Chapter 10 - The Horizon AheadThe morning sun broke over the jagged peaks of the Sierra Nevada mountains, casting a golden, amber glow across the vast expanse of high desert below.
From thirty thousand feet, the world looked quiet, orderly, and peaceful.
Inside the cabin of a sleek, modern commercial airliner cruising smoothly through the upper troposphere, First Officer Mark Jensen walked out of the flight deck during a scheduled altitude check. His captain was alert, drinking coffee, and chatting cheerfully about weekend college football scores.
Mark smiled, feeling a new kind of confidence in his step as he walked down the aisle to stretch his legs.
As he passed Seat 14B, he paused for a brief second.
The seat was empty. The passenger was gone, having caught her connecting flight to the East Coast two days prior, leaving behind only the faint, lingering scent of old leather and a small, perfectly folded red fleece jacket stored neatly in the overhead bin.
Mark looked out the reinforced cabin window, watching the endless blue horizon stretch out infinitely into the distance. He reached up instinctively, touching his own uniform lapel where his pilot wings gleamed brightly under the cabin lights.
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He didn't know where Pauline Sanders was right now—whether she was sitting quietly on a porch somewhere in Virginia, tending a garden, or silently analyzing the engine rumble of another commercial flight thousands of feet below. But he knew one thing with absolute certainty:
The sky was a much safer place because she was still watching it.
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