Heart hammering, I leaned closer. I raised my hand and brushed the hair away from the side of her face. Then, cupping the back of her head with my other hand, I did exactly what I’d been wanting to do—probably since the very first moment I’d seen Cassie in the bar. I kissed her. It didn’t feel wrong at all.
Her breath sped up when I broke the kiss.
“This is what you want?” I asked.
She smiled, her white teeth bright in the half-light.
“This is what I want.”
• • •
Leaving the Waverunner bobbing in a little inlet at the base of Anaho Island, I took Cassie by the hand and led her up the shallow slope to stop at the top of a small ridge. Below us, the rocky beach stretched into the distance. From end to end, a crowd of spiky white figures shifted and moved silently in the semidarkness, stretching or hopping about like angular, waist-high ghosts. More of them floated just offshore, spreading and refolding their three-foot wings as they settled in for the night.
Cassie gasped at the sight.
“Ssshhh.”
I held a finger against her lips, smiling at her reaction. “We don’t want to disturb them. Watch out for nests underfoot, too.”
“We’re not supposed to be here,” she whispered. “But, of course, you know that.”
Anaho Island, the largest breeding ground for white pelicans in all North America, was a wildlife sanctuary and off limits to everyone. Whenever I needed to get away from the relentless pressure of my thoughts, I came here to find peace in its solitude.
“Come on,” I said, leading her along the beach on tiptoe, winding our way between the dozing birds. White feathers rustled as pelicans waddled aside to clear a path for us.
A short distance ahead, a cluster of rocky tufa towers rose twenty feet above the beach, their calcerous limestone gleaming pale in the moonlight. Wisps of steam rose from the towers to disperse in the night sky, drifting in the faint breeze. Holding out a hand, I helped Cassie scramble up the rocky slope to the rim, and we descended into the small concavity nestled between the towers.
The geothermal springs that ran beneath the island had bubbled to the surface here, creating a pool—a sort of natural hot tub—ringed with clumpy tufa knots and ripples. Its warmth would be a welcome relief after the chilly waters of the lake. Stepping into the pool, thigh deep, I turned to help Cassie in, but she was already at my side.
Seizing the sides of my head between her palms, her long fingers caressing my scalp, she pressed her open lips against mine with hungry urgency, sending us both stumbling. Regaining my balance, I kissed her back, grabbing her hair, meeting her urgency with my own. I had only been kidding myself to think the two of us could just be colleagues or friends. But consequences didn’t matter now. Some things truly were beyond our control.
I wrapped my hands around the sides of her narrow waist and gently thrust her away from me. Breathing through her mouth, she stared at me in stunned incomprehension. But her confusion lasted only a moment. Then her gaze deepened, holding mine, as I reached for the center of her chest and tugged the zipper of her wetsuit all the way down.
Steam swirled around us. Cassie shrugged the wetsuit from her shoulders and eased it down over her hips, lifting a knee to slide one leg free, and then the other. Stepping forward, she reached behind my neck and grabbed my lanyard, drawing my zipper down to the small of my back. Her lips sought mine once more as she slid her long hands under the neoprene on my shoulders and peeled my wetsuit away.
Staring into my eyes, Cassie ran her fingers over the ridges of my stomach muscles. Then she raised her arms and wrapped them around my neck. I reached down to curl my hands beneath the backs of her thighs, and her flat belly slapped against mine as she lifted herself onto me, wrapping her long legs around my hips and hooking her ankles together behind my back. Holding her weight off the ground, I took a staggering step. But I found my balance again and found her eager mouth with mine.
Then, still standing, we found our rhythm together, and for a long while, nothing else in the whole world mattered.
• • •
The moon hung lower in the sky, larger than ever and orangeish now. Using our wetsuits as padding because the popcorn ridges of the tufa rock beneath us were sharp, we were lounging side by side in the geothermal pool.
“Why are you so hard on yourself?” Cassie asked.
I didn’t answer. I was actually happy, being here with her. Happy for the first time in years, probably, and I didn’t want to spoil that just yet. Reality would intrude soon enough.
She tickled my ear. She wasn’t going to leave this alone. “You’re so hard on everyone around you—frankly, I’m surprised you’re still alive—but I think you’re hardest of all on yourself.”
“Some people can get over being a failure,” I said. “I’m not one of them.”
“A failure? Oh,
come
on
!” She laughed. “You’re one of the most brilliant computer scientists of our generation. What you’ve done with Frankenstein and MADRID so far… I don’t think I could have even come close. I’m admitting that to you now.”
She pushed herself up on her elbow and prodded at my temple with her finger, grinning. “There’s a Nobel Prize in your future. I’m sure of it.”
“
Our
future,” I said, pushing her finger away. “But none of that shit means anything to me. It’s not important.”
I stared up at the stars, feeling my stomach tighten again. “It doesn’t change the fact that I let down the two people who mattered most.”
Seeing the expression on my face, Cassie’s grin faded. She lowered herself to lie on her back and stare at the sky, too.
“I fucked up the only thing I ever really cared about,” I said. “I failed at being Amy’s father.”
M
y eyes snapped open to the buzzing of the iPhone, accompanied by the annoying sound of Insane Clown Posse, singing “Mad Professor.” I groaned, raising a hand to block the bright light that streamed into the room through the window blinds. The custom ring tone meant it was Roger calling. What the hell did he want?
The pleasant weight of a feminine head shifted on my chest. Soft black hair slid across my shoulder, tickling my skin, as Cassie pushed herself up onto one elbow and smiled sleepy-eyed down at me. I kissed her forehead, but a twinge of foreboding speared my gut. I leaned back and blinked at the ceiling.
Consequences. Last night, I had let myself ignore them. Now, in the cold light of day, I had to face them, no matter how much they hurt. Even though Jen and I were divorced, I couldn’t hide from her what I had done. It felt wrong to. I would have to call her and tell her about Cassie. Very soon.
I really wasn’t looking forward to that conversation.
Insane Clown Posse started up again—Roger was being persistent. Cassie grimaced, shoved her fingers into her ears, and sat upright with a jingle of earrings and a rustle of sheets. She rolled her eyes at me and slid her legs out from under the covers, then padded naked toward the bathroom.
Watching her go, I considered ignoring the phone and spending a little longer in our suspended-time bubble of no responsibilities and no consequences. But maybe Roger had heard something about McNulty’s murder.
Snagging the phone off the floor, I checked the time—9:40 a.m. Friday—before raising it to my ear.
“Dude.” Roger sounded excited. “You heading in today, or what? I got something in my lab I want to show you.”
Thinking of the shipment of GPU-processor boards that would just sit useless all weekend because I wasn’t there to supervise their installation, I clenched a fistful of sheet in frustration.
“You fucking moron,” I said. “The base is closed till Monday, remember?”
Through the phone, I heard a loud metallic whirring, like the sound of an industrial-strength blender, and Roger laughed like an idiot. “Ho-leeee shee-it, you gotta
see
this thing!”
I sat up straight. “You’re in your lab right now?”
“Yeah. I had something cooking for the Navy, and it needed to come out of the oven today or we’d be looking at a two-week do-over.”
“How’d you get past the gate?”
“Base commander white-listed my badge. He intervened for me yesterday because of this Navy ship-armor thing I’m doing, so Bennett made an exception.”
“Why the hell would I want to see some stupid ship armor?”
“No, no, I want to show you something else. Trev, man, this thing is
insane
.” He sounded like a kid with a new bike—which, for Roger, could mean only one thing: a new gun. But I was already thinking about how well this might work out.
“Nah, forget it,” I said. “Sounds boring, whatever it is. Besides, dumb-shit, they won’t let me past the gate. Not until Monday.”
I let the silence hang, but Roger still didn’t bite. Looking at the closed bathroom door, I remembered how his gaze had slithered and crawled all over Cassie when he saw her in the cafeteria on Monday.
“Besides, Cassie and I were going to meet up later, to do some release planning,” I said. “So I’m busy today.”
Roger was silent for a moment. Then he cleared his throat. “Bring her with you, man. She’ll get a kick out of this, too. I can get you both past the gate.”
The bathroom door opened, and Cassie shook her head at me, frowning a question at the phone in my hand. I muted it so we couldn’t be heard.
“It’s Roger,” I told her. “He wants to show us something in his lab. The base is open now.”
She grabbed her jeans and started pulling them on. “You’re lying, Trevor.”
“Yeah. But he can get us in.”
“I’ll go with you,” she said. “But don’t lie to me. It’s insulting, I don’t like it, and I can tell when you’re doing it, so it’s pointless anyway.” She paused with one leg denim clad and the other bare, and gave me a sidelong glance. “Later on, we’re also going to talk about whatever it is you’re doing with Frankenstein that you’ve been hiding from me.”
I nodded. “Soon. I promise.”
Roger was still squawking in my ear, so I unmuted the phone.
“She’s there, isn’t she?” Roger said. “You
dog
! You’re with her right now.”
“Nah,” I said. “But your mother was just leaving. She’s mad at me because I can’t keep up my end of the bargain anymore, pretending to be your friend.”
“That’s a messed-up thing to say. Seriously, who’s there with you?”
“Charlton Heston. He wanted to kick your ass for making wacko gun nuts look bad, but I talked him out of it—told him you had a lot to compensate for.”
Grimacing in annoyance, Cassie scooped up her blouse. Her bare feet slapped against the hardwood as she headed for the kitchen.
“Come pick me up in two hours,” I said to Roger. “I’ll have Cassie meet us here.”
The grinding whirr came through the phone again, trailing off into a steely rattle. “You two are gonna freak out,” he said.
“‘Kay-thanks-bye,” I said, and hung up on him.
I heard cupboards opening and closing and a pan sliding onto the stove. Then Cassie called out from the kitchen, “Don’t you have any bacon?”
“Bad for you,” I yelled back, plugging in my earbuds to make another call. “There’s some spinach in the freezer if you want an omelet.”
“
Arrrgh.
Remind me to bring groceries next time.”
Next time.
I smiled at that, dialed, and waited for it to ring through. “Get me Engineering.”
After making the arrangements I needed, I hung up and wandered into the kitchen, where Cassie had a couple of omelets on plates on the bar. She had left in the yolks, but I didn’t complain. Instead, I cracked some raw egg whites into the Vitamix, poured in some grapefruit juice, and dropped in a banana, an apple, an orange, a carrot, and some celery—skins and seeds and greens and all. The high-speed three-horsepower blender whipped the mix into a smooth, creamy breakfast drink, and I poured us each a glass and sat at the bar to join her.
Cassie took a sip of hers, grimaced, and took a bite of her omelet instead. “You don’t own a coffeemaker?”
“We can stop at Starbucks on the way.”
She waved a hand around us. “How can you live like this?”
“Like what?” But I knew what she meant.
“Like
this,
” she said. “Blank white walls, bare floors, no decor, no framed photos, no books, no TV or stereo, no personality. You barely even have
furniture:
a bed, a couch, and three bar stools—that’s it. After
four years
? Why?”
Because I don’t want this to be my life.
“I work a lot.”
“What’s in there?” She slid off her stool and wandered toward a closed door in the hallway.
I looked down at my plate. “Guest bedroom,” I said. “It doesn’t get used much.”
After a moment, I slid off my bar stool and followed.
She stood in the open doorway, one hand on the knob, taking in the pink walls, the white Pottery Barn twin bed with its flowery comforter, the pink iPad on the nightstand, the American Girl dolls and Disney princesses propped on the windowsill, and the little bookshelf lined with kids’ books: Harry Potter,
The Hunger Games,
Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie.
The colorful hand-painted sign on the wall that read “
Amy’s Room
.”
I reached past Cassie to grasp the knob and tugged the door gently shut. Whatever she saw on my face made her close her eyes and put her arms around me. She held me tight, the side of her cheek wet against mine, her jaw hard against my shoulder.
T
he guy at the gate waved the Beast through without even really looking. Even if he had, I doubted he would have seen us through the smoked rear windows of Roger’s modified Humvee.
From the parking lot, we could see a pair of MPs guarding the lab wing’s main doors. Roger led Cassie and me around the other side of the geothermal plant to the Navy buildings, and we cut across the railroad tracks and in between the huge half-round Quonset warehouses at the northeast end of the base.
Roger used his key card at a small side door to the largest of the hangar-size warehouses and led us inside.