Page 38 of Gryphon

“Oh, my poor Ingrid,” Liisa started crying again. Apparently, she didn’t appreciate the neatness of the solution.

Miranda looked around the table, but there was still no sign of Mike to deal with the crying woman.

“What asshole do I get to kill for doing this to her?”

Miranda considered explaining that question lay outside the scope of her investigation. But that hadn’t gone well the first time; she’d needed no emoji chart to understand the president of LuftSvenska’s scream of despair. It still echoed inside her from when she’d discovered the multiple lies—by her parents—and about their deaths.

Rather than attempting to explain, she did as Mike had done for her earlier, lifting Meg from the floor into her lap. As soon as Meg settled, Miranda slid her noise-canceling headphones into place.

30

“Hey, buddy? Need a hand with anything?”

Mike closed his eyes. He didn’t need this. Especially not this. He turned to face Tad Jobson.

“No, I’m good.” So not. He’d come out to Miranda’s plane and found his bag in the nose cargo compartment. The access door in the side of the nose folded upward, placing the luggage at chest height. There he’d ground to a halt deciding about his NTSB site kit. Take it or leave it? He’d built it up over four years. Not some utility vest filled with all the tools of the trade like the other team members. He’d started out that way, but their trade wasn’t his. Time had honed it down to the essentials of his role as Operations and Human Factors Analyst.

To interviewees he needed to look more approachable and less like a walking toolkit.

On the job he carried a pair of voice recorders. A notebook with a set of colored pens in several weights, less for notes and more because many witnesses wanted to draw detailed images as they recounted events, though most couldn’t form a decent stick figure. Tissues for the weepers—would have been useful an hour ago—and a neatly pressed monogrammed handkerchief for the especially attractive ones.

God his life was pathetic.

That’s what had stopped him, stuck him in place by the plane’s forward swing-up cargo hatch as surely as if he’d been frozen to the runway.

Women always liked that personal touch, but when had he last used that ploy? Two years? Three? He used to order them in ten-packs and always made sure they were neatly pressed for the occasion. Women liked that.

“Hey, nice bag.”

“Thanks.” The tobacco-brown-leather Boston Bag from Aspinal of London balanced on the edge of the cargo deck. Worth every penny of the grand it had cost him. The supple leather had that well-traveled look that only time authentically created. It was the very last thing he had left from Advanced Ads. They’d traveled a long way together. Got some distance to go yet, pal.

“The way you handled that pilot,” Tad leaned one of his big shoulders up against the little jet’s closed main door two steps aft of where Mike stood. “Damn, that was smooth, brother.”

“Thanks.”

“Where did you learn to do that? I mean, I can chat up the ladies as fine as the next flyboy, but that was Next Level.”

Wonderful. His life’s great achievement was chatting up women so well that a Southern-fried ’Bama hound dog like Jobson wanted lessons. He should charge by the hour like that Will Smith movie, Hitch. Which completely backfired on the character, so maybe not. Mike couldn’t remember which woman he’d impressed into bed by suggesting that particular rom com for a date. He’d always kept track of such trivia in case he ran into a former lover at a later time.

Nope. Completely gone.

Even his last date before the dangerous Violetta who’d almost gotten him killed? Not a clue.

The tall Latina lawyer he’d planned on meeting the night after Violetta but before he knew he was a fugitive for justice and joined the NTSB on no notice? Name started with an A… Yeah, A-shaped like her spread legs when she was doing warm-up stretches in tight Lycra at the gym they’d shared. Alexia…Anna…Alejandra! Okay, not completely braindead.

…he was fairly sure it was Alejandra…

Mike tucked one handkerchief into his parka’s pocket, then slid the NTSB vest into his daypack, along with the sun hat, heavy gloves, and the few wrenches he needed on rare occasions. He slid the pack deeper into the cargo space, behind Miranda’s bag and Meg’s dog carrier for the rare times they traveled commercial.

Tad still hadn’t moved.

Maybe Mike always had the right words for the ladies, but he had no idea what to say to Jobson.

“Had my eyes on that fine lady,” he tipped his head toward the administration building. “Hard not to.”

“Pretty damn obvious.”

“Yeah, but I hit a brick wall somewhere that I can’t get around,” Jobson didn’t so much as grimace. “You slid in smooth on that pilot. Me? I go with sweeping ’em up so fast they never have time to think twice.”

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