Speak in Winter Code

by S. M. Harding

  She motioned me to exchange places. I did, but I was so conscious of my sagging breasts and butt, I hid both as much as I could. She moved me into position. I knew I was beet red in the face, but that wasn’t what she was focusing on. I realized what she’d been feeling and told myself to get with the program. I watched her move around me, lithe and smiling. I began changing positions on my own. I was on my back when the oven timer went off. “You get the pizza, I’ll get the robes,” Win said as she put the camera on the coffee table.

  As we ate, Win reviewed the images, those of her rather quickly, lingering on mine.

  “Shoot Win, you’re a helluva photographer. I actually look okay.”

  “Look at this one,” she said, going forward rapidly. “You, woman, look downright sexy.”

  I did, to my surprise. I thought it had more to do with my eyes than my body. “How about these as a late anniversary present?”

  “I thought we weren’t giving anniversary gifts,” she said.

  “Could you pull a couple of prints? I’ll frame them. We’ll hang them in the bedroom.”

  She smiled. “I’ll work on it tomorrow. I couldn’t figure out what to get you anyway. I mean, something that has meaning.”

  I thumbed through them again while Win got another piece of pizza. I couldn’t decide which of hers I liked best. “Maybe two of each of us.”

  “Eat your pizza so we can make new memories.”

  After we finished and cleaned up, Win removed my robe and took my hands. “How about one photo of us together?”

  “I’d like that.”

  She walked back to the cupboard and returned with a tripod. After she attached the camera, she moved the rig to face the fire and motioned me toward it. “Stand with your hands raised. As if my palms are on yours. A little lower.”

  I heard the sound of the zoom lens and she tinkered a bit more. “Hold on, we’re almost there.”

  She shed her robe, stepped into the frame, her palms against mine, our lips straining to meet. After I heard the shutter, I pulled her into my arms for a long kiss. I thought I heard the shutter sound again, but ignored it as the heat grew.

  Win pulled back. “Let’s see what we got—if it’s not good, we’ll just have to keep practicing.”

  We walked to the camera and when Win showed me the photo, I gasped. The fire backlit us so that we appeared mostly in silhouette except where the firelight made rosy modeling along our bodies. “Perfect.”

  * * *

  The phone got Win out of bed and moving at eight thirty in the morning. I followed reluctantly, showering first, then padding into the kitchen for coffee. Win was at her desk, phone still tucked into her shoulder while she took notes.

  “Can you send me your files?” she asked. “Great. Zoe, if I get any leads from this, I promise you’ll be the first to know. Er, the second. Thanks so much.”

  She turned toward me. “Zoe. She’s been poking around in the Ranger thing. She might’ve found some good leads. I’d like to go over her notes, then send what I think is important to Nolan and Nathan. Zoe managed to talk with some of these goons and has transcribed their conversation.”

  “Can I have coffee before we talk business?” While it was brewing, I watched Win. Dressed in Marine Corps sweats and heavy socks, she was far from the firelight vixen of last night. But she was still beautiful.

  After the high-pitched beeps, I took two mugs of coffee to her desk. She’d just opened a zip file from Zoe and was focused on the text scrolling down the screen. I kissed her forehead and put the mug on the desk out of reach of her elbows. “Good morning.”

  She looked up at me and snaked an arm around my waist. “Good morning. Quite a night, eh?”

  “Why do I have a feeling we’re not going to stretch last night into today?”

  “We’re already dressed?”

  “That could change quickly.” I looked at the screen and sighed.

  “Pull up a chair. Let’s do this together.”

  “Breakfast?”

  She swiveled around to look at me. “Shit, you’re resistant.”

  “My head’s still in last night, I’ll admit that. But I haven’t had a cup of coffee yet and I’m hungry. Go take your shower and I’ll fix breakfast. What do you want?”

  She examined my face, then smiled.

  “Then we’ll go over this material together?”

  “Cross my heart.” The phrase “hope to die” flitted through my mind.

  “Deal. This is an oatmeal day.” She closed the file and put the computer to sleep.

  Win shoveled in breakfast like she’d been starving. She looked up. “I guess I was hungrier than I realized.” She grinned at me. “Once we get finished with work, I have a feeling I’ll need to be fortified.”

  Fortified? “I don’t, you know, come on too strong, do I?”

  “Why would you ask that?”

  I shrugged. “It’s just…I never initiated sex before you. You’d tell me if you didn’t want to make love, wouldn’t you?”

  “Honey, I have a headache?”

  “I’m serious, Win. If you don’t want to, you’d tell me. Wouldn’t you?”

  “Should that ever happen, I promise I’ll be honest. But I hope you realize I initiate half the time. Same promise applies to you.” She sighed and pushed her bowl away. “I can’t multitask like you do. I take my full concentration and focus on one thing. Problems. You. It’s futile to flirt when I’m concentrating on something else. That’s just the way I am, Sarah.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “When do we print the pictures?”

  “Uh…”

  “Is there any way we can view them in a larger format?”

  She laughed. “Shit, you’re insatiable, Sarah. Not that I’m complaining.”

  “Are you sure? I get so lost in you, Win. I look at you and I’m off and running. I can’t seem to get enough of you and each time I come I feel my love grow.”

  She wrapped me in a tight embrace. “I feel the same. Sometimes worry begins to nibble.”

  “I’d step in front of you if a bullet was coming, Win.” I blinked away my tears and kissed her. “Let’s go read, even if it’s my day off.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Win

  “Look at this from Zoe’s files,” I said. “This is a direct quote. ‘We must treat homosexuals as the sex offenders they are.’ A homosexual registry? Restrictions on where we can live? What jobs we can work? Fuck him.”

  “Who said it?” Sarah asked.

  “Notation is just J. We’ll have to ask Zoe who J is.”

  “Joshua or James?”

  “Maybe. Let’s not make assumptions.”

  “Win, this sounds like one of the ugly emails and letters the Sentinel got when Dad got into a verbal fight in the paper about gays. Ask Zoe if Lloyd kept them.”

  “So the anti-gay hate’s been brewing for a while?”

  “At least with this guy.” Sarah frowned. “We need more context for this interview. Why don’t you invite Zoe for lunch?”

  I nodded and got on the phone. “She’ll be here at one. With files.”

  “What do we have to feed Zoe?”

  “You want me to go away? I thought we were supposed to work this together.”

  “It was just a question, Sarah.”

  “Ham sandwiches and split pea soup. Now keep scrolling.”

  I found a couple of other interesting quotes full of military lingo. I sent them to Nathan and Nolan. “These people are crazy. They don’t even have a basic understanding of the Constitution. I would so love to tread on them. Specifically, their necks. Then ship them off to North Sudan.”

  Sarah glanced at me. Quickly transferred her gaze back to the screen. I meant it. I had little patience for “patriots” who didn’t value democracy. I returned to scanning Zoe’s notes. What really upset me was how many people in the county felt government was choking them. Or maybe it was a few who were really loud, really hard to tell from this crap.

&nb
sp; When we’d finished reading both interviews and leads Zoe was following, I closed the file. “Disgusting.”

  “Welcome home, Win.”

  “I have a better appreciation for what coming out cost you publicly. Your bravery astounds me.”

  She shrugged. “It wasn’t bravery, just inability to live a lie.” She grinned. “Can we look at the photos now?”

  I glanced at my watch. “Almost time for Zoe. Let’s get lunch ready. Then, after Zoe leaves…”

  Zoe arrived on the dot. We sat down to lunch and general conversation. Like why the hell she’d quit a lucrative career in broadcasting to write for a small town weekly.

  “They told me how to dress, how long my hair had to be and pushed me to be provocative. Not just with my appearance, but with my copy. They wanted quicker investigations with less factual content and more insinuation.” She stirred her soup. “I’m not that kind of journalist. I started looking for another job about two years before I left.”

  “But why here?” I asked. “Surely there are still some prestigious newspapers still alive.”

  “They may be alive for the moment,” she said. “But I wonder how much longer they can hang on. It’s all going digital and I think the general public believe everything on the Internet should be free.”

  “Not a good business model,” Sarah said. “But I agree with Win. Why here?”

  “Lloyd, our editor and publisher, is an old-fashioned journalist who wants old-fashioned journalism from me. Besides, where else would I get to investigate militias with the publisher’s blessing? In Chicago, New York or LA, I’d have to do a specific beat. Here I get to cover everything from the Knights of Columbus to murder and get to know people in the process. You never know where a good lead will come from. Plus, the Sentinel is on firm financial ground because it’s the only place for local news. Now, shut up folks and let me eat.”

  Back at the computer I pulled up her notes. Zoe sat next to me and Sarah stood behind me with her hands on my shoulders. “First question—who’s J?”

  Zoe put on her glasses. “Scroll back a bit. Let me get the context.” She read the previous entry, then the section I’d marked. “J is for jerks. I’d stopped in at Dog’s for dinner and a drink after work. Three guys sat next to me and I was only vaguely aware of them. Then one of them mentioned a meeting of the Rangers and my ears perked up.”

  “Did you recognize the guys?”

  Zoe shook her head.

  “Sarah, you have the pics?”

  She went to get them.

  “Did they have any identifiers on? Uniforms? Company logos? What kind of footwear? Anything you can remember would help.”

  Zoe closed her eyes. “No cop or military uniforms. One looked like a janitor or something, you know, gray overalls, but he kept his jacket on so I didn’t see a logo. The other guy just looked…average. Jeans, work boots, flannel shirt, old bomber jacket. The third looked like an office worker. Gray suit, nothing real expensive, black loafers.”

  I’d been taking notes. “Great. Haircuts?”

  “All short, but the one in overalls could’ve been a skinhead. He had a cap on.”

  “Tattoos?”

  “Not that I could see. There could’ve been some on Overalls, but he kept pulling his sleeve down.” Zoe opened her eyes. “I couldn’t watch them overtly. I was taking notes, sneaking a peak.”

  “You did great. This is helpful. Really.”

  Sarah walked over with her laptop and pulled up the two photos. “Either one of these two at the table?”

  “Both,” Zoe said, without hesitation. “The one on the left is Overalls. The one on the right’s Average Joe.”

  “Did they call the third one by a first name?”

  “No. I think he intimidated them. Just an attitude I picked up on and I can’t be specific. Sorry.”

  “They talked about FEMA camps?” I asked. “Like it was true?”

  “Overalls and Average Guy did, even thought the Feds would use Camp Atterbury. But Office didn’t say much. Kept trying to get back to the plan.”

  “The plan?” Sarah asked. “What plan?”

  “I don’t know. The only thing he said when they kept going on about other stuff was the plan would never work if they weren’t properly prepared to take action. And that they were already behind schedule.”

  Sarah looked at me, her eyebrows raised in query.

  Zoe checked her watch. “Gotta go. Here’s the correspondence from the previous dustup.” She laid a thick manila envelope on the desk. “This has been a delightful time and I hope to hell you get these guys for treason and…”

  “Send them to North Sudan?” Sarah asked. “That’s what Win wants to do.”

  Zoe gave me thumbs-up.

  Sarah walked her out. When she came back in, she closed Zoe’s file. “Pictures. Now.”

  * * *

  Sipping her coffee, Sarah stood gazing at the photos I’d printed out yesterday afternoon. A slight frown furrowed her forehead.

  “What?” I asked as I joined her. “You don’t like the one you chose?”

  “No, all three are…breathtaking. I was just wondering about when the girls come.”

  “Bahar and Dorri?”

  She nodded. “I mean, is it going to traumatize them to have two moms? Then seeing these? You know they’ll be in our bedroom unless we decide to lock them out.”

  “Are you getting cold feet?”

  “No! I’m really looking forward to meeting them in person.”

  “We’ve got a lot of winter to get through. I vote we go ahead and frame them. Hang them in our bedroom for now. When it gets closer to the time, we’ll figure it out.” I wrapped my arms around her. “You could always hang them in your office.”

  I got an elbow in my ribs for the suggestion.

  “They’re Muslim, Win.”

  “Their family was Sufi. Lost their turuq—their teacher—when their village was destroyed. Right now, they don’t have any religious affiliation. I’ve been looking for someone in Bloomington. It’d be a lot easier if they were Buddhist or Hindu.” I picked up the photo of the two of us. “I’m going to blow this up to eleven by fourteen. It’s so symbolic because of the way we were drawn together. I fought it until you overwhelmed my defenses.”

  Sarah touched my cheek. “You think the girls will roll with it, with us?”

  “They’re young. I worry more about static they’ll get at school from local kids.”

  Her frown reappeared. “Me too.”

  “Take the mountain photo in the bedroom down and put it in the kids’ room. I’m going to print some more shots from the Kush. I don’t know if it’ll make them feel more at home—or miss their homeland more.”

  “There’s so much we’re guessing at, Win.”

  “We’ll muddle through—no, we’ll do better than that. I can handle the Afghan side. Help them adjust to all of this. You’ve got the best credentials in the world—your own parents.” I traced the line of her jaw with my fingers. “The most important thing for them is to feel loved.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Waterstone stood in front of the Transport Aviation hanger and watched the Eclipse 550 Twin-Engine taxi toward him. Not what I would’ve chosen to lead a revolution, but still a spiffy little plane. When it finally stopped, he picked up his duffel bag and walked toward the door on the side and followed the stairs being pushed to the door.

  The white-haired senator motioned him to one of the plush leather seats as an attendant took his duffel. Fastening his seat belt, he surrendered to the softness as it engulfed him. He was weary, but it was dangerous to show any weakness to this man. The constant pressure of working with idiots and then the message that had sent him on a mad dash to Evansville were fast eating up his reserves.

  The man maintained silence until they were in the air. “Your evaluation of Kirkland?”

  “She’s as good as her reputation. I think she’s slower with this material because she’s always used her langu
age background to analyze intel, and now she’s using English and is uncertain of her opponent, sir.”

  “So we should take her seriously?”

  “Definitely sir.”

  “Weaknesses?”

  “Her only weakness is her wife.”

  “Fuck it, Waterstone, carpet-lickers don’t have wives. They’re just a bunch of women who want to be men and can’t grow one, so they strap it on.”

  “You asked me her weakness and the only one I can see is Sheriff Sarah Pitt. Together, they’re a great team—one I wouldn’t hesitate to deploy if they could be flipped.”

  “They’re perverts.” He signaled the attendant for drinks. “So what’s your plan?”

  “Put the sheriff in the crosshairs for real—the nasty letters are a waste of time. Shake her up with a few close calls, but wait until the assault to finish her off.”

  “And how is that plan coming?”

  “If I could bring in a small team, we’d be ready to go within the week. With the Rangers? At least a month, maybe more—that is, if you want a successful endgame.”

  “Oh, I do. We have further plans for McCrumb County because we’ve found a high-value target. Ever hear of Ridley Forge?”

  “The storage depot for VX gas? Hasn’t it been deactivated?”

  The senator shook his head. “I want all obstacles, including these women, out of the way.” He stood and walked to a cupboard. When he turned around he held several large sheets of paper rolled together. “When you get back to camp, I want you to pick a small team of our best. Build this as a mock-up, work up a plan to successfully implement theft of the gas.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Sarah

  Wednesday, bloody Wednesday, with enough paperwork on my desk to last until the next election. I ripped through as much as I could, then slowed down and concentrated on the active case files. Precious little news on the Rangers and I felt as if we kept coming up against walls that we couldn’t get around, jump over or tunnel under. Win and I had made more progress than my whole department and that was depressing.

  I made a note to contact Nathan and find what he’d discovered from our new leads. Then I remembered my promise to Win and check about a search on her land. The third thing on my list was to call Dad and see if he’d talk to Dog. In the years since he’d retired, the two had become friends instead of cop and biker bar owner. I glanced at my watch. The courthouse was open and I could question Kay Castle, our Recorder of Deeds. I pushed the files to the side of my desk and grabbed my parka.