The screen went black.
For several seconds, none of us moved.
Elena remained staring at the dark laptop as though the image might return if she simply waited long enough. Richard stood beside her with one hand resting against the back of a chair. Angela had already reached for her phone.
I could still hear Samuel's last words in my head.
It doesn't show what you think.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
Elena didn't answer.
Richard looked at her.
“Elena?”
She blinked.
“I don't know.”
The federal agent called again.
I answered immediately.
“Agent Cole?”
“Ms. Brooks, the camera feed from Wyoming just dropped.”
“We saw.”
“We're sending a tactical team to the property.”
“Samuel is inside.”
“We know.”
“He may be injured.”
“We're aware.”
“And Nathan?”
“We lost visual contact with him.”
Richard stepped closer.
“What about the second entrance?”
The agent paused.
“Which second entrance?”
Richard looked at Elena.
She closed her eyes.
“There is another way in,” she said.
Agent Cole heard her.
“Where?”
“Behind the old maintenance building,” Elena replied. “There used to be a service tunnel.”
Richard immediately moved toward the laptop.
“Can you give us the location?”
Elena described the property from memory.
The tunnel had originally connected the hangar to an underground storage room. It had been built for fuel and equipment deliveries decades earlier.
Martin had later converted part of it into a private archive.
I looked at Richard.
“How do you know?”
“Elena told me.”
“No,” Elena said quietly. “I mean I knew because I escaped through it.”
The room became still.
“You escaped from there?” I asked.
She nodded.
“Six years ago.”
She explained that after Martin threatened her, Samuel had found a way to get her out through the service tunnel. They had reached a maintenance road and separated before dawn.
Samuel had told her to disappear.
She had.
But before she left, she saw something that had never stopped haunting her.
A room beneath the hangar.
Rows of boxes.
Hard drives.
Passenger files.
And one red leather notebook.
She had assumed the notebook was the center of everything.
Now she understood it had merely been the index.
Richard looked at Angela.
“Tell Cole about the tunnel.”
Angela relayed the information.
The federal team changed its approach.
Then another message arrived from Samuel.
The phone had apparently recovered enough signal to transmit.
LOWER ROOM IS OPEN.
I read it aloud.
Another message followed.
NATHAN IS NOT HERE.
Then:
MARTIN LIED ABOUT THE DRIVE.
Elena stared at the screen.
“What does that mean?”
Richard shook his head.
“Ask him.”
I called Samuel.
No answer.
I called again.
Nothing.
Then the phone rang.
Not Samuel.
An unknown number.
I answered.
A man's voice said, “You shouldn't have followed this.”
I knew the voice.
Nathan.
My stomach tightened.
“Where are you?”
“That doesn't matter.”
“It matters to Sarah.”
There was silence.
Then Nathan laughed softly.
“You've been talking to Elena.”
“Yes.”
“She always was good at making herself look innocent.”
Elena closed her eyes.
I asked, “Where is Sarah?”
“I don't know.”
“You know exactly what happened.”
“You don't understand what happened.”
“Then explain it.”
He was silent.
I could hear wind behind him.
Then he said, “My father ruined everything.”
I looked at Richard.
“What did Martin do?”
“He turned a family problem into a business problem.”
“That doesn't answer me.”
“He started keeping records.”
“Because he was covering for you.”
“No.”
Nathan's voice became bitter.
“Because he was protecting himself.”
He told me Martin had discovered that Nathan had been using the company's private terminals without authorization.
At first the incidents were personal.
Then they became dangerous.
Nathan insisted he had never intended to hurt anyone.
But whenever something went wrong, Martin intervened.
He paid.
He threatened.
He altered records.
And eventually he started documenting everything.
Nathan believed the records were insurance against his father.
Then David Keller discovered them.
Keller copied everything.
That was when the three men became trapped together.
Nobody trusted anyone.
“You're saying Keller was blackmailing your father?”
“Yes.”
“And your father was blackmailing you?”
“Yes.”
“And you?”
Nathan laughed again.
“I was trying to get out.”
I didn't believe him.
But I didn't tell him that.
“Why did Sarah disappear?”
The line went silent.
When he answered, his voice had changed.
“She didn't disappear.”
Elena opened her eyes.
I felt my heartbeat accelerate.
“What does that mean?”
“She was alive.”
Elena whispered, “I knew it.”
Nathan continued.
“She was taken somewhere else.”
“Where?”
“I don't know.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“I saw her leave.”
“With whom?”
Nathan didn't answer.
“Who took her?”
“I said I don't know.”
Richard leaned closer to the phone.
“Was it Martin?”
Nathan laughed bitterly.
“You still think this was about one person.”
Richard's face hardened.
“Then tell us who.”
Nathan hesitated.
“The person who really controlled everything.”
I asked, “Who?”
Before he could answer, another voice came through the phone.
A woman.
Soft.
Calm.
“Don't tell them.”
Nathan stopped breathing.
I looked at Elena.
She had gone completely pale.
“Who was that?” I asked.
The woman spoke again.
“Tell them what you saw, Nathan.”
I knew that voice.
But I couldn't place it.
Elena could.
She whispered one name.
“Lisa.”
The room went silent.
I looked at her.
“Lisa Monroe?”
Elena nodded.
“No.”
She was shaking.
“That isn't possible.”
The woman on the phone laughed softly.
Then the line went dead.
I looked at Richard.
“What just happened?”
He didn't answer.
Angela was already searching Lisa Monroe's employment records.
The screen displayed:
LISA MONROE — DECEASED.
I stared.
“What?”
Angela read the entry again.
“Lisa Monroe died three years ago.”
Elena's face had gone white.
“That isn't her.”
Richard looked at me.
“Then who was that?”
Angela searched deeper.
The identity attached to Lisa's old employee credentials had been accessed that morning.
From Wyoming.
Someone was using a dead woman's identity.
And whoever it was had known we were listening.
Then Samuel's message arrived.
DON'T TRUST THE WOMAN USING LISA'S NAME.
A second message appeared.
SHE IS THE REASON SARAH SURVIVED.
I read it twice.
Elena stood abruptly.
“Take me to Wyoming.”
Richard shook his head.
“No.”
“She knows where Sarah is.”
“You don't know that.”
“I know her.”
“You knew Lisa.”
“No.”
Elena's voice broke.
“I knew the woman behind the name.”
Richard stopped.
Elena explained that Lisa Monroe had not been the person who helped her escape.
Another cabin attendant had.
Her name was Hannah Pierce.
Hannah had disappeared from the airline shortly after Flight 608.
She had later contacted Elena through a private lawyer.
She told Elena that someone inside the company had been helping women disappear safely after abusive encounters.
Not to hide crimes.
To protect victims.
But the woman had been working under different identities.
Hannah had once used Lisa Monroe's employee number.
That explained the dead identity.
“What was Hannah's real name?” I asked.
Elena looked at me.
“Hannah wasn't her real name either.”
My stomach tightened.
“How many names does she have?”
“I don't know.”
Richard looked toward Angela.
“Find every employee associated with Flight 608 who disappeared from the company without a formal resignation.”
Angela searched.
Within minutes she found four.
One was Hannah.
Another was Carla's former colleague.
The third had died.
The fourth was still alive.
Her name was Rebecca Shaw.
I looked at the attorney sitting across from Elena.
She smiled faintly.
“I wondered when you'd notice.”
My stomach dropped.
“You?”
Rebecca folded her hands.
“I was the person who helped Elena change her identity.”
Richard stared.
“You've been involved from the beginning.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“To keep her alive.”
Elena nodded.
Rebecca explained that she had worked with several former employees who believed the airline's internal system was compromised.
They had preserved copies of evidence.
They had helped witnesses leave safely.
But they had never had enough proof to expose the entire network.
Until Maya's recording.
Until Richard boarded Flight 247.
Until Keller started leaking the archive.
Rebecca had deliberately allowed certain information to reach people who could finally force an investigation.
“You knew about Brenda?”
“Yes.”
“You knew she would target me?”
“No.”
She paused.
“But I knew someone would eventually.”
That answer chilled me.
I asked about Sarah.
Rebecca's expression changed.
“She survived.”
“Where?”
“I don't know.”
“You do.”
Rebecca looked at Elena.
“Elena knows more than I do.”
Elena shook her head.
“No.”
Rebecca opened her briefcase.
Inside was a photograph.
Sarah Donovan.
Older.
Alive.
Standing beside a woman in a rural clinic.
The date was three years after Flight 441.
My breath caught.
“She survived.”
Elena stared at the photograph.
Rebecca nodded.
“Sarah was moved after she escaped.”
“Escaped from where?”
“From the Wyoming property.”
Elena whispered, “The lower room.”
“Yes.”
“How?”
Rebecca looked toward the window.
“Someone inside the network helped her.”
“Who?”
Rebecca hesitated.
Then answered.
“David Keller.”
Richard looked stunned.
“Keller helped Sarah?”
“He couldn't undo what he had done. But eventually he started helping victims leave.”
That explained the archive.
Keller wasn't innocent.
But he wasn't simply a villain either.
He had become a man collecting evidence against the system he had helped build.
Then why had he continued protecting Martin?
Because he needed time.
He had been waiting for someone outside the system to become impossible to silence.
Someone like Richard.
Someone like me.
The federal team finally entered the Wyoming property.
Agent Cole called.
They had found Samuel.
Alive.
Injured.
And the original camera drive was missing.
But Samuel had left a trail.
A series of handwritten numbers.
Flight numbers.
Dates.
Locations.
The last one was Flight 247.
My flight.
Richard looked at me.
“The drive was never about Flight 608.”
“What was it about?”
Samuel had discovered that the same network had continued operating.
The incidents had not ended.
They had evolved.
My encounter with Brenda had been the latest entry.
And Keller had marked it because he believed it could expose the entire structure.
Agent Cole sent us one final image.
A hidden room beneath the Wyoming hangar.
Inside was a wall covered with photographs.
Victims.
Employees.
Executives.
Investigators.
At the center was one photograph of Nathan Vale.
Underneath it, someone had written:
THE SON IS NOT THE CENTER.
Below that:
FIND THE WOMAN.
I stared at the photograph.
“Who is the woman?”
Nobody answered.
Then Elena looked at Rebecca.
Rebecca closed her eyes.
“She isn't using Lisa's identity.”
“What do you mean?”
“She is using mine.”
I felt the room tilt.
Rebecca Shaw looked at us.
“My real name is not Rebecca Shaw.”
Click Here to continue read next: PART10: The Woman Behind the False Identities Finally Revealed Her Real Name, and Her Connection to Martin Explained Why the Cover-Up Had Survived Every Investigation
I Thought the Hardest Part of My Flight Would Be Getting Home Until the Flight Attendant Decided My Seat Wasn’t Really Mine
Part 9 of 16
