3rd World Products, Book 17 (12 page)

Marie walked back to our table and sat down, then sipped her drink in silence for a few moments. Without preamble, she asked, “Is there any reason I shouldn’t go home with you?”

Pretending to give her question serious thought for a couple of seconds, I replied, “I can’t think of one at this very moment.”

With a wry glance, she sipped again and chuckled, “Well, hell, why not take another minute and think real hard about it?”

With a slight head shake, I replied, “Nope. Not necessary, ma’am. While you were eyeballing the piano, I was eyeballing you.” As if admitting something, I said, “That’s mostly what convinced me, in fact. I decided that even though you’ve always been downright mean to me, I couldn’t pass up such a glorious opportunity.”

Her gaze narrowed. “To do what? Get even a little?”

I leaned closer to her and said, “
No
. That was a compliment,
not
a snide remark. While you were standing by the piano, I developed a rather intense urge to climb up your gorgeous legs and lick you silly.” Sitting back upright, I added, “Unless, of course, you think it’s too soon in our relationship for something like that.”

Marie gave me a rather staring ‘
are you nuts?
‘ expression, then swilled the last of her drink and set the glass down with a gasp.

“No,” she chuckled softly, “This might turn out to be a huge mistake, but it’s definitely not too soon. Not at all.”

Chapter Nine

With goodbyes on the way out, we headed for the parking lot. I half expected to encounter Tommy again, but he didn’t show. Marie and I stepped between a couple of larger SUVs, mounted our boards, and soared into the night sky.

As we approached my house, Marie suddenly veered up and left. Her board’s tail lights made a sweeping arc westward and I followed, catching up as she reached the shoreline of the Gulf of Mexico. She stopped her board a hundred feet above the beach and I stopped beside her.

Looking down at her board, she pointed at it and grinningly said, “Stay!”, then carefully lowered herself to sit on it like a surfer, her legs dangling on either side. I took a similar position on mine and studied the world below us as I waited.

Marie’s silence lasted maybe two full minutes. Not looking at me, she said, “I’m having second thoughts, Ed.”

I promptly responded, “Okay.”

She looked at me and her voice rose slightly. “
Okay!? That’s all you have to say?
”

“Yup.” I shrugged. “You’ve been through a helluva lot, ma’am. If you aren’t quite past it, don’t sweat it. Take your time.”

Her gaze narrowed. “That wasn’t what I was referring to.”

As I raised an index finger and started to speak, she snapped, “And if you’re going to correct my English again, I’ll knock you off that goddamned board.”

Letting the finger drop, I said, “Maybe — just maybe, mind you — I was only about to try to be sympathetic, ma’am.”

“Crap. You were about to try to tweak me again.”

“Okay, having established that your mind is as sharp as ever, it now seems likely you thought of some other objection.”

Holding her glare for another moment, Marie turned and looked out to sea for a time, then said, “I don’t know. The ‘bots did too good a job. Some people have thought I was Tanya’s sister.”

Uh, huh. Here we go. I asked, “And why’s that a bad thing? Don’t all you super-hotties want to try to look young forever?”

Turning to face me with visible irritation, Marie snapped, “Don’t play dumb with me, dammit. You
know
why. Would you be thinking of her while you were screwing me?”

“Funny, she asked essentially the same question after she saw some old pictures of you. Wanna know what I told her?”

Sitting straight, Marie paused, then snapped, “Yes.”

“I said I’d be thinking of Yvonne Craig.”

“Cute, but that answer won’t work for me.”

“At this very moment, no answer would work for you, so it doesn’t really matter. I’m ready for some coffee. How about you?”

Without waiting for a response, I nosed my board upward in a roll and flipped it upright at the apex, getting to my feet and heading east at a leisurely pace. Marie caught up a few moments later and flew alongside in silence.

As we neared US-19, a southbound sedan ran the red light at Cortez Boulevard. He had to be doing close to a hundred as he whizzed up the slight hill past Weeki Wachee Springs. About a mile behind him, three screaming, flashing cop cars crested the previous hill and slowed slightly as they approached the traffic light. A few cars there stopped and the cops shot past them.

I turned to follow the sedan and Marie banked to join me. The sedan had nearly reached the Northcliffe Boulevard intersection when it turned off its lights and braked hard.

Maybe the driver thought he had some special driving talent. If so, he was very wrong. He angled to the left a bit too sharply, apparently aiming for the gas station driveway just behind the northbound side of the intersection.

Barely avoiding a car screeching to a halt at the stoplight, the sedan fishtailed hard, missed the gas pumps by inches, and ended up heading back toward the street. He made it across the northbound side of the highway and braked hard before his front wheels slammed the curb of the median strip. Both front tires blew and the car’s rear flipped up. The car skidded forward on its nose, digging into the grassy median, and then the car completed its flip and slammed down onto its roof.

All the windows exploded in sprays of glass. The battered car slid another thirty feet or so, grinding to a halt half onto the far shoulder of the road. Hovering above the wreck, I put up a screen and sent a probe down for a closer look.

Marie yelped, “What the hell’s that for? Aren’t we going down there?”

I replied, “I’m not,” as the probe showed us the lower half of a man protruding from beneath the roof. He must have gone through the windshield during the flip. His upper half had been beneath the roof during the car’s slide.

As the cops arrived, I canceled the probe and turned toward the house. Marie came alongside and we flew in silence until we reached my front porch. When I opened the door, she didn’t immediately step forward to enter the house.

Holding the door open, I asked, “Something wrong?”

She looked thoughtful as she said, “I don’t know. Maybe I should head back to Ocala.”

A number of responses came to me, but I only said, “Suit yourself,” as I realized I’d left my coffee mug aboard Galatea. I silently called her down to retrieve it and startled Marie when I abruptly reached past her to take my mug from the flitter’s dash.

I said, “Thanks, Tea,” and left the door open when headed back into the house past Marie. As I rinsed my mug, I heard the front door close, then heard two soft paces that put Marie in the alcove archway.

She asked, “Got another cup?”

Reaching into a cabinet, I chose a big tan mug from an Iowa regional blood bank and set it on the counter by the instant coffee jar. Producing a clean spoon from a drawer, I set it in the mug.

As I spooned coffee into my mug, Marie came to stand in front of the jar and asked, “Is instant all you have?”

Opening another cabinet, I lifted down a box of tea-bag type coffee packets and said, “Nope. Got these.”

Her gaze narrowed and her lips tightened, then she said, “They’re the same kind Tanya uses.”

I added hot water and stirred as I replied, “They’re also the kind Angie and Lori use. Tanya never came into this house.”

Taking a  bag out of the box, Marie dropped it into her cup and poured hot water over it as she asked, “Why not?”

“We spent most of our time on the flitter, trying to figure out how to get you treated without going to prison.” With a grin, I added, “She was willing, but I wasn’t. I didn’t want you to think less of me.”

Giving me a fisheye, Marie archly asked, “Think
less
of you?”

Pretending thoughtfulness, I shrugged. “Yeah, you’re right. You hated me, so that
would
have been pretty tough, wouldn’t it? Let’s just say I didn’t want you to think I’d lost my touch.”

Rolling her eyes, Marie chuckled, “Your
touch
?”

“Yeah. You know; getting the job done without getting caught. Dodging the Stasi and all that.”

Marie occupied herself for a time by using her spoon to massage and stir her coffee-teabag. Without looking up from her efforts, she softly said, “We were damned good at that, weren’t we?”

“Yup.”

“We never lost a client. Not one.”

“Nope. Not one.”

Spoon-squeezing the bag a few more times, she chuckled and asked, “Remember Marienwald?”

“Let’s see… Dead of winter, seven people, a truck that quit with sixteen klicks to go, and half a company of Stasi searching the town and woods for us.
That
Marienwald, ma’am?”

She chuckled again. “Yeah. That one.”

“As I recall, you sort of borrowed a truck from the Stasi and scared the hell out of our clients by showing up in a uniform.”

Marie laughed, “And you baited the Stasi into blocking and searching two streets north of the one we used.”

I shrugged. “Sure. Had to. We needed the river road.”

She shuddered. “The water came all the way up to the damned
windows
, Ed. It was a foot deep inside the truck. I was almost
sure
we’d have to swim for it.”

“It splashed your windows a bit, that’s all. Back where I was, it never got higher than the tailgate.”

With another shudder, Marie test-sipped her coffee, then put the bag in the sink and turned to face me. “Bullshit,” she said, “You were soaking wet when we finally stopped.”

“Yup. The tailgate —
on a truck that you picked out for us
— leaked. Leaked real bad, in fact. The back end was full of water and I got knocked flat when we climbed up out of the river. Damned near got washed out of the truck. Tell you what, ma’am; I was never as happy as when we finally got that fire going. Next time you can bait the Stasi and
I’ll
pick the getaway truck.”

That made her laugh again. “Yeah, sure. The Forestampt thought their woods were on fire in the middle of the night. They got there before anyone else. There had to be half a dozen fire trucks.”

The moment of shared humor faded slowly, but fade it did. After a time Marie looked at me over the rim of her cup as she sipped, then said, “I still have a big problem about Tanya, Ed.”

I shrugged. “Try to ignore my sighs of deep and devastating disappointment, ma’am.”

She grinningly snorted, “Oh, fuck you and your disappointment. You don’t really care at all.”

“Nah, guess not. It isn’t something I can fix. Stay or go, Marie. It’s all up to you.”

Regarding me for a time, she set her cup on the counter and looked around the house, then looked at me.

“Show me the guest room.”

I noddingly indicated the other end of the house and said, “End of the hall on the left. Bathroom’s on the right.”

“Where’s the master bedroom?”

“To the right of the bathroom.”

She canted her head and eyed me briefly again, then headed down the hall to the guest room. A few moments later she came out of the guest room and went into the bathroom. The door closed.

I called up a screen to check email and messages as I headed for the back porch. Leaving the glass door open, I took a seat in a lawn chair outside the screen porch. Hm. A string of messages from a new spammer. I tagged them all and checked one from Ginny Harrington.

My name was on a list in her message and all the recipients of the message were visible. She asked if I’d already registered for her group’s weekend charity ride. A pressure tactic. Ginny knows I don’t do group rides, but she’s a presumptuous status-seeking organizer.

I used a probe to locate her computer — a rather fancy laptop — and removed my name and email addy from her various lists, then dug into her contact lists. I let Galatea fish up and delete mentions of me from the hundred or so machines involved in some manner with Ginny’s, then deleted her initial message.

As I’d done all that, Marie had come to stand some feet behind me. I waved over my shoulder and opened the next message. Marie went back into the house, then returned to the porch. Taking a seat on the other side of the table, she set her coffee cup down and looked around.

“Ed,” she said, and I looked up at her.

“Here. Present. Yo.”

“Was… Was your friend Angie serious about hiring me?”

“I’d say so. She doesn’t waste her time or anyone else’s.”

After a pause, Marie said, “I’ve been gone from it all for so long.”

I nodded. “Yeah, you’re my age, and you’ve been out of the business so long, and things have changed so much, and it’ll be like starting from scratch, and…”

She quietly snorted, “Shut up, dammit.”

“Oh, yes’m. By your command, ma’am.”

“Well?! How would
you
feel?!”

Letting my screen dissipate, I said, “Gee, lady, I dunno. One day a big-assed spaceship parked over the Gulf. I was offered a job shepherding an alien woman who wasn’t really all that alien. The job was offered to me by a woman I hadn’t heard from since the seventies. They replaced a chunk of her spine and I was given a flitter and a dose of ‘bots.”

Sipping my coffee, I said, “Unlike you, I didn’t need to be repaired before I was hired. I’d been out of the spook biz for twenty years and out of the mercenary biz for ten years. If I hadn’t been working directly for Linda, I’d have been working for people half my age, but I wouldn’t have let that stop me. Retirement sucks. I was bored shitless. A shiny new adventure popped up and I damned well jumped on it. Now it’s your turn to jump on one. Or not, I suppose, if you think you have something better to do.”

Marie sat there almost like a chastised child for a moment, then took a breath and sighed it out. The end of the sigh became a soft chuckle that ended with, “
Now
I know why I came here.”

Grinning, I asked, “Y’weren’t just hot for me, huh?”

Snorting a laugh, she shook her head. “No.”