Perez makes that giant final shudder, then relaxes and breathes deeply. I go back to being me, and enfold her in my arms. I honestly have no idea how long we lay there before she wakes up, and I honestly don't care. I do care about the open mouth tongues at work kiss we give each other when she does.
I look her in the eyes, she sees the question there.
"Yes. That was the most fun I have ever had in my life." She pauses and gives me a peck on the lips. "But don't worry, I actually like being conscious during sex."
I give her the best laugh I can muster, which isn't much. I'm thinking about testing that hypothesis when Halloween decides to join us. Perez and I both makes trips to the bathroom, then turn off the lights, and fall asleep, me on my back, her head nestled against my chest.
We have a hectic morning heading to the airport, me going to Kona, her to San Francisco. Our flights are about the same time, and next gate over, meaning we can exchange a final kiss before I have to do my walk around and she has to board.
The aircraft looks good, Kiana looks good looking at me out the window of her jet, and I climb on board wistfully making one last check on her. Could be I really have become a ball- less half man?
We run our checklists, and get our ground clearance, which has us taxi to 24 right behind Perez's aircraft. The flight is uneventful, with Captain Amos flying this segment so I can have the more complicated return landing.
Captain Amos is beside himself that Perez and I are together. He is apparently already making wedding plans and counting on teaching our kids to fly. Really depressing. I can't tell him I'll likely be dead before New Years, no wedding, no kids. He keeps up the discussion of little Packers through 18 holes of golf, messing up my game, and eventually even the flight attendants we're playing with ask him to change the subject.
After dark, I slip quietly out of my room, wander down to Kahalu`u Bay where this whole nightmare started. I wade out into the waves, drop my bathing suit on one of the rocks that sit well off shore, paddle out, change, and dive. It's whale season, and I spin over to Oah'u where I know they like to play, and spend some time up close and personal with a couple humpbacks. One of them dives, and I go with him (or her, I didn't really look for whale junk in the dark), deep, way deep, dark deep, but fun anyway.
Before too long, I head back to the surface, push well off shore, hit the thrusters to get a couple thousand feet of altitude and take the long way home around Kaua'i, quick trip to the south on Kona to pay my respects to Pele, and then back to the bay, grab my suit, and read until I meet the crew for breakfast.
Get out to Keahole early, the captain and I spend a leisurely hour getting ready, and I take the bird up on time. Quiet for most of the trip, except for more wedding suggestions from the captain, we have to deal with a cranky hydraulic pump for the last two hours, and dodge some weather coming in, but I am shortly driving home alone, Kiana still 500 miles to the north.
Or rather, I drive to Anaheim, park in my old favorite spot at the hotel, make a quick check to be sure they haven't installed any cameras recently, jog behind the Chinese restaurant, change into him, put our clothes on the roof, and head off into the night. I do a quick fly by of some houses that won't exist in a few weeks, just to make sure it all looks the same, and then a jaunt down to San Diego, to case the convention center.
Happy, I head back to Mickey's town, drive myself home, and spend the rest of the night going back through my nine pages of slightly grease covered plan, and all the data in my tablet. Morning comes, it's a run down the beach, then shower, breakfast, and off to LAX to pick up officer Perez.
I sneak through security so I can meet her at the gate, give her our first welcome back kiss, and then head off to mom and dad's for Sunday dinner. My sister Carolyn is there, back in town for a friend's graduation from UCLA, and probably also to make sure I will be at her graduation in two weeks. Everybody makes the assumption that Perez is coming as well, and, in fact, she lets us know that we are all invited to a party at her parent's house, which is only about 20 minutes from Stanford. From the looks, my mom obviously was in on the party conspiracy, but she wanted Kiana to make the big announce.
We drive back to my place, me feeling unusually nervous as I open the door and let her in. I need to pee, and manage to get that done (with an extra loud hand washing so she knows I did) in time to get to her while she is half undressed, the bed already pulled out. There is a question in my eyes, and she sees it.
"No, I am not going to ride the salami tonight."
There must have been a happy sigh that ripped through my whole body, because she starts laughing.
"Air Force, you know I am a control freak."
My turn to laugh. "Hadn't noticed, officer Perez."
She gets a big smile, puts her hands on her hips, and with her shirt already off, it is incredibly unintentionally sexy. I wander over and put my hands on those hands on those hips as she finishes her thought.
"I have never been that out of control in my entire life. I wanted one thing, and couldn't stop myself. It was actually a little scary."
I pull her closer. "As long as I'm the one thing, I'm good with that."
She hits my arm.
"Perez," something is about to come out of my mouth that probably shouldn't, but I can't get Captain Amos out of my head. "If you want to get married, or something, all you have to do is let me know."
She hits me really hard on the arm.
"If that was a marriage proposal, it has to be the worst one in the history of marriage. I'm going with dumbass here, not serious ass."
"Captain Amos was planning our wedding, and you know our moms are thinking the same thing, and I only have six months, and you deserve so much, and I can't give it to you, and...."
Her lips cut me off. It's an exceptionally nice kiss. She's crying a little when we stop.
"Simon Packer, if you actually got a ring and got down on your dumbass knee, I would be wearing it, happily, but do you sincerely think that our lives aren't complicated enough?"
"I love you Kiana Perez." And that's the last thing either of us says with intention for a long time.
Chapter 21
Sun up, I go for a run around the lighthouse, but I never quite settle in. From almost the moment I leave my apartment building my internal TCAS is warning me of a collision. It feels just like it did in the old days when the drones were watching me and I didn't know it, assuming it was Fog Dude.
I do a couple circles of the lighthouse itself, feeling clear on the river side and in trouble on the ocean and city sides. I stop, breathe, and try to look like I'm not looking at anything while I am busily trying to look at everything. It's actually kind of silly, because if whoever it is is simply in a high spot with binoculars or a telephoto lens, my oh so human eyes will never find them.
Of course, I could be just imagining it. But I'm not.
I jog toward the shops in the seaside village, not my normal path, but given that I have never felt this before, it might be that whoever it is doesn't know my normal path. There was no difference in how strongly I felt being watched as I ran, but the feeling suddenly started and stopped as I made my lighthouse circles. I cut on the north side of the first building, and I am invisible. South of the second, and I am on someone's radar. West of the third, no line of sight, make a loop around it, and the east is within sight.
Gives me an obvious choice. There is a really nice hotel just to the east of my position, which is up the hill from the beach, access via a large concrete staircase leading to a big open platform. From there, a walkway leads to the Hyatt, and to the Long Beach convention center.
I jog that way, dip under the stairs and the feeling, which had been with me the whole way, suddenly stops. Pretending that I always go this way, I take the stairs two at a time, followed by a loop around the platform. Then it's off toward the hotel, but up the hill beside the convention center, past it, and right turn onto the street, which will take me back home. Once I'm beside the convention center, the feeling of being watched ends, and I am clear all the way to the Starbuck's parking garage.
Or I should say, I am nervous. There was a blond headed man standing on that platform, well over six feet tall, wearing a muscle shirt that showed off his, and his Marine Corps tattoo, pretending to be taking pictures out over the ocean. A man who I don't recall ever having seen before in person, but whose picture is hanging on the bulletin board in Flaherty's conference room. A man apparently of Middle Eastern descent was standing next to him. Not someone I recognize, but someone I am sure I should.
Instead of going into my house, I grab an extra large swimsuit out of Starbuck, certain that I am not on any radar, change into him, put in my nice green contact lenses, grab my secret phone, and go for another jog along the beach. Probably the stupidest thing I have ever done, but Perez is upstairs, not here to stop me.
No joy, however, they're gone when I get there, and a quick run up toward the hotel and through the parking garage it shares with the convention center finds me nothing. I get back to Starbuck, change, run upstairs and let Perez know the bad news.
She spends the next half hour on the phone with Special Agent Flaherty, and I spend it wishing she'd just let special agent dumbass handle it. It gives me time for a shower, then I pack my tablet and the nine pages of doom into my backpack. These guys have been in my apartment before and I don't need anything too incriminating for them to find if they repeat the performance.
Phone conversation over, Perez showers before she and I head south toward the mall and buy two web enabled security cams, before turning north and her apartment. We spend the time it takes to set up the web cam thinking and talking about what Ali's former employee might want with me, who he might be working for now, and how we should go after him.
Basically, we have no answers to any of those questions, except maybe that they are just pissed at us. I know there should be some cool explanation, but I kinda think just pissed is all there is to it. They know we don't have the gas nozzle anymore, and they probably don't have any more of the chemicals necessary to make it work either.
By the time we get back to my place, there are two FBI agents parked outside, pretending that two guys in dark suits, wearing sunglasses, in a dark blue sedan with six antennas on it are inconspicuous at the beach in the middle of the day. I should warn them that the last two who parked there got shot dead, but I will assume they already know that.
I hook up the web cam to see most of my apartment, which is really not much of a challenge given that my apartment isn't big enough to hold most Hollywood starlet's shoe collections. It is wireless, so I can leave my laptop plugged in and it will collect one picture every 15 seconds when I am gone. Of course, if they steal the laptop that won't be terribly helpful, but there is a cupboard over the microwave which has a outlet in it for the fan, as the ever clever Perez showed me. It might work as a hiding place.
We stay in the rest of the day, playing with each other, the cat, and the video game console. I tuck Perez in to sleep, a rather disappointed but understanding look on her face, change, sit and read until the sun appears, then despite orders to the contrary, go for my morning run while Kiana is still asleep. Two new FBI dudes are sitting in the car, and one of them ends up looking extremely stupid trying to follow me down the beach wearing his suit and keeping a respectful distance. For good or bad though, no one is paying any attention to me today.
She drives us to the airport, parks in the LAPD lot, and we bypass security to walk to her gate. Flaherty is already there, but boards by herself so I can give Kiana her goodbye kiss in private. Then it's off to my gate on the other side of the airport.
Nice clean trip to Kona, no bumps or bruises, no talk of marriage and weddings from Captain Don the Perfectionist. Once we're in, he wants to go play golf, the flight attendants are hopping a flight over to Honolulu to go shopping, and I beg off both saying I have a planned Skype visit with my girlfriend.
Really meant to say "sky" visit, but only I would get the joke. Actually, I eat in, thinking as I settle down for lunch that Perez is still at Kennedy Airport in New York waiting for her connecting flight. She doesn't call, and I don't either, not wanting to disturb the first big FBI mission. She didn't say it, but no question it excited her almost as much as the salami.
She's landing in Moscow at six their time Wednesday night, which is five in the morning Hawaii time. I get a text from her an hour later. Not a nice text. I stuffed a set of his clothes into her bag before I carried it out to the car, something she does not find amusing for some reason.
I am cleared to takeoff from runway 17 seven hours later, and land back home in LA after another six, which should be just as they are getting up Thursday morning, Moscow time. Perez, always the earlier riser, has left me a sext already to which I reply in kind.
