"It was about a video project."
"Why call me the boy?"
She glanced toward Lenora, who stared at her own phone as though it had betrayed her. Bria had a thousand possible explanations in front of her, and none was easy to reconcile with the profile she had opened minutes earlier. Zire remembered the way she had looked toward him in the boarding area. He now wondered whether she had recognized something attached to his backpack before he knew she had noticed him at all.
"There's an earlier video," Merrick said. "Mrs. Pike, did you record in this cabin before the regular boarding group entered?"
Lenora's eyes narrowed. "I was allowed to capture some content. That's all."
"Allowed by whom?"
Bria answered. "I said she could take a brief look."
Roland turned to her. "Crew members don't independently authorize passengers to enter an aircraft ahead of the boarding team for private filming. That requires coordination with ground staff and the flight crew."
"It was less than two minutes," Bria said.
"That doesn't make it authorized."
Lenora suddenly looked less interested in talking. She had spent the morning trying to control how the story would appear in photographs, captions, and reviews. Now the same recordings were threatening to reveal the parts she had not planned to publish. She placed the phone beneath her jacket and said she was finished discussing her private media.
Zire looked at the permanent code once more. The physical tray had told them who paid. The tablet had told them who marked it delivered. The review had told them that Lenora knew she would receive it before it arrived. And somewhere on the phone beneath her jacket was a video that had made Bria nervous enough to ask for its deletion before Zire ever boarded.
"The video matters," he said quietly to Merrick. "Not because I want to see her private things. Because it might show who knew the meal was mine before they gave it away."
Merrick nodded. "Then we'll ask for it properly."
For a second Zire felt a familiar ache behind his ribs. He wished Harlon were there, not to rescue him or to tell the crew they were wrong, but simply to notice that he was trying to apply the lessons they had practiced together. Zire could almost hear his grandfather reminding him not to confuse a person's nervousness with proof of guilt, or their friendliness with proof of honesty. Keep the questions simple, Harlon used to say. The right answer can stand without being decorated.
Roland asked Lenora whether she would voluntarily show the relevant recordings, with the understanding that the airline would not copy her personal media without consent and that the reviewed details would be documented accurately. She hesitated, looked toward Bria, and then decided that protecting herself might require showing what her supposed collaborator had done. That was the moment the alliance between the two women began to break apart in earnest.