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honestly don’t know.”
    “Well, you’d better be ready to take the lead during the meeting with Metz. Look at him.” Naya pulled Sasha back into the doorway.
    Noah Peterson sat in the now-darkened, otherwise empty conference room, his eyes still on the mug on the table in front of him.

 
     
     
     
     
    Chapter 9
     
    Bethesda, Maryland
     
    Jerry sat at his immaculate desk, running through the details of Friday’s upcoming exercise in his head. It was critical for the second display of his technology to go off with the same precision as the first had. Everything depended on another flawless performance.
    One positive result could be considered a fluke or chalked up to luck, but two consecutive positives would be viewed as proof Irwin could consistently deliver what he promised: the ability to take down a commercial airliner without unbuckling your seatbelt. And that capability would fetch a fantastic sum on the not-exactly-open market. More than enough for him to disappear forever.
    Jerry rehearsed the plan again. He found no vulnerabilities, but he would keep running through it, probing for weaknesses until he identified them. Then he would fix them. Because he was Jerry Irwin. He wondered if he could be considered a bona fide evil genius.
    The chirping telephone broke into his thoughts. He glared at it, waiting for Lilliana to pick it up. Then he realized his desk phone wasn’t ringing. He reached into his top desk drawer and grabbed the prepaid cell phone. Only one person had the number, and it was only to be used to convey key information.
    “Hello?” Jerry waited to hear what his partner had to say.
    The voice on the other end was urgent but measured. “Hemisphere is meeting with the law firm today. And the NTSB found the black box already. That’s sooner than we’d hoped. It means the lawyers will start digging around, probably before Friday. We just need to stay focused.”
    Jerry took in the news. He thought hard. Then he said, “Okay.”
    Damage control wasn’t his responsibility. All he had to do was crash one more plane.
    He hung up and ran through the plan again.

 
     
     
     
     
    Chapter 10
     
    Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
     
    It stood to reason they were meeting with Metz in the Frick Conference Room.
    Frick had a postcard-worthy view of the city. From its wall of windows, downtown’s skyline was on display. On a clear day, the working barges that crossed the city’s rivers zipped by like dragonflies in the distance, and, at night, the high-rises glittered with lights. Each Fourth of July, the firm opened its doors to employees and their families to watch the fireworks display from the room.
    In addition to the view, Frick was one of the largest conference rooms (wholly unnecessary for a three-person meeting) and the most opulent (wholly necessary for a meeting with a very important client like Hemisphere Air). An original painting by Mary Cassatt, a native of Pittsburgh, hung on one wall and competed with the view.
    Sasha turned her attention from the Cassatt hanging on the wall to the distressed man sitting at the table.
    Bob Metz looked like a man who hadn’t slept in a week. He was usually disheveled; his hair unruly, his custom-made suits rumpled. But his normal disarray had an air of too rich and not vain enough to care—like Angelina Jolie caught in sweatpants and a baseball cap picking up a quart of rice milk.
    Today he looked more like a professional athlete who’d spent the night in a holding cell after shooting up a strip club. Actually, he reminded Sasha of that Nick Nolte mugshot that had been all over the Internet back in 2002. Not that Metz would be caught wearing a Hawaiian shirt, no matter how dire the situation.
    He had a day’s growth on his chin and cheeks, his reddish blond hair was uncombed, and his striped necktie was tied in a sloppy four-in-hand knot that would have earned him detention in his boarding school days.
    Sasha wasn’t sure who was in worse