A Bodyguard to Remember (18 page)

Another card looked intriguing because it had very distinctive, abstract graphics, but it gave no clue what the business was. The web address led to a pornography site.

“Garbage,” I muttered, disappointed. I was hoping for something more interesting.

I went off-line and cleared my cache. For good measure, I started a virus check. While it ran, I made use of the washroom. I figured that would be an apt place to dispose of the card. Out of habit, I started to rip it in half.

It wouldn’t rip.

Fine, I would just push it down into the middle of the washroom garbage with a piece of paper towel. I matched thought to action. Then I washed my hands for thirty seconds, with soap, twice.

When I returned to my table, one of the baristas was warning a woman away from my computer. I smiled. It pays to be a regular.

“It
is
you,” said the woman, turning away from the barista. “I thought I recognized your laptop. I was
not
going to touch it, however,” she added, raising her voice a little. “We met when you were signing books here last summer and I’ve seen you around.”

“I remember,” I said, which I did vaguely.

She was cookie-cutter pretty. Brown hair. Brown eyes. Regular features.

I sat and started to shut down my laptop. This just wasn’t going to be a good day for working here. I might as well go home.

“I’m glad I met you again,” she said. “Do you have time for coffee?”

I smiled politely and shook my head.

“Sorry. I’ve got an appointment.”

She forced an equally false smile on her face.

“That’s too bad. Please, take my card. Maybe we can arrange something.”

I took it. Maybe I’d find out what she wanted via email—or maybe not. When she’d gone, I pulled the card out and looked at it.

The card had distinctive, abstract graphics. They were different distinct, abstract graphics, but they had a similar feel to the ones on the card I just threw out. Maybe they were designed by the same graphic artist.

Slinging my backpack on my back, I made a second trip to the washroom. I took the lid of the garbage can and found where I stuffed the first card. For the lack of anything better, I grabbed a personal products disposal bag and put both cards inside.

I was almost positive that both cards had been designed by the same person and had a niggling feeling that both had been delivered to me by the same woman. At the same time, I also realized that I might be suffering from rampant paranoia. Even so, instead of going home, I wandered the mall. As I walked, I phoned Merrick.

“Ms. Hartley. This isn’t a very good time to talk. Is something wrong?”

I condensed my suspicions regarding the cards down to as few words as possible.

“It might be a coincidence,” he said when I was done. “I’m sending you two addresses. Send all the cards you’ve accumulated to the first address via Express Post. Use the second address for the return address. I have to go, but I’ll follow up as soon as I can.”

His formality told me he was in a meeting of some kind. Yet he picked up my call. I decided to feel flattered, since the alternative was that he expected me to be in trouble. At the same time, I picked up my pace as I headed to the postal outlet. I waited for the addresses to arrive via text message and then got the cards in the mail. Then it hit me. With Rick gone, Nate visiting his mother and the kids with their father this weekend, I was going to have to deal with being home alone.

Merrick called Saturday morning. He didn’t say much, but I could tell by his tone that he wasn’t happy with me being unattended for the weekend. Until then, I wasn’t very happy either, but I found myself excusing Rick, letting Merrick know that I was fine. What could happen?

“For one thing, if those cards do mean anything, someone might come looking for them.”

Okay, there was that.

“Can you stay with Paula?”

“She and Tom have gone off to Niagara Falls for the weekend. I can’t think of anyone else I could just descend on without notice.”

He sighed. “You can come here. I don’t want you alone in the house.”

Smiling to myself, I said yes. That was an offer I couldn’t refuse.

It wasn’t the Harbour Castle, in fact it was a utilitarian room in a discount hotel, but it was practically downtown so I had a wide variety of places to go, things to do, and coffee shops to hang out in and work.

“I tried to get you a room,” Merrick assured me, as I unpacked my toiletries next to his. “There’s a convention at one of the larger hotels and this is a secondary venue.”

“This is fine. This is great. Two beds. No problem.”

Truth be told, all the tension that had been building in me since that woman gave me her card melted away the moment Merrick met me in the lobby. Despite all the logical arguments I had used to convince myself that I was relatively safe, I had been really afraid.

In the wee hours of Friday night, I had worked out that I wasn’t in immediate danger. If I was an unwitting courier, either I was no longer considered reliable and would probably be left alone, or I was still useful and therefore safe. The cards probably didn’t mean anything, but if they did, no one knew I had sent them off to be checked. I could just as likely have thrown them out. Speaking of which . . .

“When will you find out about the cards?” I asked.

Merrick gave me a half shrug. “The lab will get them Monday. Once they are processed for identification, Zeke will take a closer look. If there isn’t a backlog, we’re looking at a week, but . . .”

“But?”

He shook his head. I guess I didn’t have the need to know.

“I have to work for a few hours,” he said, sounding regretful. “I imagine you won’t want to hang around here.”

“You imagine right.”

“I’ll call you around five and find out where you are. We’ll work out dinner plans then.”

“Sounds good.”

He hesitated, a worried frown pulling down the corners of his mouth.

“Would you rather I stay here?” I asked.

He shook his head and seemed to shake off his concern. Impulsively, I gave him a quick hug.

“What was that for?” he asked.

Really, it was affection for my personal guard dog. I wasn’t going to say that, however. Merrick might not think it was a compliment. I just smiled, gathered up my pack and jacket, so I could leave with him.

In the elevator, it was his turn to surprise me.

“Hartley.”

“Yes, Merrick?”

“Are you and Rick . . . ?”

I didn’t pretend to not understand what he was asking. I just smiled, shook my head and said, “Funny, Rick asked me the same about you.”

He didn’t take the bait. He just nodded and, when we reached the lobby, told me to enjoy my afternoon. He continued down a floor to the parking garage.

It was one of those cold, dark and damp days that made you wish for snow just to brighten the landscape. Gusts of wind whistled through the skyscraper-sided trenches, slicing through exposed flesh. Smart people headed underground, giving the streets a sad, abandoned appearance.

This perfectly suited the tone of my second book—the sequel to
Men in Uniform
. In the tradition of second books in a series, this one was going to be grim. I toughed out the cold until my face was numb, then I found a laptop-friendly coffee shop.

My cell phone chimed.

My mother.

“It’s a lovely day,” she announced. “Let’s go for a drive.”

“It’s cold, wet, and grey, Mom. Let’s not.”

“Looks fine to me.”

“That’s because you’re mostly blind. Anyway, I’m out of town. If the weather is nice tomorrow, I’ll come back early and take you for a drive then.”

“Tomorrow may be too late.”

My heart skipped a beat. My mother’s health was precarious. Was she trying to tell me something?

“I think Billy is going to propose,” she continued.

Relief was followed by stunned disbelief.

“You still there, Pru?”

“Yeah, Mom.”

“Well? What do you think?”

I hardly knew Billy. Except that he looked a little like Brian Keith, was a volunteer bus driver, and had applied for a guide dog on my mother’s behalf, I knew squat.

“I don’t know what to think,” I told her.

“Zeke says I should follow my heart . . . Are you still there, Prudence?”

“Zeke told you what?”

“You know, Pru,” my mother chided, “I think if Zeke can find time in his busy schedule to email me a couple of times a week, so can you.”

“I didn’t know you had an email account,” I complained. “If I’d known . . . wait a sec, how do you write emails? Or read them for that matter?”

“Voice recognition software. Billy set it up for me. Maybe I forgot to tell you.”

“Maybe?” I squeaked.

“Let’s talk about this in person,” my mother soothed. “I can put him off for a day or two. I’ll bring him over for dinner tomorrow night. We’ll have a nice family dinner.”

“Not like the last family dinner, I hope.”

She laughed and I hung up, taking a moment to absorb the information. One of the staff reminded me that I had to make my order at the counter. There’s no such thing as a free seat.

When my phone rang again, I almost ignored it. Fortunately, I relented. It was an old client wanting to offer me a new job. He worked just a few blocks from where I sitting. Unfortunately, he was out of town. I made an appointment to meet him at his office the following week then ordered a second latte in celebration.

If I had any illusions about a romantic evening with Merrick, they were quickly dashed. He had picked out a well-known Jamaican restaurant for dinner. While we waited for a table, Merrick had some pictures of known female operatives for me to look at. I didn’t recognize any of them. We talked family over dinner but once we returned to the hotel, it was back to business.

“I’ve got something to show you,” he said, bringing a glass of water and setting it on the side table between the two beds. He took out a business card and dropped it in.

“You aren’t going to want me to drink that, are you?”

“Pay attention Hartley.”

I stared at the glass, wondering what would happen. It didn’t take long. The card separated into three layers. The outside layers collapsed into a pulpy mess at the bottom of the glass. The core was made of sterner stuff. Merrick pulled it out of the glass and used a tissue to wipe it off before handing it to me.

It was made of thin plastic and printed on both sides with a series of squares.

“They look like tiny QRCs.”

“Quick Response Codes. Yes. Each one carries part of an encrypted message. There might also be a link to a Cloud account with encrypted information that can be downloaded if you have the password. This seems to be the way they’re moving information now.”

“Seems so complicated.”

“If it was simple, we’d be able to stop the flow, or manipulate it. We’ve figured out that the information is passed in relays of differing lengths, and with a few exceptions, the couriers involved don’t know what they’re transporting. The one exception was the man who ended up in your living room.”

I had been thinking about this on and off for almost a year. The little bits of the puzzle that I had gleaned so far started to make a lot more sense.

“What’s-his-name . . . the dead guy.”

“Whelan Nadar.”

“He was trying to cut the line. He was after the guy in charge.”

Merrick gave me a very Vulcan look. I half expected him to say, “Fascinating.”

“Cut the line is very apt, Hartley. I’m impressed. We were onto Nadar because he was leaving a trail of corpses in his wake, all with their throats slit.”

“So, he brought a knife to a gun fight.” I looked at the soggy beige paper in the glass. Is that what happened to the artsy cards I sent you?”

“Not them. One of the others. The one with braille. Business cards with braille are becoming more common and it would make it easier for someone to pick out of your bag later.”

Not a romantic evening, but I finally felt like I was in the loop. Maybe that’s foreplay in the counter-espionage trade.

For me the sexiest moment was Merrick wearing his Mickey Mouse pyjamas. As it happened, I had my Minnie Mouse nightshirt with me. The smile he gave me when I emerged from the bathroom with it on gave me hope.

It would do for now.

Sunday dinner was a bust. I rushed back to make a roast and Mom and Billy cancelled at the last moment. Performance anxiety, said my mother. I felt for her. Sometimes men could be so frustrating.

Rick came home later that night and I asked how things went.

“Not so good. Lorraine is having trouble letting go. She’s forgotten that she’s the one who dumped me.”

“I’m sorry, Rick. Sorry for bringing it up, too.”

He forced a smile. “It’s okay. It’s just something she has to get through.”

I didn’t want to press, but I had a feeling there was more to it than that.

“The only reason I agreed to see a couple’s counsellor with her was that I thought if I could convince the counsellor, then she might convince Lorraine.”

“But it didn’t?”

His face took on the pained expression of someone who knows they’ve done something wrong and now has to own up to it. It was an expression I’d seen on my son’s face more than once.

“Did you agree to a reconciliation?” I asked.

“Oh, God, no!” His expression flashed from guilt to horror and back again. “I told her I’d moved on.”

I gave my head a puzzled shake. “Have you?”

“I told her that I was with someone else . . . you.”

Pinching the bridge of my nose, I reminded myself, there were worse things, right? “Okaaaay . . .” I said, stretching out the word. “How’d she take it?”

“Now she thinks you’re the one I was seeing before we broke up.”

“You said there was nobody.”

“Lorraine isn’t listening to reason. She’s convinced herself that I left her for another woman. Nothing I can say will shake her from her perception of reality. On the upside, she’s agreed that phoning and hanging up is juvenile. I don’t think she’ll bug you anymore.”

I followed him to the kitchen, where he poured a large glass of milk and rooted out a couple of chocolate chip cookies. He ate one whole, washing it down with the milk.