Chapter 6 #4
“How are you on the asset?”
Ethan watched a charter engine cycle off at the head of Pier One.
The deck light on Catherine’s houseboat made a soft yellow square on the water.
The watch on his wrist said seven thirty-eight.
He thought for the count of about a quarter second longer this morning between the kiosk and the head of the boardwalk.
“She walked the dock at five forty-three the way she’s walked it for four years,” he said. “Today she had to work at not looking at Pier Three. Yesterday she didn’t.”
“That’s a piece of data.”
“It is.”
“Is it the kind of piece of data you’re going to tell me about because it’s relevant to the file, or because you needed somebody to hear you say it.?”
Ethan didn’t answer right away. The two of them had been working together for eight months, and Caleb was the closest thing Ethan had to a friend inside Shadow Ops, and Caleb was asking the question because Caleb had earned the right to ask it and not because Caleb was running a quality check on Ethan’s discipline.
“Both.”
“All right.”
“Caleb.”
“Yes.”
“I went forty-five minutes on George Halsey’s boat this afternoon without thinking about her, and the moment I knew I’d gone forty-five minutes, I thought about her.”
“Vale.”
“Yeah.”
“That’s not a quality check question. That’s the question.”
“I know.”
“Are you going to be able to do this?”
“I’m going to be able to do this.”
“Are you going to be able to do this clean?”
“I don’t know yet.”
Caleb was quiet for the count of about four breaths. Then Caleb did what Caleb did when Caleb had decided to let something sit, which was to tap once on the keyboard at his end of the line.
“Eight months in,” Caleb said, “you’re the closest we’ve ever been to him. The file is the file. Get the man’s sister her brother. Then we figure out the rest.”
“Get her her brother.”
“Get her her brother. Pell’s intel goes into tomorrow’s briefing. Halsey’s confirmed friendly. Bonner pending. Sleep, Vale.”
“I’ll sleep.”
The line went dead.
Ethan set the phone face-down on the engine cover.
The deck light on Catherine’s houseboat was still on.
The kiosk light over the office side door was on, which meant Sloane was still in the office at seven forty, which meant she’d stayed at the office an hour and forty minutes later than yesterday. He took note of the difference.
Then his phone buzzed once. The screen lit. It wasn’t Caleb.
He picked up the phone.
The text was from a number he didn’t have saved. The number had a Florida area code. It was a single line.
This is Sloane. There’s a casserole on your dock pylon.
Ethan stood up.
He looked toward the head of his slip. The pylon at the head of slip seventeen had, in fact, a Pyrex dish sitting on top of it, balanced on the flat surface, with a tea towel folded over it and weighed down on two corners by what looked like a half-brick and a small marina cleat she’d probably grabbed off the standing file of spares behind her counter.
He looked at the office.
The kiosk light was off.
He looked back at the casserole and typed.
Catherine brought me one yesterday.
He read the text twice before he sent it, thought about adding a sentence and didn’t, and sent it.
The reply came inside ten seconds.
I know. She told me she made an extra. Eat it tomorrow.
He stood on his swim platform with the phone in one hand and looked at the Pyrex on his pylon.
The marina at seven forty-three was cooling and emptying and quietly preparing to be a marina at eight, and somewhere across the parking lot a truck started and pulled out and turned right onto the road, and Ethan typed the next text the way a man typed a text he hadn’t had a chance to draft in advance.
Thank you, Sloane.
She didn’t reply.
He walked to the pylon and picked up the Pyrex. It was heavy. She’d made it heavy on purpose, with too much of whatever it called for, and he saw that the two women on this dock who’d given him casseroles in twenty-four hours must have felt he needed to eat. It could be worse.
He took it below, put it in the icebox, and stood at the icebox for a count of about three breaths with his hand on the door.
Then he went back up the cabin steps and sat on the gunwale in the cooling light and looked across the channel at Catherine’s deck light, and he thought about a woman who had stayed an hour and forty minutes late at her office on a Wednesday so she could leave a casserole on her tenant’s pylon and drive home before he could come to the office to thank her, and the thinking-about-her was what he was going to be doing for the rest of the night, and there wasn’t going to be a forty-five-minute window in it.
He sat on the gunwale until the channel had gone fully dark.
Then he went below and ate a small plate of her casserole standing at the dinette, because he’d told her he would eat it tomorrow but he was eating it tonight, and the small lie to her about the casserole was the smallest lie he had told her in thirty-three hours, but it wasn't the biggest one.