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Before she could protest, Andi turned back.
“I mean that I wasn’t talking about us, you know? When I was saying maybe we were done. You get that, right?” Her look matchedpleadingon the emoji reference page in her personal notebook. It was still the only way she could even guess other’s emotions.
“You’re mixing things up, Andi. I’mmefor lack of a better word. And we were talking about the plane. Why did you insert our relationship in the middle of that?”
“Uh, because I’ve been thinking about it a lot.”
“About stopping our relationship? But it only just started.” Miranda looked down at the still open page and searched for her own emotion. Frowny face, no red cheeks or narrowed eyes—sad.
“No, about keeping it going. But I’m messing up again, in a new way.”
Miranda tucked away her notebook, closed her eyes, covered her ears, and held her breath for a moment to think without external sensory input.
Focus on one thing at a time.That’s what her personal notebook said to do.
The plane.
There was no actual question but that it was a failure in the cockpit. If the flaps had failed, they would have called the tower for a faster than normal landing, one that would have appeared otherwise normal in the rate of descent. Until the moment of attempted recovery, their approach speed was exactly where it should have been—if they’d had thirty degrees of flap extended.
She removed her hands and took a breath.
“The failure wasn’t with the plane.”
Andi appeared to be swallowing hard but was nodding her head as if encouraging Miranda to continue. Holly was waiting and Mike was smiling at something only he knew.
“But in the general area of the cockpit, I’d still like to look for—”
“Is one of you Miranda Chase?” A woman had driven a beige Air Force Humvee to the boundary perimeter of orange flags marking the edge of the debris field.
“I’m Miranda Chase. Investigator in Charge for the NTSB.”
“Wonderful!” The woman climbed out, stepped on an orange debris-perimeter flag, and was about to kick aside a communications hatch that would have been used by ground personnel to patch in the headphones when talking to the pilots.
“Don’t do that! Stop!”
The woman froze in mid-step. “Do what?”
“Kick that.”
“This?” she nudged it gently with the toe of her boot. Then she looked around as if seeing the debris for the first time.
“We never know what may ultimately be important in a crash investigation.”
“I’m guessing that it’s not this.” She nudged it again, but then stepped carefully around it.
Truthfully, Miranda estimated that it wasn’t either and had to remind herself of that. When ninety-one tons of aircraft, plus an unspecified amount of fuel…
She quickly consulted the logs on the QAR.
When ninety-one tons of aircraft and seven-point-two tons of fuel hit the ground as hard as this plane had, the causal factors were far greater than a twelve-inch service hatch.
“I must conclude that you are correct in your assessment.”
The woman threaded her way to them without threatening to displace any more of the debris.
She stood two inches over Miranda’s five-four height, though walked as if she was a foot taller. She had Italian olive skin and lustrous brown hair with a hint of gold hanging neat to her jawline. She wore a smart uniform that had been recently pressed. Her winter jacket hid her name, but not the silver oakleaf of a Navy commander’s insignia on her collar points.
“Well, how’s it going? Have you about wrapped this one up?” The woman gestured as if encompassing the world as easily as Miranda might encompass a cup of tea.
