Julio gave him a knowing grin.
'Ah. I see.'
They'd been serving together too long for Howard to get much past his
old friend. He grinned.
'Okay, so it's a great piece, you happy?'
'You working for these people, John? Getting a commission on sales?'
It was Howard's turn to laugh, and he did.
Seattle, Washington
Sitting in his Dodge Caravan, Patrick Morrison rode the ferry from
Seattle toward Bainbridge Island. This was the first leg of a journey
that would involve driving north after the boat ride, another ferry,
then another short stint in the car, to finally arrive back at Port
Townsend. The picturesque little town on the little peninsula where
the Straits of Juan de Fuca turned south into Puget Sound was only
about forty miles away from downtown Seattle as the crow flew, but a
two-hour trip by car and boat, if you were lucky enough to make the
ferry connections just right.
Morrison owned a house on the hill in Port Townsend, where Shannon, his
bride of four months, was doubtless still in bed asleep at this hour.
She was twenty-five, gorgeous, a trophy wife half his age. Shannon was
his second marriage, the first one having gone bad after almost twenty
years. Marian had also been beautiful when he'd met her, and
brilliant, which he'd always thought was the bigger attraction. But
she'd let herself go, had gotten fat and lazy, and, it turned out, had
been too smart--especially with her mouth. He liked intelligent women,
but he found that he liked them at a distance. Too close, and they
were like fire, you got burned by their brilliance.
Marian had turned that heat onto him too many times, and she knew all
the spots where it would hurt him the most.
Shannon, on the other hand, was not the sharpest knife in the drawer.
She wasn't really stupid, probably about average intelligence; she
thought he was a genius, being a scientist and all. Actually, he just
missed the cut for genius by an IQ point or two, but he was pretty sure
she would never throw that in his face. Nor would she stab him with
the pointed question that, if he was so smart, why hadn't he won a
Nobel?
Besides, Shannon knew tricks with her hands and her body that Morrison
had never dreamed of doing in nineteen years of marriage to Marian. Her
mouth was smart-but in an entirely different way ... He shifted a bit,
suddenly excited by the idea of being home and in bed with Shannon.
Easy, big fella, he told himself. It's a ways yet.
The big ferry blasted its warning horn at a sailboat that ventured too
near. Sail craft generally had the right of way over powerboats, all
things being equal, but a ferry hauling scores of cars and hundreds of
passengers was more equal than a thirty-foot sailboat foolish enough to
tack in front of it. A sailor and a retired airline pilot that
Morrison knew liked to say, 'If you fly your plane into a mountain, you
don't get to blame the mountain.' Nobody had any sympathy for a day
sailor who cut in front of a ferry--or plowed into one, which also
happened from time to time.
