She grinned. “Thanks. I may take you up on that later.” Turning to Donna, she said, “Ed sent me a flitter usage report that included a brief mention of your campaign to reclaim your inheritance. How's that going?"
Glancing at me, Donna replied, “Uh ... Oh, pretty well, actually. Ed helped a lot, and I'm making good progress."
"Good. Do you think you'll be going back into the military?"
Apparently taken somewhat off-guard by the question, Donna sipped her coffee before replying.
"It's very possible, I think. I'm in my thirties, Ms. Baines..."
"Call me Linda, please."
Nodding, Donna said, “Okay. I've been thinking about that, Linda. I considered starting my own business when I first learned of my inheritance, but I've come to think that might be, uhm ... well, having just almost lost everything, let's say I'd rather not move too precipitously. A few million will provide a comfortable income if invested well, and I was told that I could become an instructor if I decided to return to the Army."
She hitched around in her seat and crossed her legs, then said, “And—altogether beyond what happened with my husband—I've discovered that what I've seen of civilian life doesn't really appeal to me. It's as if there are no rules, and of those rules that do exist, damned few of them are enforced. For instance, there's a noise ordinance in my county, yet boom-box cars woke me up last night and this morning. That wouldn't happen on an Army base."
I grinned and applauded politely.
"Those damned things bug the hell out of me, too. They should be confiscated and destroyed."
Linda grinned and said, “You could buy a piece of land out in the country."
Shaking her head, Donna said, “First, I shouldn't have to. Second, I don't particularly want to become a hermit. When I was a kid, we had to drive twenty miles to the grocery store. It meant running out of things during winter. No, thanks; I like the convenience of the city."
We chatted half an hour more before Linda checked her watch, stood up, and said, “Well, break's over for me. I have to get ready to meet some people."
In fact, the people arrived as we made our goodbyes. Harvey Jakes and four other people were ushered in as Donna and I were ushered out.
As Donna and I headed for the front doors, she pointed at the big silver ball on the transport pad and asked, “How would I get a tour of that thing?"
"Today? You probably wouldn't. It'll be lifting off in a couple of hours. If you want, I'll ask Linda to put you on standby."
"Standby?"
"Yeah. Politicians and other bigwigs are always scheduling visits, but there's almost always someone who can't show up. You'd get one of those slots."
She stopped just inside the doors and eyed the big ship as she said, “I'd really appreciate it. It's hard to imagine something like that actually getting off the ground, isn't it?"
"Tell you what, ma'am; I'll ask them not to shoot at us and we'll buzz around it once or twice before we leave."
Grinning, she nodded happily. “I'd like that. Thanks."
After collecting Tiger and receiving clearance, I told the flitter to circle the ship twice at twenty miles per hour, spiraling upward as we went. As we approached, another flitter—one of the large ones—emerged from a bay near the loading areas and flew up to accompany us.
I dropped our hull field and waved. The other flitter's hull field also dropped and some woman I didn't know grinningly waved back at me from her seat by the console. She then did a roll-out to the left and zipped back down to the bay.
Without looking away from the big ship, Donna asked, “What was that about?"
"No idea.” She glanced at me with a raised eyebrow and I added, “Really, I don't know. They have us on screens and they know who we are, so I don't know what made that ol’ girl come check us out. Maybe she just wanted a look at Tiger."
When we finished our second circuit of the ship, I told the flitter to take us back to Spring Hill and we headed skyward.
Donna checked her watch and began opening her purse as she said, “Ed, I saw some beers in your cooler last night. Are they still there?"
Opening the cooler, I pulled out a beer and said, “Yup. It's Ice House. Want one?"
Nodding, she found her checkbook and a pen and held them up as she said, “Yes, thanks. You'll get the first check from my new account. One thousand for the board, right?"
Opening the beers, I said, “Yup. Here you go, milady."
She took her beer and asked, “Could I add some for your help last night and everything else since?"
I shook my head and sipped, then said, “Nope."
"You're sure?"
Chuckling, I said, “I didn't do it for money, Donna. I just helped out because I could."
Sipping her beer, she regarded me briefly, then put the beer down and wrote the check. When she handed it to me, I put it in my pocket with the money from my other two board sales and thanked her, then sat back and put my feet on the console.
Calling up the music menu, I asked, “Wanna pick something from the list, milady?"
She shook her head and sipped her beer. I fished through the list until I found Dee Roberts’ ‘I Believe-extended mix’ and In-Grid's ‘I'm Folle De Toi’ and set the volume at two. A little farther down the list I saw Linda Ronstadt's ‘Blue Bayou’ and added that to the list, then poked the line for Annie Lennox's ‘Love is a Stranger'.
Chapter Twenty-two
Donna snickered, then chuckled, “I see you're eclectic."
Adding ‘Magic Bus’ by the Who, I agreed, “Yup. I like what I like and screw the critics. Those oughta be enough to get us down the road a ways. This last one's just for you, ma'am."
I poked ‘Cell Block Tango’ from the movie ‘Chicago’ and sipped my beer as Donna read the screen.
"'Cell Block Tango'? Are you trying to tell me something?"
Laughing, I replied, “You'll see."
With a narrow look, she said, “Tell me why that one."
"Nope. You'll just have to trust me, lady."
She snorted a chuckle, then canted her head and studied me for a moment. “Yeah, okay, what the hell. I guess I can trust you for one song."
We sat sipping and listening to the tunes for a time. When Annie's ‘Love is a Stranger’ cranked up, I saw Donna's feet keep time to the music as she swayed gently in her seat.
"Like that one, huh?"
She nodded in time with the music. ‘Magic Bus’ made her grinningly look at me and ask, “Where the hell did you find that one? My uncle used to play it all the time."
"It was playing the first time I saw the Atlantic Ocean and it always kind of stuck with me."
We were over Baton Rouge when ‘Cell Block Tango’ came on. Donna listened until it reached the first chorus of ‘He had it comin! You would have done the same!' and burst out laughing.
"It seemed fitting,” I said. “Well, almost fitting, anyway, since he's the one in the cell block, not you. Seems to me that would have been their next step."
She'd been about to sip her beer. Lowering her bottle, she asked, “What? What the hell are you talking about? What ‘next step'?"
"Finding a way to put you in jail so you'd have little or no opportunity to screw up their scheme.” I sipped beer and looked at her. “He bought two pistols, Donna. One was found under the seat of the SUV—which was registered in your name—that he drove to the bar. Loaded or not, an unsecured gun in a car is a crime, even for someone with a Concealed Carry permit. Did they happen to say whether it had been fired?"
Donna shook her head. “No. They didn't."
I shrugged. “Prob'ly wasn't. Doesn't matter. Still a crime. He couldn't have bought the gun in your name ‘cuz of the Fed paperwork the store has to fill out, so for the moment, assume he bought them in his name. Did they mention the gun at all when they talked to you?"
Nodding, she said, “Yes, but I didn't know anything about it and they didn't push it."
"That's ‘cuz he drove t
he SUV to the bar and bought the guns the day before. The shop would have run his ID and logged their sales at the FDLE website. Did you drive the SUV on Wednesday or Thursday?"
"No. I've never driven it at all. I've been using my old Beemer.” She gave me a little grin and added, “Well, up until I took the Corvette to the bar, anyway."
"Uh, huh. So when they ran the gun's make and number, it came up in his name, even though it was put in your name a little later in the evening. Good. We might even want to switch the pistols back to his name to make sure any weapons charges stick later."
She nodded. “Yeah. Might be a good idea."
I told the flitter to do the name changes, then asked it to see if anything other than the gun had been found in the SUV. The flitter listed four empty Long Island Ice Tea cans found under the passenger seat.
Donna sat upright and looked startled.
"Another charge,” I said, “Open booze in a vehicle. I'll bet it's even the right flavor."
Her gaze narrowed tightly as she answered, “It is. I keep a few in the fridge, and everybody who knows me knows that."
"Uh, huh. I think you acted just in time, ma'am. Your days of freedom were numbered, and it looks as if it was probably a damned small number. Flitter, search Donna's house and any vehicles on the property very carefully, please. We're looking for something that would knock someone out for a while and leave little or no trace later."
A couple of minutes went by before the flitter said it found a small bottle of gamma butyrolactone in the boat's battery compartment.
"What the hell is that?” asked Donna.
"A GHB analog,” I said, “That means it turns into GHB once it's in the body. Mixing GHB with alcohol can trigger a coma. You'd have probably been found wrapped around a tree in your SUV, ma'am. Or maybe in one of the deeper drainage canals."
Giving me one of those ‘try again a little harder’ looks, she asked, “And what exactly is GHB?"
That made me look at her rather curiously. She'd had an Agency course, but she didn't know about GHB?
"Gamma hydroxybutyrate,” I said, “It's a rave club drug that's damned hard to trace in the body after a few hours. Long Island Ice Teas would hide the taste well enough, too, if there was any. Sometimes there isn't."
"You seem to know a lot about this stuff."
Giving her a fisheye look, I said, “I'm surprised you don't. You had the Agency recon course. Were you out the week they talked about interrogations and disrupting command centers?"
Donna masked her shock well enough, then glanced at the console screen as her face went completely expressionless.
"I guess I shouldn't be too surprised,” she said, “But I don't think that's in my Army records."
"Not as such, no. There's a code number with a date in a block in your 201 file. Anyone who doesn't already know what it means doesn't need to know."
"But you know. How is that?"
"I was a medic who ended up being a ‘97B’ for close to a year. When I got out, I went to work for some people who ran me all over Europe during the Cold War, but mostly we just pulled people out of East Germany and delivered stuff behind the Iron Curtain."
I could almost see the gears turning in her head and a veil of ice seemed to descend between us. In short, she took the news of my previous employment just as I would have.
She asked, “Should I simply assume that Linda knows, too?"
Nodding, I sipped beer and said, “Oh, yeah. But don't sweat it. She was my boss back then, too."
Donna took a sip of beer, sat back in her seat, and eyed me briefly, then asked, “Were you sent to help me last night?"
"Only by Jenny."
"How can I believe that?"
I laughed. “At this very moment, you probably can't. Your training won't let you. Maybe later."
"Does she know you were a spook?"
"Nope. She only knows me from seeing me on TV the night the gambling boat went down."
The west coast of Florida was below us when she spoke again to say, “The trip to Carrington. The board. You and Linda want to recruit me for something, don't you?"
Yeah, the paranoia training had definitely kicked in.
I sighed, “The trip to Carrington happened because you showed up when I was about to leave. No reason you shouldn't go; Carrington's an open base. The board sale happened because I was selling boards today and there was no reason you couldn't buy one."
"But our last-minute visit with Linda was kind of a quiet preliminary job interview, wasn't it?"
"Probably. You'd have to ask her. Want me to call her?"
Raising a hand to stop me, Donna said, “No. If it was, I'll hear about it. Or not. Ed, I thought you were a friend."
"What have I done that's unfriendly, Donna? You got a flitter ride and a board. It doesn't really matter to me whether Linda hires you. You've been good company and you have a board now. We can go flying together and..."
"Just hold on. Let me think about it."
"About what? Look, Donna, once in a while things happen that are truly coincidences. I walked into that bar, Jenny saw me, she put me on you, and we worked out your money problems. You showed up at the right time today and got a trip to Carrington Base. You bought a board like mine. I checked you out last night because I wanted to know whether the money was really yours before I screwed around with it. The other info was just there, okay? You can go to work for Linda or go back in the Army or do whatever else may strike your fancy. I like you and that's all that matters to me."
Tiger hopped down from the dash and stood tall in the seat next to hers as he yowled, “I like you, too, Donna! Don't go!"
When she grinned and choked out a chuckle, it almost seemed to happen against her will. She met Tiger's earnest little gaze and bit her lip as she reached to pet him, then pulled him into her lap.
As he rearranged himself a bit, Donna looked at me with piercing eyes and said in a conversational tone, “I wasn't scared of you before, Ed. Now I am. A little."
Shrugging, I said, “Then you're wasting perfectly good trepidation, ma'am. I'm just looking for a compatible friend."
Lifting her backpack with her soiled clothes and boots, I unzipped it and asked the flitter to clean everything. The boots, fatigues, and even the bag lifted into the air and a grey translucent ball formed around them.
A few seconds later the items hung in the air as clean as they could be. Ignoring Donna's gasp of amazement, I folded the clothing and put it in the bag atop her boots, then rezipped the bag and set it on the deck by her seat as I sat down.
Donna studied me as we landed in my driveway and asked, “A ‘compatible’ friend?"
Swilling the last of my beer, I tossed the bottle into the flitter's perimeter field, where it flashed to bright oblivion and nodded at Donna.
"That's right. A ‘compatible’ friend. Toni's sexy and smart and fun to be with, but she'd never get on one of these boards. Well, not unless something else scared her worse."
"Who's Toni?"
I called up a six-foot field screen and put Toni's picture on it; the picture I'd taken when she'd competed in the Florida Fitness finals the year before.
Donna eyed Toni's face, then her solid arms, shoulders, and legs, and hissed, “Damn! She's for real?"
"Yeah. She's a fitness queen. Spends half her time at the gym and the other half playing volleyball on a college team. But she truly, absolutely hates to fly, even on the flitter."
"She's your girlfriend?"
"Ah. Well. That requires some explanation, I guess. Yes and no. She has girlfriends, too, you could say. She generally prefers them, in fact. Sometimes we get together, but she's more of a ladyfriend who parties with me now and then than an actual girlfriend. We used to spend more time together, but I think she's getting ready to move on when she graduates."
After a moment, Donna asked, “Would she agree with all that?"
"I think so. I'll call her if you want. She has a datapad."
"A
what?"
"A mechanical version of this screen. A handheld unit."
Before she could stop me, I tapped Toni's icon.
Chapter Twenty-three
The screen shrank to normal two-foot size and Toni answered with, “Hi, Ed!” saw Tiger, and added, “Hi, Tiger! How's my little furry pal today?"
Tiger happily yowled, “Hello, Toni! Hello!” but seemed to have nothing else on his little mind beyond his greeting, and having made it, he sat down and subsided.
Looking to my right, Toni's eyes betrayed her instant and intense interest in Donna.
She met Donna's gaze for a moment in avid appraisal, then said in a rather huskier tone, “And warm and wonderful hello to you, too, whoever you may be."
"Donna,” said Donna, in a somewhat less forthcoming tone.
With an ‘ah, it's like that’ look, Toni turned back to me and asked, “Another straight one, huh?"
"Seems so, ma'am. Sorry ‘bout that."
"You told her how wonderful I am?"
"I even showed her your picture. She seemed impressed."
Grinning like a fox, Toni turned to Donna and asked, “Is that right, Donna? You were impressed?"
"Ah ... you could say that. You're very ... uh ... fit, Toni."
Enjoying Donna's discomfort, Toni held out her right arm and ran her fingers over her it from elbow to shoulder as she studied it, then said, “Yeah, that's what they call it. ‘Fit.'” She laughed and asked, “So, what's up besides you, Ed?"
"Oh, not much. I was telling Donna how you use me now and then and don't even think about me between times. She didn't seem to believe me."
Doing her best to appear shocked that I could suggest such a thing, Toni yelped, “I do, too, think about you between times! You know I do! Just the other night in the shower with Tina, I said, ‘Good ol’ Ed! I sure wish he was here.’”
Laughing, I said, “You're such a sweet, sexy liar, ma'am. If that were true, you'd have called me and told me to get my ass up to Inverness."
She laughed, then sighed, “Yeah, you caught me. But if you're free this weekend, let me know. I might be able to squeeze you in, y'know?"
Donna gave me a sidelong glance.
3rd World Products, Inc. Book 7 Page 13