O’Banyon grunted. “Don’t ask. I’ve not heard from the boy in weeks. I’d like to think he’s too busy studying.”
When she responded with a snicker followed by a glib remark that caused O’Banyon to guffaw, Andy, who was walking a few paces behind, couldn’t help but be struck by the way the two carried on as if nothing had changed. It had, of course. Even from behind, a single glance of Susan’s figure and the way she carried herself told himself it most definitely had.
“Here we are,” O’Banyon declared as he stopped before the black, bullet-riddled Lincoln Town Car with a crumpled front end. “If the people from the Technical Assistance Response Unit found anything when they went over it, it didn’t make it into this,” he added as he looked side to side before reaching inside his jacket and pulling a thick envelope out of an inner pocket.
Neither Andy nor Susan had any need to ask O’Banyon what was in the envelope.
“I imagine I owe you big-time for this,” Susan stated as she quickly took it and slipped it into her oversized purse.
“Oh, you bet,” O’Banyon replied with a grin. “You can start by coming by on Sunday for dinner and talking some sense into Fran.”
“Okay, what did you do to piss her off now?” Susan asked glibly.
“Me? Nothing. It’s Kevin Junior who’s in the doghouse. She wants me to drive up to that overpriced college Junior talked me into sending him to and making sure he’s still alive.”
“And what do you expect me to do?” she asked as she maneuvered herself so that O’Banyon had to turn his back on the Town Car to talk to her.
“Fran will listen to you. She doesn’t believe me when I tell her boys tend to fall off the face of the earth when given their first taste of freedom.”
“And what makes you think she’ll believe me?”
“Besides knowing what it’s like, she trusts you.”
As amusing as it was to listen in on this lively exchange, Andy’s attention was distracted by Tommy, who had eased away from the others. While Susan distracted O’Banyon, Tommy took to rooting about under the bonnet of the wreck like a ferret burrowing a nest for itself. Only when he backed off, turned toward Andy — who was doing his best to keep from watching him — and gave him a quick nod while slipping something into his pocket did Andy interrupt Susan. He reminded her the last time he and Tommy had eaten was on the plane.
When she looked over O’Banyon’s shoulder and saw Tommy stepping away from the car, she knew he’d found whatever it was he had been looking for. Turning her attention to Andy, she chuckled. “You’re worse than he is,” she mused as she cocked her head toward O’Banyon. “There are only two things he’s ever interested in.”
“Dare I ask what they are?” Andy asked.
“One’s his stomach,” she replied as she pivoted about on her heels and began to head back to the yard’s gate. “I expect you can work out what the other thing is on you own.”
As he and O’Banyon watched her walk away, Andy grinned. “She really hasn’t changed, has she?”
Knowing exactly what the Englishman was saying, O’Banyon nodded. “No, she hasn’t. If anything, she’s become more of a pain in the ass.”
“I heard that,” Susan called out without bothering to look back over her shoulder at Andy and O’Banyon or slow her pace.
From where he was listening in on this exchange, Tommy watched as the two men broke out in laughter before following Susan, wondering if there was some kind of inside joke he wasn’t privy to. Deciding it might be worth his while to look into the tall ginger’s past to see if he could sort out just what was so special about her, he gave the black box he’d found connected to the Town Car’s computer bus line a pat as if to ensure himself it was there before stepping off and following the others.
After buying lunch for O’Banyon as a way of repaying him for the favor he’d rendered them and bidding him a quick farewell, Andy asked Susan if there was someplace Tommy could examine the black box he’d found while they went over the report O’Banyon had slipped to them.
“My office, of course. I’d be rather shocked if Jenny Garver, my assistant and in-house computer whiz, didn’t have everything Short Round over there might need.”
“I heard that,” Tommy muttered as he came up to Susan’s left.
Looking down at the man beside her who barely stood higher than her shoulders, Susan flashed him a devilish grin and winked. “I know.”
Realizing it was game on, Tommy returned her steady, unflinching stare. “You never did tell me how you two met.”
Once more, Susan winked. “I know.” With that, she turned to Andy, who was on her right. “Come on, cowboy. I expect you’re on the clock.” With that, she stepped off and headed out the door of the midtown restaurant.
“She’s something else, isn’t she?” Tommy proclaimed as he watched her from behind.
“That she is,” Andy muttered more to himself than in response to Tommy. “That she is.”
4
At five foot four, Jenny Garver was as close a match in height to Tommy as could humanly be. That’s where the physical resemblance ended. While Tommy looked like someone had attached a pair of stubby legs, two short arms, and a round head with chubby cheeks onto a beer barrel, the lean girl from Oklahoma with raven-black hair, big brown eyes, and a western drawl that flowed out of her mouth as smoothly as the Red River was the very definition of petite. But it was the way they went about dissecting and analyzing the black box Tommy had found that left Andy realizing they were two peas in a pod.
“Where did you find her?” Andy asked Susan as he watched from across the room as Tommy and Jenny went about their work like a pair of kids who’d stumbled upon a shiny stone.
“She was my driver in Iraq,” Susan replied quietly as she watched the girl, who had become as precious to her as her own daughter, examine the black box.
“Really? I didn’t know you made that one. Were you, ah…”
Looking away from Jenny and over to him, Susan gave Andy one of her signature “get real” looks. “This isn’t the UK, old boy.”
“Whatever happened to once a marine, always a marine?”
Susan’s face clouded as anger over the American military policy concerning someone like her welled up. “Despite what some people think, I’m still a marine.”
“If you say so.”
“Semper fi. Now, come on, cowboy,” she muttered in an effort to change the subject as quickly as possible even as she was making her way into her office. “Let’s go see what the copy of the official report Kevin slipped us has to say about the demise of your man.”
“He’s not my man,” Andy replied as he followed Susan and took a seat across from her at a small conference table she had there.
“He’s a Brit, isn’t he?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, in my book, that makes him your man.”
Andy bit back a sigh. “If you say so.”
In addition to a copy of the police report concerning the investigation into Mullins’s death, Susan had found a second, seemingly unrelated one in the overstuffed envelope O’Banyon had given her. The first one was by far the longest and most detailed. It was the other one, however, that caught their attention and on which Andy focused since the Mullins report was pretty much in line with what the mayor’s office and the FBI had made public.