Welcome to Paths Not Taken, the thirteenth Operation Quickline story. When a sting operation is set up on the resort owned by Lisa Wycherly’s father, she and Sid Hackbirn find themselves revisiting their high school jobs. And hoping their covers don’t get blown. You can read the first chapter here.
I couldn’t help but remark on how beautifully blue the sky was. It was a perfect day. Nick got behind the wheel of a dark sedan, waved at me, and drove away along the seaside cliffs. The road curved, but the car didn’t turn. Instead, it went straight off the side of the cliff and sailed into the air…
I woke up, gasping.
“You okay?” Sid asked.
He gently rubbed my back as I sat, trying to get my breath back.
“Nightmare,” I said.
“The usual?”
There’s a specific nightmare that I’m prone to having when I feel stressed. This time, however, I shook my head.
“No.” I swallowed, then told Sid about the dream.
“Oh.” He pulled me into his arms and squeezed me. “You are really not ready for this, are you?”
“You’re not either.”
“And yet we gave him permission to learn tonight.”
I shuddered and shook my head. “We might as well have. Let’s face it, Sid. Neither of us is going to be ready to see Nick driving, but it is inevitable unless we want to cripple him emotionally.”
“There is that.” He yawned and blinked. “What time is it?”
I looked at the glowing numbers on the clock radio next to Sid’s side of the bed.
“Two-thirty.”
Sid cursed. “Think you can sleep?”
“Sure.” I laid back down.
He kissed me softly, then slid down next to me. Sid and I do like snuggling, and we will sometimes fall asleep that way. However, we rarely sleep tangled up with each other. We keep waking each other up when we do.
Sid was out cold and talking in his sleep within seconds, and I smiled as I looked at him lying next to me. He had been especially tender and warm as we’d made love earlier that night.
The alarm, however, was anything but tender and warm when it went off at four-thirty. Sid slapped it off and got out of bed while I rolled back over and tried to go back to sleep. Sid is a morning person and is almost always awake by five. Since he’d taken on the morning and day shifts at the restaurant, he was getting up at four-thirty so that he could get his daily run in, get showered and dressed, then over to the restaurant by six for set up before the restaurant opened at seven.
The housekeeping staff wouldn’t even be at the resort until eight-thirty. They only started at seven on Saturdays because there were so many check-outs, which meant more time cleaning each room. I yawned. I’d still have to get up at six-thirty so that I could get my run in, then get dressed, eat breakfast, and be functional.
I didn’t stagger downstairs to the housekeeping office until eight forty-five, but I’d stopped in the breakroom to get an extra-large cup of coffee. Lourdes was handing out room assignments to the crew. As she assigned Donna Mars several of the cabins, Mira rolled her eyes. Lourdes saw it and glared back. I sighed. The morning was already off to a flying start.
The housekeeping office sat next to the resort laundry in the basement of the main lodge. As the crew left to go upstairs, Mira glared again at Lourdes, who stalked off.
“Lisa,” Mira groaned. “You know Donna can’t handle the cabins.”
Donna did have a lot of trouble working around any toys that got strewn over the floors, which was a much more significant problem in the cabins than in the lodge rooms because there was so much more floor in the cabins.
“How did that happen?” I asked Mira.
“Donna said she didn’t want to work the third floor, and then Yesmenia and Irina said that they didn’t want to give up the second floor, so Lourdes just caved right in.” Mira folded her arms across her chest.
I sighed. “I’ll go give Donna a hand later.”
“That’s just it.” Mira threw her hands in the air. “You shouldn’t have to. I mean, I totally get that Donna doesn’t want to be on the third floor after yesterday. But we could have coaxed Yesmenia and Irina along. Lourdes won’t do that. She just lets everyone walk all over her. It’s almost like she doesn’t want the job.”
I bit my lip. As it happened, Lourdes hadn’t wanted to be head housekeeper.
“Well, consider her position,” I told Mira. “She had the most seniority, and she didn’t want to lose that.”
“But she totally sucks at it!”
I nodded. Lourdes didn’t totally suck at the job, but she wasn’t as good at it as she should have been. Mira, on the other hand, was an excellent manager, and with Daddy needing a new manager for the housekeeping department, you could tell she was salivating.
It was just one more headache that my father was dealing with that summer, right along with finding a new overall manager. I couldn’t help making a face as I headed upstairs. After the previous few days, being manager of anything at the resort was the last thing I wanted. Which also made me feel guilty. [I don’t see why. Your father knew you far too well to have those kinds of expectations, however happy it would have made him. – SEH]
After grabbing a snack and another cup of coffee from the kitchen, I made my way to cabin four, where Donna stood over the vacuum cleaner with tears in her eyes. She had reddish blond hair that she kept perpetually in a ponytail. Her frame was slight, but she could lift a king-size mattress long enough to get a sheet on in no time.
“What’s the matter?” I asked, trying to sound as soothing as I could.
“I broke it!” Donna sniffed. “I vacuumed over some Legos again. You’re going to fire me.”
“I’m not going to fire you.” I sighed. “But, yes, we did warn you about that.”
“I’m no good at this.”
I winced. “That’s not true. Admittedly, you’ve got a problem working around toys, but your bed-making is gorgeous and you’re very good at getting through a room quickly. In fact, that may be why you’re having so much trouble with the toys on the floor.”
She took a deep breath as I got on the radio to page Dusty, who appeared within seconds, it seemed like. Dusty smiled shyly at Donna, then went to work. I focused on showing Donna how to check for Barbie shoes, Legos, and other small items on the floor before vacuuming. It’s a lot harder to do than you might think, especially if you’re prone to moving quickly, which Donna was.
“All done,” Dusty announced, and the vacuum roared to life and started going.
“Thanks, Dusty,” I said.
He nodded quickly, then hurried out of the cabin. Donna sighed, looking after him.
“Do you like him?” I smiled in spite of myself.
Donna shrugged, then nodded. “Yeah. But I don’t think he likes me.”
Given what Dusty was involved in, I knew I had to be careful not to encourage Donna. However, I also needed to keep tabs on anybody Dusty was interested in.
“Why do you say that?” I asked.
“He’ll talk to everyone but me.” Donna sniffed. “Every time I was working up there, he’d be talking to the people in the rooms. He talked to the old man, to the lady in the next room over.”
I quickly wracked my brain and came up with Ms. Sanchez in room 306.
“Everybody?”
“Yeah. It seems like.” Donna frowned. “You know, he’ll be walking around the common areas, and he’ll see somebody, then go over and say hi or something. Me? He doesn’t say a word.”
“Hmm.” I smiled at her again. “Well, I wouldn’t get too wrapped up in it. You guys work together and that can make things really awkward when something blows up.”
“You’re right.” Donna sniffed and blinked. “I’m not having a very good week.”
“I know.” I patted her arm. “But you’ll get through it.”
My walkie-talkie squawked.
“Lisa?” asked my father’s voice in my ear. “Mrs. Mitchell is at the desk asking about her brother’s computer.”
Sighing, I clicked the talk button. “I’m on my way.”
I suppose I could have just had my father hand the computer and Lipplinger’s other belongings over to Hattie, since said items were stored in the locked closet in his private office. I, perhaps, should have. After I said hi to Hattie, who was standing at the front desk, I went to my father’s office.
“Be right back,” I told her.
“Take your time,” she said, her voice tired and almost bored.
I was a little surprised. She’d seemed pretty worried about getting the plans that Lipplinger had the night before. Daddy was in the office, also looking harassed and a little tired.
“You okay?” I asked him.
“Well enough.” He looked at me. “Where’s that computer?”
“Oh, it’s in your closet.” I unlocked the door. “I thought it would be safer.”
“So, why didn’t you just tell me to give it to her?” His eyes narrowed.
I looked away and shrugged. I have a bit of a problem with getting things past my father. He’s an insanely good poker player mostly because he can read people better than anybody I know. Worse yet, the only person who knows me better than Daddy does is Sid, and even Sid can’t read my tells like my father can. The only reason the Ladies’ Night Out women can read my tells better than Sid can is because we’ve been playing poker together once a month for over two years. And those women still can’t read me like Daddy does.
“I wanted to say hi to Hattie,” I said.
“That’s right.” Daddy nodded. “She’s also one of those Travel Club friends of yours.”
“Yeah.” I smiled at him. “And Sid and I write for her magazines quite a bit.”
“Hm.” Daddy didn’t say anything as I lugged the computer, the cords, and the box of floppy disks out of the closet, along with Lipplinger’s suitcase and briefcase.
Cursing Dale O’Connor for landing me there every step of the way, I brought everything out to Hattie and dumped it all on a luggage cart that was at the end of the desk.
“Why don’t I bring this up to your room,” I said.
“Yes. That would be perfect.” Hattie took a deep breath and turned toward the elevator.
I pulled the cart after us. Once in the room, Hattie looked around.
“Where, in Heaven’s name, did he put the damned thing?” she asked, glaring at the computer. “That table won’t support it. It looks like it wobbles.”
“It does.” I sighed. “He had us move the TV every morning so that he could put the computer on the dresser. Then had our guy come in the evening to put the TV back so that he could watch it.”
Hattie rolled her eyes. “Oh, dear God. He didn’t.” She closed her eyes. “As I once told you, I’d apologize for his behavior, but there is no excuse for it.”
“It’s who he was.”
Hattie squeezed her eyes shut and sniffed.
“I’m sorry,” I said quietly. “I know you’re grieving for him.”
“Grieving.” She looked blankly at the window, which still had the blackout curtains drawn. “I suppose.” She suddenly looked at me. “Of course I am. He was my brother.”
“It can’t be easy for you.” I smiled softly. “I mean, you’ve told me you don’t have any other relatives except for your kids.”
She went back to staring blankly at the window. “No, I don’t.”
“I’m willing to listen.”
“I’m sure you are, darling.” She smiled, then gently shook her head. “I just don’t know if you’d understand.”
“Do I need to?”
She winced. “Truth be told, I have no idea.” She looked me over, her eyes penetrating. “Lisa, several years ago, I remember Sid telling me that you were a very different kind of bird. That you placed a high value on communication and relationship. That you chose to work on your relationships, even when others would not. I took that to mean that you came from a healthy family.”
“Maybe.” I shrugged. “I have my issues, like everyone else.”
“Issues.” Hattie snorted and shook her head. “You may have issues. But I, my darling, have full subscriptions.”
I chuckled in spite of myself. “You’ve always seemed pretty together to me.”
“And I have spent a great deal of time and money to get that way.” Hattie blinked her eyes. “The point is, if you come from a loving family, it’s very hard to understand what it’s like when a family is… Shall we say, not so loving.” She sighed. “As an adult, I avoided my mother. She was incredibly critical of me, wanted me to be like all the other girls. Thanks be, I met James.”
“Your husband.”
Hattie smiled sadly. “Yes. He was possibly the first person to be truly kind to me. He was the one who encouraged me to stay away from Mother and Miles. It was James who pointed out how dreadfully abusive they were.”
“Your mother too?”
“Oh, yes. It wasn’t the obvious kind of abuse, well, not beyond the constant criticism. But she idolized Miles. He could do no wrong. And when I protested the way he put me down or treated me with disdain, my mother usually blamed me for the way he treated me. Or she would excuse it. Finally, even she had to admit how horrid his behavior was and asked me to accept it to keep the peace.” She shuddered. “I had a terrible time. I didn’t want to believe that she was right, and mostly didn’t, because the way Miles behaved was so unlike everything I read about how families were supposed to be. Not to mention how hurt I felt all the time. James and a lot of therapy finally helped me to understand that it wasn’t my imagination, that my mother and Miles were behaving incredibly badly, and that it was not my fault.”
“That sounds pretty awful.”
“It was.”
I sighed. “And I guess you have a point in that it’s a little hard for me to understand. But I know it happens. I work with teens a lot, and yeah, a lot of what I hear is the usual adolescent angst. But there are those kids whose parents are genuinely terrible.”
“One of the reasons Miles was so terrible was that he was bitterly disappointed that the rest of the world did not adore him the same way that Mother did.”
“That makes sense.”
Hattie pressed her lips together. “I hated him.”
“Really?” I looked at her, puzzled. “You don’t seem like your soul is that dark.”
“It’s not.” Hattie sighed. “Not anymore. At least, I hope it’s not. But there was definitely a time when I did hate my brother. Now, I like to think that I see him for the pathetic creature he really is.” She stopped and swallowed. “Or was.”
“I’m so sorry, Hattie.”
She glanced at me, then blinked. “Well. That is enough whining for now. We have a job to get done.”
“Okay. What, exactly, are we looking for? Papers? A microdot?”
“It should be either on his computer, itself, or on one of his floppy disks.” She frowned at the small box that I put on the dresser. “There are two sets of plans, actually. One of my companies has the contract for a missile guidance system that will be used on submarines as part of the Strategic Defense Initiative.”
“Star Wars?” I couldn’t help chuckling. “I thought that was supposed to be lasers and decades away from happening, even if it can.”
Hattie’s smile was grim but there. “Which is precisely what we want everyone to believe, especially the Soviets. With all the chaos there, the last thing we need is for the wrong person to perceive us as a threat and use that as a rallying point. But there are other ways to shoot down ballistic missiles before they reach us than with lasers, and this new guidance system should help us do exactly that. The problem is, Dale made a set of the plans my company has developed and gave the set to Miles so that he could develop a dummy set that he would pass on to the young man who is supposed to be setting up the sting with the KGB agent making the tech buys from him. The young man is supposed to sell the dummy plans to the agent, thus misleading the Soviets.”
“So, if I’m understanding you correctly, there are two sets of plans. One we don’t want the Soviets to get and one we do.” I frowned. “How am I going to know which is which?”
“That’s why I’m here.” Hattie didn’t quite roll her eyes. “Shortly after you called about Miles, Dale called and asked me to take care of my brother’s body and effects in person. I can, at least, read the two different sets of plans and tell which is the good one and which is the dummy. The problem is, we don’t know how Miles hid the plans. Assuming he did.”
I glared at the computer. “In other words, he may have assumed that no one would have the kind of computer that could use those floppy disks, let alone read what was on them.”
“I’m afraid so.” Hattie picked up the computer box and gingerly set it next to the TV.
“You know what?” I said. “I could try to get Dusty to fix that table. That might give you a chance to get to know him.”
“You mean the target.”
“Yep.”
“That might be useful.” Hattie shrugged. “In the meantime, I’ll get the machine set up and see what I can do to read these disks.”
“Okay.” I turned and saw the closet. “Hattie, did your brother use cocaine at all?”
“Miles?” Hattie’s eyebrows shot up, and she laughed. “Why do you ask?”
“I found some in the closet there. It had been taped to the underside of the shelf.”
“Hm.” Hattie looked thoughtfully at the closet as well. “As Miles always put it, alcohol was his preferred poison. On the other hand, he may have been keeping it to use as a weapon. You know, planting it on somebody, then calling the police. I don’t know that he ever did that, but I wouldn’t put it past him.”
I checked my watch. “I didn’t see anything in his stuff that could read a microdot, and as far as I know, he didn’t leave the resort. We may have another agent onsite, but I don’t know who it is. And that would be the only way your brother could have been making or reading a microdot.”
“It’s possible, I suppose.” Hattie frowned. “It’s more like Miles to use paper or a computer disk. He was prone to losing small items.” She set the computer on its side next to the dresser, then picked up the briefcase. “Well, I’d best get to work.” She smiled softly at me. “Thank you, Lisa. I truly appreciate the kind ear.”
I went over and gave her a big hug. “You’ve been a very good friend to Sid and me. It’s no trouble at all.”
Hattie looked at me, completely puzzled. “And yet, you trust me around your husband.”
I laughed. Well, Hattie was one of several women that I was still friends with, even though Sid had slept with them before he gave up sleeping around.
“I trust Sid,” I said, grinning. “As long as you don’t mind being a former lover, then I don’t mind you being around.”
“He was right. You are a very different kind of bird.”
I left the room, not sure what to do next, so I went down toward the break room to see if the kitchen was slow enough for me to get some lunch. Which didn’t happen. Irene Wu flagged me down from the front desk to ask me about the next day’s check-ins and to generally complain about Lyle. Then Lourdes wanted to go over the next day’s check-outs and room assignments because she didn’t want Mira getting mad at her.
By the time I got down to the kitchen, lunch was almost over, Nick was off-duty and eating in the break room alongside Sid, who was also eating, although the two were not talking to each other and the atmosphere in the room was definitely cool.
That’s when our pagers went off. Now, these were not connected to my walkie-talkie. These pagers were official Quickline equipment, and no one knew we had them because they vibrated silently. The three of us were wearing them because the pager we’d given to Dusty Simpson to summon him when his services were needed to fix something also had a tracer installed on it so that when he got within a few hundred feet of the resort’s boundaries, Sid, Nick, and I would get paged and one of us could follow him. After all, the job that no one was supposed to know about was to keep Dusty under surveillance, so that he didn’t sell technology to the Soviets that he wasn’t supposed to.
“I’ll—” Sid started to get up.
Nick bounced up first.
“I’ll go,” he announced, running out of the room.
I sighed as he left.
“What happened now?” I asked Sid.
He sighed and shrugged. “I have no idea. I even complimented him today and told him he could learn to drive with your dad.”
“He’s still mostly talking to us.” I winced. “Odds I can get some lunch?”
Sid smiled. “Sure. What do you want?”
To Breanna, 9/22/00
Topic of the Day: Write about a time you were angry with your parent(s)
Wow. First time we crack open that journaling book you bought, and we have to pick this question. Sorry. It’s not an easy one for me, mostly because I am still so very pissed off at my first mother for a lot of reasons. Having to keep her leukemia a secret. Her leaving me alone so many times. And plenty of other reasons.
And it’s not like I haven’t gotten mad at Dad and Mom Two. But with them, well, it never really lasted. We’d fight, but we’d settle it, usually right away, and with the appropriate apologies, etc.
The big exception was the summer after I turned 15. Mom and Dad had to work a case on Grandpa Wycherly’s resort, and Dad decided I should work as a busboy, since Dad was managing the wait staff in the resort restaurant. To be honest, it felt like I was mad at him for the entire summer. But even then, something happened that put a whole different perspective on the situation.
Grandpa used to hire a lot of college kids for the busy summer season. In fact, Uncle Neil used to work for him that way, and that’s how he met Aunt Mae and Mom. Anyway, that summer of ‘88, there was this one kid, Dusty. He’d been set up to work there because that’s what the case was about. Anytime he got close to leaving the resort, Mom, Dad, or I was supposed to tail him to see who he connected with.
So, this one day, I was really pissed at Dad, mostly because he was being so decent. I know. It doesn’t make sense, but I guess I just wanted to be mad at him for making me work that summer, and he goes and lets me learn to drive with Grandpa and even tells me I’m doing a good job. Okay. It was that last bit that got me mad. I hated that job. It sucked. I didn’t want to be good at it.
Anyway, the pager we had on Dusty goes off, and I jump on it. Sure enough, Dusty is headed into the woods around the place, and I follow along. I kept my distance, at first. It turned out he wasn’t doing anything. Just walked around for a bit, sighed, then turned to go back to the resort. I made like I’d been out there doing the same thing and let him see me.
“Oh.” Dusty looked at me and blinked. “Hi, Nick.”
“Hi, Dusty. What are you doing out here?”
He made a face. “Just getting away from it all. You?”
“The same, I guess.” I sighed. “Getting a little fed up with my dad.”
“Why?” Dusty looked at me as if he really wanted to know.
I shrugged. “He wouldn’t let me go to science camp this year because he needs me here, he says. But then he keeps trying to make it up to me, which really sucks, because if he really wanted to make it up to me, he’d let me go to science camp.”
“That sucks.” Dusty sighed, then shrugged. “At least your dad wants you around. Mine won’t even support me. Says I’m a loser because I like computers and stuff, instead of making millions of dollars in real estate.”
“Wow, that sucks even more.”
“It’s okay.” Dusty’s face got real hard. “I’ll show him. Once I get some extra cash, I’m going to start my own company and make even more money than him. I just have to get my prototype built and tested, then get a venture capitalist, and, boom. I’ll have more money than God.”
“What are you making?”
Dusty shook his head real fast. “Can’t tell you. I don’t want to take a chance on someone beating me to it, you know?”
“Yeah.”
We walked back to the resort in silence, but I couldn’t help thinking about things. I didn’t magically stop being mad at Dad. He had been pretty heavy-handed about me working that summer. But he’d done it because he needed me. He not only didn’t think I was a loser, but he was trusting me with important parts of the operation.
Which is one more thing I’m mad at my first mom for. She would never have trusted me with anything like that. She wouldn’t even let me have a skateboard because she didn’t trust me not to kill myself.
Thank you for reading. For more information about the Operation Quickline series, click here.
Please check out the Fiction page for the latest on all my novels. Or look me up at your favorite independent bookstore. Mine is Vroman’s, in Pasadena, California.