Although, since he’d last checked maybe two months ago, she seemed to be settling into something that could resemble normality. Finally.
Which is exactly why he was so red-faced pissed regarding his current assignment. But, as they say, bullshit rolls downhill, and he was left with the task of asking Sara Winthrop to come out of retirement, so to speak. As he approached Sara but before he greeted her, his last thought was of Donald Timms, the pristine jerk from the FBI, and how he wished he’d told the self-righteous dickwad where he could shove it back in the captain’s office that morning.
Sara moved from child to child to child, pushing them on the swings, laughing and avoiding the shoe-scuffed, rain-filled crevices below each one. “Watch your feet,” she said. “The sharks might nibble on your toes.”
The mist had evolved into a drizzle, and Barker angled his umbrella against the wind, blocking the cool shards of precipitation prickling his cheeks. He said, “You do know it’s raining, right?”
Sara jumped, yelped, and covered her mouth. She said, “Barker. Jesus, you scared the sh—you scared the crap out of me.”
Still jumpy, Barker thought. That’ll probably never go away. Not completely.
“Sorry about that. I know better.”
Sara forced an awkward smile and nodded. “You should.”
“Went by your house. Miss Willow said I could find you down here.” The wind kicked up and brought with it heavier, fatter drops of rain. Barker shuddered and turned his back to the onslaught. “Never stops, does it? Can we go over to that shelter? I’d like to talk to you about something.”
“Sure. Kids? Come on, it’s raining too much, let’s follow Mr. Bloodhound over to the shelter, okay?” Like most Portland children who were used to it, the rain was just another aspect of typical northwestern weather to ignore, and they protested. Sara insisted and off they went, running, with the twins in the lead and Jacob quickly catching up.
Barker took a longer, steadier look at Sara. A few more streaks of gray in her hair—brought on by stress, most likely—and the darkness under her eyes had deepened a shade or two. “You sleeping much?” He held his umbrella over her head as they walked.
“Yeah. A little here and there. Why?”
“Just checking.” Of course he wasn’t going to say anything about her appearance. It’d only taken him three ex-wives to learn that lesson.
Sara crossed her arms, tucked her hands into the warmth of her armpits, and leaned further into him under the umbrella. “I look like hell, don’t I?”
Barker smirked. “Objection, Your Honor. Leading the witness.”
Sara chuckled. It was good to hear that laugh. He wondered how much of that had gone on around the Winthrop household lately. A wild guess said not much on Sara’s part.
Settling back into normal didn’t mean that memories disappeared. But, post-trauma, she was about as good as she could be, he reckoned. She was surviving, and that coupled with time was all it took a strong person like her to hand the past an ass whooping with an eight-pound sledgehammer.
When they reached the shelter Sara sent the kids off to the other side, told them to use their imaginations and play a game that didn’t involve torturing Jacob. She said to Barker, “If that poor boy makes it through high school, I’ll be surprised. Do you have sisters?” They sat down on a picnic bench where the wood was faded, gray like the sky, and speckled with pigeon droppings.
Barker shook out his umbrella and pulled it closed. “One older,” he said. “Name was Beth and the sweetest woman I ever knew. Well, not when she was younger. Growing up, I’d’ve been lucky to have your two running the show. They’re cupcakes compared to how my sister was way back then. Once we got older, every time I’d go visit and see that bubbly smile, I couldn’t help but think that wasn’t the girl I grew up with.”
“Do you see her much?”
“Nah, she passed about three years ago. Brain tumor took her way too early.”
Sara nodded. “It’s always too early with something like that.”
“Right.”
“So what’s up, Mr. Bloodhound? Still coming around to make sure I’m sane?” She leaned back, looking past his shoulders. “Jacob, no hanging from the rafters, please!”
“But Mom—”
“I said no, and how did you even manage to get up there?”
“Just let me—”
“Down. Now.”
Barker watched in amusement as Jacob dropped to a picnic table and hopped down to the concrete flooring. He’d never had children of his own, and seeing other folks deal with theirs made him both regret and applaud his decision. “He’s a handful, huh?”
“You want him?” Sara asked. “No charge.”
“I’m good, thanks.” Barker pulled a cinnamon-flavored toothpick from the breast pocket of his suit coat and tucked it into the corner of his mouth. He’d given up smoking six months ago and so far, so good. Except for that morning. It would’ve been the perfect sendoff to spark up and blow a plume of smoke in Donald Timms’s face.
“Still quit?” Sara asked.
“Yup. I ran two miles yesterday, too.”
“Good for you.”
“Let me rephrase. I shuffled and coughed up a lung for two miles. Anyway,” Barker said, getting up from the picnic table, groaning as he went, feeling the soreness in unused muscles. Tomorrow would be hell. He sighed, put his hands in the pockets of his slacks, and shook his head. He stared out across the playground through the sheets of rain, looking at the tree line across the open soccer field. “Sara, I don’t want to do this.”
“Do what?” She squinted at him with that questioning look that was a mixture of confusion and get-to-the-point.
“We have…uh…we have a situation, and the suits…well, they wanted me to ask you for help. And I told ‘em, I said, no sir, she’s been through enough already and I’m not dragging her into something like this. I mean, it’s big, like national security big, and there’s this guy from the FBI named Donald Timms and he’s got perfect hair and the whitest teeth you’ve ever seen. Real jerk, you know? But he’s a Fed and what the Almighty says goes, at least that’s the way it works in—”
“Barker…what?” Sara interrupted, slightly shaking her head.
He pinched the bridge of his nose and took a deep breath. “Right. Sorry. I ramble when I get fired up.”
“Did I hear you right? Did you say the FBI wants my help with something that has to do with national security?”
Barker instinctively reached for a cigarette pack and grumbled when he found the empty spot where they’d been for most of his adult life. Had he quit too soon? Like his nicotine quit coach had said, “There’s never a better time than yesterday.”
Barker sat down again, planting his rear on the bench this time, below Sara, and looked up at her, shaking his head. “It’s the damnedest thing, and I’m still not certain he’s telling us the truth. He’s shiftier than some of the CIA spooks I’ve worked with before. Regardless, something’s going on, and I have no say in it whatsoever, but they sent me here because we’ve got history, and they thought you’d be more responsive to the idea if it came from me. Not to mention the fact that you’re the expert.”
“Expert at what? What idea?”
Barker could sense that she was irritated with him. Hell, he would be too, with all this gibberish, beating around the bush, and not getting to the point. Still, he couldn’t come right out and say the words. He knew she’d decline, or try to, so what was the point of asking? And why was he having so much trouble putting the request out there anyway? It wasn’t the fear of rejection—he wanted her to say no—but maybe it was the thought of bringing up the past and shredding the thin fabric of her stability.
But he could lose his job if he didn’t, so the words had to come out, no matter what. Plus, if she said no to him, that wouldn’t stop Donald Timms from paying her a visit and utilizing more coercive techniques. The FBI always gets their man, right?
Rather than a
sking straight up with no background, Barker decided to try a different tactic. “Did you hear about that bombing in London? The one about two months ago?”
“Yeah, it was awful, but what does that have to—”
Barker held up a hand, stopping her. “I’ll get there in a second, okay? So, counting back, we got the bombing in London,” he said, counting them on his fingers, “the one in Rio, then Beijing before that, and then Moscow. Follow me so far?”
Sara nodded.
“And if I asked you what all four of them had in common, you’d probably say, ‘Four bombs exploded and killed a bunch of people,’ and you’d be right, but it wouldn’t be the right answer. What I’m authorized to tell you—the thing all four of these bombings have in common is—”
Sara gasped. “Cities in Juggernaut.”
Juggernaut was her employer’s top selling game, a first person shooter that had firmly established the company’s position as an industry leader.
“True. But it sounds like a stretch to say that they’re all connected by a video game. If the Feds only had that to go on, I’d round up every greenhorn, rookie beat cop I could find so they could tell them how stupid the idea was. Hell, I bet we could even ask Jacob and he’d laugh it off.”
Sara scooted down from the picnic tabletop and sat on the bench beside Barker. She lowered her voice and had trouble hiding her laughter. “You’re saying that the FBI thinks that four terrorist bombings in four random cities are somehow connected by the Juggernaut series? I mean, you’re kidding, right? Did they hit a dead end already?”
“I know it sounds ridiculous—”
“It’s insane, Barker.”
“—but they think it’s a real threat.”
“Four random cities that just happen to be cities in a video game that I run marketing campaigns for. It’s a coincidence. If you’re going to count London, Beijing, Moscow, and Rio, then why not Toronto and Cairo? Or Sydney? Or…or Portland, for that matter?”
“That’s the thing, Sara. Mr. Timms knows more than he’s letting on. I don’t know what any of it means, and it could just be a humongous coincidence, but he’d like to talk to you.”
“I don’t see how I could actually help him, Barker.”
“My guess is the asshole wants to use you as bait.”
~end of sample~
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August 2014
Sara's Game Page 19