Hard Landing
by Lynne Heitman
On a cold afternoon on the North Shore of Massachusetts, the body of Ellen Shepard is found hanging by the neck in the attic of her home. She leaves no family. She leaves no note. And she leaves vacant her position as the general manager of the notoriously brutal Majestic Airlines operation at Boston’s Logan Airport. The police rule her death a suicide. The company calls it a “tragic loss to the Majestic family.” But the people who worked for her call it what it is-one more victim lost to the devastating secret buried in Logan’s past, and meant to stay there. Alex Shanahan loves the airline business. At 34 years old, she has no husband, no children, no long-term relationships-not even a dog. She has her job, which over her career has taken her from airport to airport and city to city. She lives among boxes she no longer bothers to unpack and pursues the assignments no one else will take, the ones she considers to be the best opportunities. Taking charge of the Boston operation after Ellen Shepard’s suicide is the perfect challenge for Alex. From the moment she sets foot at Logan, Alex is pulled into the intrigue of her predecessor’s death. She is welcomed by an obscene depiction of Ellen’s dead body twisting at the end of a rope. It’s a greeting from some of her new employees, a warning that secrets can kill, and a threat that once she knows them it will already be too late. But Alex wants to know the truth. She follows a trail of corruption and betrayal from the ramp at Logan to the airline’s executive suites. What she uncovers could bring down the airline and destroy the lives and careers of everyone involved. It could also cost Alex her life.