Dance finally now climbed out of the Pathfinder and walked onto the porch, key out.
She didn’t need to do any unlatching, however. The door opened and Jon Boling stood before her, in jeans and a black polo shirt. She realized his hair was a little longer. It would have been that way for the past few days, of course, and she thought: Something else I missed. Missed completely.
Well, it had been one hell of a week.
‘Hey,’ he said.
They kissed and she walked inside.
A skitter of multiple feet behind her, claws that needed clipping. Some enthusiastic couch-jumping and a few good-to-see-you rolls on the back. Dance did the obligatory, but forever comforting to all involved, canine head rubs.
‘Wine?’
Good diagnosis.
A smile, a nod. She sloughed off her jacket and hooked it. Too tired even to search for a hanger.
He returned with the glasses. White for both of them. It’d be an unoaked Chardonnay that they’d discovered recently. Michael liked red. It was all he drank.
‘The kids?’
‘In their rooms. Wes came home about an hour ago. Didn’t want to look at a program I’d hacked together. And that’s a little weird. He’s in his bedroom now. Seemed kind of moody.’
Wonder why.
‘Mags is in her room too. Been singing up a storm. Violin may be a thing of the past.’
‘Not bad outside, the temperature. Shall we?’
They wandered out to the Deck, brushed curly yellow leaves off the cushions of a couple of uneven wooden chairs. The Monterey Peninsula wasn’t like the Midwest, no seasons really. Leaves fell at their leisure.
Dance eased down and sat back. Fog wafted past, bringing with it the smell of damp mulch, like tobacco, and the spice of eucalyptus. She remembered the time Maggie had made a pitch for getting a koala-bear cub, citing the fact that there were plenty of leaves for it to eat in the neighborhood. ‘Won’t cost us a thing!’
Dance hadn’t bothered to marshal arguments. ‘No,’ she’d said.
Boling zipped up his sweater. ‘News did a story on March.’
Dance had heard about it; she’d declined to comment.
‘Antioch March,’ Boling mused. ‘That’s his real name?’
‘Yep. Went by Andy mostly.’
‘Are March’s clients guilty of crimes?’
‘I’m not sure where it falls. Conspiracy probably, if they actually ordered a killing. That’s a wide net. According to March, though, a lot of the clients are overseas. Japan, Korea, South East Asia. We can’t reach them and this isn’t an extradition situation. TJ’s going through the website’s records now. I think we’ll have some US citizens the Bureau’ll talk to. March is cooperating. It was part of the deal.’
Another shiver.
I’m glad we’re in each other’s lives now …
Boling was saying, ‘I’ve always worried about video games, the desensitizing. Kids, at least. They lose all filtering.’
In 2006 a young man arrested on suspicion of stealing a car wrested a gun away from an officer and shot his way out of the police station, killing three cops. He was a huge fan of the very game that March had mentioned, Grand Theft Auto.
Other youthful shooters – the Sandy Hook killer and the two Columbine students – were avid players of violent shooting games, she believed.
One side of the debate said there was no causal effect between games and the act of violence, asserting that youngsters naturally prone to bully, injure or kill were drawn to video games of that sort and would go on to commit crimes even without gaming. Others held that, given the developmental process of children, exposure to games did tend to shape behavior, far more than TV or movies, since they were immersive and took you into a different world, operating by different rules, far more than passive entertainment. She sipped her wine and let these thoughts slip away, replaced by the memory of Michael O’Neil’s words an hour ago.
So, here’s the thing …
A tight knot in her belly.
‘Kathryn?’
She blinked and realized Boling had asked her something. ‘Sorry?’
‘Antioch. He was Greek?’
‘Probably second or third generation. He didn’t look Mediterranean. He looked like some hunky actor.’
‘Antioch. That’s a town, right?’
‘I don’t know.’
They watched a wraith of fog skim the house, urged on by a modest breeze. The temperature was cool but Dance needed that. Cleansing. So, too, was the noise of seals barking and of waves colliding with rock, the sounds comical and comforting respectively.
It was then, with a thud in her belly, that she noticed something sitting on the Deck floor, near Jon Boling’s feet. A small bag. From By the Sea Jewelry in Carmel. She knew the place. Since Carmel was such a romantic getaway, the jewelry stores tended to specialize in engagement and wedding rings.
My God, she thought. Oh, my God.
The silence between them rolled up, thicker than the fog. And she realized that he’d been mulling something over. Of course, a rehearsed speech. Now he got to it.
‘There’s something I want to say.’ He smiled. ‘How’s that for verbal uselessness? Obviously if I wanted to say something I’d just say it. So. I will.’
Dance administered a sip of wine. No, a gulp. Then she told herself: Keep your wits, girl. Something big’s happening here. She set the glass down.
Boling inhaled, like a free diver about to test himself. ‘We were talking about getting up to Napa, with the kids.’
The coming weekend. A little vineyard touring, a little shopping. On-demand TV in the inn. Pizza.
‘But I’m thinking we shouldn’t go.’
‘No?’
So he had in mind a romantic getaway, just the two of
them.
Then he was smiling. A different smile, though. A look in his eyes she hadn’t seen before.
‘Kathryn—’
Okay. He never used her name. Or rarely.
‘I’m going to be leaving.’
‘Now? It’s not that late.’
‘No, I mean moving.’
‘You’re …’
‘There’s a start-up in Seattle wants me. May be the new Microsoft. Oh, and how’s this? It’s a new tech company that’s actually making money.’