was cold and blowing pretty good, and Thorn felt it even through his jacket. If the cold bothered the other man, there was no sign of it.
The dog ranged back and forth, snuffling the ground, as if tracking some critter, limping a bit, but not looking unhappy about it.
Neither man said anything for a few moments. Thorn remembered walks like this with his grandfather when he’d been a boy. Sometimes they’d walk for an hour without saying anything; then the old man would stop and point at some sign on the ground: “See that? Deer tracks—doe and a fawn, see the little prints, here and there?”
The old man could spot things invisible to Thorn’s eyes—and, he suspected, to most anybody else’s eyes. He was tuned to the earth in ways most people never were.
Thorn smiled at the memory.
Amos raised an eyebrow.
“Just remembering my grandfather,” Thorn said. “We used to do a lot of walking when I was a boy.”
“He passed?”
“Yes, sir, some time back.”
“You miss him.”
“I do.”
The older man nodded. He bent, picked up a stick. “Sheila!”
The dog turned, saw the stick. Amos tossed it—not very far—and the dog gimped off to fetch it. The old man smiled.
“So, is this my premarriage interview?”
Amos chuckled. “Marissa made her choice, and you’re it. If she doesn’t have enough on the ball to get something this important right by now, nothing we can say now’s gonna make much difference.”
Thorn nodded. “But . . . ?”
“Nope, no ‘buts.’ Grandma and I, we want to be able to see in you what Marissa sees. Ruth liked you the minute you stepped into the house. She feels things quickly; me, I’m a little slower—I usually have to think on it some.”
The dog brought the stick back and dropped it in front of Thorn. He bent and picked it up, threw it a few feet. Sheila trotted off to fetch it again.
“Ruth’s always been a quick and accurate judge of character. If she’d thought you were a threat to our little granddaughter, she’d have put poison in your biscuits.”
Thorn blinked. It took a second for him to realize the old man was pulling his leg. At least he hoped that’s what Amos’s grin meant.
“Let me ask you something. You date many women of color?”
“No, sir.”
The dog returned. Dropped the stick. Thorn picked it up and tossed it again.
“Why start now?”
Thorn felt the urge to shrug, but stifled it. It didn’t seem appropriate somehow. “Usually, I found myself attracted to tall and brainy Nordic women. College professors, programmers, a doctor, once. Marissa doesn’t flaunt her intelligence—but she’s smarter than I am. And she’s funny, and she’s . . . wise, in a way I’m not. And she’s gorgeous. I wouldn’t much care if she were green or blue. I’m not sure what she sees in me.”
The dog returned again, but she was panting as she dropped the stick at Thorn’s feet. “That’s enough, Sheila,” Amos said. “I don’t want you so tired I have to carry you up the stairs when we get home.”
Thorn would have sworn the dog nodded and smiled. She left the stick, turned around, and wandered off the graveled driveway, sniffing the ground again.
“Gonna rain this afternoon,” Amos observed. “Couple degrees colder, it’d be snow, but we don’t get much of that down here.”
Thorn nodded.
“You have a pretty good job with the government,” Amos said.
“Yes, sir.”
“You like it okay?”
“Most of the time. There are days when I feel like walking away.”
“Every job is like that. So you can take care of our granddaughter if she decides to quit and stay home? Maybe have a baby?”
Thorn grinned.
“Am I missing something funny?”
“Marissa didn’t mention that I had my own business before I went to work for Net Force?”
“I don’t recall that it came up.”
Thorn chuckled. “I was lucky enough to have developed some software that was popular. Sold out at the right time. If the government fires me, we, uh, won’t miss any meals.”
The older man nodded. “Good enough. Marissa tells us you are a fencer?”
“I train on my own, but my best moves were twenty years ago.”
“Foil, epee, or saber?”
Thorn blinked again, surprised. “Mostly epee.”
Amos answered Thorn’s unasked question. “I expect she also told you I’m a big Shakespeare fan. Some of the roles require a little stage swordplay. I learned a bit of that over the years.”
“Ah.”>
“Well, I don’t want to overtire my old dog here, so maybe we should just head on back. Ruth’ll be fixin’ lunch pretty soon, and I want to tell her to make sure not to put any poison in yours.”
He extended his hand. Thorn took it. Amos had a firm grip. “Welcome to the family.”
“Just like that?”
“Marissa picked you, Ruth likes you.”
“What about you?”
“Oh, no problem there—I knew you were okay when my dog brought you the stick. She’s a better judge of character than either Ruth or I am.”
15
Carruth leaned back in the first-class jet seat and sipped at his drink, ice with one of those little bottles of bourbon. He smiled. It had been a banner week for him, at least when it came to capping people. First, the two Metro cops, then those two terrorist wannabes in New Orleans. It was good to know that, when push came to shove, he still had the moves. Yeah, training on the range was all well and good, and VR was getting more and more realistic, but there was nothing quite like the real thing: There was the sudden rush of adrenaline, the pucker-factor going from zero to full. The recoil of a rifle butt against your shoulder, the smell of gunpowder, the sharp
Squeeze the trigger, work the bolt, squeeze again, and the bad guys went
He knew Lewis wouldn’t count those three down on the Mississippi as a great victory—except that she had walked away alive and they hadn’t—but that’s why he’d been there as backup, and he’d done his job. She put two into the buyer—
The second guy Carruth hadn’t seen until he started moving, but he had a good idea of where the guy should
