Irreparable Harm by Melissa F. Miller Read Free Book Online

shape—her client or her boss. Peterson at least looked presentable. But he was still lost in thought and saying random things. Sasha doubted he was up to the task of providing the thoughtful advice for which Hemisphere Air shelled out eight hundred dollars an hour.
    In his panic, Metz didn’t seem to notice his trusted counselor’s near-catatonic state. So, Sasha took charge of the meeting and set for herself the same goal she had every time she babysat her nieces and nephews: no blood; no property damage in excess of a hundred dollars; and everybody eats something.
    She turned to Metz, “Bob, I know this is a stressful situation, but you should eat.”
     She pointed at his untouched plate of Virginia spots, which Peterson had brought in from the Duquesne Club because they were Metz’s favorite dish.
    Peterson was busy ignoring his own plate of spots. Sasha wasn’t a fan herself, although admitting as much about the breaded, white fish of indeterminate origin would be tantamount to heresy around Prescott & Talbott’s offices.
    Metz shoved the spots around on his plate with his fork, dragging them through the beurre blanc sauce but not eating them. Peterson carefully buttered a hunk of warm bread. Neither man spoke.
    She tried again. “Bob, why I don’t I fill you in on what we’ve learned thus far.”
    She winced when she heard herself say “thus” but pressed on. “Mickey Collins filed, as you know. We’re making a copy of the complaint for you, but it’s nothing impressive. The real news is the case was assigned to Judge Dolans, who will recuse, given her personal history with Collins. Judge Westman is the most likely… “
    Metz interrupted her, “They found the black box.”
    The black box, often the sole survivor of a plane crash, isn’t really black. It’s bright orange.
    Sasha supposed it might be charred black after a fire. She’d never seen one; she’d just worked with the data they’d preserved. The box contained two separate recorders; one recorded cockpit conversation and background noise, which often became unintelligible screaming at the end, and the other recorded literally hundreds of data points about the flight—things like speed, altitude, and fuel flow. Of the two, the voice recording was the more dramatic, but the flight data usually proved more helpful in piecing together exactly what had happened.
    “That was quick. Were both recorders intact?”
    Sasha looked sidelong at Peterson to see if he was even feigning an interest. He wasn’t.
    Metz nodded. “The NTSB called about seven this morning. Vivian flew to D.C. to act as Hemisphere Air’s representative in the lab while they cracked it open. The cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder are both in pristine shape. They won’t have to do any reconstruction.” Metz glanced at Peterson then fell silent.
    Bob Metz was a good guy. He was polite, considerate, and political without being oily. He was not a legal scholar. He’d earned gentleman’s Cs through college and law school and had relied on his family connections and charm to get where he was in his career.
    Metz would do—always did—whatever Noah Peterson told him he should do. Although everyone in the room knew it, they all pretended not to. Instead, Peterson would couch his instruction as a suggestion, so that when Metz invariably followed it, he could act as though he’d independently evaluated and agreed with the advice of his legal counsel.
    This arrangement usually suited both client and attorney just fine, but at the moment, Metz’s trusted counselor seemed to be counting the fibers in his cloth napkin. Or maybe he wasn’t even seeing the napkin.
    “Did Vivian hear the playback from the voice recorder?”
    Metz sighed, ran his hand down his tie, smoothed out some wrinkles, and said, “She said that first the pilot says something like the onboard system reset itself and was now locked in with new coordinates. Co-pilot checks them, agrees. They