by Dale Mayer
“Close to five years, I think,” Todd said. “A friend of ours owns it.”
“Do you want to move or would you want to buy it from him?”
“Depends on the price,” Todd said. “Like you stated, real estate here is pretty pricey.”
“But you already have an apartment you could sell.”
“Sure, and it’s a penthouse. Because, in my heyday, I was making good money,” he said cheerfully. “But it’s amazing how quickly my savings can disappear when I’m not flying as high as I once was. With the medical bills and the rehab and all the other expenses, plus with the endorsements dwindling, it’s pretty rough to see it go down.”
“Yes, but we both invested well,” Wynn reminded him. “So, if we did sell our bolt-holes, we could possibly buy this place and live frugally, just off of our investments.”
“But we’re running a business too,” Todd added.
“So we have to make the business solvent,” she said. “I guess I’m having a change of heart, realizing this really is a gift.”
Tanner nodded. “It so is.” His phone rang. He pulled it out, checked the screen and groaned. “I need to head back. We’ve got meetings this afternoon. It was supposed to be my day off. But when duty calls …” He walked toward his Jeep, turned to look at them and said, “Both of you stay safe.”
He hopped into his Jeep and pulled out. He hated to leave them, but, when he got called out, he got called out. That was just the way the naval life was. What he wanted to be sure of was that they would still be here when he came back.
He drove to Coronado Base to the meeting that had been called. As he walked in late, the commander looked up at him and said, “You’re flying out at 0800 in the morning.”
He nodded, keeping his face calm and quiet. He’d missed the beginning of the briefing so he’d catch up from the guys. Apparently they were doing an extraction. Someone in Iraq who the military wanted badly.
The only good thing was it appeared to be fairly open and shut. Rebel leaders had taken the hostage from a convoy. Depending on how heavily armed the rebels were would tell the navy how smooth and how fast they would be getting in and out. As Tanner glanced at his watch, he realized, chances were, they should already have left tonight. He frowned, his fingers drumming on the desk.
“What’s the matter, Tanner?” Mason asked.
“I’m just wondering why we’re not leaving tonight.”
“We’re still gathering intel on his location,” Mason said.
Tanner slumped back. “Okay, that makes sense. But, Mason,” he added.
“Yeah?”
“Can you get one of the guys to stay with Todd and Wynn while we’re gone?”
“Already on it.”
Tanner sighed in relief. One less thing on his mind.
But, even though Tanner hadn’t left yet, he was already looking forward to being back. That had never happened to him before. And he knew it all centered around Wynn and her brother Todd. But mostly Wynn.
Chapter 8
The next few days were full of heavy discussions between Todd and Wynn, with lots of reorganizing in the workshop, time spent on their new company website and organizing the paperwork already accumulated here. And every day, for at least a four-hour shift if not an eight-hour shift, one of Tanner’s SEAL buddies showed up and took a watch inside and sometimes outside the house. They were like silent sentinels, who ate whatever Todd and Wynn ate, whenever they ate. She could almost forget they were here. It was not so uncomfortable now, on this the morning of the third day with rotating bodyguards.
Today, with apologies, their guard had to leave with no replacement at the ready. “Be back as soon as I can or as soon as the next available guy can be here. Lock up behind me. Watch your sixes.”
Shortly thereafter, noting the time on the clock in her office read 10:59 a.m., she got up from her desk chair and stretched. “Todd, I can’t do a desk job like this all the time,” she yelled to him in the workshop. “This is brutal. How can anybody work in an office, sitting on their butt all day long?”
“Lots of people do it,” he called out.
She walked to the open shop section, where he was working on compiling components again. Todd had a hang glider apart on the floor. She preferred paragliding but had done plenty of both. They were very different experiences. From the designer perspective, improvements could be made to both. “What are you doing?”
“Just looking at these joints on the curry straps for the harness,” he mumbled.
“Is this that new design?”
He nodded. “I just thought it would be easier to handle. The ultimate dream, of course, is to stay up there longer, having more control to fly up, not just down. Catching the wind is one thing but controlling the wind—now that’s a whole different story.”
She smiled. Her brother had always been like this. He was never a glass-half-empty type of guy. He was less into competition and more into the feeling of flying. And she understood because she’d caught the bug with him. If their parents had lived, she often wondered what they would have thought of their adult kids’ accomplishments.
“I’ve got these mocked up to scale,” he said. “I’m testing how much pressure these aluminum alloy airframes can take.”
“There’s got to be something stronger,” she said.
He nodded. “There is, but, with what we gain in strength, we add in weight.”
“Right back to that fine balancing act. I was also thinking better channels in the silks that would hold more loft.” She bent over her favorite part of the design work. She’d been sewing wings for her and her brother for a long time.
He glanced at it with interest. “And again we’re back to the fact we need a certain amount to hold and a certain amount to float. But if we’re carrying any kind of weight …”
“Then we have to have more air pockets. It’s fairly well balanced now …” she muttered to herself.
For the next hour, she and her brother sat on the shop floor, smiling, working away, the same as they always used to. This was their dream—to design new products and to run their own company. “By the way,” Todd said suddenly. “I forgot to tell you, but a rep called this morning. I asked him about a clothing line. He had a couple suggestions, wanted to know if he could come by this week.”
“Depends on how much money we have to invest.”
“Actually he was looking at it the other way. If they carry a line of our products, with our name, our logo, as long as they think the line of products is any good, they’ll endorse them and sell them in stores.”
“And what do we get for that?”
He named a figure that had her rocking back on her heels, staring at him in shock. “Really?”
He glanced at her and laughed. “You’ve forgotten the figures we commanded in endorsements in our heydays.”
“I haven’t forgotten,” she said. “I just hadn’t realized some of those numbers were attainable again.”
“You know? I think they really are. When everybody retires, they have to do something. In our case, if we go into research and development of sports gear, honestly I think that’s where we belong.”
She tucked that away in the back of her mind. She thought she heard the front doorbell and glanced at him. “Did you hear the doorbell?”
But he was already muttering to himself.
She walked to the front of the house and opened the door. She stepped out to see several delivery boxes had just been dumped on the front porch. Obviously no signature required and nobody still here to reveal who had dropped them off. She sighed. “Next time let me know you’re coming,” she said to the empty air around her. “I’d have you bring them back around to the shop.”
Instead of carrying them all individually on her own, she returned to the shop, grabbed the hand truck, rolled it to the front door, stacked up the boxes and wheeled them back to Todd. “Delivery. I presume you ordered some more stuff.”
“I’m always ordering things
,” he said, only half paying attention.
“I know,” she said. “I’m telling you some of it’s here.”
He glanced at the boxes and grinned. “Great. Do you want to move it all over there?” He pointed to his workbench.
She moved it all and said, “We have to start keeping track of inventory. What comes in needs to be input, and what’s used up needs to be recorded.”
“I think there’s software for that.”
“Sure, but somebody still has to enter and remove things.”
He glanced at her and smiled. “Remember? That’s your area.”
She walked back to her office and frowned. “Hey, were you in here?”
His head was back down again.
She thought about this. She’d gone from her office to spend an hour with Todd in the workshop. From there, she had heard the bell, went to the front door of the house, but had to return to the workshop for the hand truck. And then back around to the house for the front porch delivery. She’d maybe been gone ten or fifteen minutes for this delivery run. Otherwise she had been right with Todd on the workshop floor, just a stone’s throw from her office. Surely she would have heard somebody in her office if she was nearby. Yet, she swore that the papers she had left on her desk had been moved. She sat back down on her chair and frowned. It was farther away from her desk. Normally she just stood and then stepped around the chair and the desk.
She reared back and then stood. With icy fingers of dread creeping up and down her shoulders and back, she walked to her brother, sat down beside him and whispered, “Hey, I think we just had an intruder in here.”
His head popped up, and he stared at her.
“Did you hear anything nearby?” She wiped a finger across her lips in warning. “I went to the house for the delivery at the front door. When I got back, the papers on my desk had been moved, and my chair shifted.”
He narrowed his gaze at her and opened his mouth.
She placed a finger against her lips again and whispered, “He could still be here.”
He settled into his wheelchair that he always kept close by and moved toward his own office. She watched what he was doing and realized that, depending on where Todd sat and where he looked—whether in the actual workshop or in his own office—he wouldn’t have seen her office at all. The side entrance, the actual front door to the shop, was around the corner. If somebody had sneaked in and crept along the side, they could have slipped into her office while Todd muttered to himself. And he would never have noticed. She loved her brother, but, when he got into his work, everything else faded.
He acted very casual. He swept into his office, and, from where she was, she could see him do a slow visual search, then go to his desk and remove something from his drawer. She watched as he logged onto his computer or appeared to be searching. And that was a good point. She hadn’t even considered if somebody had gotten into her computer.
As she walked back to her office—searching the large workshop on her way, wondering if some intruder was still here—she tried to log on to her desktop computer. When the screen came up, it showed her normal log-in. She signed in, typed her password. Then she went to her recent history to check documents, but nothing appeared to have been opened. Nothing had been downloaded; nothing had been copied. She sighed. And why would anybody be here in the offices anyway? This was her office computer. Like, for paying bills, keeping track of orders, expenses, taxes even. Bookkeeping crap.
But, of course, her laptop was the one with all her early IP designs. Their later improved ones were under tight security here. But no one knew that.
And the laptop had been at the school.
She bolted to her feet. Some of her stuff was still in her Jeep. Granted, it was in the locked garage, but a lot of good that did if the intruder came in via the workshop which also served as their garage. She’d come home from her last day at the paragliding school, unpacking all the stuff from Todd’s trailer. But not everything had been unpacked from her Jeep. Most of it had, but some of it was still left there. She hadn’t really worried about it, what with it being locked up in the garage. Until now with their newest intruder. She grabbed her car keys, walked around to the garage side of the workshop, and saw several cardboard boxes still evident in her Jeep. That worried her even more. In a Jeep, everything was so damn obvious. There was no hiding whatever you put in a Jeep.
She went through the boxes, and, on the bottom of one, she found her laptop. Sighing with relief, she pulled it out, putting it directly on top of the two boxes, then carried it all back into her office. Making several more trips, she emptied the Jeep. Back in her office, she took her laptop, put it into the filing cabinet and locked it. At least it would be obvious if somebody was after it now.
But, considering that, what if somebody was after it? She needed to have a copy of everything on it. She pulled it back out, put it on her desk and copied over everything to her desktop as a backup and put another copy into cloud storage. By the time she was done, Todd joined her.
“I did a full search, but I don’t see anyone. Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m not sure,” she said tiredly. “But I swear to God that I didn’t move these papers, and I don’t push my chair all the way back.”
“No, you don’t. It always drives me nuts because I have to pull it out in order to get in myself.”
“Right? So it just doesn’t feel right. But that’s when I realized my laptop and a bunch of the other boxes were still in the Jeep. I’ve just unloaded everything, and I’ve copied a backup from my laptop to the desktop and now over to cloud storage.”
He nodded. “That’s something else we’ll have to get. We need a big upgrade in our computer security. We’ve been foolish. And that’s something we have to stop. Especially if we want to make a go of this. We’re going to have espionage almost as a right because we’re going into the business of designing. People will always wonder what we’re up to, what we’re creating, and they’ll do whatever they can to find out. To steal our designs.”
She shook her head and glanced at him. “The world sucks.”
That startled a laugh out of him. “It does. But it doesn’t have to continue to suck.”
She stared around her office as she logged off and shut down the computers. She picked up the laptop, put it in the filing cabinet and locked it once more. She walked out of her office and locked it. She turned back to her brother, her shoulders slumped. “I don’t even like to think about how much we have to lock up now on a regular basis.”
“The other thing is, we need to put alarms on every one of the doors and windows, so we know when somebody is coming in.”
“That’s for sure, whether we just continue to rent but especially if we buy this place. We’ll take a look at that after lunch.”
“Lunch. Now that’s a good idea.”
Together, with everything secured behind them, they headed toward the main part of the house, into the kitchen.
“Did you hear from Tanner?” he asked.
Startled, she glanced at Todd. “No. Why would I?”
Todd shrugged as he moved to the refrigerator to pull out sandwich stuff. “He seemed very interested in you.”
“Did he?” she asked drily. “Or is he just feeling responsible?”
“Either way, I think he’s a good guy,” Todd said. “You could do much worse.”
“Maybe, but he didn’t get ahold of me recently, so whatever.”
“But then again, did you try to contact him?” Todd asked with a snicker. “The world’s changing. Girls get to ask guys out too, you know.”
“That’s only if I care,” she snapped. She slapped some mayonnaise on the bread. “We also need to get more groceries. We can’t live on sandwiches.”
“I can,” Todd said with a cheerful smile. “No changing the subject.”
“I’ll change the subject if I want to,” she said mutinously. “No discussions about Tanner and me because there is no Tanner and me.”
She shot him a hard look. “A lot longer.”
He shook his head. “Nope. Tanner is all over you. That says something about who he is too.”
In spite of herself, she asked, “Why is that?” She added cheese to the ham on the bread and started slicing tomatoes and onions.
“He’s got good taste,” Todd said cheerfully. “And some of the guys you’ve gone out with, well, they’ve been pretty ugly.”
“Ugly?”
“Very ugly.”
She laughed, cut the sandwiches in half, put them on a cutting board and put the board in the center of the kitchen table. “How about you sit down and eat and get off the subject of Tanner.”
“I’d love to. I wonder how long it’ll take before he gets back to you.”
“Probably weeks, if ever.” But inside she hoped she was wrong.
*
“Hey, Tanner, are you missing your new girl?”
“She’s not my new girl,” he called back good-naturedly. He was certainly interested in getting to know Wynn a whole lot better. But, since he was here in Iraq, it would be safer for him and for his unit if Tanner stayed focused on what he was doing than to worry about what was happening to her. He had to trust that Mason had somebody with her and Todd 24/7. Of course, this was an off-the-book mission and had to take a back seat to any ongoing op. That had him a bit worried.
Tanner had told the guys about the incidents she’d had. But outside of everybody agreeing it was suspicious as hell, nobody had any answers or any new directions to consider. He’d done his best to run down everything he could, but there just wasn’t anything else to go on right now.
He knew that the brother and sister were working on setting up better security all around the house and the workshop, but that wouldn’t be enough. If somebody was determined to get at them, either at home, in their vehicles or in the cyberworld, then they would make it happen. Tanner walked into the tent, dumped his kit on the bed and plunked himself down, dropping his boots on top of his bag. He really missed Wynn, something he hadn’t expected. She was a breath of fresh air, not only bright and cheerful and comfortable in her own skin, in her own profession, as he was in his, but—he hoped—the attraction between them was mutual. It felt very natural to him.