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21
Miranda had knownthat she didn’t have to wait long.
By the time she’d uncovered her ears and opened her eyes, Commander Piazza and Holly were gone from the cabin. She’d managed to miss all of the chaos that ensued whenever anyone triggered one of her team into protective mode. She’d deemed that problem would spike the moment Commander Piazza had taken her tablet.
She’d been right.
By focusing on avoiding exposure to the results of that action, she also managed tonotfocus on the abrupt interruption to her own mental processes.
“They’re in back,” Mike nodded toward the stern of the aircraft when she looked his way. Which was better than Holly preparing to eject Susan at fifty thousand feet. That would be a remarkably dangerous action, as the C-37B had no airlock that would allow the retention of cabin pressure. She’d been able to hear Holly’s threat despite covering her ears.
Actually, as they were headed west of south, they were cruising at fifty-onethousand feet. Holly frequently rounded off numbers when she was upset. Now that she considered the matter, she understood that most people did, even when they weren’t upset, which struck Miranda as a decidedly lazy way of thinking.
So many things were changing so fast, but some were staying very much the same. Miranda had known what Holly was about to do. Not because she had understood what was happening when the commander grabbed her computer, but because she’d felt the internal slide down to places she’d never wanted to experience again.
Holly reliably rose to her defense when someone acted against Miranda herself. But she didn’t like the accompanying violence or chaos either. At least with Holly, it would be over quickly.
Andi was hovering.Herface was now familiar enough that Miranda could look at it for several seconds at a time. She could see the…wrongness?
“Are you upset?”
“I’m worried about you,” Andi rested a hand firmly on her shoulder. She’d always paid attention to Miranda’s aversion to light contact.
“I’m okay.” And she was, which was a pleasant surprise after any altercation or pending altercation. However, Andi’s face hadn’t changed. “But you still look worried.”
“I’m trying to do what is right. I’m…” Then she turned away to look at Mike. “…being stupid.”
Mike nodded firmly.
Before Miranda could ask why, Andi had wrapped her into a hug and held her tightly.
Miranda let herself be held, “You have great hugs.”
“Thanks,” Andi’s voice sounded shaky by her ear. She held on a moment longer, then released Miranda and turned to face away toward the rear of the cabin.
Miranda leaned out to glance aft, but the rear door was closed. Andi didn’t appear to be looking in quite that direction.
“Should I now be asking if you’re okay?”
“I’m fine,” Andi’s voice was…not a good indicator for Miranda. So she took Andi at her word.
Andi eventually scooped up the dog and sat in Holly’s chair. Andi kept her face buried in Sadie’s fur.
Mike returned her tablet, actually Andi’s tablet. She tapped the screen awake and continued her editing. The text was far cleaner than she’d expected. The layout followed her preferred analysis methodology. There were a minimum of extraneous words that she always found so annoying in most other investigator’s reports.
It was…familiar.
That was illogical, because it was completely about the crash of the KC-46 Pegasus aerial tanker at JBER. Yet it was…
“You copied my report on the crash of the Embraer ERJ jet in Atlanta.”
“The format, not the details. Is it okay?” Andi finally looked up.
Miranda finished it with fewer edits than she might have made to one of Jeremy’s early reports. “I agree with your conclusions. Forward it to NTSB headquarters for Jeremy to verify against the data recorders.”
“High praise indeed,” Mike spoke up.
“Oh, was I supposed to praise her? I didn’t know.” She turned to Andi. “Well done.” Then back to Mike. “Was that appropriate?”
