Ghostrider - M. L. Buchman Page 0,26

“Because the autopilot is designed to recover from dangerous situations automatically. So they wouldn’t engage it. He rode the plane down until it was unrecoverable. By that time there would be enough air to breathe. He rushed to the door and bailed out himself. Leaving the plane to die.”

Miranda didn’t even hesitate. “That is the precise scenario I had also formulated as the most likely sequence of events.”

Jon felt a bit as if he was a little boy who’d just been patted on the head. Also, in matching Miranda, he felt like he was one step closer to understanding her. Maybe…

“Was that what was going on?”

“What?” Miranda blinked in confusion

Is this what Miranda felt like all the time—like she was being constantly hosed down by the sheer flow of information? No filter? He’d asked around and been told to read Temple Grandin’s book, Thinking in Pictures: and Other Reports from My Life with Autism. If they were going to be lovers… Boy and girlfriend? Accident investigators with benefits? If they were going to be any of those things, then he figured it was worth trying to understand her a bit better.

“Have you been avoiding me all morning or have you just been focusing on the helicopter, then the boy, then the crash?”

“I haven’t been avoiding you. We’ve been working on the same project all morning.”

“Then why did you assign me to study the wings with Jeremy?”

Miranda turned to face the team still walking the grid search over the hilltop and he was half afraid she’d rejoin their efforts without answering. Jeremy had taken over her position in the line.

“Because you’re good with Jeremy,” she responded without turning. “Holly doesn’t give Jeremy time to slow down and think, and Mike tries but he isn’t very technical and having to explain things to him slows Jeremy down too much.”

“Oh, okay.” And also, now that he’d kicked his ego to the curb, it made good sense. More than he expected Miranda to make about people. “It was just that we haven’t seen each other for three months, and you didn’t seem to be very happy to see me.”

She turned back and for just an instant studied his eyes. He now knew how atypical that was. “Was I supposed to stop the investigation and make a gesture to indicate that I’m glad to see you again?”

“Well…yeah.”

Then she pulled out her notebook and wrote a neat note that he could just make out.

Show people (e.g. Jon) that I’m glad to see them after time apart.

He could also see the note above that: Discuss (Jon): attractiveness versus varying states of undress. He was absolutely looking forward to that one.

“Is it too late to make an appropriate gesture? Like…” she flipped to an earlier page, “…a laugh too long after the joke?”

“Never too late to show you care about someone.”

Miranda simply stepped into his arms and placed her face against the center of his chest. He wrapped his arms around her and held her close even though she didn’t hug him back. Jon made sure the embrace was firm for her sake…and his. He liked the feel of her in his arms. There was something very right about it.

He breathed in the scent of her. Northwest wilderness, and—he tried not to sneeze in her hair—the carbon of the mountaintop fire.

The crash.

Crap!

15

“You said there were a bunch of anomalies.” Jon released her from the hug and she missed it. That wasn’t something that had happened to her before. If she’d missed his hugs, did that indicate that she’d missed Jon as well? She supposed that it really did.

“I said there were several anomalies.”

Previously, Miranda had learned to tolerate hugs, partly because Holly insisted on delivering them so fiercely at such unexpected moments. But she liked leaning her face into Jon’s chest and not thinking about anything else for a brief time. It was one of the only places, other than sitting alone on her island, where Miranda had ever found that that she could just be…quiet.

Now it was time to deal with the crash.

“Acknowledging that it is far too early in the process to discuss conclusions…”

Jon nodded his agreement without interrupting her flow.

“In the past you’ve asked me to create a ‘most likely model’ against which to compare findings rather than waiting until all of the findings were complete.”

Holly and the others, including the boy Jeff, came up beside Jon. With a slight shake of her head, Holly indicated that they hadn’t found the copilot’s emergency breathing system