“What the hell is happening, Mom?”
“Watch your language,” Christyne said.
Ryan gave her an empty stare. “That was a reflex, right?” he said.
She smiled in spite of herself. “I don’t know what’s happening,” she confessed. She spread her arms for a hug. “At least we’re not hurt.”
Ryan allowed himself to be embraced, and decided not to tell her just how hideously he expected all of this to turn out.
In the process, he willed himself not to cry.
The hug was an attempt to soothe his fears, but Ryan broke it off as soon as he could. He snatched the lantern out of her hand and turned a slow circle to reveal the details of their new home. In total, the space appeared to be about twelve feet square, and it was crammed with furniture. Immediately to the right of the door, four sagging twin beds had been shoved into the far corner, at what Christyne figured to be the front of the house, each separated from the adjacent bed by a gap of only a couple of inches. A carpet remnant of indeterminate color covered most of the concrete floor. The beds each had two pillows and a bedspread, and appeared to be fitted with sheets underneath.
“Four beds,” Ryan said. “Do you think they’re expecting more?”
She didn’t offer an answer because she knew he really wasn’t expecting one.
The rest of the space was crammed with miscellaneous furniture. Moving around among the clutter was a challenge, but Ryan managed okay as he explored their prison.
“Why is it so cold in here?” he mused aloud, zipping up his coat. He paused. “Oh, crap,” he said. “This is disgusting.” He turned back to face her. “I found our toilet.”
Actually, it wasn’t a toilet at all. It was a chair with a hole cut in the seat and what looked to be a porcelain pot suspended underneath. “I think that’s called a chamber pot,” Christyne said. “It’s what they used in the days before indoor plumbing when you couldn’t make it to the outhouse, or just didn’t want to go outside.”
“So the poop and pee just sit there?” Ryan asked. This, apparently, was far more horrifying to him than their overall predicament.
“Somebody has to empty it,” Christyne explained.
“Nose game,” Ryan said, and he quickly touched the tip of his nose with his forefinger. In Nasbe family parlance, the last person to touch their nose in the nose game was “it” and therefore had to perform whatever task was in play.
Christyne let it go.
This time when Ryan looked at her, his expression glowed with anger. “I told you not to pick her up,” he said.
While Gail tended the pasta, Jonathan manned the bar. He made Gail’s cosmo first, pouring equal parts Grey Goose L’Orange, Cointreau, orange juice, and cranberry juice into a shaker and giving it a vigorous ride. He strained the pink concoction into her favorite martini glass and delivered it over her shoulder.
“Your sissy drink,” he said. He kissed the nape of her neck and elicited the shiver he’d hoped for.
Gail scrunched her shoulders and took the drink with both hands. “Sneak up on a girl, will you? That’s a good way to get shot.”
“I don’t scare easy, Sheriff,” he said. He walked back to the bar to make a real martini for himself: two or three glugs of Beefeater and a drizzle of vermouth, definitely shaken (not stirred) with ice, then strained into whatever martini glass happened to be closest. Two olives later, he was done.
He took a sip and became self-actualized. “God, I’m good,” he said. He rejoined Gail at the stove and lifted the lid on the marinara. “Smells great.”
She hip-nudged him. “You’re in my way. Where do you keep your bay leaves?”
“Um. In the bay?”
She sighed. “Unbelievable. How can you have a kitchen this grand and not have bay leaves? How do you make marinara when I’m not here?”
“I pretty much open a jar and call it spaghetti sauce.”
Jonathan’s home, one block up from the water, started life as a firehouse. He’d bought it a few years ago after the town decided to relocate the fire trucks to newer digs out on the highway. Now he lived on the first two floors, and his company, Security Solutions, was on the third floor, accessible by a separate entrance. Thanks to money passed on to him from his father, who would never again see the outside of a supermax prison, Jonathan could afford the best of everything, from firepower to cooktops. He was even a pretty decent cook. Still, why work to improve a product that was damn near perfect out of the jar?
But this was Gail’s treat to him, and he took his role as sous-chef seriously. He even hand-shredded the salad and hand-opened the bottle of Italian dressing. He also lit candles and dimmed the lights in the dining room where they gathered at one end of the table, close enough that their knees touched. Cocktails finished, he opened a favorite Lodali Barbera D’Alba.
Jonathan and Gail’s relationship was a complicated one. That’s what happens when your first encounter includes a gunfight. She worked for him now as one of his best investigators. Once a member of the FBI’s elite Hostage Rescue Team, she could thread a needle at fifty yards with just about any firearm, and if she was afraid of anything, he hadn’t yet seen her confronted by it. That was the good part.
Unfortunately, her law degree had somehow melded the Constitution to her DNA, reducing her color spectrum for right and wrong to only black and white: either something was legal or it wasn’t. By contrast, Jonathan’s color palette for justice was kaleidoscopic. If the ends were justified, the means for achieving them were limited only to the breadth of his imagination and the laws of physics of chemistry. It never occurred to him to question whether a strategy for rescuing a good guy from a batch of bad guys might violate a law or two.
It was a rift that occasionally grew to a chasm.
To give their relationship a chance to flourish, they’d banned work discussions during their off-hours together, adding strategy and tactics to religion and politics on the list of topics that were forbidden in polite company. It made sense in theory, but in practice, their brokered peace occasionally left them with long moments of silence. Tonight was an example.
“So, how terrible was it?” Gail finally asked. “On the bridge, I mean.”
Jonathan arched his eyebrows. “I was too caught up in the moment to notice details. A lot of shots fired, a lot of people killed.”
“You’re lucky you didn’t get hurt.”
The gin was just beginning to find his bloodstream. He felt a little flushed as he tasted the wine. “I kept my head down,” he said. “The shooter’s the one who should be counting her blessings. She owes that fed a thank-you card.”
“As you owe Wolverine,” Gail said. “In fact, you owe her a mention in your will.”
Jonathan chuckled. The director of the FBI-Wolverine to Jonathan, thanks to some work he’d done for a Bureau a number of years ago-had covered his tracks on more than a few occasions. “I’m doing better than that,” he said. “I’m buying her breakfast tomorrow.”
Gail took a sip of her wine. “This is good. Are you going to tell her everything?”
“Lodali’s a small vineyard in Tuscany. Everything they touch is great.” Saying the words inspired him to take another taste. “I don’t see a reason to hold back. There’s nothing covert about my presence.”
“In a perfect world, it would be nice not to have your name tied to a terrorist attack.”
Jonathan recoiled. “Is that nervousness I hear?”
“Of course it is. You tried to kill somebody who’d killed Lord knows how many people. I don’t think Fisherman’s Cove needs terrorists flooding in to settle the score.”
He dismissed the point with a wave-not because it wasn’t valid, but because there wasn’t much he could do about it. “Wolverine’s always been able to keep me out of the news. No reason to think she’s lost her touch.”
They fell quiet again.