“It slips through a hole. If you leave it in there, it’ll blacken.”
John reached in and pulled the duck free. He hung it on the set of matching fireplace tools. When he turned, Caitlin held out the tumbler.
“Thanks.”
“I didn’t ask if you wanted ice.”
He chuckled lightly, and she found herself smiling.
“I think this will be cold enough. Don’t they worry about their stuff freezing?” He said and sipped the whiskey.
“Not this, too much alcohol. The wine is kept in a climate controlled room in the basement.”
The seasoned wood caught, and she could feel the increased warmth. She motioned toward the thickly padded couch that faced the fire and John nodded.
Caitlin sat at one end and watched John take the opposite end without hesitation. She sniffed the heavy fumes of the Armagnac. It burned her sinuses, but the aroma was heavenly. She sipped it. It was already cool, but it burned a path down her throat.
John was watching the flames, his drink balanced on one knee.
“Is that all right?” she asked.
“What? Oh, yeah, I’m surprised your parents keep Black Bush around.”
“You surprise me. I wouldn’t have thought you could tell the difference.”
“I can’t tell that many whiskeys by the taste, but I’ve always been fond of this one.”
“I’m glad you like it.”
Caitlin unzipped her coat as the fire warmed her front. She watched John as he continued to stare into the flames. His left side was toward her, and the scar looked pink in the firelight.
“John.”
“Yes?”
She was quiet for awhile and eventually, he turned to face her.
“What is it?” he asked.
“These last twelve years, did you ever think about me?”
His eyes were dark lenses except where the sparkle of the fire reflected. His reply was slow in coming. “Is this where we’re honest with one another?”
“Yes, please.”
“Then, yes. I did think of you. Often at first, but less so as time went on. I wondered how you were. Where you were living. If you were happy.”
He paused and, after a moment, she realized he was waiting for something from her.
She took a second to sip her drink and gathered her courage. “I used to look for you in crowds, at airports, crowded restaurants, that sort of thing.”
“Oh?”
“Over the years, it became something of a hobby. I even thought I saw you once. I was changing planes at DFW. I saw a man with dark hair, shorter than yours is now, but similar in texture. I didn’t get a good look at his face before the crowd separated us, but it could have been you...before the scar anyway. I almost called after him, but the airport was very crowded, and I don’t think he would have heard. I caught one more glimpse of him from farther away. The walk, the build, they were familiar.”
The firelight danced in his eyes, and she could feel the indecision in the way he sat, perfectly still, as if any movement would upset the balance.
She sighed. “It’s foolish. I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”
“Not so foolish. It could have been me. I used to go through DFW often.”
His voice was warm, without the harsh edge that it had developed since the canyon.
Caitlin felt something, a connection that hadn’t been there earlier. Could they be recovering some of what they’d had in the Canyon? What would it be like to fall in love again? The attraction she’d felt toward John in the Canyon hadn’t reached the point of love, and she could scarcely remember when she and Scott had first fallen for each other. She did recall that it had been a frantic, needing emotion. Neither of them had been able to get enough of the other. Their days and nights had been filled with sweet promises of the future and intense burning passion of the present. Would it be like that again or was that something that only came around once? Was that sort of intensity reserved for adolescents?
“What are you thinking?” he asked.
She realized she was still staring into his face and as a blush warmed her face. She turned away to stare into the fire.
“Nothing really,” she lied.
“I thought we were being honest.”
“Okay, I was wondering if it would be possible to rediscover what we started in the Canyon.”
He shrugged, one of those irritating male traits they used anytime they were avoiding the truth. “Anything is possible. Things will develop naturally if we let them.”
When he didn’t press his question further, she hesitantly changed the subject. “Do you think we’ll be able to contact Louie?”
He accepted the shift in conversation. “I don’t know. I’d sure like to find out what happened to him and I think we need to know how they got on to him. It could be important.”
“You don’t think they tailed us?”
“No. It’s possible given enough resources to trail someone without their knowledge, but I would bet anything that we lost whoever might have been on us when we went through that alley.”
“What’s that leave? Could one of the people he asked to help break the encryption have turned him in?” she asked.
“I doubt it. They’re a clannish group, and none of them trusts the government. Besides, I really don’t think they know where each other live. Still, it’s a possibility we’ll have to consider.”
“How about the file? Is there any way they could have tracked him just because he was accessing the file? Perhaps he got the code. It could have transmitted some kind of signal when he activated it.”
John nodded his head and then sipped his drink before replying. “That’s possible, but not the most likely option. Louie is bright enough not to allow the program to use his Web link to transmit a signal when he opened it. No, if
