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Part 3
The silence in the hangar was absolute. All eyes shifted from the tampered heat exchanger on the table directly to Vance Sterling.
“That’s a lie!” Vance roared, the veins in his neck bulging. Sweat poured down his face. “She planted that! This homeless piece of trash is trying to frame me!”
He didn’t just yell this time; he completely lost his mind. Vance grabbed a heavy steel torque wrench from a nearby cart and swung it violently toward my head. I ducked hard, the heavy metal whistling inches over my hair. Before he could take another swing, Hawk tackled him from the side. The older man slammed Vance hard against the fuselage of the jet, pinning his arm behind his back until the wrench clattered to the floor.
“Get him off me!” Vance screamed, struggling against Hawk’s iron grip.
Victoria Croft’s face was unreadable, a terrifying mask of absolute fury. “Security. Restrain Mr. Sterling,” she ordered, her voice eerily calm. The two massive guards who had almost dragged me out earlier now slapped heavy zip-ties onto Vance’s wrists.
“Ms. Croft,” Hawk panted, stepping back. “I’ve seen this aftermarket valve before. It’s manufactured by Horizon Aerospace. The rival company trying to buy out your failing merger.”
The pieces snapped together instantly. Vance had been intentionally grounding the CEO’s flagship jet, bleeding millions in delays, hoping to tank the $250 million merger. He had secretly bought stock in the rival company, manipulating the diagnostics and firing any competent engineers—specifically targeting minorities and lower-tier staff he could easily bully—who got too close to finding the truth.
“Check his private accounts,” Victoria told her assistant, who was already furiously typing on a tablet. She turned back to me, the ice in her eyes melting into something resembling respect. “Can you fix it, Maya?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said, wiping grease and a little bit of blood from my cheek. “If we have a stock heat exchanger in the supply room, I can swap it and recalibrate the analog sensors in forty minutes.”
“Do it.”
The next forty minutes were a blur. With Hawk handing me tools and the remaining engineers following my exact orders, we bypassed the corrupted software entirely. I bolted the pristine, factory-grade heat exchanger into the manifold, trusting the torque and tension to my bare hands and ears.
When I finally tightened the last bolt, I climbed down. “Start it up. Take it outside first.”
They towed the massive Gulfstream G800 out onto the freezing Atlanta tarmac. The engines whined, then roared to life. We stood there for ten minutes. Then twenty. The pitch was perfect. The vibration was a smooth, uninterrupted hum of pure power. No stutter. No cavitation. The jet was flawless.
Victoria Croft stood beside me, watching her multi-million dollar asset finally ready for the sky. She pulled out a sleek silver pen and a blank company checkbook.
“I owe you a profound apology, Maya Jenkins,” Victoria said, handing me her own expensive suit jacket to cover my shivering shoulders. “And a massive debt of gratitude.”