by Alyssa Kress
After a long, silent moment, Kerrin couldn't resist asking. "So, was it worth it?"
"I've never seen anything like it." Stripping off the pack, Gary dropped it to the ground. He stepped along the river bank toward the falls. Spray misted onto Kerrin's face as she followed.
"That's gorgeous." Coming to a halt, Gary eyed the climbing trail that led to the mouth of the cave behind the longer drop of water. A look of almost religious wonder was in his eyes. "I'd love to get under all that water."
"It's pretty cold," Kerrin admitted. "But people do it."
"Naked," Gary added, without losing a scrap of his religious awe. Then he slanted her a devilish glance. "With you."
"Oh, no." Kerrin took a step back.
Gary was grinning. "You said we could do whatever I wanted once we got here."
So she had. And of course, so they did. Kerrin wouldn't have dreamed it possible, but somehow Gary managed to make love to her, right there under the falls with the pure mountain water splashing over them. The world turned into a universe of brightly flashing diamonds and falling stars, the way it always did when she was in his arms.
~~~
A half hour later, lying on the sandy bank, dried and fully clothed after that madness, Gary folded his hands behind his head and gazed up into the dancing leaves of the trees above them. In her slim leg capris and sleeveless shirt, Kerrin lay like a doe beside him, her eyes closed and her breathing suspiciously slow and regular.
He'd been surprised she'd agreed to make love to him like that, out in the open and under a freezing cold fall of water ‑‑ but not by much. The lady had been surprising him so often now that he was almost starting to expect it. As far as sex was concerned, she was like a trapped soul that he'd set free. That pleased him. It more than pleased him.
Gary had liked a lot of the women he'd slept with over the years. Most of them had been pretty good in bed, better than Kerrin, technically speaking ‑‑ although she was getting up there. But none of them had roused in him the kind of emotions that swirled around him now. There was a lot of tenderness in there, but most prominent of all was the way he was starting to depend on her. That scared the hell out of him.
He felt fingers walking up the center of his torso. A peculiar warmth spread through him from the palm that then pressed down in the middle of his chest.
"Gary?"
"Hmm."
"Would it make any sense to you if I said that I love you? Would you understand what that means?"
All of those mysterious emotions inside him suddenly rose up, like a flock of white doves flapping into the air. Excited, chaotic. He knew she was watching him, with her eyes shining. He had to come up with some form of response.
"I don't know." With the birds still flapping, this was as close as he dared get to the truth. He'd been fond of a few people, Willie Deere for one. And some, like Willie, or even Marty Simmons, his parole officer, had cared for him on one level or another. But none of them, he had to admit, had ever looked at him the way Kerrin did, as though he were somebody essential.
He turned his head to look at her. Her uniqueness didn't matter. This had to be stopped. Neither one of them was going to survive otherwise. "You may want me to learn, but we don't have time for you to teach me." Gary made his tone definite.
Kerrin's intent expression didn't change. "I've been thinking." Her eyes moved past him, into the forest. "I've been thinking some kind of miracle is going to happen. That somehow, some way, you and I are going to be able to stay together."
Cold fear laced his insides. "Don't," he said. "Don't do that."
She looked back at him, unimpressed by his sudden vehemence. "You know, Gary, there's something I'd like you to give me. Free of charge." She raised up on her arms and loomed over him. She was smiling, dammit, as though she weren't playing with dynamite here. "I'd like you to give me just a little faith."
"I don't believe in miracles," Gary flatly stated.
"Oh, I wouldn't expect a miracle out of you." She brushed a lock of hair from his forehead while still smiling. "Not from such a beginner. All I ask for is a smidgen of hope. Nothing more than a mustard seed. Think you could give me that? A mustard seed, that's all."
She was leading him down the road to hell. He knew that perfectly well. But the flock of doves inside him settled on his chest. "All right," he told her. With a growl, he added, "But only a mustard seed."
~~~
The next day Kerrin pushed open the glass door of the coffee shop. A quick glance told her Gary wasn't inside. She was only mildly disappointed. They'd see each other for dinner, of course, but she couldn't remember whether she was supposed to pick up the bread and milk for breakfast tomorrow or if Gary had said he'd do it.
"Kerrin, you just missed him." Carolina paraded behind the counter with her coffeepot, checking for empty cups. "He mumbled something about meeting Matt and off he went."
"Oh well, I'll find him later." Shrugging, Kerrin seated herself at one of the empty seats at the counter. The other patrons, reading newspapers or digging into late lunches, nodded her way with absent smiles.
"Cuppa java?" Carolina inquired, holding the pot aloft.
Kerrin nodded, and caught the other woman's complicitous smile. It occurred to her that she'd recently joined the club. A bond of companionship now joined her with the voluptuous waitress. They both knew what it meant to have a lover; they were both privy to the host of emotions and experiences that entailed.
"How's the discussion group going?" Kerrin asked. Gary had told her that Carolina had agreed to head the girl's sex education supplement.
"Oh, it's a blast." Carolina set the coffee pot on the counter next to Kerrin. "Though it's all I can do to keep it from turning into a convention on beauty tips." She tipped her head with a knowing smile. "Maybe next year you'll take it on, huh?"
Kerrin dropped her gaze to the black liquid swirling in the heavy ceramic cup. "Maybe." Next year. She fought back an encroaching army of doubts and fears. Gary's dark outlook was starting to get to her, but she wouldn't let him win on this. It was going to work out. Something unexpected and wonderful was going to occur. It had to.
"May I?"
The familiar, cultured voice interrupted Kerrin's reflection. Startled, she looked up to find Victor Bothmann standing there, snazzy in a navy polo shirt and crisply creased beige trousers. Holding the back of the seat next to her, he appeared to ask permission to join her.
"What are you doing here?" Kerrin blurted, even as she remembered the rumors that Victor had threatened to return. Her nerves took an abrupt jump. Victor was the only person who'd ever shown a critical interest in Gary.
Victor lifted a shoulder with a sheepishness that somehow seemed arrogant. "I thought my documentary would benefit from a comparison of the post-technological phase to the prehistoric roots of the syndrome."
In other words, he planned on adding some political correctness by shoe-horning in a segment on the local Native American tribes. Victor's bid for tenure was getting more desperate by the minute.
"Sure, have a seat." Kerrin gestured casually toward the empty chair. Victor shouldn't guess he made her nervous.
"Coffee?" Carolina asked.
"A cup of tea would be nice," Victor told her. "The water should be very hot, but not boiled."
"Comin' up." With a brief frown, Carolina moved off.
Victor turned his dazzling smile in Kerrin's direction. "It hasn't been easy to track you down."
Did you need to? Kerrin almost retorted. "Well, I have been busy these days."
"Yes, I've heard about your busy-ness." Victor let his eyes rove around the interior of the restaurant. "I believe everybody in town knows all about how 'busy' you've been."
Kerrin couldn't help smiling. "Small town. That'll happen."
With an elbow on the counter, Victor propped his cheek on one hand to regard her. "Mr. Sullivan has certainly put a lovely blush in your cheeks. But tell me." Victor's voice lowered. "How much do you actua
lly know about him?"
She hoped her face didn't show the alarm his words inspired. "I know everything I need to."
"Indeed." Victor shook a finger at her. "But you don't know. After I left last time, I got curious, did some checking on him."
"Did you now?" Kerrin's heart started to speed, but she kept her voice calm. Was there an Internet list of the inmates at Chino?
Victor leaned toward her. "Sullivan doesn't even have a teacher's certificate. Did you know that?"
Kerrin picked up her spoon and tapped it on the countertop. "Of course I know it. He doesn't need one, not for just one class of summer school." A lie. But Victor was from Massachusetts. He wouldn't be up to speed on California rules...Kerrin hoped.
"Do you know where he comes from?" Victor asked.
"This is crazy." Kerrin's heart was going so fast it was more like a stream than separate beats. "Why do you care about Gary?"
Victor's head lifted off the couch of his hand and his mouth opened. He closed it again with a purse. "You're a well-bred young woman. I hate to see you waste yourself on riff-raff. And I don't want to see you hurt."
"In that case," Kerrin told him sweetly, "you can delete the footage of my father from that misguided documentary of yours."
Victor managed to look insulted and triumphant at one and the same time. "You've never understood about that project."
"Oh, I understand, all right. That so-called documentary is designed to make my father look like a kook."
Victor's brows drew down. "Not true. Far from being a kook, your father is the perfect example of the post-technological malaise. Here's an intelligent man, at the very top of the IQ pool, highly-educated and once deeply immersed in the most intensely scientific research of the century. But something made him turn his back on all of that. Is he still building bombs? No. He's putting all of his considerable resources into attempting contact with extraterrestrials."
Victor paused a moment, apparently overcome by his own theories. "Kerrin, don't you see?" His blue eyes looked into hers with a religious fervor. "Tom's seen the light. He knows that the answers don't lie in scientific technology. That phase of human civilization has failed us. The fact that he's looking beyond earth for answers depicts just how deep the failure is. You, of all people, should understand that."
Last winter Kerrin had found Victor's intellectual passion stimulating. Now it made her want him to find somebody else to listen. No wonder he was having trouble making tenure.
"Whatever," Kerrin sighed. "The bottom line is it's up to my dad, not me, if he lets you use him."
Victor looked at her with infinite sadness. "You don't understand."
"Not yet," Kerrin admitted. Carolina came with Victor's tea and Kerrin used the distraction to slide off her chair. "Maybe all that bad technology just hasn't caught up with me. Maybe in a few years I'll understand."
Victor watched her drop a bill on the counter. "Oh, I predict it'll be a lot sooner than that," he murmured.
Kerrin barely heard him. She was quite sure now that it had been up to her to get the bread and milk. Furthermore, she'd made some rash promise about making pasta for dinner. Gary's fleeting expression of panic hadn't been lost on her. She'd pick up some ready-made pasta and canned sauce as well. Her relationship with Gary could probably take the strain of one meal of her cooking, but no sense messing with a good thing.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Gary caught the baseball in the old leather glove just before it could connect with his femur. Gee, he'd always thought the goal was to hit the ball over the fence, not through the pitcher. Narrowing his eyes at the batter, he considered his next pitch. In his wheelchair, Matt shortened the strike zone considerably, and he suffered from no deficiency in hand-to-eye coordination that would have evened the matter.
Matt raised his bat and regarded Gary with grim determination. Gary fell back for the wind-up and sent a high fastball over the plate. Matt went for it, hit, and this time couldn't help sending it into the air.
"About a foot too high," Gary commented, watching the ball sail to the far end of the field. "If your object was to knock me in the head."
Matt didn't reply, but rested the end of his bat on the ground as Gary strolled toward the plate. The kid remained stonily silent as Gary bent to pick up another ball.
"You got a problem?" Gary asked, tossing the ball into his glove. "Why don't you just say so, 'stead of trying to send me to the hospital?"
"Since you ask." Matt's voice was a soft hiss. Despite the bitter anger in his gold eyes, there was pain there as well, something he was too young to completely disguise. "Is it true you're leaving in the middle of October?"
A shot of panic kicked through Gary. The kid shouldn't know that. Was there no end to the people who shouldn't know who he was or what his plans were, but did?
"Elaine told me," Matt explained, thereby reducing the worst of Gary's panic. "So there's no use lying about it."
Gary plucked the ball from his glove and threw it in again. "All right, I won't lie about it. I'm leaving by the middle of October." Columbus Day, to be exact, if not a lot sooner. Gary knew where the tunnel was now. The river made its length far shorter than the hundred yards Gary had first figured, and the far bank wasn't shaved clean of brush but provided ample cover. He'd only hesitated contacting the feds because...because for one thing he didn't trust that automaton, Mike Rogers. Gary didn't want to give up his post until he could be sure this sucker got caught. So he'd turned from prowling the DWP facility, a place he'd studiously avoided since getting shot at, to an intensive study of the inhabitants of the town. One of them had to be Holiday.
Matt's eyes narrowed on him. "I don't suppose you've discussed this itinerary with my sister."
So that was the problem. Gary ground the ball into the seat of his glove. "Kerrin knows."
More pain showed in Matt's eyes. He dropped his gaze, giving a close inspection to his wood bat. "Oh. I see. That's okay, then." His lower lip pushed upward as he rotated the bat. "You got another job?"
Gary couldn't help a short laugh. "You could say that." He turned and tossed the baseball out to the side, not wanting to meet the kid's eyes. "Look, Matt, I can't tell you where I'm going... That's Kerrin's secret, not mine." God knew what would happen to her reputation if the town found out just who he was. "And if I could tell you ‑‑ " An unusual tightness came into Gary's throat. "Well, if I could tell you, I doubt you'd like me very much any more."
Though he didn't dare look, Gary knew Matt was staring at him now.
"Gary," Matt stated, and sounded like a father chiding his son. "I may get boiling mad at you, but I'm not going to hate you."
"No. You've got enough in common with your sister that you can't imagine that." Gary managed to glance down at him. "And since you're going to hate me anyway, maybe I ought to take off the kid gloves."
Matt frowned as Gary lowered to crouch at eye level with him.
"I've been watching you come at the ball with the bat, the way you swing."
Matt knew what he was getting at. Gary could tell when the natural frankness in his eyes suddenly hid behind a dense, dark cloud.
"You're using your legs," Gary baldly stated.
Matt surprised him. "I know that. I've always had some function down there." But the dark cloud persisted, hiding something.
Gary took a gamble. "You could have more."
"No." The answer was swift, bitter, and definite. Too definite.
"How can you be sure?"
"Look, just drop this, all right. You don't know. And I'm sure."
Still in a crouch in front of Matt's wheelchair, Gary looked into Matt's hard, set face. He could finally see Kerrin's frustration with his own pessimism. Without hope, without some vision of a better future, you just couldn't get anywhere at all.
"A mustard seed," Gary muttered.
"What'd you say?"
"It's what you need, kid." Gary straightened as he scooped up one of the loose baseballs. "Think if I
toss a few more of these, you could manage to miss my most essential body parts?"
Relaxing, Matt shot him a boyish grin. "It won't be easy, but I'll try."
Gary had a feeling Matt could drop the ball anywhere in the field that he wanted. Climbing the pitcher's mound, he looked back at the kid, with his bat held up and ready, eager to go.
Maybe Matt did have that mustard seed of hope. Maybe anybody who kept on with the business of living had it. It was just barely possible one of those little seeds rested inside of Gary himself.
~~~
Kerrin ended up with a full bag of groceries, something she had to balance precariously against Gary's front door as she fiddled with the knob. It could be stubborn. She managed to push the door open without dropping the bag, but it took her a few seconds to readjust the weight in her arms.
"Kindly step inside, Ms. Horton," a cold, cultured voice ordered. "And close the door after you."
Gasping, Kerrin clutched her grocery bag tight. Two men sat inside of Gary's living room. One of them she recognized.
"Marty," she squeaked. "What are you doing here?" As if she didn't know.
"We need to...speak to Mr. Sullivan," the other man told her. He was older, with close-cropped white hair and he was dressed in a conservative, dark business suit. "Please close the door."
Ice coated her insides. They'd come to take Gary away. "Who are you?" Kerrin asked as the stranger stood and strode toward the door. Reaching around her, he pushed it closed.
"The name is Rogers. I'm with the Federal Bureau of Investigation." Without a trace of expression on his face, he reached into a vest pocket and produced a trim leather wallet. "Please. Feel free to review my identification."
Kerrin did, her mind reeling. The FBI? How on earth were they involved?
"Here, let me take that for you." Marty came up and tugged the bag of groceries out of her hands. "Have a seat, Kerrin. Not much we can do until Gary gets here."
No, there wasn't much they could do. That miracle Kerrin had been waiting for had better come soon. Awfully soon. With feather-strength legs she sat in one of Gary's mismatched easy chairs. Her stomach felt like a lead cannon ball had lodged there. Rogers took a comfortable seat on the couch. He lifted his lips in a polite smile, but it didn't do anything to alter his basically empty expression. The FBI!