and cursing like a drunken sailor that he’d been beaten. Defeated soundly in three weeks, two days, seven hours, fifty-six minutes and five seconds when it had taken him more than a decade to write the code.
Her brain against his.
It had been quite a challenge. A challenge that had left her with a severe headache, an empty belly and cramps in her fingers and arms for several days running as she began to test the limits of what she could do both mentally and physically. But she’d won. And the world would be a safer place for it. Or at least America would be. For now.
She felt really good about that.
Her first and only call was to Krueger. She rattled off the coordinates of every tagged terrorist in the system, pinpointing their current location. From there it wasn’t hard to find those who were residing in the western hemisphere. The few that had been allowed to infiltrate homeland security in order to identify their compatriots, four in total, were the first to be picked up.
It turned out they were in Florida. Orlando of all places, which led Sabrina to secretly suspect that some cartoon character might be a turncoat and a terrorist. Or it could have had something to do with the climate and the bulk of foreign tourists in that part of the country year round. That seemed more sensible.
She left Arnold’s cabin with a weary but satisfied smile. The agents had driven her the three and a half hours north back to her sleepy small town in central Pennsylvania. Her house, battered and bruised from all the recent activity, waited for her. Inexplicably, when she saw it, she felt tears spring to her eyes. Such a girly thing to do.
She smiled at the group in the car with her. These were the same three men with whom she’d shared her company for the past few weeks. The same men she’d taken for all of their spare cash in several well-played hands of seven-card stud. Deuces wild.
“Thanks, guys,” she said as she got out of the car.
“You did a hell of a thing,” the agent driving told her. The respect was there in his voice.
She smiled and thought about how good that made her feel, too. First doing the job, then being applauded for it. She thought about how long it had been since she had felt just this good and knew it had been ten years ago.
That’s when it occurred to her. This wasn’t supposed to be about her. Instead it was about doing the right thing, stopping the bad guys and saving lives. As a grown-up she could see that now.
“All in a day’s work.” She shrugged.
Sabrina left the agents and jogged up the path to her home. It had only been weeks, but it could have been years she missed it so much. This was her place, the one place she knew she absolutely belonged. She was practically giddy with the anticipation of being back among her things.
Until, as soon as her foot hit the porch, one of the slate roof tiles slipped loose from its perch and came crashing down in front of her, nearly braining her in the process.
The bitch.
“You missed me, didn’t you?” she asked the intractable house.
In reply, another slate fell to the porch.
The next day, balanced on the roof, Sabrina thought again about what she’d done by giving up the bounty money on Kahsan’s head. She could have hired workers, she could have hired decorators. She could have leveled this house to the ground and had a new one built.
Instead, she was crouched on the roof, in the freezing cold, trying to get a stupid slate rectangle to stay put.
“Fool,” she muttered to herself.
The sound of a car approaching had her shifting her attention to the empty street. A sleek black Mercedes turned the corner and rolled up in front of her sidewalk. Her breath caught a little as she contemplated who might be coming to visit.
When Quinlan stepped out of the car, his frame and his gait both easily recognizable, her heart did a little tumble in her chest and her knees grew suspiciously weak. Not a good thing, considering where she was.
Carefully, she crawled down the ladder and waited for him. Making it appear as if she was taking his presence in stride, she plopped herself down on the porch step. He opened the back door of the car and pulled out a tool belt heavy with oddly shaped metal objects that she immediately determined would be very useful in repairing things on and in old houses. He flipped the belt over his shoulder and walked down the path toward where she sat.
His salt-and-pepper gray hair seemed to mesh with the melting snow on the ground, the residual aftermath of a small storm that had passed through the area a few days ago. He wore sturdy beige construction boots, jeans that had seen some labor and a cream wool sweater not all that dissimilar to the one she currently wore.
Up close she could see that he had another scar in addition to the one over his eyebrow. This one was on his temple. It was from her gun.
From her. And from Kahsan, she thought. They had all been involved.
“Hey,” she started, because she doubted he would.
“Hello.”
“Feeling better?” she wondered aloud and pointed to her own temple to indicate the source of her concern.
“Fine.”
“Good.”
Awkwardness and silence reigned for a few moments.
“You got your job back,” he stated.
She tilted her head back and forth. “Sort of. Krueger and I both agreed that contract work would be a better fit.”
He nodded, his eyes looking up at the roof. “Word down on the Farm is you didn’t take the reward available for Kahsan’s kill,” he said. “It was rightfully yours. I know I don’t have to tell you that.”
“No, you don’t. But I guess it seemed wrong to take that money when I was really just doing my job. Of course now my roof is caving in and I’m regretting the hell out of that decision.”
He smiled. “So I see. I was thinking…I have some time off. Maybe I could give you a hand…with the house.”
Interesting. Jack Quinlan wanted to work on her roof. There were all sorts of implications in that statement. And all of them made her feel gushy inside.
“You want to work on my roof?”
“I would like to help you fix up this place,” he said slowly, almost carefully. Then he added, “You never really cared much about making a place of your own. I could see from the beginning that this house was different. I think it’s good for you. To have a real home.”
It was different. This house was important. And he was right calling it her home. The fact that he understood that, knew how to distinguish it from every other residence she’d lived in because of their history together only added to the gushy going on in her belly. Now, she was positively mushy. She hated it when she got mushy.
But she didn’t have to let him know that. Instead, she smiled casually, as if it didn’t matter in the least what he did.
“Okay. Whatever you want. I make hot chocolate in the afternoons.”
“I like hot chocolate,” he said.
“And in this house, when I have guests, we play poker every night.”
He smirked. “I brought some extra cash.”
“Excellent.”
They both got quiet again for a moment. Then he started to move away from her toward the ladder that was resting up against the house. The ladder would lead him to the second-floor roof with the broken and difficult to manipulate slate tiles.
“You know, Q, slate is a tricky thing to work with.” She figured it was only fair to warn him.
“Really.”
“Yep. It can be temperamental and stubborn. It very rarely goes where you want it to go.”
“I see.”
“But…if you handle it just right, with enough care and patience the end result can be a beautiful thing.”
