Miranda held aloft one final dog hair, but couldn’t find anywhere to place it. Finally Mike took it from her, then surreptitiously dropped it to the floor when Miranda stopped looking.
Susan turned to try again with Miranda…who was now studying Andi’s tablet computer. Her motions said that she was editing something.
Mike caught Susan’s attention and winked. “You’ve lost her for a bit while she reads over what Andi and Holly wrote up about the JBER crash.”
She reached across and snatched away Andi’s tablet.
Miranda squeaked in surprise, sounding enough like Sadie to almost be funny.
The transition was instantaneous, but not in the way she expected.
Mike snapped out a sharp, “No! Don’t!”
Miranda didn’t look up or protest. Instead she placed her hands over her ears, shut her eyes, and bent down her head.
Andi shoved to her feet, tossing Sadie down on the seat behind Miranda’s and appeared ready to do battle.
Holly’s voice was very soft, chillingly so. “You’ll want to be handing that to Mike very slowly.” There was no hint of any accent at all.
“No,” Susan matched her tone for tone. “I have a major crisis awaiting us and I need your team’s attention to be focused exclusively on that.”
“You got our attention, mate. Now if you don’t want to make an abrupt exit of the aircraft at fifty thousand feet, you’ll hand that back.”
“I’ve faced down plenty worse than you over the years…mate.”
“No,” Holly almost smiled. “No, you haven’t.”
Susan was never able to fully reconstruct what happened next.
One moment she was in control of the situation—marginally, but in control.
The next, her head was spinning from where it had been slammed against the window. The tablet was gone from her hands. She was out of her seat and being walked toward the rear of the plane with an arm twisted painfully high behind her back.
They passed the couch, into the rear cabin, and into the small bathroom.
“You’re about to be sick as hell,” Holly’s voice sounded solicitous. “Not that I give a rat’s ass. Now lean forward.”
Susan had no idea how she came to be on her knees, but she puked violently into the bowl.