Texas Lightning. Gerry Bartlett
stalled long enough and headed to the kitchen with her empty coffee mug. Conchita gave her a refill and looked her over while Anna added cream and sugar.
“You look better, chica. You must have slept well.” Conchita patted her shoulder.
“I passed out. That bed is very comfortable. Where are we eating? Not outside again.”
“No, it’s cold this morning. This crazy weather. In the breakfast room. Through there.” Conchita picked up a platter of bacon and pointed at a door. “You will see. It is a beautiful view. King likes to look at the lake.”
Anna held the swinging door open and Conchita preceded her. There was a round table with six chairs. Placemats were set for two and a coffee carafe sat in the middle of the table, along with butter and syrup. King stood when he saw her and pulled out a chair.
“Finally. I waited for you.” He snagged a piece of bacon and fed it to YoYo, who sat beside his chair.
“You shouldn’t have waited.” Anna grabbed a piece of bacon for herself. “This is a treat.” She chewed, sighing when Conchita brought in a platter of Belgian waffles. “Surely you don’t eat like this every day. You wouldn’t look like you do if you did.”
“And how do I look?” King grinned as he speared a waffle with his fork.
“In shape.” She took her own waffle and reached for the butter. “How do you stay that way?”
“I run most mornings. You have the shoes for it, I noticed them yesterday. Do you run?” He grabbed the syrup and drizzled it over the waffle.
“Sometimes. My friend Scarlett bought them for me. She’s trying to motivate me to get out in the fresh air and exercise. Away from the computer. Since we haven’t heard from her, I guess Ron talked her off the ledge.” Anna smiled thinking about Scarlett. “She’s always been protective of me. We met in junior high, in physical ed.” Anna could laugh about it now, but then it had been the worst day of her life. “I was the slowest runner in class. Even fell down at the start of a race, if you can believe it.” She glanced at King but he just sipped coffee, waiting for her to finish her story. “I just lay there, wishing I could die. You’re so dramatic when you’re thirteen.”
“Hey, anyone can trip. Was your shoelace untied?” King put down his mug.
“No such luck. I was trying too hard. Tripped over my own two feet. So I lay there, spitting out gravel, the kind they put on those tracks, and praying for invisibility. Then here came Scarlett. She was one of the fastest runners in the school. She pushed everyone else aside, even one of her teammates on the track team who was taunting me. ‘Anna Banana, slipped on her own peel.’” Anna laughed again. “That was actually pretty clever coming from that bonehead. Anyway, Scarlett helped me up and took me to the nurse to doctor my bleeding knees. Oh, yeah, I was scraped up good. Then she asked for my help in math, making a big deal later about her pal, the brain. We’ve been friends ever since.”
“I can see why. And don’t worry, I won’t make you go running with me.” King grinned. “You want to discuss that phone call? You really had to talk fast. She was obviously upset.”
“Scarlett threatened to call my brother in Boston if I don’t meet with her and show her I’m all right.” Anna took a bite of waffle and savored it. “I should probably do it.”
King worked his way through one waffle and started on a second. “Maybe you should warn your family, let them know you’re okay.”
“And have them go into protective mode?” Anna almost choked. “Chance, my oldest brother, is in the FBI. That’s all we need, to bring the FBI into this.”
“I don’t know. The Feds can provide some powerful resources. Ron is against asking for help because he’s afraid the competition or our other investors will get wind of it, but I’m more concerned about your safety.” King laid down his fork. “Seriously, if you’d been in the apartment when they’d come after that computer, Anna…”
“I wasn’t, and I think they planned it that way.” She stabbed the waffle, her appetite gone. Damn it. He’d better stop bugging her about this. “Clearly they’d been waiting for me to leave, King. I’d been holed up in that apartment for days, working nonstop, then the one day I go somewhere, they hit it. Don’t you think that’s how they wanted it?”
“Maybe so.” He picked up his fork again. “I’m changing the subject since this one has you riled up. So. Tell me something.”
“Good. I don’t want my family involved. That subject is closed.” She swirled a bite of waffle into syrup and tried to decide if she wanted it or not. “What do you want to know?”
“Why you don’t have the accent? I’ve known people from Boston before. They talk with a broader ‘a,’ you know what I mean. ‘Pawhk the cawhr.’ Instead of ‘park the car.’” He smiled. “You sound more Midwestern.”
“That’s an easy one. My mom is from Kansas City. She arrived in Boston at eighteen to attend college. She met my dad when she was protesting for women’s rights and he arrested her. Dad is a cop. Believe it or not, it was love at first sight. Mom insists we speak Midwest English. She’s a professor now, at Harvard, brilliant. Dad’s a captain with the Boston PD. My brothers are all law enforcement in one way or another, very protective. If I called them about the break-in, I guarantee at least one of them would show up here and try to drag me back home.” Anna gave up on eating. “That would make it difficult, if not impossible, for me to finish my project.”
“You don’t have to do what they say.” King put his hand over hers. It was warm, comforting. But a little sticky from the syrup.
“You have no idea the kind of pressure they can bring to bear.” Anna pushed back from the table. “I need to get to work. We may have to arrange for Scarlett to come here, to see for herself that I’m okay. Otherwise, she may well call one of my brothers. She’s known them most of her life and is just as protective of me as they are. She’d see it as her duty to call them if she’s afraid I’m in trouble.”
“You are in trouble, Anna.” King jumped to his feet and walked with her to the library. “Ron has been busy this morning, even though it’s a Sunday. I asked him last night if there could be anyone inside the company who might be working with the thieves. You know, someone jealous of the attention you and your program are getting. Seems like Ron’s pouring a lot of money into this one project. But he laid off people in another department last fall.”
“I don’t know about that.” Anna thought about it. “I really don’t know many people there. Only four of us came from Boston. Scarlett is in the office and the other two are hardware people. Not my area.” She’d been surrounded by strangers. No one had been particularly welcoming, but not nasty either. “He’s let me work from home a lot. Then he sent me out of town to those special classes. Scarlett said that caused a bit of an uproar in the office. Some of the long-time employees have been asking for special training for years and he never sent anyone else.”
“There you go. Motive. Do you think she can come up with names for Ron? He’s checking out every Zenon employee anyway. Looking for cash payoffs in bank records, expensive purchases, things like that. He’s into it. Playing detective.” King frowned. “Jealousy is a powerful motive. People have done some really bad things in the name of it.”
“Call Ron and tell him to check with his secretary. Mona knows everyone and everything happening at Zenon.” Anna put a hand on her stomach. She’d enjoyed her new role in Texas, happy to be appreciated. It hadn’t occurred to her that someone might think she was getting perks that they deserved. “Do you really think it could be someone at the company who broke in to my place?” Could it be someone she knew? Someone who’d worked side by side with her?
“He just started looking. But he’s hired more security, and I’m going to post someone to watch the boat dock at the back of the house.” King glared out the wide window with the view of the lake like he hated it.
“Seriously?