My back and neck ached, and my eyelids felt like they'd been lined with sand. I placed both hands on my hips and arched backward.

'Or I could help you' — When I returned to vertical Ryan's eyes locked onto mine and his brows flicked up and down — 'relax.'

'I'l be asleep before I hit the pilow.'

'You've got to eat.'

'Jesus, Ryan, what is this concern with my nutrition? You're worse than my mother.'

At that moment I spotted Larke Tyrel waving at me. He pointed to his watch then made a slicing movement across his throat. I nodded and gave him a thumbs-up.

Teling Ryan that I'd take the briefing, and only the briefing, I zipped the remains into their pouch, made notes in the disaster victim packet, and returned everything to the body tracker. Stripping down to my street clothes, I washed and headed out.

===OO=OOO=OO===

Forty minutes later Ryan and I sat with meat loaf sandwiches in the kitchen of High Ridge House. He'd just voiced his third complaint concerning the absence of beer.

'The drunkard and the glutton shal come to poverty,' I replied, pounding on a ketchup bottle.

'Says who?'

'According to Ruby, the Book of Proverbs.'

'I wil make it a felony to drink smal beer.' The weather had cooled and Ryan was wearing a ski sweater, the cornflower blue a perfect match for his eyes.

'Did Ruby say that?'

'Shakespeare. Henry VI.'

'Your point being?'

'Like the king, Ruby is being autocratic.'

'Tel me about the investigation.' I took a bite of my sandwich.

'What do you want to know?'

'Have the black boxes been recovered?'

'They're orange. You have ketchup on your chin.'

'Have the flight recorders been found?' I blotted my face, wondering how a man could be so attractive and so annoying at the same time.

'Yes.'

'And?'

'They've been sent to the NTSB lab in Washington, but I've listened to a copy of the cockpit voice recording. Worst twenty-two minutes I've ever spent.'

I waited.

'The FAA has a sterile cockpit rule below ten thousand feet, so for the first eight minutes or so the pilots are al business. After that they're more relaxed, responding to air traffic controlers, chatting about their kids, their lunch, their golf games. Suddenly there's a pop, and everything changes. They're breathing hard and shouting to each other.'

He swalowed.

'In the background you hear beeps then chirps then wails. A member of the recorders group identified each sound as we listened. Autopilot disconnect. Overspeed. Altitude alert. Apparently that meant they'd managed to level off for a while. You hear al this and you picture those guys struggling to save their plane. Shit.'

He swalowed again.

'Then there's this chiling whooping noise. The ground proximity warning. Then a loud crunch.

Then nothing.'