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.
Sid was so tired that night when he came in, we went straight to sleep. Well, he had worked both the day and the night shifts.
The next morning, in the apartment kitchen, I told Sid over breakfast about Stevenson’s option for me and what had happened when I got laid off after my first year of teaching.
“I have to say, I’m surprised how angry that made me.” I pressed my lips together.
“It sucks, but it’s not surprising,” Sid replied, pouring us each a cup of coffee. “And, while I feel the same umbrage over the sexism, I can’t say I’m unhappy that you got laid off. I wouldn’t have you otherwise.”
I munched on some toast thoughtfully. “Maybe it was God leading me to you and the side business.”
“Whatever.” He looked at me. “Daddy mentioned that you’d talked to him about taking over the resort.”
“He said that he’d always known I wouldn’t and that I should follow my heart.”
“Are you still feeling guilty about not wanting to take your father’s place?” Sid got up to get another couple slices of toast from the toaster.
“No. Not really.” I smiled. “It does make it easier for me to think about it, though. After all, if I did, it would be because I want to, not because I felt I had to.” I looked at him. “What do you want to do?”
Sid laughed. “I don’t want to stay here. If anything, last night confirmed that one for me. I’m having fun, and it’s nice to keep my hand in. But, damn, it’s hard work. I’d rather be writing, thank you. How about you?”
He handed me a slice of toast, buttered just the way I like it.
“Hm.” I thought about it, then shook my head. “No. I don’t want to take over. I really don’t like the work.”
He sat and got a bite of the other slice. “What do you want to do about your PhD program?”
“Actually, I kind of like the idea of making it about English education, and I like that I’ll be teaching.” I frowned. “It’s just going to make working around the side business a lot more challenging.”
“We’re already doing that with my teaching schedule.” Sid taught piano at Stella’s school twice a week. “We’ll find a way to make it work. It’s not like you have a deadline to get all this done, either, if that helps.”
I took a deep breath. “True. Now I just have to start applying for positions. At least Stevenson gave me some places to try.” I got up and picked up our breakfast dishes. “Anything on the case yesterday?”
“Esther verified Donna’s attendance at Sac State. According to Hattie, since we have the real plans in hand, it’s probably time to start thinking about getting the dummy plans to Dusty’s contact, whoever that is. Hattie thinks maybe have Clint question Dusty. He can do it directly under an alias.”
“That sounds workable. I’ll hang around outside today and see if I can question some folks unobtrusively.”
As I slid into a lounge chair on the edge of the playground, I saw the Winslow family heading out for the day. A minute later, the DiNovo kids burst out of their cabin, followed by their father. The kids ran to the playground and Mr. DiNovo settled into the lounge chair next to mine.
“Hi,” he said softly, setting a large briefcase next to him. “It won’t disturb you if I try to get some work done while sitting here, will it?”
I smiled at him. “Why should it?”
“Not a lot of folks are working while they’re here.” He held out his right hand to me. “I’m Avery.”
“I’m Lisa.” I shook it. “But both you and your wife seem to work all the time.”
Avery shook his head as he pulled a small set of papers from his briefcase.
“We’re not technically on vacation,” he said. “The house is being remodeled, so we came up here. I used to when I was a kid.” He looked at me. “You remind me of the owner’s daughter.”
I chuckled. “That’s probably because I am.” I looked at him. “Did we…?”
“I saw you necking with some other guy one year, but we never did that. I was far too shy. I just worshiped from afar.” He sighed as he looked over the first sheet of paper. “You’re better off that we didn’t.”
“Why?” I asked.
“I’ve been one lousy husband and father.” He looked at me. “I’m a geologist and working for a major oil company. The problem is, most of my work had to be done on site, and you can’t take a wife and kids to places like Saudi Arabia. So, Francine has stayed home these past ten years and raised the kids. I finally got a job that would keep me here, but the funny thing is, after all that time apart, we’re practically strangers to each other. I’m still working all the time, and since I agreed it was time for her to do what she wants, she’s been spending her time working on law school.” He looked over at his two children, a girl and a boy. “They barely know me. I don’t know what to do about that.” He choked. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be dumping all this crap on you.”
“It’s alright. I’m sorry you’re having such a rough time. Have you considered counseling?”
“Francine’s not that excited about it, but we kind of want to try to stay together for the kids. They deserve an intact family. I just don’t know how it’s going to happen. Anyway, I’ve got reports to review.”
He went to work. I lounged for a little while longer, then wandered around for a while. But there really wasn’t anybody to talk to. I went to eat lunch at my parents’ house. Sid was there, so we ate lunch together, then headed back to the apartment to make up for the night before. We cleaned up, then I went for another walk. I don’t know what started the fight, but when I got back to the apartment, Sid and Nick were in the living room.
“I don’t get to do anything I want to do!” Nick yelled at his father.
Sid held out his hands. “You’re learning to drive. You’re dating girls.”
“I wanted to go to science camp. I didn’t want to work a crap job. You made me do that.” Nick’s eyes blazed.
“I need you here.” Sid glared right back at him. “You can do things that no one else can, and we’ve got a hot case.”
“Well, you could have asked if I wanted to help.” Nick paced. “You didn’t even bother to do that. You just came in and told me I was going to work a crap job, whether I wanted to or not.”
“I thought you’d want to be up here with us.” Sid looked bewildered. “You hate it when you’re away and we’re working.”
“But did you have to decide that I’d be a busboy? I didn’t get a chance to figure out what I could do around here. You just gave the orders and I have to toe the line.”
“I did not order you to take that job.”
“Yeah, you did, Dad.”
The two faced each other, breathing heavily. Then Nick turned and left the apartment, slamming the door on his way out. Sid swallowed and looked at me.
“I did not—”
“I’m afraid you did, Sid.” I went over and touched his arm. “I know why. You just didn’t give him much of an option or even ask him if he’d mind.”
“We’ve had to make decisions like that for him before.”
“But he’s fifteen now. And we asked him about coming to Kansas. We didn’t assume he would.”
Sid cursed. “You’d think I would have seen it.”
“You don’t like just taking orders, either.”
“I’d better go find him and apologize.” He sighed, then looked at me. “You wanna come?”
“Sure. I may need to apologize, too.”
We found Nick upstairs in his room.
“Can we talk?” Sid asked when Nick opened the door.
Nick nodded and let us in.
“Son,” Sid said. “I owe you an apology. I should have taken your feelings into account a lot earlier, and I didn’t. I just had a lot of things to manage, a lot of pieces to pull together, and I forgot that I have no right to treat you like just another piece.”
Nick looked everywhere but at Sid. “It wasn’t doing the job so much as that you didn’t ask if I wanted to or what I thought about doing it.”
“I know. I should have. I’m sorry. You have every reason and right to be mad at me.”
“It’s okay.” Nick sighed and winced. “It hasn’t been that bad. I just… I don’t know.”
“I don’t, either, sometimes,” Sid said with an odd smile.
Nick reached over and the two hugged.
“I’m still mad at you,” the boy said as they released each other. “And I still want to go to science camp. And I really, really hate bussing tables.”
“Unfortunately, you’re too young to wait tables and I could really use you bussing.” Sid sighed. “I’ll see if one of the other guys has somebody who can take over for you. Can you hang in until I get someone?”
“That’s fair.” He looked up at me. “Hey, Mom.”
“Hey, sweetie.”
He came over and gave me a hug, too.
“And depending on how things here break here, we’ll see about a week of science camp,” Sid said. “I’m sorry, Nick, but I really do need you.”
“It’s not my fault I’m good.”
We all laughed at that one, then made our way back to my parents’ house to make dinner together with Daddy and Janey. Dusty was still pretty mopey, but Desmond and Daddy got into an extended discussion on barbecuing. Nick looked over at Dusty as we ate, and sighed.
“You okay?” I asked Nick later.
“I’m fine.” He made a face. “It hasn’t been that bad a summer. I’m getting really close to Grandpa, and that’s great.” He glanced back at Dusty. “And other stuff.”
I played with the lock of hair on his forehead. “Okay. I love you, sweetheart.”
“I love you, Mom.”
I was working with Irene on incoming reservations the next morning when Clint, apparently, talked to Dusty. Desmond told me later that Clint had asked to speak to Dusty privately. I had no idea that part of the operation had even been set in motion until Sid paged me right after lunch.
“What’s going on?” I asked Sid when I got to the apartment.
“I’ve gotta get Dusty out of here,” Sid said. “He’s trying to bolt. Something Clint said scared him. I told him I can get him hidden, but I have to take him to Sacramento to do it.”
“Where are you hiding him?”
“I don’t know.” Sid shrugged. “I called Liz Warner, my old friend? She hides battered women. I told her that one of the college kids here got messed up and the CIA is involved. She said she’d take care of it. We’re meeting in Sacto in a couple of hours.”
“Okay. Thanks for letting me know.” I gave him a warm kiss, and he rushed off.
I went to find Clint. We found each other in the hotel lobby. It turned out Clint had been looking for me, too.
“Hattie said I should,” he told me. “The kid. Simpson. He told me that Yuri Voskoff has been staying here.”
“Then he’s been doing it under an assumed name.” I thought. “We’re looking for someone just over average height, dark hair and eyes, right?”
“No. Yuri’s bald. Well, not completely. Half-bald, really.” Clint shrugged. “He sometimes wears a toupee.”
My heart stopped. “Does he know you? As a CIA agent?”
“Don’t think so. I’ve never met the fellow. I’ve just seen photos. Now, what name is he traveling under while he’s here?”
I thought about it. “Pretty sure Brian Lane.” I pulled Clint to the restaurant. “He might be in there right now. I saw him go past the front desk about half an hour ago before Sid paged me.”
I pointed Lane out to Clint.
“Yeah, that’s Voskoff.”
“Good.” I took a deep breath. “Now we know, and now we can get the dummy plans to him somehow. I’m going to talk to Hattie. Can you update Dale on this? I don’t want him here, but he should probably know that we’ve found our target.”
“Sounds good.” Clint headed out to the front of the resort and into the parking lot.
I went up to Hattie’s room. She wasn’t in for some reason. So, I went downstairs to help Mira get started on doing the timecards. She picked it up fast enough, but I stuck around until Nick paged me.
He had a location and the code for help.
To Breanna, 7/20/00
Topic of the Day: Seeing Mom and Dad in action
I could just shoot Darby right now. I get that he can’t help wondering about Mom and Dad sometimes, and that he’d love to see what they can really do. And Mom and Dad are really good. But seeing them work that way is not at all fun, because when they do, it’s generally because something has gone wrong and it’s fucking scary.
Not always. In fact, you have seen Mom in action. You just didn’t realize that was what you were seeing. It was your first semester at JHU, about a month after we started sharing our tiny little lab tech’s office. When you met Mom for the first time. She’d gone into the office and was leaving me a note and you couldn’t figure out how she had because you swore you’d locked the door. You had. I saw you do it the night before.
Mom picked the lock. She and Dad are real good at that. I know. It’s not legal entry, but sometimes they have to.
Then there was the summer I was fifteen. Grandpa had been teaching me to drive and had somehow caught on to the side business. There’s a reason he’s so good at poker. Anyway, we go out that afternoon. I think it was a Thursday. Grandpa had me practicing parking in the front lot of the resort. Well, he sees this guy getting into a car and points him out. And I knew the guy from meetings with my folks. So Grandpa says we should follow him.
I knew how to tail someone in a car. I had just never been driving at the time. And maybe I shouldn’t have gone for it, but it was kinda fun. So, I start telling Grandpa how you do a tail and all that, and Grandpa was impressed.
The guy, Clint Foster, drives off and we tail him. And he meets up with this guy that Mom and Dad really couldn’t stand named Dale O’Connor.
“Do we stay on Mr. Foster?” I asked Grandpa.
“No,” Grandpa said. “Let’s follow the other fellow.”
“Sure.”
I don’t know how we didn’t get made, because it’s really not that easy to tail someone if they’re looking for it. And O’Connor definitely should have been looking for it. Anyway, he leads us to this small warehouse north of town, then gets out of his car and goes inside.
I looked at Grandpa and we got out of the jeep, and went to look, only to run into this guy with a big-ass gun pointed right at O’Connor’s temple. He pushed us inside, got Dale handcuffed, then Grandpa, then me. He also took our shoes and belts and taped our mouths. And that’s how Mom found us.
I took my mother’s sedan from the garage, thanked God that it was running, and hit the accelerator. I found the warehouse easily enough. Daddy’s jeep was parked nearby, but neither he nor Nick were to be seen. My heart in my throat, I parked in the trees on the side of the road away from the jeep, then slipped up to the door in the boxy gray brick building with no windows.
I heard scuffling inside, then silence. I slid in through the door. It was a huge single room, filled with boxes of computers fresh off a truck. Nick, Daddy, and Dale were seated in a row along the nearest pallet, mouths covered with duct tape and hands cuffed behind their backs. Not far away, a man with a bald head walked toward the back of the room. I scurried to hide behind another pallet. Voskoff, or Brian Lane, heard me and spun around.
He ran up to the front of the room and spotted me immediately. I put my hands up.
“Please don’t hurt us!” I begged. “I saw my daddy’s car and came in and saw them and, oh my god! Please don’t hurt us!”
“Don’t worry, Ms. Wycherly,” Brian Lane (well, Voskoff) said, kindly. “I have no interest in killing civilians. But I do have to get out of here without interference from your local police.”
He cuffed my hands behind my back and taped my mouth and got me sat down next to Nick, then took my shoes and put them with the others on top of a tall stack of computer boxes on another pallet. He disappeared to the back of the room for a few minutes. When he returned, he stopped in the doorway.
“Now,” he said. “I don’t want you to worry. Dale, here, will get you free in plenty of time. Dale, you have twenty minutes.”
Voskoff shut the door, then locked it.
As soon as he was gone, I gestured Nick forward with a nod. He nodded, scooted himself forward and toward me. I laid down with my mouth next to his hands. He knew what to do. The tape came off quickly and painfully.
“Dale, what have you got?” I asked, getting myself sat up straight.
Dale shook his head, then nodded at Daddy and laid down and Daddy got the tape off his mouth, then laid down behind Dale. Nick made a face as he tried to run his hands along the waistband of his board shorts.
“Why’d he take our shoes?” Daddy asked as soon as he could.
“Because he’s good,” Dale said.
“Thank God, I’m better,” I said.
It took some effort, but I got my polo shirt untucked from my shorts and inched my hands up along my back until I hit my bra.
Nick yelped as Daddy got the tape off his mouth.
“My beard!” he sniffed.
“Looks like it took your zits, too,” I said, grunting as I tried to get the back of my bra unhooked.
“But why take our belts?” Daddy asked.
“We hide stuff in those and in our shoes.” I reached for the first snap on my bra strap.
My bra straps unsnap. That first year I was with Sid, he’d suggested that I wear bras with detachable straps to help me escape an enemy. It turned out that detachable straps aren’t all that easy to detach. So, years ago, I got into the habit of cutting the straps on regular bras, then sewing snaps on them.
“You can always hide something,” Dale said.
“Dad says that a lot,” Nick said, still trying to wriggle his bit of spring steel out of his board shorts.
“Who do you think taught him?” Dale glared and tried to shift. “Damn it. It was in the belt.”
I shook my head and got the second snap undone. “Why don’t you carry something in your waistband?”
“I don’t need it that often,” Dale growled. “I haven’t been captured in years.”
“Three years,” I said, trying to pull my bra off my chest and down my back. “And, come to think of it, we saved your backside then, too.”
“Mom?” Nick sounded worried. “I can’t get mine. It slid around to the front.”
“That’s alright.” I finally pulled the bra free and felt for the reason I’d taken it off. “I’ve got something.”
Daddy looked pained. “He said twenty minutes. Any guesses as to what that’s about?”
“Looks like he’s got evidence to destroy.” Dale said. “And an explosion will keep the cops occupied while he skips town.”
I felt for the slits I’d put under the bra cups, then started pushing the casing down to get to the under wire inside.
Daddy looked at Dale. “You know the fellow.”
“I’ve known him for years.”
I glanced at Dale. “You’re a known operative?”
I finally got a hold of the wire, but it stuck in the channel.
“It happens.” Dale shrugged. “And I’m not that well known.”
I yanked the wire again and almost lost it when it suddenly pulled free.
“How long has it been?” Daddy asked.
“A lot closer to twenty minutes than I’d like,” I grumbled.
Still, I had the wire and got my cuffs opened and shook them off.
I got Nick free next, then Daddy. Okay, I hesitated when I saw Dale, but Nick yelped.
“There’s a bomb back here! It’s set to go off in one minute.”
“Nick!” I screamed.
“It’s okay, Mom.”
Like hell it was. Still, I got Dale free of his cuffs and grabbed my running shoes, and got them on. Daddy had his running shoes on and got Nick’s.
“I got it reset.” Nick came running up.
“Oh, thank God.” I looked at him.
“Did you give it more than ten minutes?” Dale demanded.
“I gave us five.” Nick shrugged. “There are only two sticks.”
“Could be nerve gas,” Dale said. “Evacuate. Now.”
I was already at the door, but the push bar was jammed and I couldn’t get it open. I took a quick look at it, then popped open the sole of my shoe. Daddy’s eyes opened wide in surprise. I grabbed a screwdriver and went to work.
“Do I need to reset again?” Nick asked.
“Can’t you set it off that way?” I glared at him.
“That’s only in the movies.” Nick shrugged. “I mean, you can trigger a charge by trying to dismantle it. But not by resetting the clock. Most of the time.”
“We shouldn’t reset it, anyway,” Dale said. “We don’t want Yuri coming back here wondering why his bomb hasn’t gone off.”
The pin holding the push bar shut finally popped out.
I let Daddy and Nick out first. Dale followed us.
“We’ve got to get out of here now,” I said.
We’d just barely made it to the jeep when the bang happened. It didn’t sound like much, but soon smoke poured out of a hole in the back of the roof. Dale got in his car and took off. Daddy took me to where Mama’s car was and we left immediately.
Sid’s Voice –
The drive out to Sacramento was completely uneventful. It was nice seeing Liz again, but the whole encounter was about business and nothing else. I drove back to Tahoe wishing that Lisa had had a chance to meet Liz.
When I gave up sleeping around, I promised myself that I would never give Lisa reason to doubt my fidelity. I haven’t. At least, I hope I haven’t. It still amazes me that Lisa trusts me to the extent that she does. Back in ‘88, I was a lot more worried about appearing to violate that trust than I am now.
Liz was one of the very few women in my life who’d had an impact beyond the bedroom. She is an amazing broad, one of the things I’d always liked about her and still do. There was part of me that really wanted to share that with Lisa.
Nonetheless, we weren’t in that place yet, at least between Liz and me. Which meant I wasn’t exactly thinking about what I’d find in the apartment in the staff lodge when I walked in.
The good news is that I have been chronically on alert since I started intelligence work back in 1969. The man tearing apart the living room of the apartment startled me, but did not set me up for disaster. He was about my size, with dark hair ringing a significant bald spot on his head, and a deeply lined face.
“Who the hell are you?” I gasped, trying to look like a civilian.
“I am looking for something you have.” He advanced on me, his huge automatic aimed at my heart, and I backed up into the doorway.
“What do I have?” I asked, gulping.
He spotted the computer, which was up against the wall under a window.
“This may be it.” He grabbed the 5.5-inch floppy disk next to the drive on the table. “Where did you get this?”
I swallowed. “Um. One of the kids here had it.” I gulped again, hoping like hell I was making it look good.
He chuckled and booted up the computer. It took several minutes, and I debated pleading with him. Not because I thought it would do any good, but it might make me look more like a civilian.
He inserted the disk into the drive. A couple minutes later, he looked at the screen and smiled.
“Good,” he muttered, then shut the computer down and pulled the disk from the drive.
Then he cuffed me and taped my mouth, leaving me on the couch.
At the door, he turned and chuckled again. “I don’t enjoy killing civilians. It’s messy. Right now, I need to leave. Tell your wife that I like her. She gives good service.”
He left the apartment, and I started breathing. I had a feeling he was trying to nettle me with the way he’d phrased things. He didn’t know how well I knew Lisa. I got the spring steel from the back of my belt and got the cuffs off in short order.
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.