Chapter 17

Bob's shift was supposed to end at 0800 the next morning, but he wasn't released until nearly noon. That's because the "sensitive government asset" involved, turned out to be one Cynthia Jean Nelson, the sixteen year old daughter of Senator Larry Nelson, a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and, coincidentally, also a member of the president's political party.

It seemed that Senator Nelson had received information (from his fifteen year old son, Rudy) that Cynthia intended to bestow her virginity on one Stephen Mills Parker, a nineteen year old college student who Cynthia had been forbidden to date. Her plan was to go to prom with an approved date, and then meet Stephen afterwards. The "deed" would be done in his van, while her prom date, and a girlfriend, acting as decoy, drove around town in the car she had left for prom in. Cynthia, it seems, expected her father to try to find the car and follow it.

That had, in fact, been his plan, except when he got to the school, the car ... and his daughter ... had already left.

Being on the SSCI, he was aware of some of the capabilities of America's satellite surveillance program. What he was less aware of, was how expensive it was to use that system. He knew better than to use the capabilities for this particular purpose, but like many politicians, believed his need outweighed the rules.

Nor did Senator Nelson anticipate that someone like Bob, thinking an actual sensitive government asset was in danger, might call out the big dogs to come save the day. And, since the big dogs went out so rarely, they responded with ... vigor.

That might have been fine, except that the response of the big dogs drew a lot of attention. It was "the middle of the fucking night," as one police commander later noted, when the normal civilian constabulary in that jurisdiction learned that men with machine guns were in the process of storming a van parked in the Home Depot parking lot.

And the local police reacted with cavalry of their own. Need I say they also did so with vigor?

Nobody got shot, but it was a close thing.

And, right in the middle of all this law enforcement officialdom ... was Cynthia Jean Nelson. And Stephen, of course, who was officially much too old to be doing what he was doing with a sixteen year old very naked girl when the van door crashed open and some of those machine guns were aimed at them.

The senator tried to stop the assault when Bob told him it had been ordered. Daddy had intended to do the catching himself, once the agency spent several million dollars telling him where his daughter was. But that didn't quite work out, because, as I said, the team that assaulted the van didn't get to do that very often, so they were ... energetic ... in their response.

That team tried to stop the information about the assault from getting out, once they found out what they had been called out for ... or gotten sucked into, as they saw it.

But their attitude toward the local police, when they showed up with shotguns and M-16s drawn, pretty well guaranteed that information got "leaked" to the press. Then there was the helicopter that was part of the assault team, which actually got to the area where the van was first. Circling helicopters in the middle of the night in the nation's capitol tend to draw ambulance chasers and paparazzi like flies to shit.

Photographs did manage to get taken. It could never be proven whether the most sensational of them ... the two naked young bodies, artfully turned so that none of the good parts were on view ... was taken by police or somebody with a long lens. But those photographs, including the one that clearly showing Cynthia Nelson with a tramp stamp tattooed on her lower back, showed up in the papers the next day. True, Cynthia's face was pixeled out ... but her name wasn't. After all, she was a victim, not the suspect of a crime.

The Colonel in charge of the assault team, of course ... blamed it all on the agency that had pushed the panic button.

It was the second embarrassment for the agency within two months. Nobody seemed to notice that both occurrences had been caused ... from outside ... by the members of one particular political party. No, in Washington, shit rolls downhill at prodigious rates.

Eventually, Bob and Brad were called to a meeting that had a heck of a lot of people in attendance who didn't work at the agency, and had no business being involved in agency business.

Bob was told that his actions resulted from the request of "authorized personnel," and that therefore, no fault was being found in him.

Brad was told, "You should have known better," and fired.

Whereupon Bob stood up and said, "Neither of us caused this problem. If you're firing him, then I'm quitting."

Bob might have thought he was making a statement that would make people think.

All they thought was: "Problem solved. Now ... on with business as usual."

"Hey," said Bob, into the phone.

"Hi, you!" said Riley. "This is a surprise. Why didn't you Skype me?"

"For one to Skype, one needs a home to Skype from, and it seems I have no home."

"What?"

"I sort of quit my job."

"You sort of quit your job?"

"It's a long story. Suffice to say that, for now, I am unemployed, and my living quarters have been closed to me. I used to keep an apartment, but it was expensive, and I spent very little time in it, so I gave it up. Now I am homeless. I thought about going to an internet cafe and Skyping you from there, but I didn't know how you might answer the computer. So I called you instead."

"For which I thank you," she said. "Seeing as how I am naked."

"Really?"

"No. I'm just kidding. Bob, I'm so sorry."

"Well I'm not ... depending on what you say."

"About?" she asked.

"About whether I can crash with you until I find another job and a place to stay."

It was silent for so long, that he thought the connection might have been lost.

"Riley?"

"Last time you just showed up," she said.

"I know, and that was rude. I thought I should ask before doing it again."

"So ... last time you just show up, and you end up in my bed and I can't keep my hands off of you, and somehow you think all that was just a two week stand, and that you might not be welcome any more?"

"Riley, can I please come see you?"

"Yes, Bob."

"Thank you."

"When will you be here?" she asked.

"I'm at the airport," said Bob. "But seeing as how I'm unemployed, I thought maybe you'd pick me up, instead of me renting a car."

"The Denver airport?" she asked.

"Um ... yeah," he said.

"Oh Bob," she sighed. "Curtis is at Bessie's. Let me see if she can keep him while I come get you."

"You can bring him if you want," he said.

"You just be standing on the curb in front if the airline. What airline, by the way?"

He told her, and was rewarded by the click of the phone as she hung up on him.

Her welcome, when the car stopped in front of him in the "Don't even think about parking here!" zone, was a lot warmer and a lot more energetic than she had been on the phone. He had one bag looped over his shoulder on a strap, and was towing another on little wheels. She jumped on him, wrapping her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist. Her kiss was long enough that they got a warning from a security officer to move the car or have it towed.

Curtis was in the car, stuck in his car seat, but that didn't mean he was quiet. Bob had to spend the first ten minutes of the drive answering questions about where he'd been and what he'd been doing, and then hearing all the news about what Curtis had been doing as well, since Bob had gone.

Bob couldn't miss the grin on Riley's face, as she negotiated them out of Denver and headed south on I-25.

"You look happy," said Bob.

"I am happy," she said.

"That makes me happy," he said.

"You have no idea how much I've missed you."

"I might have some idea," he replied. "I missed you too, you know."

"You made that very clear," she said, still grinning. "And that made me happy too."

"I'm happy," chirped Curtis, who didn't like being ignored.

Bob turned around and looked at the boy.

"I'm happy that you're happy," he said.

"I need gas," said Riley, "but I'm pretty sure we can make it to The Springs."

"I'm buying," said Bob.

"You don't have to do that," she said.

"I know, but you're my taxi, so I'm buying."

All that chatter covered, in a sense, for the nervousness both adults were feeling. While Riley was, in fact, elated that Bob had wanted to come to her when he quit his job, she was three weeks past a period that hadn't shown up on time. That, in itself, wasn't so unusual. Her periods were a little irregular, and she'd missed one several times. But missing a period when you haven't had sex with anyone is very different than missing one when you have had sex ... multiple times ... and quite a few of them without any protection.

Still, she didn't want to say anything to Bob. And she was very glad she hadn't said anything to him before, in an email, or while they Skyped. He was there because he wanted to be there ... not because he thought he owed her something. There was tremendous relief in that.

And there was also the fact that, the last time she'd told a man she was pregnant, it had been the beginning of the end of that relationship.

So she was nervous.

Bob was nervous for completely different reasons. He had examined his feelings for this woman and had come to the conclusion that he was hopelessly, completely, and incurably in love with Riley Franklin. The problem was that he'd been in love before, and it hadn't ever worked out well for him. He seemed to fall in love pretty easily. In fact, he had only dated two of the five or six girls he was sure he'd fallen in love with. Part of the problem was that, when he fell in love, he fell all the way in love, which meant he had, traditionally, been much more serious about things than they were. And confessing his love to the two girls he had dated caused them to break up with him.

So Bob wasn't sure he could trust what he was feeling. Moreover, he was afraid that he might be moving too fast for Riley. He was afraid to tell her how strongly he felt about her.