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Chapter 114
IT WAS SEPTEMBER 25, and Joe and I were having friends over to toast one another and the good days ahead.
A ham was in the oven, baking under a peppery mango glaze. Martha was begging for a taste and got a Milk-Bone instead. I was wearing a kimono and an avocado mask as I peeled the potatoes and Joe sliced apples for the cobbler. The 49ers were playing the Cowboys, the cheers of the crowd coming over the TV, when Joe’s cell phone rang.
I said to him, “Don’t answer that, honey.”
I wasn’t joking, but he grinned at me and picked up the phone.
I hadn’t had a call in weeks that hadn’t sent me down a tunnel of horror, and frankly I was so strung out from my job, I couldn’t take even a lightbulb burning out. Or a broken fingernail. Or even a dip in the temperature. I just couldn’t take it anymore.
Joe brought the phone into the living room, and I rinsed the potatoes and put them on to boil. I was in the bathroom washing avocado off my face when Joe said my name. I shut off the water and patted my eyes with a fluffy towel, and when I turned, I saw Joe looking at me, gray-faced and grim.
“There’s a plane full of people on the tarmac at Dulles International,” he said. “There’s a guy on board, used to be an informant of mine years back. He smuggled C-four in with his hand luggage. He’s threatening to blow up the plane.”
“Oh my God. And the Feds want you to advise them?”
“Not exactly. The guy with the C-four, Waleed Mohammad, wants to talk to me and only me.”
Joe had been deputy director of Homeland Security when we met and had become a high-level security consultant when he moved here from DC—a consultant who worked from home.
“So you need to call the guy,” I said. “Talk him down.”
“I have to fly to Washington,” Joe said, walking to me, enfolding me in his arms. “A car’s picking me up. I have to go right now.”
It felt like my heart stopped in its tracks.
It was stupid, but I just wanted to bawl in Joe’s arms and tell him he couldn’t go, and if he did, I’d keep crying until he came back.
“Do what you have to do,” I said.
Chapter 115
I WAS DRESSED by the time Yuki and Miles arrived. Miles, that too-cute-for-words bartender, presented me with a bottle of wine, telling me about its special qualities. I barely heard him, but I’m pretty sure I thanked him. Yuki asked where Joe was, and I told her with my voice catching, my eyes watering up, that he had rushed off to Washington.
I turned away so she wouldn’t have to endure my disgraceful wet-eyed funk. So she followed me into the kitchen and helped me plate the olives and cheese. “What’s going on, Lindsay?” she asked me.
“Don’t look at me. It’s just that everything finally got to me. You know. Everything.”
“When’s Joe coming back?”
I shrugged and the doorbell rang, Martha yelping happily when I opened it to Edmund and Claire. Claire surrounded me in a big hug and smothered me with flowers.
Edmund said, “Lindsay, you look gorgeous in red. Gorgeous in any way, but red’s definitely your color.”
Edmund joined Miles in front of the TV, the two of them having a football bonding moment as Claire went into the kitchen and poked around for a vase.
When Cindy and Rich showed up, I realized it was the first time I’d seen them together on a date. And maybe it was the first time they’d really been out in the world publicly. That their debut was happening at my home was pretty cool. I told them that Joe was MIA and why.
Rich said, “You want me to pick out some music, Linds?”
“Thanks. That would be great.”
Richie was digging through the CDs and I was pulling the ham out of the oven when the phones rang, each of them, one in all four rooms ringing together.
“Are you getting the phone?” Claire asked me.
“Phones are no friends of mine.”
