Ghostrider - M. L. Buchman Page 0,20

her.

How was she supposed to explain the devastating hole in her life and that it actually could happen to him?

“Pleasepleaseplease…” Jeff continued to almost pray through his sobs.

“Jeff,” she tried to pry him loose.

“Jeff,” she pushed harder, but he clung about her so hard that he was actually choking her.

“Jeff!” Miranda shoved him back hard enough that they flew apart and both landed on their butts on either side of the explosion’s epicenter.

The air was briefly filled with a puff of scorched carbon. She raised a hand and saw that it was well-blackened from arresting her fall.

At least the shock seemed to cut off his pleading as he looked at her with big round eyes.

Miranda had learned to fly from her father. She’d often wondered about his final thoughts as he plummeted from the sky with no way to control the plane and save himself, and especially Mom.

“Is your father a good pilot, Jeff?” Even at thirteen she’d known it was ridiculous, but that hadn’t stopped the nightmares of her father scrambling for the 747’s stairs to the cockpit and diving to the controls to save everyone—and failing. TWA 800 had been blown in two at over thirteen thousand feet. The greatest pilot in history couldn’t have saved that plane. Or her parents.

“He’s the best ever!” Jeff shouted. At her? At the world?

So was mine. But some instinct told Miranda to keep that thought to herself. “As long as he can reach the controls, then he’ll probably always be safe.”

“Really?” Now he was begging her.

How could she know? How to explain to the child she herself had once been, what she now knew to be the hard truth of death?

“Really?” An escalation of pleading. She didn’t want another choking embrace.

She wouldn’t lie, not even to an upset child.

How to explain what she knew in a way he’d understand? Then she remembered what she’d done when she’d finally stopped crying over her parents’ deaths.

“Do you know why I study plane crashes?”

Jeff bit his lower lip and shook his head.

“I don’t do it to learn why a plane crashed.”

“You don’t?” That earned her a frown that she hoped meant he was really listening.

“No. I do it to make sure it never happens to anyone else again. At least not for the same reason.”

Jeff stared at her hard, but she didn’t feel the need to look away from him.

She waited him out. That fierce concentration was something she knew very well from herself.

Finally, he nodded. “Teach me how to do that.”

From somewhere deep inside her, a laugh came up. A sad laugh that also had tears, though she blinked those back even as she swallowed the laugh—barely managing not to choke on it. It was a drive she knew that, once embraced, would never let him go. One that blocked out all other possibilities.

She’d spent a lifetime crawling through the remains of dead planes and past dead people. It wasn’t a task she’d wish for anybody.

“Maybe you’ll fly planes someday. Or help build safer ones.”

“I wanna learn why they break.”

She sighed—to herself—for his sake. “Well, that can be useful to understand if you want to fly them or make them safer, too.”

“Show me.”

“Well, next we need to get to the cockpit to do that.”

He jumped to his feet. “Let’s go!”

Then he looked around in every direction.

“Uh! Which way is it?”

She pointed in the direction opposite from where they’d found the tail and the scorched pole.

Jeff grabbed her hand and led the way.

11

Just as they were turning away, Holly and Mike came up over the ridge by the howitzer barrel.

Jeff kept tugging at her hand, but Miranda stopped and waited for them to pack up their climbing equipment and join them.

Mike set the battered orange case of the CVDR, cockpit voice and data recorder, at her feet.

“What happened to it?” It was incredibly battered.

“You should have seen the tail it came out of.” Holly tapped the radio in Miranda’s vest. “Isn’t it on?”

It wasn’t. Yet another thing she’d missed. This was a very…confusing wreck. She took a deep breath and centered herself. Then she began her usual process of tapping all of the pockets on her vest. When she reached the radio, she sighed and turned it on. Lastly, she tapped her chest, then had to look down in surprise. Not even her NTSB badge was in place.

“Someone been distracting you?” Holly gave Jeff a punch on the shoulder. Thankfully without the usual force she unleashed on others. “You been asking a lot of