8
Miranda arrived in Washington, DC less than an hour before the first class at the NTSB Academy. By the time she’d retrieved her baggage—there’d been rather a lot of fuss about all of the tools in her vest until she’d reluctantly agreed to check them—and visited a business center, she was only two minutes early for the first class.
The lecture hall could seat forty and about half of the seats were already full. The Academy was brand new and she could still smell the paint from the white walls. She didn’t much like the fluorescent lights. They always seemed to flicker at the edge of her vision, but never straight on. Like they were teasing her and she’d never liked being teased. She’d never trusted fluorescents.
Unsure of the procedures, she’d carried her bound report to the instructor
