Three Rivers (21 page)

He pulled back, kissing every inch of her face, her shoulders, her breasts, muttering sweet words against her skin about how beautiful she was, how much he wanted her and she couldn't help but smile. He finally rested his head in her neck and she was sure he could feel her heart racing against him. Then she heard chuckling, the vibrations jostling her belly.

"What is it?" she asked confused.

"I should probably continue getting undressed." She looked up and laughed. Other than his half-lifted shirt and his jeans and boxers pulled down around his thighs, he was completely clothed. He stood, disposed of the condom, and gave her the best strip tease any woman could hope for simply by removing his shirt, jeans and boxers. "What?" he asked as she stared at him from the bed, unknowingly licking her lips.

"You really are a stud. I like watching you strip."

"I'll keep that in mind. Any time you like, gorgeous, you just have to ask. Though you do make me pretty wild. Maybe I should just never wear clothes again so we don't slow down you having your way with me."

"Hmm, I like that idea. You okay with being my kept man?"

He climbed on the bed to lie beside her. "Hell no, I don't mind. Is there an application or do you feel pretty sure I'll get the position?"

She laughed and straddled him so that her warm pussy was rubbing against him as she slowly moved back and forth. "I'm pretty sure I'll get you in every position."

He laughed and flipped her over so he was fully on top of her. He suddenly got serious, and she couldn't place the emotion she saw in his eyes. It quickly flashed away and back was the cocky man she was so used to seeing.

He cleared his throat, "Now, I believe I promised you dessert."

She squeezed his butt playfully, "I thought you just gave me my dessert."

He laughed and stood, walking in his naked beauty across the room to a lovely little kitchenette and returned with a saran wrapped covered plate full of chocolate mousse and fresh berries. He flopped down and without a word began to spoon a morsel for her. "Open your mouth."

She obliged, tasting it and closing her eyes on a groan. "You spoil me, Griffen Tate."

"I thought that was the idea," he said.

"I like the sound of that, though I suspect you're trying to fatten me up before you leave." She said it teasingly but her heart jumped when she saw sadness cross his eyes so quickly she thought she imagined it. "Griffen...?"

Before she could say anything more he kissed her until there was no room in her mind for questions — only thoughts of how good he made her feel.

Althea had left and Griffen groaned at the thought that he wouldn't see her again for several hours.

They'd made love again, it wasn't as frenzied as before, but still more rushed than he would've liked. She was so perfect in every way that he wanted to take his time tasting her and enjoying her body, but she'd had to get back to work.

It surprised him how thrilled he was to have her ask him to her house for dinner and to stay the night after Johnny went to sleep.

He suspected she didn't want to risk going out with him in public because of her crazy obsession with keeping their time together secret, but he was getting to spend time with her and would simply have to take what she would give him. Maybe it was better this way anyway. She was already getting deeper under his skin than anyone had before.

He pulled himself out of bed and took a shower. He'd been half-tempted to simply let the smell of her body and their lovemaking stay on his skin all day, but he knew it was better to appear half human when he showed up at her house.

As he walked out of the shower drying his hair roughly with a towel, his laptop caught his eye. He sat down and pulled up Jack's flash drive file. Nope, the security was still beyond him. He’d packed up the flash drive for the courier to pick up, but he was quickly restless again and couldn't figure out what to do with himself.

As he was about to put the computer to sleep, his finger instead hovered over the Word icon. He opened a blank document and for the hell of it typed out "Chapter One." Then he wrote a couple lines about the day he met Jack, back when he was five, so shy and scared of the world, living in a world of terror and Jack was there with a football and asked if he wanted to play.

Then the strangest thing happened. Griffen kept on writing and couldn't stop. He released everything inside him onto the keyboard, from his guilt over Jack's death, to his passion for Althea to the mysterious contents of the flash drive. It wasn't until he looked at the clock on the bottom right of the screen to see it was almost time to meet Althea after work that he realized a new book had begun.

CHAPTER TEN

It was Wednesday and Griffen called Trey on the way to campus to teach his Investigative Journalism class. He knew he needed to focus on a lesson plan but his mind kept wandering back to thoughts of Jack.

Griffen had spent the last two evenings with Althea and Johnny and it shocked him just how enjoyable that time had been. When he'd arrived for his first dinner there Althea had been pretty shy, understandably. It was very important to her that Johnny not have any idea that she and Griffen were — well, whatever they were.

Yet from the first moment Griffen arrived, Johnny had been eager to spend time with him, playing football and learning more about his dad. Each moment filled Griffen with happiness in a way he'd never anticipated.

The time with Althea also became better by the second and they even found the boldness to sneak a kiss or an embrace every time Johnny was outside or in his room, well before Johnny went to sleep, when Althea and Griffen would go to her room and enjoy their heated nights together.

Even though Griffen had to leave both mornings long before Johnny awoke, he couldn't deny the bizarre sensation of joy he felt at being a part of this unit. The pleasure of being with Althea and Johnny was so foreign from everything he'd ever known before. Each moment with them filled him with an emotion he couldn't quite name, but didn't want to lose, if even for this brief time.

That happiness quickly turned into a desperate fixation on a need to resolve why Jack — the actual touchstone of this family — had reached out to him so many years ago.

Griffen had always known that he would never be free of guilt as long as the mystery of why Jack reached out to him before he died still hung out there. It was still a blinking spotlight on Griffen's greatest shame, but now it was more than just the matter of resolving his own regrets. It now represented Griffen's opportunity to leave Althea and Johnny with some of the peace that Jack's unexplained death had stolen from them.

Now he felt an overwhelming desire to resolve this issue for Johnny and Althea's sake. He knew he needed to leave them soon, that he would never be more than a passing visitor in their lives, but maybe he could use his skills to give them some peace by getting to the bottom of what Jack had been working on when he'd asked for Griffen's help.

"Hi Trey."

"Dude. I was just about to call you. I got your flash drive late Monday night. So are you finally writing another book or is this just for you?"

"Both. I'm including the investigation in the book like I always do, but it's also for my own peace of mind. So, what do you think? All I was able to open were a couple of requests for proposals from the military. Did you have any more luck?"

"Of course I did, that's why you called me, right?"

"Yes, you arrogant ass. What have you found?"

"Hey, play nice, man. I just speak the truth is all. But I'll tell you this is some serious technical security on here. Your friend knew what he was doing."

"I believe that. Can you crack it?"

"Well, it's not that simple. Basically, he loaded data on this flash drive over a period of several weeks. The first materials were pretty simple to break into. There were military contracts following up on those requests for proposals you mentioned and drawings of some components for robotics equipment for the military. With each file he loaded, his security features became more extreme. I'm peeling through them as I go, but I won't be able to resolve everything all at once. Do you know what he was working on? That may help."

Guilt rose like acid from his throat. "No. He, uh, reached out to me asking for my help with something before he died."

"And what did he say when you talked to him? Anything could be helpful."

"Nothing."

"He called you and wouldn't tell you anything. That's weird."

"I never called him back, all right!" Griffen shouted into the Bluetooth speaker, his fingers white from clenching around his steering wheel.

"Oh, shit man... Well, I guess I don't want to go there. Doesn't matter now. That's all done, right?"

"Right," Griffen blurted out sarcastically.

"You did know him, though, and he knew you. If you really want to figure this out, you have to think, why would he have wanted your help? You don't know robotics or computers."

"No clue. I was hoping his flash drive would tell me."

"Well, he didn't need you for technical shit. He certainly had that covered. Only other thing you’re good at is digging up shit other people did and maybe kicking somebody's ass."

"Trey — you're right! Maybe something was going on and he was trying to figure it out."

"Or..."

"Or what?" he growled out.

"Or maybe he was involved in something bad and needed your help to get out of it. You do know some tough dudes and you've disappeared for long periods before."

"No way. Jack was a golden boy, no way. Got it," Griffen said adamantly but he hated that the same thought had invaded his brain.

"Right, sure. Thing is...I was able to open up one pretty interesting file, it was an email that had markers of what I'm pretty sure are the
CMU
server, but sender and recipient are hidden. It's referencing military projects I saw in the contracts I found, but they're broken out and tagged with notations regarding which ones 'the Chinese want.'"

Griffen suddenly felt sick.

"Point is Griff, I think I should go beyond the flash drive, maybe look into..."

"Jack. You want to look into Jack."

"I think we have to. Either way I'm going to keep plugging away and you see what you can figure out over there. Okay?"

"Okay. Do what you gotta do."

"I always do, man."

Althea was watching as the clock on her computer slowly ticked forward. All she could think about was getting down to Oakland to see Griffen. Just the thought of his hands on her again made her feel hot all over. She was starting to wonder if maybe she should just leave when her office phone rang.

After reading the caller ID she answered and said, "Hey David. What's up? I thought you were teaching class today?"

"It's done, I just wanted to check in with you. How are you?"

"Good. You have a doctor's appointment later, don't you?"

"Yeah. Just a lot of the same, I'm sure. More bad news about what the accident did to my body...want to cheer me up after? Maybe have dinner tonight at your place?"