CHAPTER 6
Baxter Road, Nantucket
Through the morning fog I saw a team of Secret Service agents posted on guard along the perimeter of the property. Though he hadn’t yet secured his party’s official nomination, Senator Coleman Harrison qualified for protection as a major presidential candidate.
Just as I pulled the slide to the rear, I heard a female voice say sternly, “Put the gun down and turn around slowly.”
No way this happens a second time in less than twelve hours. I put the pistol down, raised my empty hands, and turned around to see … a smiling face.
A fit, tan woman about five foot eight with shoulder-length blond hair and green eyes was standing in my garage dressed in khakis, a polo shirt, and hiking boots. She was alone and didn’t have her gun drawn.
“Too soon?” she teased. “Sorry, I couldn’t help it.” She held out her hand. “US Secret Service Special Agent in Charge Rowan Anderson.”
How could I forget the woman who’d had me arrested? She looked to be in her mid-thirties and had a drop holster and a pistol strapped to her thigh.
“Funny,” I snorted. “The senator still alive?”
“For at least one more day,” she said. “Look, I’m sorry about last night. But you were skulking around in the dark with a bevy of weapons.”
“I’d hardly call it a bevy. It was more like a tiny collection of guns. And I wasn’t skulking—I was moving quietly and deliberately.”
She flashed me a grin. Anderson had a lovely smile and wore no ring that I could see.
“We had to take the potential threat even more seriously than we do the usual whack jobs running around these days, especially given the ruckus you caused with that state trooper. The rear security detail enjoyed that bit of excitement.”
“Can’t believe I missed the rear security clowns. That was sloppy. I guess I deserved the beatdown,” I muttered sheepishly.
“Well, we had you dead to rights for sure, but you were formidable. I will give you that.” She chuckled.
“I’ll have your tiny collection of guns back here this evening.
I assured my boss that we would take good care of you.
My ass still has bite marks from the chewing, by the way.
You’ve got some mighty powerful friends. Peace?”
She moved closer and once again extended her arm. She had a good handshake.
“Peace.”
Anderson checked a lot of boxes for me: intelligent; funny; gun-toting; tough. Plus she was really pretty, and when she turned around I checked her ass for the bite marks she’d mentioned; it looked perfect, from what I could tell. My teammate Wolf would approve.
I was suddenly tongue-tied. At work, on the job, even during a gunfight, I could talk to women as equals and friends.
Out in the regular world, however, I always seemed to be too much or too little—a clueless train wreck, always somehow getting seventeen steps ahead of myself and messing things up before they even started.
It was worse than an Achilles heel—I probably needed some kind of romance therapy to cure my Achilles leg.
Just then, Si rounded the corner into the garage holding two cups of joe.
Oh, thank God. Perfect timing.
I introduced the two. “Josiah, this is Special Agent in Charge Rowan Anderson of the United States Secret Service,” I said in my best radio-announcer voice.
“She’s the one who arrested me, beat my ass, and stole my guns.
She isn’t a very nice person, but she is the reason you now have a summer job. ”
Si laughed. “Thank you for beating his ass so that I can have a summer job, ma’am.”
“Hello, Josiah. As you can see, I do like to steal and pillage and get into fights. But as much as I’d like to hang out with you two desperadoes,” she said with a smile and a wink, “I’ve got important work to do.”
“Speaking of desperadoes,” I warned her, “the rest of my crew will be heading up later in the week to create havoc. Be on the lookout for suspicious types.”
She took it like a champ and headed off to do her Secret Service duties.
When Si and I caught each other staring as she left, we laughed self-consciously, clinked our coffee mugs, and headed out to fix my house. The big renovations would start later, but Si seemed as excited as I was to get cracking on them.
We spent most of the day replacing the front door and doing small cosmetic jobs. The kid had a keen work ethic and never once sandbagged it. He was pretty decent with a hammer and surprised me by even knowing the basics of wiring and electricity.
Seeing him in action, I asked how he had acquired such an impressive skill set. It seems the Wilson family was not afraid of hard work.
According to Si, while his parents employed a large staff, they preferred—when possible—to personally handle the maintenance on both their homes.
Young Wilson was also a competitive sailor, fluent in French, and apparently a top-rated squash player. Most of all, he had a desperate need to be part of something meaningful.
We had a good time together, and by the end of the day I had offered him another job: working for me at CSTC until he returned to college. A trip or two over to the sandbox would give him a lifetime of challenge and direction.
I just needed to convince Alan and Constance Wilson that it was a good idea for their baby boy to go to Iraq.