by Kit Frazier
“Mia, Brynn!” Mama said, transferring her grip from Logan to my friends. “You have got to try the Sangria. I made it myself!”
Near the bandstand, Clairee sat at a picnic table, munching on ribs and listening to the Bug, who was holding the little white hound from hell. Despite the nerves jangling in my stomach, I smiled.
Logan and I stood alone under the darkening sky.
“What did you call that the other day?” I said. “Subtle?”
Logan laughed.
The lake lapped the shoreline. People milled about with sparklers and turkey legs, and the snappy notes of a Sousa medley marched toward the darkening sky.
“Still got the dog,” he said as Marlowe made a fool of himself, dancing and leaping for Logan’s attention. I knew how the dog felt.
“Yeah,” I said, watching Marlowe. “You know, he hates everyone but you. The way he acts, you’d think he was your dog in a previous life.”
Logan grinned and I stared at him.
“You’re kidding,” I said. “Marlowe is your dog?”
“Sort of,” he said, and we began walking toward his old Bureau car, our bare arms brushing slightly as we moved.
“How can a dog be sort of yours?” I said.
Logan ignored the question. “He’s a great dog. Search and rescue, cross trained in drugs, bombs and accelerants.”
I waited.
“He belonged to my partner.”
“Belonged?”
Logan’s jaw muscles tightened. “She was killed in the line of duty.”
She? I swallowed hard. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, well, I figured a girl like you needed a guardian angel. I couldn’t tail you all the time, so I sent the dog keep an eye on you ‘til this thing was over.’
“What’s that supposed to mean? A girl like me?”
“Stubborn, smart, nosy. Trouble-prone. That kind of girl.”
“How did you know I’d keep the dog?”
“Because, kid, you are the Patron Saint of Lost Causes. Also, you’re a sucker.”
I grinned, but my smile faded as we stopped next to his car.
In the near distance, I saw Miranda setting up a live feed with her television crew. Probably doing a countdown to the fireworks.
I reached down to pet Marlowe. “Do you want him back?”
“Well, that’s one of the things I wanted to talk to you about,” Logan said. “I’m going away for awhile. You feel like keeping him until I get back? You’ll have to take him to his Thursday night search and rescue training.”
I scratched Marlowe’s chin, happy about the dog, but trying not to feel hurt that Logan was leaving. “He’s some kind of husky, right?”
“Something like that,” he said.
I frowned. “What’s his name?”
“Dog,” he said. “But he seems to like Marlowe better.”
“You named him Dog?” I laughed. “Imaginative.”
“I didn’t name him, but it’s from a John Wayne flick if that makes you feel any better.”
Behind us, a rocket burst red into the evening air. “What was the other thing?”
“Hm?” Logan brushed my hair out of my eyes.
“You said keeping Marlowe was one of the things you wanted to talk to me about.”
“Yeah,” he said. “About that.”
Logan stepped between me and the dog and he kissed me and my breath went away.
It was a gentle kiss, the way first kisses are supposed to be.
My heart thumped and my brain went blank
He pulled back and looked down at me, his eyes as dark as a new moon.
“Hey,” I breathed. “I thought you were just doing your job.”
“Job’s done,” he said, and he leaned in, his arms around me as he kissed me again, harder this time and I could feel it all the way down to my toes.
He stepped back, and for once, I was speechless. His hands moved up my lower back to my shoulders and he turned me toward the lake, his body large and warm and sure as he stood behind me.
“See?” he said, nodding toward the sky. “Fireworks.”
We stood that way, wordlessly watching the fireworks until Logan stepped back. He gave Marlowe a pat to the head, then opened his car door.
“You’re not staying for the finale?”
“I already got my finale,” he said, and I blushed when he grinned.
The finale really did begin then, and massive red, white and blue fireworks exploded against the dark dome of the sky. The National Anthem swelled around us.
I smiled, lost in the moment. “Oh,” I said, my memory jogging. “I have something for you.”
“All right, I give. What is it?” he said, watching as I searched my pocket.
“The stuff that dreams are made of,” I said, and I pressed the coin into his palm.
He looked down at it for a moment, then at me.
He flipped the coin high into the air and it glinted dark gold in the moonlight. Catching it neatly, he tucked it into his pocket.
Logan eyed me for a long moment, then nodded. “You’re going to be okay, kid,” he said, and then he got into his car and disappeared into the night.
Chapter Twenty-nine
Back at home I was trying not to feel sorry for myself as I surfed through 400 channels of televised crap, looking for something to take my mind off a certain FBI agent who was Missing in Action.
Logan said he’d be back, and God help me, I believed him.
Muse was snoring on the back of the sofa and Marlowe was lying next to me with his furry chin on my knee. The dog was watching television, his little white eyebrows moving as I channel surfed. I landed on CNN and tossed the remote onto the end table. The anchorman was droning on about the latest congressional bickering, and I wondered if anyone knew just how precarious our little world was.
“So you’re an FBI agent, too, huh?” I said to the dog. His ears twitched, and I could tell he was listening. “Well, that explains the way you snorted around the Turkish rug and the coffee table. You knew somebody doused them with accelerants, didn’t you, big guy?”
Marlowe lifted his head and I rubbed his soft, velvety ears. “I guess sometimes you do get two guys, even if you aren’t Ingrid Bergman.”
The music swelled on the television and I jolted as the anchorman’s voice changed the way it does when there’s something important to report.
“Suspected fugitive John Fiennes was taken into custody this morning in Belfast, where he was caught transporting nearly fifty pounds of antique gold coins.”
I sat up and Marlowe growled.
“Fiennes is the alleged leader of a Central Texas syndicate known as El Patron, which has ties to South American countries including Brazil and Argentina. Fiennes escaped from custody late this afternoon, but authorities say they have detained the coins, which are on their way to a lab for identification ‘
I jumped to my feet and the dog stared at me.
“Marlowe,” I said. “We’ve got some writing to do.”
I rushed down the hall toward my “new” computer in the den, and stopped short. Van Gogh was dead, but I wasn’t sure where John was, and I wasn’t about to get my hard drive stolen again.
I swung around and raced toward Aunt Kat’s old Royal Scout in the library, moved the Magic Eight Ball and jammed fresh paper under the cylinder.
I pounded the keys like I was possessed.
The old keys were harder to press than the computer keyboard and there was no delete key. Even so, the words had never come faster.
My Heroes have always been Cowboys, I typed. By Cauley MacKinnon.
My fingers flew as the story bloomed on the page.
“Nearly three months ago, Scott (Scooter) Barnes, a real hometown hero and former Dallas Cowboy running back was branded a coward when he barricaded himself in a shed, allegedly threatening suicide. But Scott Barnes may have helped prevent an international tragedy with ties to Central Texas, Argentina and beyond…
&nbs
p; Stopping a moment, I picked up the phone and dialed Tanner.
“Hey,” I said into the receiver. “You got a minute?”
Tanner’s tires spun gravel in my driveway forty minutes later as I ripped the last piece of paper out of the old typewriter. Marlowe growled low in his throat.
“Give it a rest, tough guy,” I said to the dog and let Tanner in.
“It’s ten o’clock at night! What in hell’s going on?” Tanner said, his cigar puffing plumes of silver smoke.
“I thought you quit smoking.”
“I did,” he grumped. “You okay?”
“I’m fine,” I said. “Put that cigar out. I’ve got something to show you.”
He didn’t extinguish his smelly cigar, but I handed him the stack of freshly typed paper and moved to the kitchen to get us each a Corona.
“You spelled Pedernales wrong,” he said, turning the paper over in his hands, fingering the depressed text. “What the hell did you do? Write this on a fucking typewriter?”
“Just read it,” I said and handed him a bottle of cold beer with a wedge of lime.
He paced as he read, and I watched his face brighten as he took in the story that would probably win both of us a Texas Press Association Award, typos or not.
“El Patron?” he grumbled, but his eyes jerked quickly from left to right as he read on. His expression changed, and I could tell he’d gotten to the part about John Fiennes and his escape from custody earlier this afternoon. I watched Tanner’s face as he read about the stolen coins that were most likely going to be authenticated as the Anschluss Eagle.
“Jesus,” he said, sinking into the sofa.
“Yeah,” I said.
I jumped when the telephone rang and the machine picked up.
“Cauley?” A dark velvet voice said, “Bond here. I wanted to tell you that I miss you and I am very sorry…”
I scrambled to the machine and hit the silence feature. There were some things Tanner didn’t need to know.
“That him?”
I felt my cheeks redden but I nodded. Tanner shook his head. “Who else knows about this?”
“I don’t know. Cantu knows some of it, but nobody outside Tom Logan and the Bureau, except John Fiennes, knows all of it.”
“And you got all the back up?”
“Authenticated all my sources,” I said.
Tanner nodded. “This is good, Cauley. Really good. But you do realize I can’t bump you to City Desk ‘
I wanted to smack him. “I didn’t do this to get off the Dead Beat,” I said.
“You don’t want a promotion?”
“Well yeah,” I said. “But I did this because I owe it to Scooter and his parents. He called me that day from the shed because he wanted to dime out his in-laws and those bastards in El Patron. He knew I’d done Ryder’s background research on El Patron. You know what? Scooter was the one who started unraveling this thing. He’s the real hero here.”
Tanner was quiet for a long moment. “You gonna be in on Monday?”
“If I still have a job.”
“Don’t fucking tempt me,” he said, heading for the door. “Be on time.”
“You bet.” I smiled and let him out.
I closed the door and walked back into the house, a riot of emotions rocketing around in my rib cage.
I jumped when the telephone rang again. The machine picked up and my heart jolted when I heard John’s voice.
“Cauley? Are you there?”
Hesitating, I picked up the phone.
I waited a beat. “They’re looking for you,” I said.
“I wanted to explain.”
“I don’t need an explanation.”
“I think you do,” he said. “We came down on the wrong side of this. And I never expected to fall in love with you.”
I felt dizzy, like I was car sick, but I listened as he went into a really bad Bogart impression, “But I’ve got a job to do,” he said, “and where I’m going you can’t go.”
“If you say We’ll always have Paris I’m going to buy a gun and shoot you myself.”
He chuckled at that, warm and low, then was quiet for a long time. I stood, holding the telephone as though it was my last connection with him, and I thought of Logan and his hasty departure earlier that evening. I blew out a breath.
“He’s going to catch you,” I said finally. “And I’m going to write about it.”
“Perhaps,” John said. “See you around, Cauley.”
My breath caught and I closed my eyes.
“Goodbye, John,” I said, and disconnected.
Muse hopped up on the kitchen counter next to the Magic Eight Ball and stared at me as I went back to the answering machine.
I hit play and the rest of John’s message spooled.
I hit the stop button.
The mechanical voice of the machine said, Press erase again to erase all messages.
Muse glared at me and I hesitated. A year’s worth of messages from men who’d left me.
I stood over the machine and pressed erase again.
All messages erased, the machine announced.
“I hope you’re happy,” I said to the cat. Muse gave me a self-satisfied smirk, hopped off the counter and leapt to the top of the nearby Wurlitzer.
“Well, I guess I’m still the Obituary Babe,” I said to Marlowe. “For now.”
I picked up the Eight Ball and took it to the library and set it on a shelf above the old cigar box near the old Royal Scout.
“Rest well, Scooter,” I said, running my fingers along the metallic surface of the typewriter. I opened the cigar box and took out my father’s compass. It felt surprisingly warm in my palm.
Beside me, Marlowe cocked his head and whined. “It’s okay, puppy,” I said, but my throat felt tight. I set the compass next to the typewriter and moved into hall, where Muse was perched atop the Wurlitzer. I smiled.
“Logan was right,” I said to the dog and cat. “We’re going to be all right.”
I hit the familiar series of worn, plastic buttons on the old jukebox. Gears churned and the 45 dropped. The needle hissed as it hit the record.
The music started, and Aretha wailed, “When I’m down…and feelin’ low, ah ooohh…”
Marlowe barked his strange, warbling bark.
” know,” I said to the dog. “It’s Aretha.”
Muse sat on top of the jukebox, her tail twitching to the beat. Marlowe yipped and pranced as the music swelled.
Then I threw back the rug, and the three of us danced until dawn.