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When Daniel Fawk gets bumped because Airista Airlines over booked their flight 105 to San Diego, Jarod gives his ticket to the college freshman, so that he won't be late in registering for his first classes. While Jarod is waiting for the next flight out, he learns that flight 105 crashed just outside of San Diego. There were 11 fatalities, and one of them was Daniel.

National Transportation Safety Board investigator Jarod "Lindsey" arrives at the airport in San Diego, determined to find out why his good deed ended up killing a young man who was just starting out his life.

Jarod discovers that the chief investigator, Clark Thomas, took a bribe from the head of Airista Airlines to conceal all evidence that his son, Brandon, was on non-FAA approved prescription drugs while he was co-piloting the plane and caused the crash. Since the pilot of flight 105, Angela Wiley, hit her head and can't remember anything past getting the okay from the tower to make the final approach, all Clark Thomas had to do to frame her was make it appear as if the cockpit recorder malfunctioned and switch the blood that was drawn from both pilots after the crash. Jarod manages to recover enough of the data on the cockpit recorder to know that it was Brandon Larsen who had the elevators set at zero degrees, instead of the 20 that were needed to clear the mountain into which the plane crashed, not Angela Wiley.

By rigging the elevators on a small plane, Jarod puts Mr. Larsen and Clark Thomas in the same situation that flight 105 faced just before it crashed. In order for Jarod to tell them how they can release the elevators and make it over the mountain, they must tell the truth about what they did. With seconds to spare, they both confess and Jarod tells Clark where to find the toggle switch that will allow him to pull his plane up and over the mountain.

Afterwards, Jarod takes Daniel's belongs back to his parents and tells them that he gave Daniel his ticket on the doomed flight. To Jarod's surprise and their credit, Mr. and Mrs. Fawk invite Jarod in to talk about the time he spent with Daniel.

When Jarod sends each of them a high school locker with a school yearbook in it, Miss Parker, Broots and Sydney attend the Douglas High School 15-year class reunion in Townsend, Nebraska. Once there, they are shocked to learn that a classmate listed as having passed away, Bobby Bowman, is actually the man they know as Mr. Lyle. While Broots goes back to Blue Cove to see what he can find in Lyle's Centre personnel records, Miss Parker and Sydney meet "Bobby's" parents. His father, who insisted that Bobby call him "Mr. Lyle," is serving a life sentence at the Topeka Penitentiary, in Topeka, Kansas. He was convicted of killing Bobby. Lyle Bowman tells them that Bobby was fine until a "counselor" from the adoption agency started coming around when Bobby was 15. After that, Bobby became moody and violent and Mr. Bowman dealt with it by locking his son in an 8 x 10 shed for protracted periods of time. Every month since he's been in jail, he has received a cutout card that resembles the lock he used on the shed when Bobby was in it. Bowman keeps them on one of the walls of his cell, to keep track of time. The lock for this month hasn't arrived and Miss Parker doesn't think it ever will, since she is certain that she killed Lyle on the docks in Hillman. Sydney doesn't share her faith. Realizing that Lyle was capable of successfully faking his death as a teenager, Sydney thinks that he did it again, and that's why Jarod sent them to the reunion. Broots tips the scales in Sydney's favor when he reveals that Lyle has no Centre personnel record - only a sheet showing the date of his hire and the date of his termination. There is one other piece of information in Lyle's folder at The Centre - a copy of the Statement of Final Decree of Adoption for Mr. and Mrs. Bowman. Lyle's "original" name on that document is listed as "Bobby Arkham." Miss Parker calls for a DNA test to be made on the body that was pulled out of the river the morning after she shot Lyle, but Broots tells her that The Centre had it cremated. While Miss Parker, Sydney and Broots contemplate what all of this means, Lyle Bowman receives his "lock" for this month, and puts it on the wall with all of the others.