The Mystery Admirer
by Joshua Falken

Thanks to Tracy Miller for beta-read this fic :-)

Chapter 1 - The First Rose

When she left the El station, it calmly snowed. To protect herself from the cold, she raised the collar of the black leather coat that she was wearing and lowered her beret over her bright eyes. The winter began to get stronger as they approached of the end of the year.

She turned around wondering if she had gone down in right station. It was when she saw in the end of the block a sign: McGinty's. She had found what she sought.

"Will he remember me?" she thought. Then, she shook the head. "Your fool, do you really think that he will want you, after what you did?"

The woman in the black coat went in direction of the bar. The footsteps of the black boots mixed hope and fear.

== == ==

Marissa Clark entered in the apartment of her business partner, Gary Hobson, and she noticed by the noise that he got dressed quickly.

"What is wrong, Gary?" He got scared when hearing her voice, especially for the fact that she caught him putting on his pants. The detail that she can't see him in such situation didn't decrease his embarasament.

"Ah! That's you, Marissa?" he asked, hiding behind the door of the bathroom. "Did you want some thing?"

"Nothing serious." She noticed his shame immediately. She imagined that she had caught him at an inappropriate moment. "I only wanted you to sign these purchase orders. It is so we can have supplies for the holidays. But if you want that I returned another hour..."

"No, there is not need for that." He signed the documents quickly. She heard him to get the Paper.

"Something wrong in the Paper?"

"Well, I have to stop that a high school science project stops the traffic of the entire Wacker Drive."

"What?" she asked confused.

"A student of organic chemistry was carrying a kilogram of metallic sodium in a flask in his backpack, when he slipped and the backpack and the flask with the sodium dropped in a sewer opening. The metal reacted with the water in an explosive way. The drivers got scared and there was a collision. Nobody was wounded, but that caused a jam for five hours." he explained while he put on his leather jacket.

"My God!" Marissa exclaimed. For what she remembered, a science project that go wrong could, at the most, smell badly, and not to stop one of the main streets of Chicago...

"Good luck."

"Thank you."

"And don't forget your scarf." Marissa stated.

"But how you...? Ah, never mind!" Gary went down the stairways and he left McGinty's. Smiling, Marissa followed him.

== == ==

In the most discreet corner of the bar, somebody saw his departure with great interest. A woman in a elegant black coat and beret, drinking a beer, accompanied his movements with her eyes, hidden behind the dark glasses. Some minutes later, when she thought that was safe, she rose from her chair and went to the bartender.

"Where is the bathroom?" she asked him.

The young man in the bar indicated a door close to where Gary had left. The woman calmly went until the door of the bathroom, but in the last instant, she opened the door of the stairway that took to Gary's apartment. Nobody saw she enter there.

Slow and quietly, the woman in black went up the stairways. She stopped in front of Gary's door. She removed from the small bag that she carried a beautiful red rose. She was about to place the flower in front of the door, when she had one thought.

"And if Gary returns tired of one of his strange walks and do not to see the flower? He could even step in the rose by accident..."

For a moment, the idea of arresting the flower in the door occured to her, but she didn't have a insulation tape. Feeling a spy entering in the enemy territory, she opened the door slowly and entered.

"Then... it is here that Gary lives...", she murmured for herself. Yes, the style combined with the owner.

"Meow."

The mystery woman jumped when she heard the orange-tabby cat, on the couch. She laughed at herself, and she caressed the feline, sitting down to its side. She remembered one night when she and Gary had sat down in that couch, viewing a romance movie, and she smiled. Then, the invader left the rose in the table in front of the sofa, with a small envelope.

She rose from the couch and she left the apartment, not without before to give a small wave to the Cat.

"Bye, bye, Cat."

Nobody saw when she left McGinty's.

== ==

It was night when Gary returned to his apartment, after finishing the last mission determined by the Paper. He was very tired. So tired that he tripped in the rug of his living room. And to add insult to the indignity, the cat jumped in Gary's head before jumping upward of the table.

"Listen here, one of those days, I..." Gary stopped when he saw the rose on the table. "What is that?", he wondered. He opened the envelope and read the card, that said:

Dear Gary,

A gift from someone that loves you very much.

From your mystery admirer.

"Mystery admirer?!", he think stunned. He looked at for the Cat waiting an answer. The only answer that the feline gave him was: "Meow!"

== == ==

Gary's mystery admirer was lying in the bed, of her recently-rented apartment. She has just removed her beret, revealing her shoulder-length fire-red hair.

"Will Gary liked it?" she wondered. "I hope he doesn't get scared." She was afraid that Gary interpreted her gesture erroneously...

The mysterious redhead turned in the bed and her eyes saw the photo that she had put on top of the chest of drawers. It was one of her few photos with Gary: the two smiled at the camera.

Forgetting about her fears for one moment, she kissed the tip of one of her gloved fingers and placed it on the face of the black-haired man. A mark of lipstick was on the picture.

"Good night, Gary."

What do you think? Next chapter coming soon!

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