Saturday April 3 2004
Cuyamaca Rancho State Park, California
Eddie pulled the top of his sleeping bag down just enough to uncover his face. "Figures, I let you buy the camping gear, you'd get a mirror. You can't start your morning without spending half an hour in front of it."
Bobby gave his temple another lick with the handleless brush. "You saying I'm conceited or something?"
"Neh. It's the only time I see you look at one, really. But it beats me why you can't step out the door without every hair in place."
"How the world sees you's important, bro. Who gives respect to a guy who combs his hair with his fingers?"
"I comb my hair with my fingers."
"My point is made." Bobby turned slightly, examining the image in the tiny mirror hanging from the side wall of the tent. Bobby thought the guy in the mirror looked pretty good – not a chick magnet or anything, that would be conceited; but you could tell at a glance that all was right with this guy's world. He looked at his haircut, and debated whether to grow it out a little more.
We'll let your hair grow out for now, a woman's voice whispered in the back of his mind. I think you'll look positively edible with it down around your shoulders.
Not too much longer, he decided.
"Hmph." Eddie rolled on his side and pulled the bag up to his eyebrows. "What time is it?"
He glanced at the watch Anna had given him. "Seven or so." Bobby had never gone camping, but it didn't seem too bad. The walls of the tent were glowing from the morning sun, the air was fresh and strangely scented, and he could hear birds in the nearby trees – way better than an alarm clock. A good way to start the day, he decided.
"Your dad show?"
"Don't know. Haven't been outside yet." And he was in no hurry. His usual feeling of being about to go on stage when he stepped out the bedroom door was subdued here. It gave him a warm and peaceful feeling to know the great outdoors was his at the lift of a zipper.
"That's another thing. Why'd you get two tents?"
He rubbed at his chin, and decided a day without a shave wouldn't hurt. "He likes to come and go without telling anybody. I figured I'd make it easy for him."
"Hmph," Eddie said again. "So, what's to eat?"
"Thought you were going back to sleep."
"I can't sleep with my stomach growling."
"We've got milk and cereal, I think."
"That's it? I didn't do anything to deserve this. Starving to death in the wilderness."
"You can see the car from the front door, bro. I think we backpacked all of fifty yards into the wilderness before we set up camp. There's a restaurant back the way we came, maybe ten miles." He smiled as he turned from the mirror. "I thought you camped when you were a kid. Scouts and all that."
"Yeah, well, Dad's idea of roughing it was leaving his laptop behind. And my scoutmaster was more about prepping us for badges than teaching us survival stuff. Besides, I didn't want to get too far from the car. I want more than a sheet of nylon between me and a hungry wildcat if I hear one." At Bobby's look, Eddie said, "You didn't read the sign? 'There may be mountain lions in this park. Be on alert. Although normally elusive, they have been known to attack without warning.' He unzipped the bag and threw it open. "So did you do the same thing with the zipper?"
"What thing with the zipper?"
"You know, like you do with the door."
Bobby frowned. "What are you talking about?"
"What, are you doing it in your sleep or something?" Eddie searched through his pack for his toothbrush, head down and hair falling into his eyes. "Every morning, as soon as you get out of bed, you go to the bedroom door and open it a crack and shut it again. Weirded me out at first. It was like you were checking to make sure it would open."
La Jolla California
"'Bootylicious'." Sarah's eyes were hidden behind her sunglasses, but Roxy saw her nose wrinkle in distaste. "They really said that."
"Among other things." Roxanne sat beside Sarah, both of them out on the pool deck in lounge chairs. They watched Kat churn up the pool swimming laps, the empty beach at the bottom of the little hill, and distant boats in the water beyond. The late-morning sun was peeking over the roof and shining down on the concrete, which was just beginning to warm up for the day: a perfect time to work on her tan. "Not a big deal. Really. They were watching her cross the Quad and started making comments before they saw me. It was harmless."
"It's disgusting. Talking about her derriere like it was a lollipop."
"More like a peach. It was just guy talk, Sarah. They do it all the time."
"I'm sure. In between lying about their batting averages and remarking what cold customers the girls in school are." Sarah squeezed a dollop of baby oil onto her arm and rubbed it in. "When will they realize they'd have better luck with women if they'd drop that ridiculous patter and the attitudes that go with it? Really, what girl in her right mind would feel flattered by that sort of attention?"
Roxy kept her silence. She'd often enjoyed just that sort of attention from boys before. But she'd been younger then, just experimenting with her sexuality, mostly with boys no older and just as inexperienced. And Mr. Lynch sort of shared Sarah's views on the subject, which left Roxanne feeling self-conscious about courting hoots and comments these days.
"And besides," Sarah went on, as she watched Kat climb the ladder out of the pool and head dripping for the springboard, "isn't that a term they use if a girl's bottom is a little bigger than average?"
"Well, that's Kat all over. You have to get close to realize, though. From ten steps away, everything fits together, you know?" She lifted her eyebrows. "Except for the rack. That wouldn't look natural on anybody."
Kat bounced on the end of the board, making it bend until it almost touched the surface of the water, then catapulted into the air. Roxy and Sarah both whipped their damp towels off the concrete to hold up in front of them as the big redhead hit the water with a huge splash that soaked the chairs and deck surrounding.
Kat's head broke surface at the other end of the pool. She saw Roxy and Sarah using their towels to wipe their chairs and the table between. "Sorry."
Roxy stated wringing out her towel. "That sounded a lot more sincere the first time, Sis. We got some passive-aggressive action going on here?"
Instead of answering, Kat climbed out and went to her own wet chair, a small distance from Roxy and Sarah's but likewise facing the pool and beach, and just as soaked. As she started twisting her dripping towel, she asked, "Where's the suntan oil?"
Sarah reached for the bottle of baby oil. Roxy said, "Whoa. We can't use that stuff. It's like, SPF negative. We'd fry." She produced her own bottle from under the chair and tossed it to her sister.
Sarah regarded the two of them with a little smile. "Melanin deficiency. What a trial that must be for the master race." Her arms and shoulders and legs were water-beaded like a car coming out of the wash with a fresh coat of wax, and looked as smooth as Anna's, only about six shades darker. Roxy watched her abs ripple slightly as she spread a little oil on her already-glistening thighs. "Want me to get your backs?"
"No, thanks," Kat said as she popped the top on Roxy's bottle.
"Sure? My hands are already oily."
"I'm going to lie on my back. I can get my own front." As she splurted an ounce of Coppertone on her belly, she said, "So. Anybody doing anything tonight?"
Roxy spoke up. "Hit a club, maybe?"
"Count me out," Sarah said, stretching out a foot to examine her recent pedi. "I'm not ready for a night of fending off passes."
No, Roxy thought, you look like you've got other plans. A heavy date with that girl from the volleyball team, maybe. "Well, I am. Kat? Wanna shake your groove thing?"
"I suppose," Kat said doubtfully. "I was thinking of the theater. The Rep is doing 'Kiss me, Kate.'"
"Gawd. Shoot me now." She had a thought. "What about your girlfriends from school? The three chicks in Bobby's band? Lori and Alex and…" Roxy gave Sarah a quick glance, just a movement of her eyes. "The one Bobby went out with."
"Melanie," Sarah said, rubbing baby oil between her breasts. "Melanie Richards."
"Yeah. Maybe they want to make it a night."
"I don't know about Lori and Melanie, but Alex is going to Mexico with her sister, remember?" Kat rubbed lotion into her upper arms, looking out to sea. "Wonder how her date with Joel went last night."
"Oh, yeah, right. Hey. There's an idea. Let's go check out TJ."
Kat shook her head. "I know Mr. Lynch said our IDs are solid, but I'm not sure I want to risk a border crossing for a pleasure trip. It seems a perfect place for IO to give photos of us to people it trusts." She leaned back, put on her shades, and shifted around on her lounge chair, trying to get comfortable with her heels hanging off the end.
Roxy sighed theatrically. "This is impossible. How could you be stuck for something to do in a place like this?"
Sarah leaned back in her chair. "Sounds like you've been depending on Eddie too much to provide your entertainment."
"As if." Roxanne blew a strand of damp hair off her forehead. "Did I overreact, do you think?"
"Roxanne, do you really think every guy carries condoms in his wallet?"
"Well, that doesn't mean he was planning something."
"No, it just means he was one step closer to doing something impulsive and selfish. Do you think Bobby carries condoms in his wallet?"
"Bobby's a bad example." She lowered her voice, even though the three of them were alone on the deck. "You know he's waiting for you to switch teams."
"Don't be ridiculous. I like him, but we're never going to be like that. I thought I made that clear at Darwin."
Roxy stretched, feeling the sun on her skin, and tried to decide whether to start a fight with the Apache Princess. "I don't know. You looked plenty close our last night at Darwin, before we ran."
"He was just desperate for somebody." Sarah made the tiniest motion of her head in Kat's direction: Roxy's big sister was still, face to the sky, and might be sleeping. "And nobody else was stepping up to the plate."
"You were already in the bullpen, all warmed up. What about our first night here, when you came in from the pool in just a towel?"
"I was there first. I wanted a swim, and I didn't have a suit yet, that's all. I didn't know he'd be coming out. I wasn't waiting for him. I got out when he showed up."
"No, you came in when Anna went out to clean the pool. And you got dressed and went right back out again. And came right back in, with smoke coming out your ears. Don't deny it."
Sarah shifted. "Of course I was upset. I thought I'd just caught Lynch's housekeeper seducing his teenage son. I wasn't jealous, for heaven's sake."
Kat said, startling them, "We could go to the beach."
Roxy stared at the strip of sand maybe fifty yards away. "Uh huh."
"Not there. I heard about this place just up the coast. It sounds wonderful. Not crowded, very secluded and hard to get to. You either have to wait for low tide and take a long walk around the rocks or make a steep descent down a cliff. Hang gliders use the top of it for a launch point. We could watch. The guy I talked to says it's the best beach around."
"He would," Sarah said dryly. "I'm sure he offered to take you there."
"Well, he offered to show me. He said it was a little hard to find. But I'm sure we could do it on our own, if we spent a little time on it."
"Black's Beach," Sarah said. "Maybe five miles north, between here and Torrey Pines. Just past the U of C. If you really want to go, we could be there in ten minutes. Drive past the main lot with the glider port to the next one. The start of path is clearly marked."
"You've been there?"
"I've thought about it, but no. But the person who invited me was a little more informative. Caitlin, it's a nude beach."
"Ewww." Roxy curled her lip.
"It's not what you think. Couples go there, but it's not a meat market. If you've ever wondered what it's like to swim in the surf naked, I'm sure you'd have a good time. But not with a guy you hardly know who comes with a headful of wrong ideas and a camera."
"Pass," Kat said, looking back up at the sky.
Anna appeared, dressed in her little white bikini, a load of towels over her arm. "Anybody hungry? Thirsty?" She draped a towel over the back of each of their chairs and picked up the wet ones. "If you're not going out, we could make tonight Fem Fare."
"No, thanks," Sarah said, swinging her legs off the lounger and rubbing oil off her skin with the fresh towel. "I'll be eating out." At Roxanne's scoff, she added, "Child."
"Anna," Roxy said, "What's with the suit? You going to clean the pool?"
"No, I did that yesterday." The little cyber eyed the surface of the water and the puddled deck. "Though I probably should top it off. I just thought that, if I'm going to be serving you girls out here all day, I'd stand out less if I'm properly attired." Her eyes swept out over the water in a way that made Roxy think of a radar dish. "The new landscaping should hide the pool from the rear by next year, if we're still here then."
"Where would we go? And why?"
"Oh, you never know." Her head stopped moving. "I've seen that boat before. Twenty-eight or thirty-foot, flying bridge, red striping. Four visible occupants, all male. Three hundred meters, ten degrees right of perpendicular to the beach, under power but keeping station relative to the shore."
"What boat?" Roxy sat up and stared out over the water. Sarah dropped her towel and looked too. Kat started to rise.
"Don't," Anna said. "They're too far for you to make out, and they're not doing anything suspicious. Two of them are watching with binoculars, though. They'd wonder why you're all looking their way." She started wringing towels, idly looking out over the water in another direction. "When it was out there yesterday, there were only two aboard. Now they're turning towards shore, headed our way."
The air felt too thick for Roxy to draw in. "What do we do?"
Anna quit fussing with the wet towels and looked at her. "Sweetie. If I thought they were dangerous, I wouldn't be standing here. They're all college-age boys, possibly classmates of yours, though I hope not. They were motoring by a hundred meters offshore yesterday afternoon. When they approached the house, they suddenly throttled back and cruised by at a crawl. I'm quite sure they spotted Caitlin catching some after-school sunshine. We'll just have to see what they do next."
"Great," Roxy said, trying not to hide her relief – and to hold in the shakes. "Those horn dawgs from school find out where we live, we'll have to move. Won't we?"
Anna turned toward the house, towels in hand. "It seems likely, but not certain. I'm sure Mr. Lynch has considered this possibility. And when Mr. Lynch enters my probability computations, the margin of error goes way up. Let's see what happens when they reach shore."
About a minute later, the cabin cruiser slowed to a stop and dropped anchor a short distance offshore. Roxy imagined they thought they were being subtle parking across from Mrs. Sylvestri's. Two guys slid over the back railing into the waist-deep water, calling back and forth to the ones still in the boat and receiving a cooler and packages to carry to shore. It looked like they were planning to stay awhile.
The first wave of the invasion reached shore and began to set up in Mrs. Sylvestri's portion of the beach, then one of the boys pointed down the beach, as if there was some reason to prefer the patch of sand right in front of their pool. Again, Roxy thought, subtle. Roxy said, "Do you recognize any of them?"
"No," Sarah swung her legs back onto the lounge chair and put her hands behind her head. She lifted a knee to rest on the arm of the chair, tucking the foot under the opposite thigh. "But I know them, just the same."
"We could just go inside," Kat suggested.
Sarah said, "I'm not about to be chased indoors by a pack of strays. Just ignore them."
"They're setting up a volleyball net on our beach," Kat pointed out, throwing a towel over her front that only covered her from rack to navel. "They're making themselves awfully hard to ignore."
"Yeah." From behind her shades, Roxy watched the four laying out their gear, tamping in stakes and catching cold bottles tossed to them by the guy at the cooler with no more than an occasional glance their way. What next? Bat the ball around for a while, then 'notice' us and invite us to join in? Kat's right. We should just go inside. Then another voice intruded. The blond one is kind of cute, and he keeps looking my way. What's the harm? Just sit here, keep enjoying the sun and the view, and let them do the same. It's no different from being at a club, is it? It's not like I'm cheating on anybody.
No. If we give them the slightest encouragement, there will be a dozen of them here tomorrow, that's the harm. Our privacy will evaporate. And every stranger who knows we're here will bring IO a little closer. "Guys, we need to do something."
Anna appeared with a tray of iced glasses full of lemonade. "I think something is about to happen. I hear the patrol cruiser at the mailbox."
Sure enough, Rick appeared on the beach from between the Lynch and Sylvestri properties, in uniform and looking stern, and walked up on the boys. Roxy couldn't make out what he was saying, but the visitors glanced at each other uncertainly. Then one apparently appointed himself spokesman, and he and Rick started exchanging words. The boy gestured at the boat and their camp,then swept an arm along the length of the beach, his manner getting more confident as he talked. Rick's scowl got deeper and he folded his arms. The other three boys traded smiles. None of them looked towards the beach house.
"Anna," Kat said. "Rick can't make them leave, can he?"
"No." She set the glasses beside each of their chairs. Roxy noticed that she'd brought out a fourth drink, which the little cyber touched to her lips as she looked out over the discussion on the sand. "The beach is public land. As long as they don't break any laws, there's not much he can do."
Rox said, "Maybe we could put a hole in their boat or something."
"No." Anna sipped again, eyes traveling down the beach. "Wait."
Rick looked over the spokesman's shoulder and stiffened. He said a few words to the boy, cutting him off, and abruptly turned and walked back the way he'd come. The boys' puzzled looks changed to smiles when they realized they'd been left in possession of the beach. One of them grinned up at the house.
"They ran him off?" Roxy was outraged. It seemed so unlike the big protective man to leave them to these wolfish strangers.
"I'm sure he just thought it best not to be a witness to whatever comes next," Anna said, smiling behind her glass.
Two men came trudging up the beach from the opposite direction. They were wearing dark suits, their ties fluttering in the breeze, and looked thoroughly pissed at being there. The flap of one man's jacket lifted to reveal the butt of a gun.
Anna said, "Russo and Pete. I don't think Mr. Ricci likes rowdy strangers on the beach either."
The two men stopped a short distance from the volleyballers. They didn't offer any conversation, and the single attempt on the part of the spokesman to address them went unanswered. They just stood and watched, while the boys tried to ignore them and play ball. The game faltered when one of the men pulled a small notebook and pen from his front pocket and wrote down the registration number on the boat's bow.
Ten minutes later, the boys began packing up their gear, rolling up the net and carrying the cooler towards the water. The first of them was up to his knees when one of the Mafiosi whistled, stopping them in their tracks. The man pointed to an empty water bottle half-buried in the sand. One of the boys returned to pick it up, and they all waded out to the boat. The same man gave the boat a two-finger wave as its twin engines fired up and it moved off, while the other kicked sand into the indentations where the net's stakes had been pulled up. Then he looked up at the beach house and the girls watching, and touched a finger to his brow as they turned back towards the Ricci compound.
"I think I may need to pick up an Italian cookbook," Anna said, giving the men a little wave and a smile. Then she turned the other way, smiling towards the Sylvestri house even though nobody was visible. "And bake some doggy treats."
Los Coyotes Indian Reservation
Lynch adjusted the shoulder straps of his daypack as he looked up the mountainside at the sun just peeking over the crest high above, even though it was nearly noon. He'd taken the car as far as he could into the hills, following a familiar route that brought memories by turns pleasant and painful. He'd left it beside the dirt road and struck out on foot, headed east and up. Two more hours of walking had brought him to this spot, a narrow sheltered saddle, cool and green and isolated.
He found the remains of one of his old campsites and sat in the shade of a tree, sipping bottled water and waiting. He debated whether to build a fire, and decided against. The only person he wanted to find him here wouldn't need a beacon.
About the time the sun began to descend, he heard the buzz of a small gas engine somewhere in the distance, funneled to him by the saddle's walls: a dirt bike, he guessed, coming up the other side of the ridge to the east and getting closer. He watched the stand of trees crowning the hilly ground in that direction. His guess was confirmed when he saw the source of the noise burst out of the trees and leap a small hump in the trail. The rider was dressed in jeans and a leather jacket that didn't fully hide the bob of her breasts when the bike grounded. The helmet hid her features, but Lynch was sure of the rider's identity from the devil-may-care riding style, even before he saw the light blonde hair peeking out from under.
He raised a hand, and the cycle slowed to walking speed and came putting up to a stop a few feet from him. The engine shut off. The rider unbuckled her helmet, placed a hand on either side, and lifted. Yellow-white curls tumbled onto her shoulders as it came free.
"Christie," Jack said.
Christie Blaze regarded him carefully. She didn't get off the bike or offer her hand. "Hello, Jack."
He glanced around, but they were alone, without even an aircraft in the sky. He was ashamed of the suspicion in the back of his mind, but she was still working for the Shop, after all, and the two of them hadn't parted on good terms. "How did you know I was here?"
She tucked the helmet between ribs and elbow. "I didn't. But I've been coming here every weekend I can. I thought if you were trying to get in touch, you'd be visiting our old haunts, and this is a good meeting spot. Secluded. It's why we picked it, after all."
We picked it as a place to tryst without being spied on or interrupted. He pushed away the memories of sharing a sleeping bag here with her under the stars, and wondered what might be going on in her head when she visited this spot looking for him. "How long have you been here?"
"Just got in, actually. I was at MacLean early this morning. Would have been here sooner, but I had an appointment with some woman in PsyOps who's asking questions about you."
Alicia, I'd bet anything. She's looking for a way to get in touch. "Well, what now?"
"I'm here to help. What do you want me to do?"
He relaxed a bit. "Find a reason to go to Boulder. Talk to Colby." He took out his pocket notebook and pencil, and jotted a time and address. "Keep a low profile. If you can't get past the flappers into his office, haunt the target range. He spends a lot of time there. Give him this."
She took the paper from his hand without touching him, folded it without looking at it, and tucked it into a pocket. "Kay. Anything else?" She toed out the bike's kickstart lever, as if ready to fire it up.
"Thank you, Christie." He leaned towards her. "I know-"
She turned her face away and put up a hand. "Don't. You lost your claim on these lips the morning you left me in Wiesbaden."
"If there'd been any other way-"
"I think we're way past the time for explanations. Then would have been lots better than now."
He knew there was nothing he could say, but his mouth opened anyway. "I was trying to make it easier for you."
Her cheekbones colored. "We made love the night before! How do you think that made it easier for me? Not a hint it was coming, just a lover gone cold for no reason I could think of. And then you tell me on the way to the God-damned airport? Just a bald statement that we couldn't see each other any more, as you let me out of the car. You drove off and left me on the sidewalk, staring after you like an abandoned pet." She settled her helmet on her head and flipped up the face shield, and kept talking as she buckled the chin strap. "It was for the very best of reasons, I'm sure. But you made the decision for both of us. You didn't treat me like a partner. So stick by it. I'll do everything I can for you, but there's no 'us' anymore, ever." She dropped her heel on the kickstarter and fired the engine up. "Unless I'm sent, I won't be coming back here. Goodbye, Jack." She flipped down the face shield with a quick bob of her head and spun the bike around, peppering Lynch's shins with dirt and tiny stones. She took off down the trail with the front wheel in the air, and was out of earshot before it touched down.
He watched her disappear among the trees. "Goodbye, Angel."
14
