“Let me change clothes. Then I’ll sit a few minutes until the after-school crowd descends.”
“Just what I was hoping,” he said.
She took his empty plate with her when she went back through the kitchen on her way to the bathroom to change. Just minutes later she brought herself a soda and slid in across from him. “How’re things?” she asked.
“Good. But that’s my question for you. Have you given any more thought to U of Oregon? We could drive up to see it, talk to someone there.”
She grinned. “I’m set for now. Besides, I’ve seen the campus. I’ve gone to see some games—you’re right, it’s a great place. But I’m good.”
“Still planning on community college?”
“It’s a good decision. I’m not ready to commit to a four-year program yet. I want to dip in, work part-time, live at home for now. I have to give some more thought to what I want to study.”
“As long as it doesn’t have anything to do with the cost of tuition because I said I can help with that. I want you to feel like you can stretch if you want to.”
“I’m stretching,” she said. “You aren’t trying to get me out of town, are you?”
“Absolutely not! Eugene isn’t that far!”
“But now you have a girlfriend.”
He was shocked. He shouldn’t have been. He’d known from the first date this would be all over town.
“Eric,” she said, laughing at him. “You have a girlfriend. A nice girlfriend.”
“I’m in denial,” he said.
“Why? Aren’t you ready for a girlfriend? Too soon after being dumped by the computer geek?”
“No,” he said. “To my embarrassment, that wasn’t serious. It should’ve been, since we lived together, but really...” He cleared his throat.
“I’m sorry I never met her,” she said with a laugh. “Then maybe I’d understand why you were never brokenhearted.”
“Cara’s a great girl. You would’ve liked her,” he said. “But she wanted someone entirely different and I understood. It was time to move on. That’s why we never got serious, I guess. And now...”
“Now you’re hooked up with the mystery woman,” Ashley said.
“Huh?”
Ashley just laughed again. “Gimme a break, Eric. Computer researcher? For some agency? Good friends with a woman who was in a cult for years before she escaped with her daughter? I should say barely escaped. And later both of them had to be rescued?”
He could feel his eyes grow about as large as hubcaps.
“Whoa,” Ashley said. “You bought all that research stuff?”
He thought she did investigative research for the FBI and he was keeping a tight lid on that, per her instructions. He knew she probably went out on search warrants from time to time or something. What was this cult and rescue stuff? “I don’t like to pry,” he said evasively. “And apparently I don’t get much gossip.”
“Probably because you’re always under the hood of a car. Haven’t you wondered about her?”
He just shook his head. “Do you?”
“Well, yeah! Not that she isn’t well-liked. Everyone likes her a lot because she’s very cool. And she’s tight with Cooper and Spencer and Rawley, who just happen to be the three guys who staged a big rescue to get Devon’s three-year-old out of that cult after she was kidnapped. Come on, Eric,” she said with a laugh. “Your girlfriend is some kind of secret operative. She can probably build a car out of her cell phone or something.”
He swallowed with a gulp. “Kidnapped? Operative?” He gave his head a shake. “Jesus. So what are people saying?”
“You mean guessing?”
He just nodded stupidly.
“Well, like she’s undercover. Or in the witness protection program. Or she was a cult member who’s going to testify against the ones who got away. Or that she’s on the run, hiding from bad guys. Or maybe she’s a computer researcher, but that’s so boring. And she just doesn’t seem boring. Have you checked to see if she has a Wonder Woman outfit in her glove box? Because I bet she is—Wonder Woman. Or something.”
“No shit,” he said before he could stop himself. He looked up and colored a little. After all, this was his daughter!
But she didn’t seem embarrassed. “Not boring, huh?”
“She’s amazing,” he admitted. “But I bet she doesn’t know the town is talking about her.”
“It’s because she stands out. Not in a bad way. Laine seems totally cool.” Then she got a little serious. “I’m glad you like someone, Eric. I don’t think you’ve liked many women since you got out of prison.”
He looked down. He could say those words pretty easily but it still filled him with shame when Ashley said them. After all, he’d never been there for her. He gave her a biological father she should probably be ashamed of. He wished, for her sake, he’d learned about her after becoming a Rhodes scholar or something. “Not many.”
“And apparently no one special,” she said.He met her eyes. Green on green. She was so intuitive. So smart and empathetic.
“I’m very accomplished in the skill of identifying and avoiding potential problems. Now, that is.”
“So you found yourself a woman who could shake up your world?” She didn’t wait for him to answer. “Awesome. I have to get to work. Listen, I’m set with school. I’ve been planning very well and I looked at all the internet links you sent me and I appreciate it a lot. And your offer is very nice. I might take you up on some help—I hear the cost of books is just deadly. For right now, I’m all set.” She winked at him and flashed him a smile. “And I’m glad you have a cool girlfriend.”
“Thanks,” he said.
She laughed a little more. “You’re so cute.”
“I don’t want to be cute,” he said.
Seven
Eric was restless and troubled through the rest of the afternoon. He needed to talk to Laine, to understand a few things about her, like what it really meant for her to be an FBI agent. It wasn’t like he never watched TV, but he just assumed she didn’t punch the clock and go to work like the NCIS team did. It was one thing for the rest of the town to speculate and he was fine with not knowing all the finer details, but still...they were lovers. And Eric was surprised to realize he was a little old-fashioned. He thought lovers should be straight with each other. He’d been straight with her. She should tell him what her job really meant.
Justin had come in at 4:00 p.m. and at five Eric asked, “Will you be all right here for an hour or so if I step out?”
“Sure,” he said.
“If you have any problems or questions, my cell is on.”
“Relax, man. I’m just pumping gas.”
“Pay attention, Justin. If anyone gives you any trouble...”
Justin straightened, insulted. “I can handle it for an hour, man.”
Even though it was misty and the sun was lowering, dropping the temperature even more, Eric walked to Laine’s house. He hoped the cold, damp air would clear his mind. He was worried about how she’d respond to his questions. After all, she’d implied this business of hers was classified, that she couldn’t talk about it. Did that mean even if the town was speculating? When she answered the door she had a paintbrush in her hand.
“What are you doing here?”
“I came to ask you something. What are you painting?”
“The backsplash behind the stove. I thought you worked tonight.” She stepped back so he could come in.
“I have to go right back. I just want to talk to you about something.”
“Shoot,” she invited, heading for the kitchen to put down her brush.
Eric stood on the other side of the breakfast bar until she came back around. Then he threw it out there. “Are you in the witness protection program?”
“Huh?” she asked with a sharp laugh. “No!”
“Okay, were you in a cult?”
“Eric, what’s going on?” she asked much too calmly.
“People are curious about you. Talking. Trying to guess what you’re about. I didn’t hear FBI agent, but I heard operative. Spy kind of stuff. They’re making connections. Between you, a kidnapping, a rescue, a cult. What the hell, Laine?”
“Eric, I told you. I’m an agent. I’m a field agent. I don’t talk about my cases.”
“No kidding! What does that mean—you’re an agent? Other people know things—apparently some people around here are in on it. And I’ve been having scary pictures in my head all afternoon.”
“What kind of pictures?” she asked, hands on her hips.
“Pictures of you facing off with bad people, vulnerable, in danger. Somehow when you told me you worked for the FBI all that stuff didn’t pop into my head. I thought you filed stuff or looked up stuff. But scary pictures are there now. What are you?”
“Crap,” she said, running a hand through her hair. “All right, this is need-to-know, okay? The case isn’t closed, though our primary suspect is dead. But there are still loose ends to wrap up. So, I was on an assignment, which is how I met Devon. I was undercover. Only the third time I’ve done a deep-cover assignment, which means ‘live the role.’ And it stretched out way longer than we expected. It was a mess.”
“In a cult?”
She nodded. “It was a commune, really. A farm. A kind of loose religious order without much religion. Or order, for that matter.”
“How’d you end up there?”
“I asked for it. I looked the part—our suspect liked young blue-eyed blondes. I look younger than I am. I thought I could do it if we created the right backstory. And as it turned out...”
“Whoa,” he said. “You asked for it?”
She gave a nod. “I had to give the pitch of a lifetime to get it. Our bad guy was recruiting young women to make a part of his ‘family.’ He found them when they were down on their luck, rescued them, then held them against their will. We knew he was working on his antigovernment manifesto, spewed a lot of violent-sounding, antiestablishment rhetoric—”
“Since when is antiestablishment rhetoric against the law?”
“When it’s accompanied by threats, human trafficking and the purchase of large quantities of fertilizer—the kind used to make bombs. Since they were running an organic farm, we were concerned about the commercial fertilizer. We already knew he had defrauded charities, didn’t pay taxes, wouldn’t acknowledge law enforcement and kept his commune surrounded by a locked fence guarded by a few armed men. He was suspected of plotting domestic terrorism and I was part of a counterterrorism task force. Some of his clan had gotten away and tipped the police. He hadn’t been real violent, according to the reports, but the potential was escalating. He was escalating.” She shrugged. “We had to get ahead of it. Before he blew something up.”
Eric wiped a hand down his face. “I think I better sit down,” he said.
“Take it easy, it was expertly planned. And it wasn’t what we thought at all. It was a pot farm concealed behind a fake cult. Oh, he was crazy,” she said, following him to the couch. “He believed all his own B.S. about how he could run his own world, populate it, conceal it and keep it separate from the rest of society. He thought he was creating a peaceful sovereign nation, which of course takes piles of money. Drug money. And it was peaceful, right up to the point when someone disagreed with him—then it was less peaceful. It was when he said the world was going to go up in flames but his family would be safe—someone had to take a closer look.” She stood in front of Eric while he sat. Then she sat down beside him. “He was the king of his little empire and his fertilizer wasn’t for bombs, it was for marijuana. And he had a few men to guard it and move it. Armed men.”