I eased my seatbelt a little so I could reach down into the side pocket of my canvas bag.

My fingers closed around the creased spine of my battered paperback.

The cover had gone soft at the corners from weeks of riding in my flight bag, and the art on the front was faded by sun.

I turned to page one hundred forty-two, where a folded corner marked the paragraph I’d been reading four hours earlier at Gate C27.

Back at the gate, Evan Carter had sneered across the walkway and asked why a real officer would be reading cheap paperback fiction instead of going over duty manuals.