“You working tomorrow?” he asked. 

“Nope.  You?” 

“No.  First night off in nine days?”

“Going out with your girlfriend?” she asked. 

“No girlfriend to go out with.”

She raised an eyebrow as she looked back over at him.  He was so far from her type it wasn’t funny.  Her type was Greg, one of the waiters.  They had been out several times.  She spun around just in time to see him walking back out into the dining room with a handful of rolled silverware to put on the tables.  He was also tall, like Rock, but slim.  He had mid-length, very stylish blonde hair and beautiful blue eyes.  He was gregarious and flirtatious, often having tables of women out for “girl’s nights” stopping in to see him. 

“Looks like you are almost done.  Let me walk you to your car,” he said. 

“Thanks, Rock.  You don’t have to… everything should be fine.”

He looked at her.  A year ago, a waitress had been assaulted.  Rock hadn’t worked there then, but he had always made sure every woman that worked there knew he would escort them to their car. 

A couple of minutes later, Ginger slipped her purse from under the bar and grabbed her jacket.  She counted out the tips from the tip-out jar from the waitstaff, to split between her and Rock. 

“You ready to rock it, Ginger?” he asked, smiling. 

She hopped off the stool and headed toward the kitchen to walk out the back, Rock next to her.  They circled through the prep area, both of them greeting a few of the kitchen staff, Rock dropping off a couple of tips to cooks that had helped him that evening or another. 

As they stepped out the door into the alley behind the restaurant, Rock turned to her, “You just upped my cred with a couple of the guys.”

“What do you mean?”

“They’re jealous I get to walk you out.”

She smiled and grabbed his arm.  “My hero,” she joked. 

They continued to talk as he walked her to her car.  Since they were downtown, she was parked in a surface lot a couple of blocks away. 

“This is me,” she said, pointing to her boxy little car.  “Thanks again, Rock.” 

“Anytime, Ginger,” he said, holding her door and she slid in.  He gently closed her door as she slipped the key into the ignition. 

Click.  Nothing.

Click, tic, tic, tic.  Nothing. 

“Crap.  Let me call my mom,” Ginger said, climbing back out of the car. 

“You don’t need to do that.  I can give you a ride home.”

“Are you sure?  I’m like thirty minutes north.”

“Hey, damsel in distress… that’s why I’m here,” Rock replied. 

She really liked his smile.  His eyes were warm and comforting. 

“Thanks, Rock.  You’re the best.”

They started walking and he pulled out his phone and typed in a text quickly.  A moment later his phone vibrated, and he read the response. 

“I have a buddy with a towing company.  He said he can pick up the car and drop it at your house.  He owes me a few favors.  We just need to drop the key off to him.”

“You don’t have to do that, Rock?” she replied, her hand lightly settling on his arm. 

“Not a big deal.” 

It was about a ten-minute walk back to his car.  He was parked the opposite direction from the restaurant.  Ginger found herself enjoying the conversation.  She also appreciated the cool, but not cold weather as they walked. 

“Hopefully, mine starts,” he said as they approached his car, a late-model Mustang Mach I.  He held the door for her again, and she slipped into the seat.  He walked around, dropping into the driver’s seat.  His car fired up immediately. 

They continued their conversation as they met up with his friend to drop the car key off, then talking more during the drive to her house.  Ginger found that the more she talked with him, the more she enjoyed being with him.  They had worked together six months, usually sharing at least three shifts a week, and they had talked more in the hour since they had left the restaurant than they had in the previous six months.  It didn’t take her long to figure out that Rock was actually kind of shy.  He hid it well as he interacted with customers. 

“Rock, thank you so much,” she said as they sat in front of her mother’s house.  “You really went above and beyond tonight.” 

“I’m just glad I was able to help,” he replied as the tow truck backed into her driveway to drop off the car. 

“It won’t balance out everything you did for me tonight, but can I talk you into going to the zoo tomorrow with Elise and me?”

“I don’t want to intrude on time with your daughter,” he said awkwardly. 

“Are you kidding.  Elise adores you.  She’ll be thrilled.  It’ll be fun.  Please?”  She reached out and laid her hand on his. 

“I guess,” he said. 

“Awesome,” she said, excitedly.  “Meet us here at eleven.  She is going to be beside herself.  I’m excited, too.  I can’t wait.” 

Currently, I have “New Life” out for its second round of “beta reads” with a different group than those that read it a couple of weeks ago. It is sitting around 90k words. My goal for a novel is 80k to 100k before adding any bonus content.

“Death Star” is sitting at about 45k words. I think that after I get done with New Life, this will be the next story to get a push. There are a few cross-over characters. And, like New Life, it shares a few character appearances from the Dixon-Prince series, but sits outside of that storyline.

Another of the novels I am working on is “At Arm’s Length“. If something is going to jump in front of Death Star, this is the one. I had one scene and the rest of the story has flowed out of that. I could easily slip a couple of Dixon-Prince characters into the story, but have resisted so far. It is sitting around 55k words.

I’m a little nervous about this one. It has a good premise, but I think I need to spend a little more time with it. I only have about 13k words in the story so far, but we haven’t really hit the main story arc. It’s called “Railroaded” and is about an unlikely friendship between a railroad executive and a waitress. This was another that had one scene that I needed to write.

NaNoWriMo is coming up in a few days, and I haven’t mentioned my project for that. “Sniper“. It has 0 words so far. I promised myself that I wouldn’t start writing it until November 1st. I have an outline (a first for me) and a good idea of where the story will take me. There are a few scenes kicking around in my head, but I am trying to avoid writing them… we’ll see how they change as they mature in my mind.

Finally, “Invisible Jack“. This may be the next installment of the Dixon-Prince series. Obviously, it is about Jack Dixon, and I think it will be more about his struggles coming to terms with his life. I feel like he needs to have a little more tarnish to get him from You Don’t Know Jack to Unknown Caller. He has come off as too perfect, but I know he really isn’t. No mistake, he’s a good guy, but not a saint. it is hanging at 22k words at the moment.

“Go,” Finn yelled, pushing Beth deeper into the house.  He pushed her through the back door just as Finch managed to pick up his weapon with his left hand.  Eight shots rung out as he pushed her in front of him through the door.  “Around to the right,” he told her, just half a step behind, stripping the memory card from the recorder he had been carrying in his jacket. 

“Crap that went bad fast,” Beth said, slowing up after sprinting all the way back to the barn with the Land Rover.  When she turned around, Finn was on the ground just outside the door.  A red stain was spreading from his side. 

“Go,” he told her as she rolled him over. 

Beth ignored him, tearing the shirt away from his side where he’d been hit.  

“It’s a clean shot, Finn.  We can fix this,” she told him.  Her limited medical training years ago was being pushed past its limits.  Finn held out his hand.  There was a micro-SD card between his thumb and index finger.  “Take it.  It’s as close to a confession as we can get.”

She took the card from him and jammed it into the pocket of her pants. 

“The passcode on my phone is 0819, the day we kissed.  Look for Alex.”

“I’m going to get you to the hospital.  You’ll be alright.  You have to be.”  She looked around the barn, seeing nothing but what they had brought, along with a few dirty, oily rags and a roll of duct tape.  She ran to her backpack and pulled out a couple of t-shirts.  She took those and the part of his shirt that she’d torn off and fashioned a bandage.  She wrapped duct tape around him and then did her best to leverage him up and into the passenger seat of the old Land Rover. 

She ran back around the driver’s seat and jumped in.  She cranked the engine, but it refused to fire. 

“Button,” he said weakly. 

“Right.”  She slammed her hand into the glow plug button, as if hitting it harder would make it work faster.  She held it for what seemed like forever… as she counted to thirty.  She turned the key again, and the engine sputtered to life. 

She pushed it into gear and pulled out of the barn.  When she looked off toward the rustic cabin and the trail beyond, she saw Finch, his gun held unsteadily in front of him.  She grabbed Finn’s 1911 from his slack grip and fired half a dozen shots as she popped the clutch.  She saw the older man collapse in a heap on the ground as she turned away from him and headed down the two-track as she’d been instructed. 

The drive seemed to take forever.  Pulling the Land Rover into the ambulance lane she looked at him, his skin pale from blood loss.  “I can’t leave you,” she told him.  She remembered seeing a hospital as Marty drove them out a few miles from the meeting point.  After passing the barn with the car, and not even slowing to check for the car inside, she recognized a feed store.  From there she had known the way to the hospital.

She’d been posted through much of Europe, usually with a diplomatic cover involving culture.  As a beautiful woman, she blended well in the social circles she circulated within.  She had surrounded herself with artists and musicians, as well as politicians and business leaders, among others.  Beth was gifted with the ability to speak several languages and picked them up almost effortlessly.  She spent a couple of decades making the rounds from Moscow to London to Berlin and Paris.  Her network was vast and well-connected.  And loyal.  To her. 

She had abruptly exited the field a few years prior and was later reassigned to counterespionage.  Nobody better to hunt the best than the best of ours, and that’s you, she was told.  So, she had leveraged her networks to find the leaks in America’s intelligence community.  At the same time, she had passed along to her superiors valuable intel that still streamed through to her from her many assets. 

“Beth, there are reports about your President’s declining mental condition.  They are circulating all through the Kremlin and beyond,” one of her Russian assets confided in her.  The woman was the lover of a high-ranking Russian government official.  “There are leaked fitness reports.  Apparently, his party knows, and they are working to cover it up, but he is in rapid decline.  The Russian President has already used the knowledge to gain some trade concessions from him.”

When she passed that up the chain, all hell had broken loose.  Within days she was fielding messages from several assets.  A search was on for the person that had leaked that information from Russia.  Another of the official’s lovers had gone missing, and Beth’s asset wanted to try to disappear. 

Someone above her was sending intel back to the Russians, and she didn’t know who.  She had been ordered to give up her source but had refused.  “If I tell you who my source is, that person is as good as dead.  Obviously, there is a leak somewhere on our end.”

The next day, she got word on the down-low that she was going to be picked up by a counter-intel team to be “debriefed” on the identity of her asset.  She knew what that meant.  They would get the name of her source from her.  After that, she would suffer some accidental death or just disappear. 

Old habits die hard, and for a spy that means escape plans, identities, and infrastructure.  When she was in the field, she never trusted the supplied “Plan B.”  Beth always had her own.  She had a couple of identities she had built up over the years, along with properties and bank accounts, passports and even credit cards.

What she lacked was friends.  Or at least friends that were unknown to the agency. 

Every friend she had, every boyfriend, every lover.  College, high school, even middle school.  They knew them all.  Except a few people she’d worked with at an amusement park, and one boy she’d had a crush on that had kissed her exactly one time.  Finn Powers had escaped notice.  She’d seen her own file, and he wasn’t in it.  Just knowing that one item made the risk of finding her own file worth it.

Agency investigators had done dozens of interviews before she was hired.  And Finn Powers had escaped everyone.  She’d never told her friends how much she liked him, and nobody mentioned him to the investigation team.  When she had looked through her file, there were names she barely recognized, but his was absent.  At the time, she hadn’t thought anything about it.  Now, he was her lifeline. 

And now Finn Powers wrote spy thrillers.  Not just any spy thrillers.  There were people in the agency that were sure he had inside contacts leaking methods and storylines to him.  His stories were too real.  Too close.  In fact, close enough that he’d been put under surveillance more than once over the last few years.  They had never managed to find any connections between him and anyone at the agency, though.  Beth kept watch, although she had to do it from a distance. 

If he was ever connected to her, she would be out.  She hadn’t had any contact with him in thirty years, but the coincidence of a former field agent working in counterespionage having an old flame that wrote thrillers that were too close to the truth was one that would result in termination.  Or even punishment.  Lack of evidence wouldn’t protect her. 

“I don’t think I have,” she replied, pouring him another glass. 

“Pour one for yourself, too.  Put it on my tab.”

She reached down under the bar and produced another glass.  She poured a measure for herself and left it sitting on the bar between them.

“It sucks sometimes.”   He paused.  “I mean, sure, sometimes it’s great… anonymity… you can do whatever you want, and nobody knows.  But other times, it would be nice to get a little credit, you know?”

“I guess I can see that.  Someone at work steal your thunder?” she asked. 

“My wife.  She didn’t steal any of my thunder, though.  She made her own.  My thunder is silent, so everyone thinks all the lightning is from her.”

“That’s kind of cryptic, Mr…” she said, fishing for a name. 

“Dixon, Jack Dixon.”  He put his hand out over the bar to shake hers.

“Lori Taylor,” she said, taking his hand.  She noted how soft it was, but he also had a firm grip.  “Do you have a ride home, Mr. Dixon?”

“Not yet, Miss Taylor… but I promise not to drive.”

Jack picked up the glass and swallowed its contents again.  He enjoyed the single malt as it burned a path down his throat.  He looked down at the glass, but the bartender didn’t move to refill it. 

As he picked up his, she moved to pick up the glass in front of her.  She swirled the liquid for a moment, enjoying the aroma.  She picked up the spices, and a hint of orange.  She swallowed her drink.  It’s smooth and woody, she thought. 

“Thank you, Mr. Dixon.  That is a very fine whiskey.  I don’t really think you need anymore, though.  I might recommend some water, instead,” she said as she put a bottle of water in front of him.  It was almost closing time.

He reached into the breast pocket of his jacket and pulled out a folio.  He slipped the black credit card from a slot in the folio and set it down on the bar.  Lori scooped it up and went to run it through the machine.  A moment later, as Jack finished off the bottle of water, she set the guest check in front of him.  He quickly signed before she could walk away, the cheap pen flying across the page.  He added a tip and folded her copy and slipped it back across the bar.  His copy and his card went back into his folio and into the pocket. 

“Are you going to be ok, Mr. Dixon?” she asked, not looking at the paper as she slipped it into the pocket of her apron. 

“I think so, Miss Taylor.  Thank you.”

A few minutes later, Lori slipped the merchant copy from her apron to close out the ticket.  It was closing time and she had a few minutes while the bar cleared.  She glanced down at the ticket. 

6   Balb25   $50    $300

Tip                    $10,000

Total                $10,300

She hadn’t been paying attention when she rang it in.  She knew that the Balblair 25 was a high-quality whiskey, but fifty dollars for a glass.  That surprised her.  She liked it but couldn’t imagine spending that much for a few ounces of whiskey.

Then she looked at the tip again.  She had thought it was a hundred until she started punching it in.  Surely that’s wrong, she thought to herself.  She turned to look, but the bar was empty of its patrons, only a few staff remaining. 

“Hey, Andy, did you see where the guy at the bar went?” she called out. 

“Out the door, Lori… I don’t care after that,” came his brusque reply. 

She finished her closing duties and grabbed her purse to leave.  She stepped out the back door and into the small parking lot next to the building.  As she walked toward her aging Nissan Sentra, she saw a man leaning against the lowest, meanest, blackest car she’d ever seen. 

“Mr. Dixon?” she said tentatively. 

“Hi, Miss Taylor.  It seems I don’t have my mobile phone.”

“It’s quarter after two, not many people would answer anyway” she smiled.  “Do you need a ride?”  As the words came out of her mouth, she wondered to herself why she would offer this man she didn’t know, a ride home. 

“If it isn’t too much trouble.  You can drive my car if you want,” he said, slurring.

She shook her head for a moment.  She knew she was about to accept, but she didn’t know why.  Normally, she did everything she could to remain anonymous herself.  She didn’t want her customers to know her.  She wanted to do her job, collect her tips, and leave. 

“Sure,” she said as he scissored the driver’s side door up.