Mara fiddled with her napkin and silverware as she sat at the large round table in the back of Anda!—a Spanish tapas restaurant that she and Ping had taken to frequenting, largely because it was a quiet place, especially after one o’clock when their short lunch rush appeared to end. Ping spoke into a cell phone, apparently to a vendor who provided some finished baked goods of one kind or another. Lost in her own thoughts, she wasn’t really paying attention. She was starting to get the sense that life was spiraling out of control again, as it had after the crash of Flight 559. Not that life had ever gotten back to normal, but things did quiet down for a couple weeks. At least until a child’s voice starting coming out of the radio casing and out of Melanie Proctor. That was bizarre.
Ping ta
