“Aw, too bad,” Tommy muttered while flashing Andy a Cheshire cat grin before turning his attention back to what he’d been working on, leaving Andy free to reread the letter he’d written. As he was doing so, he thought about adding a personal note at the bottom before slipping it in the express mail envelope. No, he finally concluded. This is going to be awkward enough without making a comment that might not be appreciated or might be taken the wrong way, he thought to himself as his mind once more turned to Susan G.
3
The idea Susan Giovanna O’Conner wouldn’t be there to greet them never entered Andy’s mind. The way she had gone about catching his attention as he and Tommy emerged from customs didn’t surprise him, either. It was more than her five-foot-nine height, further enhanced by the two-inch heels of her stylish black boots that caught Andy’s eye straight off. Not even her coppery red hair was the main draw. Rather, it was the sign she was holding that caught his attention.
Standing front and center in a cluster of limousine drivers, she held a sign up as if she were just another chauffeur waiting for a client. But rather than a last name scrawled on a plain white sheet of paper, the background of hers was a Union Jack upon which was written in an ornate script:
Yomping
Anglo-Saxon Person
& Company
That, along with the lopsided smile she flashed him when their eyes met, were more than enough to tell him she’d not lost the quirky sense of humor that had made working with her years ago more interesting than it should have been.
With an affected nonchalance, Andy made his way up to her, dragging his sole piece of luggage behind him. He stopped when he was still a respectable and safe arm’s distance away. After making something of a show of inspecting her from head to toe, he grinned. “I must say, you certainly have changed.”
Unable to help herself, even as she was lowering the sign, Susan averted her gaze. After an awkward moment of silence, she peeked back up into Andy’s eyes through her lashes. “And you haven’t, not one bit.”
It was now Andy’s turn to go all shy as he stuffed his free hand in a pocket of his trousers and shrugged, wondering if the coloring of his cheeks was betraying a most unwanted response he was unable to tamp down.
Tommy, who’d been standing off to one side, couldn’t help but grin as he watched this scene play out. For once, he kept his tongue in check, resisting the urge to say something that would spoil what he believed was an emotional reunion between two former lovers. That he was about as wide of the mark as he could be was something neither Andy nor Susan did anything to make clear by the way they conducted themselves. Instead, the tall, well-proportioned redhead cleared her throat.
“If you’re finished here, my car is outside double-parked in a no-parking zone. I thought I’d drop you two off at your hotel and give you a chance to freshen up and sort yourselves out before we pitched into this mysterious quest of yours.”
Realizing it just might be best if he did take a bit of time to collect his wits and figure out how he was going to go about dealing with Susan G. now that he had had an opportunity to see just how different she was from what he had expected, Andy nodded. “Yeah, right. Good idea.”
Having managed to pry precious little out of Andy at the hotel after Susan dropped them off, Tommy wasted little time pumping the tall redhead for information as she was driving them to the NYPD impound lot. “Andy never did say how you two met,” Tommy blurted from the backseat of Susan’s car as she bobbed and weaved through early afternoon traffic with a reckless abandon that put the taxi drivers to shame.
“I think it would be best if Andy told the story,” she replied just before cutting off a city bus that was pulling away from the curb. “You were, after all, the one who came to me back then,” she added as she glanced over at Andy, sporting a devilish grin that told him her wording was meant to be suggestive.
At the moment, Andy wasn’t up to playing along with Susan’s wicked little game as he wondered if it would be best if he closed his eyes and used what precious little time he had left to watch his life flash before his eyes or keep them open to bear witness to the calamity he expected was but a hair’s breadth away. “Are you trying to reenact Mullins’s death, or is this the way you drive all the time?”
“What’s wrong with my driving?” Susan asked innocently as she gave the wheel of her car a quick jerk to the left to avoid rear-ending a cab that had stopped in the middle of the lane she was in to pick up a fare.
“You either have a charmed life or you’re crazier than you were when I last saw you,” Andy intoned as he watched Susan zip past a cyclist who flashed them a one-finger salute.
“And when was that?” Tommy asked in a feigned offhanded manner as he once more tried to find out what had gone on between her and Andy.
“You’re rather persistent,” Susan chirped brightly. “Just like your boss is.”
“Aye, he can be as tenacious as a terrier when he wants to be. But I guess you already know that.”
“A terrier?” Susan quipped as she glanced over at Andy out of the corner of her eye. “I always thought of him as something of a Labrador — you know, the cute, cuddly kind.”
Not at all pleased with how this exchange was playing out, Andy glanced over his shoulder, shooting Tommy a look that warned him the fun and games were over, that the time had come to cease and desist, or else.
Taking heed, Tommy acknowledged the wave off with a broad, toothy grin. He expected there’d be ample opportunity later to find out more about the woman Andy was doing his damnedest to keep from looking at, he told himself, as he eased back in his seat and settled into enjoying the wild ride she was treating them to.
At the impound lot where the NYPD stored abandoned and illegally parked vehicles, the trio was met by a man Susan identified using only his first name before introducing both Andy and Tommy in a similar fashion. “Kevin and I were partners,” she informed them.
Andy didn’t let on that he remembered Detective Kevin O’Banyon as the two men shook hands. They’d met only in passing in 1988 when he’d been working with Susan. No doubt she was doing all she could to keep anyone from knowing more about the others than was absolutely necessary — just in case someone got wise to the unauthorized visit O’Banyon had arranged for the two men who Susan had told him were friends of hers from the UK. Likewise, he didn’t bother asking her if Andy was still working for the same people he had been when he’d been sent in to the States to track down a Russian with ties to the IRA, as well as a number of other nefarious groups.
After being admitted to the yard with nothing more than an exchange of nods with the officer on duty at the gate, O’Banyon led them to where the wreckage of the Lincoln Town Car Mullins had died in now sat. As they were doing so, Susan used the opportunity to engage O’Banyon in some idle chitchat of a personal nature. “What’s Kevin Junior up to these days?” Susan asked.