Page 70 of Double Shot
“Well yes, insurance companies pay out to dead people all the time, that’s a cornerstone of insurance fraud, and there are a few very wealthy people who built their fortunes doing that sort of skullduggery. But, no, our policy doesn’t pay out to dead people, it paid out to the investment and holding company that legally owned the house. You would be mad to think that our real names, or that any of aliases were attached to it.”
“I think you might be a wizard, Mister Roan,” Sadie said and pulled herself up to give me a peck on the cheek.
“Thank you, Poppet, but when I game, I’m a paladin, actually.” I smiled.
“Of course, you are - you big nerd,” Lach laughed. With the worry over lost money gone he warmed.
Taking a loop around the head, following the waterline, had the feeling of a funeral procession, the somber pomp and circumstance, a quiet and guarded walk. The sky threatened rain the entire time, and we were left with our memories. The last time I had been here, several of the Escadrille hirelings had been dragging me away from the house, through what had once been a wall but blown to splinters. There had been the stench of blood and cordite, burning rubber and hot metal, and I had a few bullets shot through me. Just under the vest, into the hip.
They had good doctors and the bullets hadn’t struck bone. There were things to be thankful for. Lach and Sadie had their own memories. The boat, rockets, gunfire. I wondered where they had been when the warhead went off. I knew that I had been spared a lot of injury because of an array of destroyed SUVs and a stone wall. Some of the men who hadn’t had shelter had fallen over dead, organ burst by the pressure wave. Others had been left screaming, ruptured eardrums, bleeding from their eyes, internal hemorrhaging that would take hours to kill them.
It had been an ugly business, but there was nothing beautiful about war. And that was what had happened out on the Head.
“Oh!” Sadie gave a shout and released me to go trotting off toward a new grown hedge of weeds and water grass. “Pspspspsp,” she called and then I saw what she had seen before either of us. The amber eyes of a large black-and-white cat. “Come here, Sylvester, come here you.” She chided the cat for giving her a wary look and retreating into the weeds.
“Come off it, how do you know that is the same cat you named before?” Lach asked.
“Because I recognize his coat, and he has one white whisker, mister.” She kneeled and tried to cajole the cat out of its hiding place, but it was to no avail. The cat had been a feral before, and it was very much unchanged in that regard.
“Come along, Poppet,” I said. “He’s a wildcat now, and won’t come to you.”
“I know, but still.” She sounded a little crestfallen.
“He’s been fine this long, he’ll be fine without us,” Lach said. “I didn’t even know there was a cat on the property before.”
“I only knew because he set off the motion detectors,” I nodded.
We watched as the cat emerged from the far side of the weeds and then bolted like a black-and-white streak, following an arrow straight path to vanish into a gap in the wall, well away from where we intruded on his domain. Lach helped Sadie back to her feet and swept the fragments of grass from her black skirt.
“Are we going to stay at the new house?” Sadie asked, finally.
“It’s okay, but it doesn’t have the same charm, does it?” I asked. She shook her head.
“If we build from the ground up, the things we want done will go quicker and easier, plus we won’t have to work to preserve a landmark.” Lach led us back up the head, to where the new path had been bulldozed through the ruined wall. It looked like service vehicles and equipment had been brought through, and no one put any effort into cleaning up the damage they had inflicted.
It didn’t really matter now. The house had just been a place, that was all.
The Powhattan Hotel was waiting, with its dining room overlooking the Chesapeake, enclosed in insulated glass.
Chapter Seventeen
Sadie…
I was battling a bit of this deep seated, I wasn’t sure,restlessfeeling? It was this phase in my training that I felt as confident and competent as ever, and yet it wasdifferentsomehow in that I didn’t feelconfidentin that confidence I felt fidgety, and the routine, while necessary, and the structure it provided that had left me feeling delightfully secured before was now starting to leave me feeling almostcaged.
I didn’t know what it all meant with the front of my brain, not yet, but I kind of wanted to speed some things along and get it figured out. It wasn’t the same type of nervous energy spurred on by anxiety. No, there wasn’t anything to beafraidof, just a feeling like something wasoffand that we needed to be doing something.
It was driving me so crazy that I wanted – noneededto do something to break up the ghost of monotony already.
Every other Sunday, we had started doing something on our own. It was past time, Roan had said, that we cut the proverbial apron strings and started doing things that appealed to us individually. He said that we might be a unit, but we were individuals too. We had to reclaim our own independence, or our interests.
He was right. I knew that, and I wasn’t at all sad or upset, didn’t have an ounce of bad feelings in me when he’d almost nervously suggested it and found it sweet and almost endearing at how he almost stammered it out. Add to that at all the nervous looks he cast in my direction when he brought it up over dinner one evening and I don’t think I could be any more in love with the man for caring for me as deeply as he obviously did.
“Poppet!”
“Yeah!” I called out, straightening from where I pulled on my last running shoe from the bench at the foot of the next to useless bed in my dressing room.
Conan appeared in the doorway. “I’m headed to The Black Watch, love.”
