Maya turned her head just enough to answer.
“I’m managing.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Maya met her eyes.
Lena looked to be in her early 30s, with dark hair pulled back into a practical bun and a hospital badge clipped to the side pocket of her travel bag.
She had the tired, alert look of someone who had come straight from a shift or from the kind of life where emergencies did not announce themselves politely.
“I have hypoglycemia,” Maya said. “And food allergies. That meal was scheduled with my medication window.”
Lena’s expression changed immediately.
Not panic.
Assessment.
“How long since you ate?”
Maya glanced at her watch.
“Longer than I planned.”
Victoria gave another small laugh from 1A.
“Then perhaps you should have eaten in the terminal.”
Maya did not turn toward her.
Lena did.
“Ma’am, this is not helpful.”
Victoria lifted her eyebrows.
“Excuse me?”
“I said it’s not helpful.”
For the first time since boarding, Victoria looked genuinely offended.
Not by the danger.
Not by the insult.
Not by the fact that she was trying to eat another woman’s medical meal.
She was offended that someone had corrected her.
Maya looked back down at her email.
Her stomach tightened, partly from stress and partly from the familiar warning inside her body.
She knew the sequence.
First the tremor.
Then the cold sweat.
Then the narrowing of focus, like the world pulling itself into a smaller and smaller circle.
If she was careful, she could manage it.
If she ate properly, she could prevent it.
That was why she had planned ahead.
She had built a company the same way.
Williams Meridian Group was built on exposing the exact patterns of bias playing out in this cabin.
For three years, Maya had engineered software that tracked how corporations quietly dismissed minority customers, treating legitimate complaints as attitude or noncompliance.
Crestline Airways had spent six quarters bleeding public trust through racial-profiling scandals before begging her firm for a full-scale systemic overhaul.
Tomorrow morning, Crestline’s executive board was scheduled to sign an $80 million contract with her.
They had no idea their final audit was happening right now.
Live.
In seat 1B.
Maya looked toward the front curtain where Clare had vanished.
Crestline did not know it yet, but its final interview was happening right now.
Her phone buzzed softly on the tray table.
A message from Naomi Price appeared at the top of the screen.
Final board packet uploaded. Douglas Whitman’s team confirmed 9:00 a.m. Rest tonight if you can.
Maya almost laughed, but there was no humor in it.
Rest.
She turned the phone slightly so the notification disappeared from view.
She did not want Clare, Victoria, or anyone else seeing the name Williams Meridian yet.
Not now.
Not before Crestline showed exactly who it was when it believed Maya was nobody important.
Samuel Reed leaned toward her from 2C.
“You sure you don’t want me to call someone over?”
Maya looked at him.
“Thank you, Mr. Reed.”
“Samuel Reed.”
“Thank you, Mr. Reed. But if they won’t listen to the documents, I don’t think another voice will change them.”
Samuel’s mouth tightened.
“Sometimes another voice isn’t meant to change them. Sometimes it’s meant to show they had a choice.”
Maya held on to that.
Samuel sat back, but his attention never left the front of the cabin.
He had the posture of an old teacher waiting for a student to lie badly.
His hands rested on a worn leather Bible in his lap. His wedding ring was loose on his finger.