Okay, that’s it, daydreamer, there is something wrong out there.

He pulled out his satphone, opened it, and pressed the contact button. There was a click, then, “Lyndon.”

“Are you watching us?”

“I am.”

“See anything odd? In the town?”

“Not a thing.”

“How about the rest of it? The farm?”

“All quiet.”

“You’ve moved them out? The farm is abandoned?”

“I’m onto the local health department, but it takes time. I have to go through channels.”

His love made these conversations painful for him, every one of them. To escape that pain, he confined his communications with her to the bare minimum necessary to do the job. He liked to imagine a quiet life with her in a comfortable, sweet town just like this. He imagined winning her love and thought often of the strangeness of women. On the night he’d spent with her, he’d given everything he had, but she had not fallen in love with him. He wondered often about her life, waited in dread for some mention that she had married a rich politician or lobbyist or whatever. He wanted her so badly, but how do you say that? How do you break through to a buried intimacy with somebody who has chosen to ignore it and address you only on a professional level?

“Advise me soonest, please,” he said, his voice, as always, carefully professional in tone.

“Mark, it takes time.”

This worried him. This was not right. “There are children out there. Children in harm’s way.”

“And we have major security issues,” she snapped. Then she cut the connection.

Her bed, he recalled, had been big and old, her room full of the lightness of women, sweet with her scent.

He knew her well. And he knew, therefore, that her angry response meant that she had no quick way of setting up a false quarantine of that farm, and she was as worried as he was about those kids. She was helpless, though. He was not.

He stepped out onto the little porch that was tacked onto his room. His own hitchin’ post for the horse, he supposed, of his dreams.

The sky was clear, the street still quiet, the air sharpened with the scent of pine.

No way could he commandeer some citizen’s car. There was no cleanup crew to take care of a problem like that. Their operation was too secret for things like cleanup crews.

He stepped down off the porch, into the gravel of the parking lot, then went quickly to the van, walking so that his feet wouldn’t crunch gravel, a sound that he knew would awaken his whole team and make them wary.

As he moved around the front of the vehicle, he wondered if Gina would see him. If so, he would sure as hell hear from her. As always, he wanted to and he didn’t. So good to hear her voice. So hard.