“Eight days ago.”
The anonymous text reached me seven days ago.
Ava looked from him to me.
“Someone accessed Thomas's archive first.”
Then found me.
Then found Mason.
Then used Grant's controlled operation.
May you like
Whatever this was—
Grant had not started it.
