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“You’re lying, Sweetheart. I can always tell when you’re lying. We’ll be traveling. Just you wait and see.”
Chapter 15
Three days afterHarper and Lydia returned home, Harper called an all-team meeting, including a big dinner spread at their house. The whole team was supposed to be there, except for two snipers, Carl Womack and Dodds Murphy. Womack would stay located up on the water tower over the next hill. Murphy was to remain atop the Park Service shed, camouflaged, watching his monitors for unwelcome visitors. This was considered light coverage, and Harper told them it would be the last time it would go that way. After all, they were about to begin a war, and control was the most important element.
Other than that, everyone was to show up. They provided a large turkey Harper was going to deep fry, a forty-pound prime rib, and lots of fresh vegetables. Lydia contributed five of her famous berry pies, with ice cream, of course. All the berries were from their backyard, as were the apples. Lydia was hoping they’d have enough leftovers to keep them fed for several days.
Sally came up the day before to help her with the baking. They’d done this before. She brought her own apron, and the two of them began cutting fruit and measuring the fixings for the pie mixtures.
“How’s it going down there? You enjoying taking care of your three guys?” Lydia asked.
“Why? You think I don’t enjoy having a man around? They’re all real gentlemen.”
“What do you talk about?” she wondered.
“All sorts of stuff. I know how to talk to a man when I want to. If he’s respectful, Lydia. Shame on you! No, I like these guys. My kind of people.”
“You have probably introduced them to your puzzles.”
“Oh gosh, yes. When they’re not working, but they work hard.”
“I haven’t seen what you’ve got down there, but does your living room look anything like mine?” Lydia asked as she pointed to her living room, which was literally covered floor to ceiling on two walls with monitors, consoles, scanners, wireless boosters, satellite receivers, and hundreds of miles of wires and cords, plus the shelving to hold it all. At all times, four people sat on the two sides, watching screens and listening to devices, running their computers, and analyzing sounds. It was the heartbeat and the pulse of the entire operation.
“No, it doesn’t look anything like that. Well, maybe a little. My guys are pretty tight-lipped and don’t talk about it. And that’s okay. I just go out and do my work outside. I cook for them, and so far, they seem to be okay with my food.”
“Are you kidding? They’re in heaven, Sally!”
“And then at night, we play games. Puzzles sometimes. We don’t watch much TV. They’re really solid guys. They’re actually no problem, other than the fact that I’m running out of hot water every day, mostly from the laundry I’m doing.”
“I’m so grateful for what you’re doing for us.”
“Lydia, I know you’d do it for me if the roles were reversed. Besides, I’m right in there with you guys. I mean who’s to say they wouldn’t come after me just because I’m close to you or as a way to get to you. I’m a realist. I understand these guys are no-nonsense.”
They paused. Then Sally asked, “Have you heard anything about Lipori?”
Lydia brought out two balls of dough she’d had chilled in the refrigerator and spread them out over the floured countertop for the both of them to roll and cut their piecrusts.
She shook her head. “Not a thing yet. The day after tomorrow is supposed to be the handoff. We’ll see. Everything’s quiet. There’s no chatter, except they did try to locate the couple, and the address turned out to be bogus. But they’re still working on something. I just hate to ask Harper all the time, because he is right in the middle of so many things. I don’t want to distract him.”
The piecrusts were made and placed over the pie dishes, covered with plastic wrap to use for tomorrow. She was going to make two deep-dish apple pies, one berry pie, and a fresh peach pie. The pie plates were placed in the garage refrigerator. The fruit mixes they’d made were held in a sealed containers in the kitchen refrigerator until they could be put in the oven tomorrow.
Lydia’s thought was to get all the work out of the way first, that way she could turn the kitchen over to Harper, who always wanted to be the one to cook the prime rib and turkey himself. He also brought some steaks for some of the guys who wanted barbecue. She didn’t want to be under foot while he was in the middle of making his famous kitchen disaster zone, and he almost never offered to do the cleanup.
When the kitchen was tidy again, Sally asked her if she’d like a cup of tea, and Lydia agreed. They sat down at the dining table, reduced to half its normal size due to the traffic. Venom lay down at her feet.
“How’s he doing with all this crowd?” Sally asked.
“He’s a champ. He’s got lots of distractions, though. But he’s not seeming to mind at all. He loves the affection, he still gets to sleep with us at night, and we’ve gone through several nights now with no alerts and no barking. I think he’s getting used to the routine and knows something is up, but he’s not been signaling.”
“You get to spend much time down in the garden?”
“I was going to today, but I just ran out of time. Thank you for your help. This is going to be great.”
“No problem.” Sally hesitated a couple of seconds while they both sipped their tea and watched the guys studying the wall of monitors, whispering amongst themselves. “You know, I was worried about you coming home.”
“Why?”
“I really thought that maybe this would be something you and Harper couldn’t maintain. He was such a mess after you left, and he’s such a strong personality. I wasn’t sure you would feel comfortable around him.”
