Call Out

by L. B. Clark

  I shook my head and joined her in poking around in the fridge and cabinets to see what we could find. Thankfully, the fridge was empty except for bottled water and sodas. Nothing nasty lurking in there, half-forgotten. We found a lot of in-date nonperishables in the cabinets and pantry, including some high end, gourmet kinds of things, but no coffee. On a hunch, I checked the freezer, and sure enough – coffee. Gourmet stuff again.

  I left the coffee-brewing to Dylan and took stock of the kitchenwares. I also found the stash of oversized coffee mugs. When the coffee was done, I poured a cup for Ashe, and as an afterthought I poured another for Quinn. If any of the other guys wanted coffee, they could get it themselves.

  Dylan sipped her mug and sighed a happy sigh. She looked from her cup of gourmet coffee to the cold Pop-tart in her other hand and then at me, and we both laughed. Shaking my head, I headed to the library with my offering, which both Ashe and Quinn accepted with many ‘thanks’.

  Back in the living room, Adrian and Brian were still working on their song. I thought it was starting to sound pretty good. Dylan had reclaimed her seat at Brian’s feet, despite the overabundance of squishy chairs and sofas in the room. I didn’t blame her. In fact, I understood completely.

  I bypassed all the other seating and headed for the sofa where London lay. He looked exhausted and miserable, and I considered urging him to go find a bed. I figured it would be futile though, and went back to plan A.

  “Sit up a minute,” I told him.

  He looked up at me, his face blank, like he could hear me but not understand what I was saying. Then he closed his eyes, shook his head like he was trying to clear it, and sat up long enough for me park my butt on the sofa. He lay back down and turned over, his head in my lap and his back to the room.

  “You should try to sleep,” I said, combing my fingers through his hair. “Quinn and Ashe seem to think you’re safe for now.”

  “From outside influence,” London countered, “but not from what’s in my own head.”

  “Um....think happy thoughts?”

  I could see the corner of London’s mouth turn up in a smile. “Not that easy.”

  “Maybe you just need a distraction. Something else to focus on.”

  He turned to lay on his back, so he could look up at me. “I think we determined last night that distraction is out.”

  It took me a second to realize what he was talking about, but when I did I rolled my eyes. “Sex is not the only distraction. Honest. Besides, you’d so fall asleep just when it was getting interesting, and I’d develop a complex. We’d end up hating each other and have to go on the Dr. Phil Show. Or Jerry Springer.”

  London laughed, and I smiled back at him. We were quiet for a while, listening to the boys work on their music. All the while, I tried to think of something to help disengage London’s brain. If music wasn’t doing it, what would?

  Sometime later it hit me. I touched London’s cheek to get his attention, and he turned away from whatever he’d been staring at to look at me.

  “Meet me in the bedroom,” I said. When he opened his mouth to speak, I laid a finger across his lips. “No questions. Just go.”

  London looked up at me for a minute, then dragged himself to his feet and wandered off toward the bedroom I’d chosen for us. I followed, detouring by the kitchen on my way.

  When I stepped into the bedroom, London was sitting on the foot of the bed, looking a little lost. I half-hugged him as I walked past, and told him, “Lose the shirt.” I dug my iPod out of my backpack to plug it into the docking station on the bedside table. The bottle of almond oil I’d liberated from the kitchen went on the table, too. I queued up a playlist of soft, soothing music, and then turned my attention back to London. He was lying face down on the bed, having figured out my plan.

  Using just enough of the oil to keep from chafing his skin, I started working the kinks out of London’s back. I didn’t have the first clue about massage techniques or any of that jazz, but I knew how to give a good, basic backrub. So I did.

  I started by using my knuckles and a good bit of leverage to loosen up the knotted muscles, and followed up with long, slow strokes meant to soothe. I found myself moving in time to the mellow music and just went with it. Soon enough, I felt London relax under my hands. I continued the backrub for a few more minutes, just to make sure he was all the way under. When I stopped and he didn’t protest or open his eyes, I figured he was out.

  I stepped into the adjoining bathroom to wash the remnants of oil from my hands, and when I went back into the bedroom, London hadn’t moved an inch. Definitely out. I hesitated, uncertain. I wanted to crawl into bed beside him, but I didn’t want to risk waking him. I made myself turn away and head back to the living room.

  “Maybe something like this,” Adrian said as I stepped into the room. He played a series of notes on his guitar, and Brian nodded and played them back on his own guitar.

  Dylan glanced up from where she still sat at Brian’s feet, now holding a heavy, hardbound book in her hands.

  “Anything good?” I asked her as I plopped down on the sofa near her.

  She held the book up so I could read the cover. “Found it in the library.”

  “I can’t believe you’re reading ‘War and Peace’. Again. What is it with you and Tolstoy?”

  She just shrugged and went back to her book.

  With everyone else occupied, I was at a loss, so much so that I found myself looking forward to sentry duty. I decided I would switch with Dylan and take the next shift – and dare anyone to bitch about it. I knew she wouldn’t mind since it would mean she could, possibly, drag Brian off for some alone time. My grand plan was foiled, however, by the arrival of reinforcements.

  Quinn left Ashe alone on duty long enough to introduce his agent friends to the rest of us.

  “Agents James Carmichael, Ron Peterson, and Martine Rochon,” Quinn said, indicating each of the new arrivals in turn. He introduced us in the same brief, no-frills fashion, ending with, “And where’s London?”

  “Sleeping.”

  “Good. Could I get you guys to help them carry in the provisions they brought us?”

  “We got it covered,” Carmichael said, surprising me with a deep-South drawl. With his spiky bleach-blond hair and designer sunglasses, I would have figured the twenty-something agent as anything but a southern boy.

  The rest of us protested Carmichael’s assurance, of course, and my friends and I brought in bags and bags of groceries, leaving the agents to juggle suitcases and weapons and things I couldn’t identify. Adrian gave up his room – the second twin-bed room – to the agents, and they dumped their gear there, with the exception of their holstered sidearms. Peterson, who I couldn’t help noticing was good-looking in spite of his perpetual frown - went to take over sentry duty, and the others came into the kitchen to help us put things away.

  “I hope somebody knows how to cook,” Carmichael said. “Martine can,” he said, nodding toward the woman whose perfect café au lait skin and long legs I envied, “but she won’t. And Peterson is worse than useless.”

  “In more ways than one,” Martine added, her voice deep, rich, and sultry with more than a hint of what I thought might be a Haitian accent.

  “Yeah, well, he’s here to work, and that he can do,” Carmichael said, handing a jar of spaghetti sauce to Adrian who found a place for it on a shelf.

  “So what about you?” I asked, rearranging the food in the small freezer to make more room. “You not a cook either?”

  Carmichael smiled, the expression spreading across his face in the same slow-motion way that his words tumbled out of his mouth. “Well, I can use a microwave, a coffee maker, and a toaster. That’s about the sum total of my culinary skills.”

  The bizarre combination of the backwoods Georgia drawl and the phrase ‘culinary skills’ had me and Dylan both giggling. Even Martine cracked a smile, the simple upturn of lips and crinkling of eyes transforming her model-perfect face into something
truly beautiful.

  “We shouldn’t have sent Kenny home,” Adrian chimed in.

  “Apparently his cooking skills are legendary,” Dylan added.

  “Shame he ain’t here, then,” Carmichael said.

  “My skills might not be legendary,” I told him, “but I think I can manage something.”

  We kept up the idle chitchat while we unpacked, stored, rearranged, and rearranged again. Dylan was unloading the last bag when her unexpected peal of laughter brought our conversation to a screeching halt. She hefted the jar in her hand and tossed it to Brian.

  “I think that’s for you,” she said with a grin. “It was probably meant as a joke, but I seem to remember you actually liking the stuff.”

  Brian grinned, too. “Yeah, I do,” he said, setting the jar on top of the fridge.

  I looked up at it, and laughed, too.

  “Vegemite?” Carmichael asked. “I thought that stuff was just an urban legend.”

  A brief conversation about vegemite and the band Men at Work ensued, followed by a vegemite tasting party. To my utter surprise, the stuff tasted really good, though not everyone agreed with me on that. Afterwards, we all went our separate ways again. Brian and Dylan shut themselves up in their bedroom, Martine joined the other agents in the library, and Adrian and Carmichael found some sports network on the living room TV. I considered my options for about two seconds before snagging a book from the library and then heading for the bedroom to curl up next to London and lose myself for a while.

  Chapter Twenty

  Ten people in a house the size of the one in Winter Park wasn’t such a bad deal. There were enough beds to go around – if you counted Adrian’s sofa – and plenty of room to scatter. But anytime people are confined to the indoors, cabin fever will set in sooner or later. When you’re rubbing elbows with more than half a dozen other folks, some of whom you don’t even know, and you’re just sitting around twiddling your thumbs and waiting for the other shoe to drop....well cabin fever sets in right away. We all struggled to find ways to fill the empty hours, with varying levels of success.

  I emailed my teachers, and to my surprise they all responded with variations on the theme of ‘you can get caught up after you’re done dealing with your family emergency.’ My favorite professor even asked if there was anything she could do to help. Hers was the one class I really enjoyed and missed. I was also in charge of the kitchen, more or less, and spent a lot of time on culinary experiments, a few of which were truly disastrous. The rest of my time was spent with books, on my computer, or curled up with London to sleep or watch TV.

  Dylan made obligatory phone calls to her sister, her parents, and her employer. When she called in sick on Monday, her boss had been out. She’d explained to the office manager that she was stuck in Florida for the foreseeable future as part of an ongoing investigation. The manager had been shocked and awed, and she had promised to deal with Dylan’s boss.

  True to form, Dylan spent a lot of time with her nose glued to one book or another. She also spent a lot of time locked in the master bedroom with Brian, a fact that seemed to set every other male in the house on edge. Apparently, if they couldn’t get laid, they felt Brian shouldn’t either. Men can be so weird sometimes.

  Adrian spent a lot of time on the phone, too, with his wife and with Kent. Kenny and the rest of the DPS entourage – except Jimmy, who really had left the country - had made it home safe and sound. All of them, along with anyone else Ashe and Quinn considered high-risk, were under surveillance by agents that Quinn trusted, and there had been no sign of trouble.

  Adrian and Brian also spent a lot of time playing and writing music, sometimes with London but more often without. London was busy working with Ashe and the other agents, learning more about his abilities and how to control them. The guys also watched a lot of sports and action movies, but...well, they’re guys. Dylan, Martine, and I learned to either block out the worst of what was on the TV or make ourselves scarce for the duration.

  Quinn and his team hadn’t made any headway in their search for Julia, but the planning had resulted in an epic battle between him and Ashe that had shaken up the quiet calm of the safe house for a few minutes. Quinn had pointed out that, since he was retired, Ashe couldn’t be part of the official investigation into, search for, or apprehension of a rogue agent, and Ashe had not taken the news well. The shouting match that followed had been a little terrifying and had come to an abrupt end when Ashe slammed out of the house. Carmichael had followed him, and sometime later the two of them returned. Ashe had calmed down, but Quinn had wisely gotten the hell out of dodge just in case, saying he was going to meet with the field agents who were looking for Julia.

  Other than that brief shouting match, all was serene. We were safe, our lives were as secure as they could get under the circumstances, we had a nice, comfy house to stay in – and we were all going stir crazy. The agents dealt better with the cabin fever and the close quarters, but even they were showing the strain after two whole days of doing nothing. Peterson, especially, seemed to be spoiling for a fight.

  Sunday night bled into Monday and then into Tuesday. I made lunch, as I sometimes did, and the men – minus Carmichael who was on duty and Brian who was locked in his room with Dylan – took theirs to the living room where they argued about some sporting event or other in that good-natured way that men seem to live for. I decided to join Carmichael and Martine for lunch in the library because it beat hell out of listening to some game I couldn’t care less about.

  After lunch, Martine surprised me by breaking out a giant cosmetic case that looked like a tacklebox and setting to work on her nails. I’d never seen so many cosmetics in such a tiny space, at least not outside of a store. There were implements in there whose purpose I could only guess at. I found myself watching in bemusement as Martine, who always managed to look both elegant and austere, stripped off her fashionable, sensible shoes and socks and began to paint her toenails with a metallic ice blue polish.

  “Holy crap,” Carmichael said. “You really are a girl.”

  Martine glared at him, but he just smiled back, his eyes fixed on the monitors before him. She looked away from him to find me watching her and raised her brows.

  “Nice color,” I said.

  She smiled, then looked contemplative. She set aside the ice blue lacquer and turned to the kit, lifting each bottle of polish in turn and setting them on the desk. The array of colors was impressive. After a moment she chose a deep, true, glittering red and showed it to me.

  “That one suits you best, I think,” she said.

  After she’d painted my nails, I held my hands out to admire them. She was right; the color did suit me.

  “There you are,” I heard London say from behind me, drawing me out of the contemplation of my brightly painted nails. “I wondered where you’d disappeared to.”

  I turned halfway in my chair to look back at him as he neared the desk where Martine and I were playing beauty salon.

  “Nice,” he said, taking my hand and turning it so the polish caught the light. He dragged up another chair and leaned in to kiss my temple.

  “Game over?” I asked, hopeful.

  “Not even close. But it’s kind of a crap game.” He launched into the reasons why the game wasn’t a good one, and I just gave him a bland smile. “Aaaaand you really don’t care, do you?”

  “Nope,” I answered with a big smile. “Not even a little bit.”

  He smiled back and laid his head on my shoulder. He couldn’t have been comfortable in a physical sense, but I knew that he drew emotional comfort from all sorts of physical affection. I nuzzled his hair a little and planted an awkward kiss on the top of his head.

  Carmichael snorted and said, “Get a room.”

  London sat up, the beginnings of a frown between his eyes and at the corners of his mouth. I put my arm around his shoulders, careful of my nails, and leaned my head against his shoulder. He sighed and returned my top-of-the-head kiss. He
leaned forward in his chair, and I retreated to mine to see him reaching for the one of the polish bottles that hadn’t made it out of Martine’s kit.

  “You mind?” he asked.

  She waved a hand over the box in a ‘be my guest’ gesture, and London and I looked through the rest of her arsenal of nail enamel. When we reached the end, London pulled one of the vials out and held it up to the light.

  “It’s darker than it looks,” Martine said. “Almost, but not quite black. And the matte finish is an interesting effect.”

  London looked at her for a moment, his back to me so that I couldn’t see his expression. Martine responded with another ‘be my guest’ wave, and London uncapped the purple polish.

  “You have got to be kidding me,” I said.

  London turned to look at me, and I could see him mentally gearing up to defend himself. I shook my head and took the bottle from him, again being careful of my nails. I dragged my chair around to face his, propped one foot up on his thigh, and guided his hand up to rest on my bent knee.

  “You can’t paint your own nails when your girlfriend is around to do it for you. It’s like, a rule or something.”

  I halfway expected London to argue with my use of the term ‘girlfriend,’ but he just flashed a wide smile at me and watched me paint his nails. Martine was right; the matte finish was interesting. I thought the purple lacquer looked pretty good on London.

  Beside us, Martine and Carmichael traded places. She took a turn at the monitors while he found something recreational to do. Recreation for him turned out to be cleaning his gun. I paused in my artistic endeavor to watch him for a minute.

  “What the heck is that?” I asked him. “It looks like something you’d see in sci-fi movie.”

  “Yeah, it does,” London agreed.

  Carmichael grinned a good-ol-boy grin that looked out of place with his club-kid image. “Optical illusion,” he said. “It’s a Glock 35, not much different from what a lot of cops and feds carry. The add-ons are what makes it look odd.”