Donning a ratty, old wool coat, she stepped out of the downtown high-rise and made her way to the corner bus stop. Her timing was precise. The ST545 bus pulled up only moments after her arrival.
On the long bus ride across Lake Washington to the Bear Creek Park N Ride lot in Redmond, Donna read a Susan Wiggs novel and tried to decompress. She didn’t want to bring the stress of work home.
The sun crept over the Cascade Mountains as she disembarked. The Park’N’Ride lot was just beginning to get busy. She walked the short distance to a silver-blue BMW X5 SUV. Clicking her key fob flashed the lights on the BMW and started the engine. She climbed in and pulled out of the Park’N’Ride lot.
She hummed an old Marvin Gaye song along with the oldies station on the satellite radio as she drove into the long, curved driveway of her large brick-fronted home. The gardeners must have been here yesterday. All of the leaves had been raked up.
The garage door opened at the touch of the remote control. She backed into the garage, killed the engine and just sat for a minute, still humming I Heard it Through the Grapevine and smiling to herself.
Stepping out of her vehicle, she removed her old coat and put it, along with her battered purse, in a locker near the SUV. She removed her gray, cleaning lady dress and donned a stylish Nike track suit. She kicked off the clunky cleaning lady shoes and slipped into mulie slippers. Her wedding band set sat on a shelf in the locker. She slipped it onto her finger.
“I’m home, honey. Are the kids up?” She stepped through the door from the garage into a kitchen filled with granite counter tops and stainless steel appliances. She reached into the light-stained oak cupboard over the stove and grabbed a pair of coffee cups. The aroma of fresh coffee, from the automatic coffee machine, called seductively to her.
“Hi, Hon.” Her husband entered the kitchen pulling on a light jacket. “How was work last night?”
“The usual. Are the kids ready to go?” She planted a light peck on his lips.
A teenage boy and girl swept into the kitchen, grabbed breakfast bars, and blew through to the garage.
“Tammy, Billy, good morning,” she called after them. “How’s school going?
“Not now, Mom,” the girl yelled back over her shoulder. “I need to be there early today.”
“What’re your plans today, Bill?” Donna asked as her husband reached for the door knob.
“I’m going to make a Costco run, then I have the furnace repair guy coming for annual maintenance. I’m hoping to clean the fish tank and vacuum. I’ll try to keep everybody quiet so that you can get some sleep. Bye, Hon.”
“Bye, guys.” Donna stood holding two coffee cups as her family disappeared into the garage. She heard the garage door open and Bill’s Hummer pull out. She looked at Bill’s cup, then shrugged and sat it on the counter.
She took her coffee into her office and sat on the comfortable swivel chair in front of her desk. While she booted up her computer, she sat for a moment, glancing at the cup in her hand. It had a big pink heart on it and said “The World’s Greatest Mom.”
For just a second, her heart felt heavy, then a long, elegant Seal point Siamese cat jumped into her lap. She rubbed his ears and he began to purr. “At least somebody’s glad to see me.”
The morning light broke through the gloom. A pair of doves picked seeds from the bird feeder outside her window. The sunflowers along the cedar fence were at the height of their glory.
When she reached for the mouse, the cat attacked her hand. Then he jumped onto the desk and batted at the moving cursor on the computer screen. Donna laughed and double-clicked on an icon on her screen. “That’s a very bad cursor, Maxie. It must be punished.”
The Cisco VPN application opened. She gently picked up Maxie and cuddled him in her lap, then clicked on the DigiGuard link, clicked on the “Connect” icon and was challenged for her credentials. She entered her user ID, pin number, the constantly changing code from the SecurID token on her key chain, then her pass code and waited for a minute for the virtual private network to connect to her work network. A popup box on her screen prompted her to scan her fingerprint. The best security is something you know, something you have and something you are, she thought.
The logo for her company, DigiGuard Security, flashed on the screen along with the usual legal warning notice that she was entering a private network. She clicked “OK” and went to work.
Her email in-box was full. She rubbed Maxie’s head and sorted through the items. Her assistant had scheduled two meetings later in the afternoon. She had an email from the vice-president and another from the controller. Maxie stretched and rubbed his head against her cheeks.
The last item on her list was marked urgent. The message was comprised of only six words. “Donna, call me immediately. Urgent. Alison.”
Chapter 4
“Good morning, Mr. Chris.” The small Filipino nurse pushed back the drapes. “Today’s your big day.”
“Morning, Maria.” Chris Hardwick sat up in his bed. “I can’t wait to get out of here.” He tossed his head to get his shaggy blonde locks out of his deep blue eyes. “I don’t remember the last time I saw the sun shine.”
“There’s not much danger of you seeing that today, Mr. Chris. The weatherman says it’s going to rain all day.”
Chris was dying to get out of the hospital room. He hated the institutional gray walls, Formica covered cabinets, the IV stand by his bedside. He couldn’t get the IV out of the back of his hand soon enough. That had to be the worst part of his hospital stay. No, the second worst. The catheter tube was the worst.
“Maria, I want to thank you for all of your help. You’ve been the best.”
“Just doing my job, Mr. Chris.” She smiled as she recorded his vital signs. “Besides, we have to take care of our big hero, don’t we?”
Chris’ heart skipped a beat; he felt tears forming in his eyes. Hero? They stopped the al-Qaeda terrorist, saved Dad and Sarah, but he lost Meagan.
Unconsciously, he rubbed the left side of his chest. The bandage was just under his collar bone. That’s where the bullet had penetrated his lung. There was a matching bandage on his back where the bullet exited his body.
I’ve got to think about something else.
Being in a hospital setting, seeing Maria, made him think of Mom.
“Did I tell you that my mom was a nurse? Actually, she was a nurse’s assistant. That’s how she met my dad.”
“Really? She’s been gone a long time, hasn’t she?” Maria took his wrist and felt for his pulse.
“Yeah. . . She died my senior year of high school.”
An awkward pause filled the room. Chris didn’t like to think about his mom dying either. This was getting rough. Now he had two things he couldn’t think about. He needed to teach himself to think about the good memories.
“Hey, Chris-O!” Sarah Hardwick breezed in through the open door. “You’re getting out today.”
Chris could hardly believe his eyes. The last time he saw his little sister, she had been a Goth. Black hair, black lipstick, black nail polish. She dressed in nothing but black, with black combat boots and wore a studded leather collar around her neck.
The sister he remembered from before Mom died peeled off a tan rain jacket. Her short, sandy brown hair matched Dad’s hair color. She wore jeans with new Reebok sneakers and a Gap sweatshirt. She even had red nail polish.
“Who are you and what have you done with my sister?”
“I decided that today’s a big day for us. We’ve both starting our lives over. Like Mom used to say, we get a ‘redo.’”
“How are you starting your life over?”
“I started classes today.” Sarah raised her hands in the air and twirled around. “Surprised?”
He was. Sarah was adamant that she wouldn’t follow Dad and him to the University of Washington. “But I thought . . .”
“I didn’t do it for Dad, I did it for you. I’m moving into your house. I’m going to take car
e of you while you recover. I figured that I had to have something to do, so I went ahead and enrolled in school.”
“You’re moving in with me? There’s only two bedrooms. Where’re you going to sleep?”
“That’s all worked out. Ted’s already found another apartment. He’s moved all of his stuff.”
Ted’s moved out? “He hasn’t said a word to me.”
“I wanted it to be a surprise. SURPRISE!” She tossed her hands in the air again.
Chris didn’t know what to think. “Don’t I get a vote in this?” Ted had been his roommate since freshman year of college. He couldn’t imagine not living with that crazy hermano. On the other hand, he was getting his sister back. Since Mom died, Sarah had been off in her own little world. They used to be so close and she had completely shut him out.
Maybe this can be a good thing.
****
“Adelita se llama la joven.” Ted always sang Papa’s old Mexican songs when he cooked. He flopped the large pork loin onto the cutting board. “A quien yo quiero y no puedo olvidar.” There was no one around to hear him butcher the tune. Butcher the tune? Ted slapped the pork loin with the flat of his hand and chuckled. Teddito, you’ve still got it.
He loved cooking. It made him feel close to Papa, close to his roots. He thought back on all the Saturdays he spent with his dad cleaning the kitchen in the restaurant where Papa worked, the evenings peeling onions, chopping lettuce, always under his father’s watchful eye. He could feel Papa’s hand on his shoulder as he showed Ted how to hold the knife.
He pulled an oak-handled carving knife from the knife block. It had that familiar feel. Everything else in the kitchen may be junk, but Papa had sent him away from home with a good set of knives.
He ran the blade through an automatic knife sharpener. Papa’d have a fit if he saw me doing this. His father always insisted that knives be sharpened by hand on a whetstone. That was the only way to get the edge right he said.
Chris’ dad bought the eighty-year old Craftsman-style house in the University District for Chris to live in while he went to school. This old place had been home for Chris and Ted for the last three years. To Ted, the big old kitchen felt comfortable. It wasn’t new and it didn’t have all the modern conveniences, but it was homey. Glass-doored cabinets revealed Chris and Ted’s collection of assorted serving ware. “Garage-sale modern” was how Chris referred to it.
Now Chris was coming home. Ted and Sarah spent the previous day cleaning the house and moving the last of Ted’s belongings to his new apartment. Sarah didn’t have a lot to move in. They had accomplished that with one load in the Hardwick’s old Suburban. Chris would’ve blown a gasket over that. Me, driving his mom’s old car.
How did he feel about moving out? Ted brushed back the lock of black hair that always fell in his eyes. They had some good times here. He had never felt as close to anyone as he did to Chris. Still . . . he was starting a new chapter in his life. This would be good. Exciting. New.
The pork loin was a big piece of meat, maybe seven pounds. Ted delicately carved it in quarter-inch thick slices.
He peeled and sliced several onions and a pineapple, then threaded the pork slices onto a spit until they were about an inch thick. He put on a layer of onion, then another pork layer followed by a layer of pineapple slices. Then he started over again with a pork layer.
The spit was full of the meat/onion/pineapple slices. He secured the end prong and set the spitted meat down over the sink, then brushed on the rich adobado sauce from the bowl of his food processor.
Life would be different now, but what was next? Chris was going to be okay. It didn’t matter whether he went to law school or not. He was getting out of the hospital and he would be as good as new. The image of Chris, dropped by terrorist bullets, flashed into his mind. For an instant, he was back on the sailboat far up Canada’s Inside Passage. He saw their friend Jack, lying on the cockpit floor, bullet holes in his chest.
He shook his head. For the most part, he had driven these images out of his waking mind. He didn’t think about them all the time anymore. It was the night that haunted him.
In the early morning hours, the horror came back. He found himself caught in the explosion, flying through the air, plunged deep into the frigid water. He saw the missile launch and knew he could do nothing to stop it.
But the worse nightmare of all was when he woke screaming, feeling something warm and sticky running into his eyes, his nose, and his mouth. He would lift Meagan off of him and see the glazed look in her eyes.
“Ouch!” Ted cut his finger with the super-sharp knife. “Damn.” I’ve got to pay attention to what I’m doing. “Shit.” He held his finger to his mouth while he reached in the cabinet for a Band-Aid.
He took the spit to the back porch and placed it on the barbeque. The short roof over-hang protected the grill from the rain.
The tiny lanai at his new apartment would just about hold the big grill. Ted loved the third burner in the back of the grill for the rotisserie so that the meat juice didn’t drip down into the fire and flare up. Turning on the motor, he slipped back inside the house with a grin on his face.
“Meow.” Oscar, Meagan’s cat, rubbed against Ted’s ankles.
“Hey, little guy.” Ted reached down and scooped up the sable Burmese. He had never liked cats. His family never had pets when he was growing up. Papa refused to have anything living under his roof that didn’t pay its own way.
When he was on the boat with Chris and Meagan, Ted had done everything in his power to keep the cat away from him. But, somehow, Oscar adopted him. After Meagan was killed in the terrorist attack, Oscar came home to live with Ted. Now he ruled the house with an iron paw.
Ted smelled the sweet aroma of the meat roasting on the rotisserie. Tacos al pastor was one of his best dishes. It impressed people whenever he served it.
Ted scratched Oscar’s ears and took a pull on his Corona. No matter what internal demons chased him, cooking always centered him, brought him back to his roots.
***
“You guys about ready?” Candace pushed the wheelchair into the stark hospital room.
For an instant, the old resentment rose in Chris’ throat. He choked it down. What the hell, I guess I’m going to have to get used to her. After all, Candace was his new stepmom and he was too weary to hate anyone anymore.
Dad could have done worse, but he was sort of robbing the cradle. Candace was closer to Chris’ age than she was to Dad’s. Chris eyed Candace as she adjusted the foot rests on the wheelchair. With her long legs, large breasts, long black hair and emerald green eyes, she could grace the cover of Playboy. Still, there’s more to her than looks. She’s wicked smart. Dad saw that right away.
“Come on, big guy. Let’s get you dressed.” Sarah pulled clothes out of a Nordstrom shopping bag. “Candace and I got you all new stuff.” She laid out underwear, jeans, a white T-shirt, a Husky’s sweatshirt, socks and sneakers on the bed.
“You went shopping with Candace?” Chris felt that old bitterness rise up in his throat. That’s getting a little chummy. He took a deep breath and stifled it. “You guys aren’t going to stand there and watch me dress are you?”
“No time for modesty now, bro.” Sarah ripped back the covers. “We’re breaking you out of here.”
By the time Harry, Chris’ dad, entered the room with a bag of drugs from the pharmacy, Chris was dressed. Harry was tall like Chris, but he carried a few extra pounds. His sandy brown hair just began to show flecks of gray.
“How’s the hero today?” Harry asked.
“I wish you’d stop saying that, Dad. I’m not a hero.”
Sarah bent down to tie Chris’ shoes. “He still can’t bend over to tie his shoes, that’s how he is, Dad.”
“That’s OK. We’ll be there to do that for him for a while. You ready, Chris? I’ve got the car downstairs.”
“Yeah.” Dad is taking time off during the middle of the day to pick me up?
“I’ve got some good news for you.” Harry said as Maria moved the wheelchair next to the bed.
“Uhhh” Chris started to get up, then dropped back down to the bed clutching at the bandages on his chest. Beads of sweat broke out on his brow. He hated feeling helpless. He’d be damned if he’d let them treat him like fine China. He’d be even more damned if he had to listen to Dad’s “good news.” “Let’s roll.”
“Take it easy. Here, let me help you.” Harry put his hands under Chris’ arms and eased him into the wheelchair.
Chris grimaced. At least that shut Dad up.
“Take it easy son.”
“I’ll be okay.” Chris breathed out heavily. “Let’s blow this pop stand.”
Maria wheeled Chris down the hallway with Harry, Candace and Sarah following. Harry pushed the elevator button. “I’ve got some good news for you,” he repeated.
I guess there’s no way to avoid it. Chris was used to his Dad’s manipulating. He just sat in the chair.
“I’ve talked to Dean Curtwright.”
So, that’s what this was all about. Dad was adamant that Chris follow him to U Dub Law.
“You still have to take the LSATs in March, but you’re in. He’ll watch for your application and process it himself.”
There was a slight silence before Chris responded. “Great, Dad.” It was over. He’d always known that he was going to law school anyway. Dad always won. “Thank you.”
“When you get back on your feet, you can come to work as a paralegal until classes start next fall. It’ll be good experience.”
The elevator door opened and Maria pushed Chris’ wheelchair in.
****
All faces turned to Donna Harrison, dressed in a Navy Pierre Cardin suit, as she breezed through the office doors. She knew that the smile on her face telegraphed the good news. The thirty or so people, scattered through the gray cubicles, all depended on her.
“I think we got it, Jules.” Donna grinned at her administrative assistant, her best friend since high school, as she slipped into her office. “That was Power Lunch 101.” She dropped her alligator purse onto the glass-topped table she used as a desk. “A big steak and a couple of Daniel’s famous Martinis and I think we’ve hooked ‘em.”
Hacker For Hire (Ted Higuera Series Book 2) Page 3