The Warning Sign

by Mia Marlowe

  “For the pantry, credit my mother,” Ryan admitted. “When I’m by myself, I eat out or order in more often than not. But Mom comes by every few months and makes sure I keep the essentials around in case of emergency. She knows better than to expect I’ll cook something fancy enough to need spices.”

  “That’s sweet of her,” Sara said, tasting the lasagna with obvious satisfaction. Ryan was glad to see her eating. In the short time he’d known her, he bet she’d dropped a dress size. He liked her curves and didn’t want to see them go away.

  “I enjoy cooking but it seems like a lot of trouble for just me. It feels good to cook for two again.” Then because he suspected she thought that comment seemed a little too intimate, she hurried on, “Your mom sounds terrific.”

  “She is. She gives piano lessons, tends a flower garden that has to be seen to be believed, keeps an eye on my grandparents and still manages to look in on me from time to time.”

  “You said your folks are divorced. Do you see much of your dad?”

  “No,” he said. “My dad’s dead.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry.”

  “It happened a long time ago.”

  Ryan took another bite of lasagna and tried to put it out of his mind. He could go for months without rehashing it. In fact, he had to think hard to remember the last time he’d even spoken with anyone about his father’s death. Then the memory rushed back into him, harsh as a New England winter.

  The Christmas tree was going up just outside of Macy’s. Ryan had quickened his pace, taking a narrow, cobbled lane toward Boston Common. He turned his collar up against the biting wind that whistled down the man-made canyon.

  He passed the cemetery where Paul Revere was buried. It only served to remind him that he hadn’t visited his father’s grave in nearly a year. He always told himself he’d stop going. There was no reason to. But almost without his conscious volition, on every December 24 th he found himself at the gravesite.

  There’d been changes in that cemetery since he’d stood there as a five year old boy. The trunk of the maple tree by the gate was too thick to span with his hands any more. The marble monument that marked his father’s final resting place was choked by dead remains of the vining ivy that his mother had planted at its base. She always cleared afresh each spring. Divorced or not, Paul was the father of her son. She still took care of his grave.

  But the fact that Paul Garibaldi was dead because he was a bad man had not changed. And would never change.

  Every kid deserves to believe in Santa Clause. Every kid deserves to believe his dad is a hero. But Ryan’s dad was a principal in a major New England crime family who got himself killed by a rival faction on Christmas Eve.

  So much for peace on earth.

  That day was the last time he’d had a face-to-face meeting with Nicholas Garibaldi. Their whispered conversation in a coffee shop booth was a delicate dance, and Ryan had to step lively, like a mongoose baiting a cobra. Didn’t the fact that he’d legally changed his last name to his mother’s maiden name prove how much he wanted to distance himself from his father’s family and anything to do with the Garibaldi’s business? He’d finally threatened to turn state’s evidence to keep Uncle Nicky from forcing him into his dead father’s shoes.

  If Nicholas Garibaldi had a son of his own, Ryan suspected his uncle would make sure he joined his father in eternal rest. But blood counts for something. Uncle Nick’s hope of drawing him into the family business someday kept him alive.

  Sara was saying something to him.

  “What?” He gave himself a mental shake, thankful to find himself at his own dining table with this lovely girl instead of that coffee shop with his uncle.

  “I said, what was your dad like?”

  “I was only a kid when he died. I don’t remember much about him,” he lied. “Have a little more of this merlot. It was a good year.”

  Sara held out her wineglass and he refilled it. “Careful,” she said. “If you’re trying to get me drunk so you can take advantage of me it won’t work. Too much wine and I’ll go to sleep on you.”

  “Well, in that case, let me crank up the espresso machine.” He rose and suited the action to his words. “My granddad gave it to me for Christmas one year. I think he was re-gifting it because he’s strictly an instant Maxwell House man. The directions were missing. You won’t believe how long it took me to figure out how to punch these buttons in the correct order.”

  “Buttons,” Sara repeated pensively. “Maybe that’s it! Those rabbit pop-ups had buttons on them. Glittery annoying buttons. What if instead of trying to get rid of them, we’re supposed to use them?”

  “That’s a definite thought.”

  Sara and Ryan left her truly remarkable lasagna cooling on their plates and turned back to Valenti’s lap top. Settling beside him on the couch, Sara leaned close to view the screen with him.

  Once they made it past the porn to the emails, the rabbit reappeared. Ryan began trying to X it out as he’d done dozens of times that day.

  “I’ll be damned,” Ryan said as the rabbit divided and populated the entire screen. He adjusted his glasses on his nose. “Do you see what I see?”

  “Yep,” Sara leaned closer to examine the pop-ups. “They look identical at first glance, but they aren’t. Each one has different letters of the alphabet on the buttons of the rabbit’s waistcoat.”

  The letters were subtle, but now that he focused on them, he could have kicked himself for not seeing them sooner.

  Ryan turned his head and gave her a quick kiss. “You are brilliant.”

  “No,” she said with a heart-melting smile as she scooted closer and squeezed his forearm. “Just lucky. Incredibly lucky.”

  While Ryan started clicking on the buttons, he became acutely aware of Sara’s soft breast pressed against his bicep. Hitting the right combination of buttons was going to take most of the night.

  Maybe, if everything worked out the way he hoped, he’d get lucky this time.

  In more ways than one.

  Chapter 23

  “ALICE, DES, election, vote, democracy, primary.” Sara ticked off the list she’d made of possible combinations they’d already tried so they wouldn’t duplicate themselves. They’d punched in three legal pages worth of words. “We’ve exhausted every word I can think of that has anything to do with an election. Can you think of anything more?”

  Ryan took off his glasses and pressed the heel of his hands against his eyes. “No. I’m going to have to call my buddy Jared and see if he can email me that key word generator program he was working on.”

  “How will that help?”

  “It works through the entire Webster’s dictionary based on the parameters we set. It’ll do what we’re doing, but it’ll sort of be on auto-pilot. I only hope Valenti is sticking to the pattern he started with ‘wonderland’ and is using an actual word. A random jumble of letters and numbers would be harder to crack.”

  “Maybe we’re using the wrong parameters.” Sara stood and arched into a graceful catlike stretch. “Maybe it’s not a political word.”

  “Hmmm. Your cousin Tony does seem to have an affinity for Alice in Wonderland. I wonder…” Ryan pointed and clicked the buttons in sequence to spell ‘white rabbit.’ Nothing happened except the addition of more pop-ups.

  “Try ‘mad hatter,’” Sara suggested.

  Ryan clicked it in and then shook his head. “No go.”

  They tried every character from Alice in Wonderland they could remember and when they ran out of names, Ryan had Sara take his copy down from the bookshelf and scour the pages for minor characters they might have missed. Next, they did the same with Through the Looking Glass.

  “It’s no use.” Sara stifled a yawn and slumped beside him when ‘bandersnatch’ from The Jabberwocky yielded only more rabbits.

  He was definitely going to need to call Jared.

  “Wait a minute! A programmer sees himself as a creator, an author of sorts. Let’s try…” Ryan
clicked in C-A-R-R-O-L-L for Lewis Carroll, the man who wrote the adventurous Wonderland satires. “Bingo.”

  The white rabbits exploded across the screen like a pack of cards sent flying. They spewed out in all directions until the screen was cleared. Finally a new image shimmered into existence one pixel at a time.

  It was a close-up of a bare female breast that filled the entire screen.

  “More porn,” Sara said with disgust. “What is it with guys and pictures of naked women?”

  “Is that a rhetorical question?” When she frowned at him, he decided it wasn’t. “Ok, I won’t deny it. We can’t help it. It’s how we’re wired.”

  He leaned over and cupped her cheek. “But I prefer my hot babe three dimensional. Why do you think I made it a point to get you into a swim suit at the first opportunity?”

  He moved to kiss her but she slid away from him.

  Evidently that was the wrong thing to say, even if it was true.

  Ryan turned off the computer and put it on the coffee table. They’d come to another dead end with Valenti’s white rabbit and this conversation wasn’t going to be improved by having a naked nipple winking at him from the laptop’s screen.

  “Sara, I know the porn bothers you, but—”

  “It’s not that.” She tucked her legs up under her, retreating into a small form on the far edge of his couch. “I mean, it’s not only that. I know this isn’t your computer and you have to look at the screen to try to figure things out, but it just reminds me of Matthew and—well, how his looking at another woman destroyed our marriage…”

  “And my looking at Valenti’s pictures feels like a betrayal too,” he finished for her. He almost added that he’d only looked, while Matthew had followed it up with action, but he wisely kept that observation to himself.

  “I can’t compete with an airbrushed beauty,” she said softly and turned away.

  “That’s where you’re wrong. You bury any mere photograph.” He slid across the leather to her and turned her face toward him with two fingers on her chin. “Sara, I’m not going to lie to you. A picture of a naked woman is arousing. Have I looked at some? Yes,” he admitted. “If I ever meet the man who hasn’t, I’ll be first to shake his hand.”

  Her gaze slipped downward and he ducked to meet it, to force her to maintain eye contact with him.

  “But you’re wrong if you think I’d do it again, now that I know it hurts you.”

  “Don’t make promises you don’t mean.”

  “I never do,” he said firmly. “I’m not Matthew. I’m playing for keeps here.”

  Her eyes glistened. “Me, too.”

  “Ok, then,” he said gently as he took her hand and pressed it to the center of his chest so she could feel the thump of his heart. “For keeps, here it is. I’m not going to hurt you. Not ever. You move me, Sara. You touch me in places no one else can. I don’t want to go back to my life without you. Now that I have you here with me, stay.” He lowered his mouth to cover hers in a soft kiss. “Please, stay.”

  She put her arms around his neck and kissed him back. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  ~

  Sara woke later when the moon rose full and slanted through Ryan’s panoramic bedroom window. In shades of gray, she made out his profile, his pale lashes against his high cheekbones, his fine straight nose, his lips parted softly in sleep.

  She shifted onto her side and he pulled her close, snugging her bare body next to his. She almost said something, but realized from his deep, even breathing that he wasn’t awake. Even in sleep, he wanted her near him.

  Deeply satisfied, Sara rested her head in the crook of his shoulder and watched the rhythmic rise and fall of his chest. She was totally relaxed, every knot unloosed. Ryan Knight had loved her with a thoroughness she’d never dreamed possible.

  When she was a kid, one of her brothers had married an Episcopalian and converted, much to the dismay of her devoutly Catholic parents. But family proved stronger than faith. The entire clan turned up for the high church ceremony. Barely in puberty at the time, Sara had swallowed a giggle over the wording in the stiffly formal marriage rite.

  ‘With my body, I thee worship.’

  Sara wasn’t giggling now. She finally understood what those words meant. Ryan had used his strong, hard body to love every bit of her, to sooth away her hurts and insecurities, to worship her with all that he was. He hadn’t said the words, but she felt them. She’d been well loved in every sense.

  She was the luckiest girl on the planet.

  Sara turned her head and brushed her lips on his collarbone. He stirred and stroked her hair, running his hand on down her back and staying to dally with the dimples just above her bottom.

  ‘Can’t sleep?’ he signed with his other hand.

  “No. Too happy I guess.” She raised herself on one elbow to look down at him. “Though by rights, I should be comatose. You certainly know how to punch all my buttons, big guy.”

  A sensual grin spread across his face, his teeth glinting whitely in the moonlight. Then his smile froze.

  “Buttons,” Ryan repeated. He sat bolt upright. “It’s a button.”

  He threw back the sheets and clambered out of bed, knocking Lulu from her place at the foot. The little dog landed on a pile of discarded clothing with an offended “yip.” He reached for his jeans and, going commando, pulled them up over his tight buttocks.

  “What’s wrong?” Sara asked.

  “Nothing,” he said, turning to face her so she could read his lips. “It may be nothing, but then again…” Ryan strode from the bedroom without any further explanation.

  Sara retrieved her hearing aids from the nightstand. Then she rolled out of bed and slipped on Ryan’s button down shirt. The tail of the shirt barely reached her mid-thigh and the fabric retained Ryan’s uniquely male scent. There was no need to button it up to her chin, so she left the top three unfastened. She felt delightfully naughty as she padded after him to the living room.

  He’d already donned his glasses and plugged in Valenti’s laptop. When he realized she’d followed him, he looked up, his gaze strafing her and lingering appreciatively on her bare legs. Then he motioned for her to join him on the couch.

  “Sign us in and get through the rabbits to that last image again,” he ordered.

  She moved the computer to her lap and did as he requested, pleased that he’d kept his promise not to view the porn if he could help it. “Why are we doing this?”

  “Because I think it’s another button.”

  “What is?”

  “The…ah…the nipple on that breast. I think Valenti may have used it to create another gateway, like the buttons on the rabbits’ coats,” Ryan said. When she rolled her eyes at him, he hunched his shoulders in a self-deprecating shrug. “What can I say? Men are pigs.”

  “Well, you’re pretty useful pigs sometimes,” she admitted as she pointed and clicked through the white rabbits to bring up the image of the rosy, pert nipple in the center of the screen. “So how did you make the connection?”

  “You inspired me.” He leaned over and slid a hand inside her shirt. His touch sent such shimmers of pleasure over her she completely forgot her question. “You’re the one who said I punched your buttons.”

  He followed the caress with a kiss that strayed from her lips to trail down her throat. Then he parted the top of her shirt with his chin and kept going south.

  “So I did,” she said breathlessly. “Let’s see what happens when we punch this one.”

  She positioned the mouse over the center of the nipple and hit enter.

  “Whoa! Something’s happening. Look, Ryan.”

  He dragged himself away from her softness and focused on the screen.

  Every second a new photo of some sexual deviation splashed across the screen. Before the image was replaced by another, a tiny segment of it was automatically highlighted and lifted.

  “What’s it doing?” Sara asked.

  “It’s assembling co
de, sort of a program that’s capable of writing a program. MIT’s been doing research on artificial intelligence for years. This is a unique protocol for it though,” Ryan explained, as the couple engaged in paddling appeared on the screen in a blink and disintegrated just as quickly. “Valenti evidently has a program on this laptop that needed to stay hidden and he chose to hide it in plain sight. Anyone poking around would either be put off by the porn images or so turned on, they’d never look for what’s embedded in them. Brilliant.”

  “But what does the program do?”

  “That’s what we have to figure out.” Ryan reached for the laptop and moved it over to his own thighs, scanning the reams of code with interest.

  “You mean you, Kemosabe,” Sara said as she stood. “I can point and click with the best of them, but what I don’t know about programming would fill an ocean. You’re the Lone Ranger on this one. But, I can help in my own way.”

  He slid his hand under her shirt and cupped her buttocks. “You’ve already provided inspiration.”

  “And now I’ll provide sustenance.” She glanced at the art deco clock on the wall. Three in the mortal AM! Sara sighed. “All the thinking you’re doing is bound to work up an appetite.”

  “Seeing you in that shirt does plenty for my appetite, but not much for my brain,” he said, drawing her close and pressing a kiss to her belly while his hand slid the length of her thigh. Sara didn’t think she’d ever go without shaving her legs again. “In fact, it pretty much guarantees no thinking whatsoever.”

  “Later, lover,” she said, pulling away from him with a grin. “I’ll take care of your other appetite once you solve the Valenti riddle. Right now I want to fill your belly so your brain is free to do its thing. Got any pancake mix?”

  Chapter 24

  The phone rang again, its strident tone a stiletto to Neville’s ears. He rolled over in the dark and fumbled for the receiver. What the hell time was it anyway?

  “Yeah,” he grunted into the mouthpiece.