She caught herself looping that hair behind her ear, and realized that the vibe was surging back between them. She saw he’d noticed it. They had that kind of instant connection.
“Actually,” she nodded in affirmation, “I sense I might have to talk to you about it, knowing as you do about HAARP and the like.”
“Oh, Jeez, tinfoil hat time again?”
“Maybe. I’m relying on you to tell me.”
“What’s up? What you doing?”
She filled him in on her history of documentaries, and her need to get out of the corporate world, if only to catch her breath.
She’d thought about it and her mom was right. She didn’t have a life beyond work.
A professional photographer would be at her home at 7 a.m. the next day to shoot it in the best light. She’d also retained short-term rental experts to get her pad to pay for itself while she went back East to visit her folks, family and friends… and find financial backing for the documentary.
“It’s harebrained,” Pete assured her.
“It’s what?”
“Harebrained, nuts, daft… plain bonkers.”
“Gee—thanks for the support.”
“That is support. If I talk you out of something crazy, I’m doing you the biggest favor. There’re only two possibilities. Either there’s nothing to report and you’ll grab at moonbeams, or it is sinister and there’ll be players involved that you’ll want to avoid like the plague.”
“That’s standard reporter risk.”
“I don’t think you understand.”
“Then explain it.”
“There are, what? Half a dozen major political storms. There are closed-door negotiations and apparently, something big enough to rock the Earth on its axis. And you’re going to do, what precisely? Take a camera and microphone on your savings and start asking uncomfortable questions?”
“Yes.”
“Come on Teegs, get real.”
“This is my reality.”
“You’re serious?”
“Deadly.”
They stared at one another long and hard.
“So, are you going to help me?” She broke the impasse. “It’ll be very dangerous, I understand this. If it’s too hot for you, I understand that too.”
He shook his head and his eyes creased with a smile. “What do you need? Cash I can help you with. Maybe, just maybe…”
He left the rest of the thought unspoken.
“Leads? People I can speak to? Insiders… if you have them.”
“Perhaps. But it’s sensitive. You don’t just call these folks up and say ‘Hey, Pete said you might help me’.”
“Sure—I understand. I’m discreet.”
“I can’t be linked… We can’t be linked.”
“The first isn’t a problem.”
“Hmmm…” He raised his eyebrow in a knowing manner. “I like the sound of the second.”
“Yes, I want to see you again,” she looked down and fiddled with something in her lap, coming over coy.
“Goes without saying. Me too.”
“I can’t believe I’m flirting with a gun runner,” she looked up, serious again.
“Defense consultant,” he winked in that boyish way that made her belly somersault.
“Tequila-swilling gun runner.”
“I’m not boring,” he suggested.
There was another pregnant silence and Tegan found herself grinning, shaking her head at the peculiar situation she found herself in.
“So how do we do this then, Mr. Gun Runner.”
“You happen to be in luck. I carry two mobiles.” He produced one with a sleek design she’d never seen before. It had no brand name marking. “Real James Bond number, this… Crypto phone—not traceable. Lose my other number, record this one.”
He scribbled the number on the corner of a newspaper and tore it off for her.
“Throw that away when you’re done,” and he checked his watch and started collecting his hand luggage. “Boarding time.”
“I can call you on this?”
“Yes. My side is secure, yours isn’t. Look into it, research ‘crypto phone’. If you want to play in this world, you’ll be well advised to have the tools. But best we use messaging so there’s no recording of my voice.”
They stood to depart and her heart sank.
When he hugged her, she choked, her eyes strangely brimming with tears.
This is ridiculous! she admonished herself.
She barely knew the man and she actively disliked him for a few minutes not very long ago when she discovered his affiliation to a world she hated, but he’d crawled back in under her skin in record time. It made no sense.
“When are you travelling? And to where?” he asked her, still hugging.
“I need to move fast,” she was glad he couldn’t see her face, wiping her eyes over his shoulder behind his view, glad her voice wasn’t betraying her pathetic state. “I’m going out to Maine and my folks for a few days to plan.”
“I’m in Maryland for the week, back at Lockheed HQ. I’ve got to go to D.C. and then New York… it’s the right side of the continent.”
“Let’s…” she felt choked and didn’t finish.
“Yes, lets,” he agreed.
They hadn’t looked at one another since they started to hug.
She could feel a heart beating against her chest and she wasn’t sure if it was hers or his.
“I’m just going to walk now and not look back.”
And at that instant, Tegan heard his voice catch. He was suffering too.
Chapter 11
Milbridge, Maine
Latitude: 44°32'11"N
Longitude: 67°53'06"W
Tegan was livid.
“They haven’t seen hauls like this in a century, Teegs. I’m not going to last forever and if this is my last chance to do this, there is absolutely nothing that can hold me back.”
John said it lovingly but firmly.
“Come on. Give your old man a hug. You’re making a big deal over nothing.”
He stepped forward to embrace her.
“No Dad,” she stepped out of range of his bearlike arms. “Haven’t you been watching the news? A second attack. Another family butchered in their sleep up there. And you think it’s okay to leave Mom because the fishing is suddenly so good.”
“But it is.” He sounded like a little boy pleading for a treat, looking to Gaby for backup. “They haven’t landed sizes like they’re landing in living memory. I’ve just… I’ve got to go. It’s…” his voice tailed off.
“Mom asked me… begged me to come visit. And as I arrive, you announce you’re leaving.”
“Now that’ll be emotional blackmail, Tegan,” Gaby scolded her daughter.
“Is it?” Tegan rounded back on her mom.
“Dad will be gone less than a week. It’ll give you and I time to catch up.”
“I won’t have time to catch up,” Tegan blurted. She was peeved and reacted without thinking. “I’ve got too much work to do.”
“Then where’s the problem, darling? If you don’t have time to catch up with mum, and I stay home… what’s the point?”
“Aghghgh…” she growled, seeing she was cornered. And then she huffed at her own insight, “I’m frightened, Dad. There’s some kind of gang turf war going on up there and you’re wanting to fly into the middle of it because the bloody fishing is suddenly good. Of course I’ll have time for mum and you. I’m sorry, I’m being a child. I’m really scared. I really don’t want you going. I’ve got a bad feeling….”
John crossed the distance and smothered her in the acres of his chest.
She kept her hands balled into fists, but the longer his burly and rugged old frame engulfed her, the more she became the little girl again in his arms and her hands reluctantly unclenched and went round his back.
She buried her face in one of the coarsely knitted woolen polar-neck jerseys her mom had knitted for him when he was awa
y. He had enough of them to clothe a village.
“Please, Daddy,” she said it so quietly that only he could hear it and he responded by scratching his course beard growth against her temple like he used to do when she was little.
Then he kissed her forehead.
“Let’s eat. Let’s sleep on it.”
“That’s a no, isn’t it?”
“We’ll sleep on it,” John repeated.
The smell of lobster had permeated the house and Tegan realized that her emotional state was amplified by hunger; by hunger and reminiscing with all the familiar places and faces she’d seen driving the pleasant hour and a half to the coast from Bangor Airport.
The aroma of cooking lobster was one of Tegan’s earliest memories. The big, red, steaming delicacies tipped out into the sink after fifteen minutes in the pot.
She’d only just put her bags down and embraced Gabby when John had pulled into the driveway with a dozen monsters fresh from the traps.
She’d overseen the preparations. John was old school and would simply drop the creatures into boiling water, but Tegan had campaigned long and hard to the folks of the area to be more humane.
“We put them in fresh water for twenty minutes, dad. Let them die peacefully.”
John always laughed at her sentiments, thinking them a little silly. The prevailing wisdom he’d grown up with was that lobster had no feelings and couldn’t experience pain or discomfort.
“Then why do they squeal and go crazy in boiling water?” Tegan had challenged him for the umpteenth time.
“It’s the air escaping from their shells,” he had assured her.
“There isn’t air in their shells, Dad—or they’d float. Just do it my way, okay? Look how peaceful they are. They think they’re back in the ocean, and they’ll go quietly to sleep.”
“Drowning them is peaceful?” her dad had teased her over it.
“It’s not drowning like we drown. We’re just reversing the osmotic effect of the saline water they’re used to….”
“Alright, alright,” he’d held up his hands in surrender. “I don’t want another biology lesson. I submit to your greater wisdom, o child of mine.”
And now the lobsters were cooked and they sat around the kitchen table as they had done a thousand times before, breaking off legs and savoring the sweet white delicate flesh.
“And the new man in your life?” John asked.
“He’s not in my life, Dad. Mom…!” she scolded, “you really have to stop with the stories.”
“Me? Y’r father makes up his own mind. The guy’s the first thing you jabbered about when y’a arrived, and you haven’t stopped.”
Tegan clucked her denials, but it was true.
She’d always hated the mirror held up to her.
“And the new project?” Her dad let her off the hook.
“The Incident… I get a sense there’s something they’re not telling us.”
“Who’s they?”
“Whoever…? I don’t know. That’s what I want to find out.”
“Alone…? Or with y’r man?”
“Mom! No, not alone. I’m trying to talk Lynne Sunter into it.”
“Ahhh. That director from the telescope project?”
“The same. She’s brilliant. So brilliant, that I can’t even get a call returned.”
“And cash? Your place in Malibu?”
“I’m renting it out short term.”
“Bit risky?”
“Not these days, Dad. I’ve told you and Mom to rent this place and take a vacation. You do it online.”
“Computer renting… with the web? Risky. I wouldn’t touch that.”
“You don’t have to. I can set it up or find an expert.”
“An expert…? In this town?”
“You’d be surprised.”
“Maybe…” Gaby looked at John. “Maybe we should do it, John. I’ll come with y’a to Newfoundland for a week… make the trip worthwhile.”
“Oh, Jeez… Mom. No, not you too now!”
“Well weren’t y’a talkin’ about going up there? Maybe we all go? Make it a family getaway.”
“Yes… I talked about going there if another situation occurs. I’ve got a hunch it’s connected to The Incident. But if I do go, it’s different… that’s work, that’s what I do. You don’t go on vacation to a place if there’s a…”
Tegan’s mobile pinged with the door-knocking sound effect she’d assigned to Lynne and she scooped it up excitedly.
“Somet’ing wrong?” Gaby asked, as Tegan’s face dropped.
“Not really… Lynne’s too tied up and can’t give it time now. But I can’t wait. I’ve gotta at least do the scouting, starting tomorrow.”
And then a smile broke across her face. There was also a message she’d missed from Pete and his covert mobile number that she hadn’t yet assigned a unique prompt sound to. The message read;
Been sniffing about. u may b on 2 somethin darlin. big doohdooh in diplomatic circles. we need 2 talk. witness protection stuff. trying 2 setup chat 4 u with a fella. sounds like he @ center of storm but gone 2 ground. will revert.
“Wow!” she exclaimed, as she read and her parents looked on.
“What is it?” Gaby interrupted, as Tegan began typing back a response, her thumbs a blur.
“Shhhhh,” she admonished, then added, “Don’t know yet. Tell you in a sec.”
To Pete she typed, Kill me with suspense. How u want to talk? And she realized her heart was racing.
“You okay?” John asked, concern in his voice.
“Fine…” she snapped at his interruption.
“In love,” Gaby teased with a wink to John. She’d recognized the flush for what it was.
“Mom! Honestly. You have to knock it off, it’s irritating… and don’t start with that biological clock nonsense, please.”
“Alright…” Gaby relented.
Tegan’s mobile pinged and she looked at it.
I in Boston in 2 days meeting @ MIT. u make it down?
She contemplated a second, then composed, 5 hr drive or same time 2 fly… airport security. So yes 1 or the other.
As she typed messages back and forth, her folks carried on with planning their newly hatched trip together up to Newfoundland.
She harvested only snippets of what they were saying, unsure of whether they were doing it to rile her or genuinely meant it.
Drive, Pete advised, best not leave trail to same city I in. we meet @ restaurant… I make up for LAX burger disaster.
Tegan smiled as she responded, I need head to NY. Can make it round trip if I organize quick enough.
Cool… it set then. make it cnr main & cherry st. cuchi cuchi… spanish restaurant noon thurs?
I’ll leave here at 6 there noon…Y
Verycool.
“Very cool,” she mouthed dreamily.
“Cool?” Gaby asked.
“Nothing, mom. Just a friend saying it’s cool.”
“Uh-huh,” the smile on Gaby’s face said she understood too well.
Tegan clicked the phone to sleep and it buzzed in her hand before she could put it down.
Miss u.
Tegan couldn’t believe her eyes.
Miss u!
She read it three times over and her belly did a loop.
I miss u too!
Her thumbs flew. She’d added an exclamation and hesitated… then she chanced a heart emoticon… a yellow heart.
Her finger hovered over the send button.
“What’s wrong, then?” Gaby asked.
It was the push she needed to send it on its way and her finger tapped the icon.
A moment later, a pair of red lips came back and she flushed.
“The man?” John asked.
“Now what are you two hatching?” She ignored her folks’ probing, but the lightness and buoyant lilt to her voice answered him amply.
“I t’ink it’s a good idea to get away,” Gaby suggested. “How ‘bout we all
go up to Newfoundland together? Would that make you more relaxed? I could do with the break. Dad’s definitely going anyway. And we can keep an eye on you.”
“I’m forty-plus, mum. I don’t need an eye kept on me.”
“We’re sixty-plus and y’a still want to keep an eye on us.”
“It’s different.” She looped a stray lock of hair behind her ear. Pete was now back constantly on her mind. “If you’re insisting on going, it looks like I’ll probably have to go, but only in a week. I have to go to Boston and maybe New York.”
“When?”
“Thursday… day after tomorrow. And maybe weekend in the Big Apple… We can go up next week.”
“The fish are running now!” John observed with alarm in his voice.
“Well, they’re going to have to just wait,” Tegan said decisively.
Chapter 12
Cambridge, Boston, Massachusetts
Latitude: 42°21'48"N
Longitude: 71°05'49"W
It was weird. Like seeing an old friend or lover. Gone was any hint of awkwardness and posturing.
Pete’s meeting had run over and it was more dinner than lunch, which bothered neither of them one bit.
Tegan refused wine.
“Just don’t like the taste,” she explained. Not drinking always seemed to need an explanation, and an explanation that it wasn’t a problem.
“I’ll behave myself too,” Pete assured with a slightly pained look and ordered a local brew that he nursed for nearly two hours.
During that time, they laughed. And when they were done laughing, they laughed some more.
“So, ya’ did it?” he quizzed. “Resigned?”
“They said I’d always have a position if I want to come back full time.”
“So quick? Just a week or so ago you were full-on…” and he mimicked her fingers on the keyboard back on the plane when they’d met, furrowed brow, squinting into an imaginary laptop screen.
“I’ve got the best of both worlds, actually. Half the package and all the freedom. I’m on a retainer, doing the same job; number crunching and a few consulting calls.”
“Kinda like my job then,” he winked.
“Except I only intend to kill people with laughter and fun.”
“And I keep them safe for you to do that.”
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