After the Rain

of those French jobs on him, sticking her tongue between his teeth.

After that he couldn’t resist. Though he was scared plenty, because the farthest he’d been with a girl was messy hand jobs with dumpy Margie Block up in her dad’s hayloft.

He had to give it a try.

They met in the hall, at midnight. She showed him how she’d put tape on the lock to the door in the ladies’ room that led to the pool. Taped it on vertical, up the inside edge of the door, keeping the lock bolt from engaging.

They slipped into the darkened bathroom. Ginny told him to go on in and undress. She’d meet him in a second and they’d go skinny-dipping.

“For starters,” she’d said.

A chance like this would never come again. So Dale went in, stripped off his clothes, and waited in the darkness. There were little lights along the bottom of the pool that cast wavy shadows on the ceiling. It felt humid and smelled of chlorine. The longer he waited, the more excited he got.

And when he had become real excited, and no Ginny yet-that’s when the lights exploded on.

And there was Ginny standing by the door with Irv and Gordy Riker. They pointed their fingers and rocked with laughter.

“Boy,” Irv sang out, “that’s what I call real hard.”

“And real small,” Gordy chimed in, moving forward and extending his hand. He wasn’t just pointing. He had a squirt gun and proceeded to squirt Dale in the crotch. Dale covered up and ran to the other side of the pool, to where they kept the towels, but there weren’t any towels.

To his chagrin, Dale discovered that Gordy’s squirt gun had been filled with cheap perfume. And for the rest of the trip, and all during the bus ride home, people kept saying: “You smell anything? I sure smell something.”

The nickname “Needle-Dick” became common usage.

Dale smiled, took the videotape from his desk, and fed it into the VCR. He pushed the play button on the VCR remote. As the screen flickered into focus, he settled down into his chair, raised his hips slightly, and unbuttoned his jeans.

Chapter Twenty-six

“This is Jane.”

“Game over. Ace just gave me the boot,” Nina said.

“Not to worry. You got all your stuff?”

“Yeah, I’m doing my famous walking-down-the-highway-to-town.”

“Did you keep your legs crossed?”

“Turns out he wasn’t that kind of guy.”

“Nina, they’re all that kind of guy.”

“Well, what have we got?”

“We got movement on your tip. Khari, the liquor dealer in Grand Forks, is planning a road trip tonight. Bugs got a parabolic mike on his house. Overheard a call to Shuster about the special pickup. It tracks with what you told Broker. Distinctly heard him say they’d meet at the RLS on 5. That’s missile talk for the deserted Remote Launch Site east of Langdon. So Bugs will be tailing him. Holly is standing by with the bird if we need him. We’ll follow Ace, in case the meet on the highway is a diversion.”

After her awful scene with Ace, Janey’s upbeat voice was a blast of relief. Nina’s knees trembled, a little weak. “Great,” she said, “where do you want me? I’m out here all alone, walking down a country road half- dressed.”

“Hey, I thought you liked that dress. And I got a feeling you won’t be walking alone for long.”

Before Nina could ask Janey where she was, the call ended. Nina kept walking, looked back once. Okay. A deserted pole barn and some trees broke the line of sight to the Missile Park. If Ace was watching her she’d be lost in the roadside clutter now. She was almost to the airport. From Janey’s remark, she figured they were close. But where? She squinted down the road: patches of sunlight alternated with muggy afternoon shadows.

Then she caught movement to the right, a figure stepping from a grove of trees, an arm whipping in a tight circle. About forty yards off the highway, standing in the thick stuff behind an abandoned Quonset. Hand signal: Rally on me. She hefted her travel bag and started up the rutted trap rock driveway. When she came closer and entered the trees, she saw it was Janey.

“What’s going on?” Nina said.

Janey stood casually in jeans and a dark pullover, one hip thrust out, a cigarette hanging from the corner of her mouth, like a B-movie moll. She said, “Watching Ace. He’s talking on the phone, to George. Like I said. I doubt he can see out the window and through this building. On the other hand, if you climb up top this Quonset you can get a fair view in through the living room window. With these.” She held up a pair of binoculars. “Quite a little striptease going on for a while there.” She handed over the smoke. Nina took a drag and handed it back.

“How long you been here?” Nina grimaced.

“We been here all afternoon. Since you and Ace rolled back in.”

“We?”

Janey yanked her thumb over her shoulder and said, “This way, darling. We is now a combined task force. Ad hoc, mind you.”

“Ad hoc, huh?” Nina glowered, then said, “Sounds like…”

Broker was standing deeper in the brush, spraying mosquito repellent on his arms and face. He handed the cannister to a husky man with short-cropped brown hair. He was wearing jeans, boots, and a long-sleeved shirt over a T-shirt. The shirt did not quite hide the dull twinkle of a pistol holstered on his belt. Broker’s truck was parked in the tall clump of Russian thistle.

As she approached, Broker softly clapped his hands in a lewd take-it-off rhythm. Jane left them and scrambled up a makeshift ladder made of several old air conditioners stacked together. She leaned over the top of the building next to the boxy capola of an exhaust fan and trained her glasses on the Missile Park.

Down on the ground, the guy standing next to Broker extended his hand. “Deputy Jim Yeager, Cavalier County Sheriff’s Department. It’s a real pleasure to see special ops in action.”

Nina dropped her bag and shook his hand. Broker took a step closer and said, “We concluded the man is very fast, considering the brief amount of time elapsed from when you first showed some skin to when he booted you out the door,” Broker said with a straight face.

“Fast on his feet, as it were,” Yeager said.

“Right, strictly a vertical encounter. No reclining going on that we could see,” Broker added.

Nina’s glare was wasted in the shadows. Broker and Yeager, however, were like two Cheshire cats, gleaming teeth floating in the gloom.

Broker handed Nina her go-bag, which Nina snatched from his hands. “Assholes. How about you turn around.”

“You’ll need this.” Broker handed her the can of OFF!. To their credit, Broker and Yeager let the ribbing die and turned around. Nina quickly sprayed a chemical bath, slipped out of the dress, and flung it at Broker’s back. It draped over his head. He raised the material in one hand and sniffed it, but said nothing.

Nina opened her bag, pulled on a pair of loose jeans, a sports bra, a baggy gray T-shirt, and a pair of black cross trainers. As she strapped on her pistol belt, she took a deep breath and let it out. Beneath the raunchy banter and her gruff reaction she felt a palpable aura of relief. She was in and out unscathed, and something was up.

And she and her husband were finally doing something together. She smiled as she checked her.45 auto in the hideout holster, made sure that it was on safe. Not exactly dinner for two and theater tickets, but what the hell…

She swatted at the bugs. “Damn critters are out in force.”

“All the rain,” Yeager said. “If you got a long-sleeve shirt in that bag, I suggest you put it on.”

Nina, stooped to her bag and pulled out a slipover and put it on. The mosquitoes hovered in close, probing, like little pin pricks of anxiety.