Summer at Peregrine Cliffs
A/N:The latest summer 2017 challenge is longer; a multi-chapter story about the team renting a huge beach house for the summer, so that team members can visit and stay at varying times and periods. Mine is a slight variation as you will see. I've borrowed some of Tom Clancy's characters, as well as a few from NCIS. (My other two loves besides Bones.) Obviously, I don't own any of these fictional people; I can only lay claim to my strange imagination.
For their upcoming anniversary, Brennan resolved to purchase a retirement home for Booth. His slow recovery from the serious abdominal wound sustained during a gun battle with Victor Masborian's thugs had drained them both emotionally. They needed a positive future focus.
The advance on her upcoming book was more than sufficient for a down payment, and she could easily cover the balance once her royalties began. (That is the logic she intended to use on her husband, to silence his protests that she was over-indulging him. The truth was that she could easily write a check today for the purchase price of any home she chose. And while Booth was well aware of this fact, Brennan still downplayed the difference in their incomes.)
She wanted something secluded enough to give them privacy, but closer to shopping and city life than their West Virginia place where they'd found Andy Taylor or the land with which Broadsky had taunted Booth. She smiled to herself, thinking how aggravated the misguided 'Hand of God' sniper would be to learn that his carefully selected remote acreage had tripled in value since that case. The man had given Booth an entirely unintended windfall.
The scientist intended to take her time carefully choosing a place for their 51st year together and beyond. (Might as well be extremely optimistic about their lifespans, right?) During her many trips to digs around the world, Brennan had most enjoyed the expeditions to places near the ocean. She had endured rather than relished the hot humid climate of Maluku; but she had loved the sea since childhood; first feeling the sand and tide during brief summer jaunts to the Carolina coast with her parents and Russ.
A few years prior, at the invitation of Booth's surgeon Dr. Jursik, she had addressed Mid-Atlantic Medical Association members on the use of iris scans in law enforcement. One of the attendees most enthusiastic and curious about her topic was Dr. Caroline Ryan, a prominent ophthalmic surgeon at the Wilmer Eye Institute in Baltimore. Cathy Ryan had so many questions she invited Brennan to lunch and the two women had hit it off immediately. Despite their busy schedules and 40-mile separation, the pair had since maintained frequent contact, becoming fast friends.
Not surprising, Brennan had thought. We are both highly intelligent, at the top of our fields, and strongly motivated to improve people's lives. She, by restoring sight; I by solving crimes with Booth.
Their husbands also had much in common although their areas of crime prevention differed and they couldn't discuss many classified subjects. Danny Beck had assured Booth that Jack Ryan was a stand-up guy. Upon reading several of the man's exceptional books on naval history and warfare, Booth found them fascinating; almost as good as his wife's Agent Andy novels. No wonder his classes at the Naval Academy were so popular with midshipmen.
The two couples had dined together when they could, and eventually visited each other's homes for a weekend. Brennan realized she'd found her target area for Booth's retirement home. Huntingtown, Maryland. The Ryan's home was located in North Beach on the Peregrine Cliffs western coast of Chesapeake Bay,33 miles south of Annapolis, 38 miles from DC.
Brennan sought Cathy Ryan's advice on a summer rental to try out before purchasing a property. She suggested Open Farm Bed and Breakfast on the Lower Marlboro Pike. The owners, friends of theirs, were getting on in age and the husband's cardiac condition required a complex surgery. Unable to open for the summer season, these proprietors still needed income while he convalesced. The worried wife had disclosed their predicament to Dr. Ryan two weeks earlier when they came to Johns Hopkins for a pre-surgery consult. Cathy realized Brennan's desire to rent a spacious summer cottage might provide a solution for both parties.