. . . 21 Hours and Counting . . .

 “We needed a break, this was a good idea,” sighed Johansen.

Vasquez glanced up at him without moving her head, then returned her attention to the report in her hands. Despite her bad mood, she allowed herself a private smile. Johansen was always complimenting his own ideas. It had been his idea to go to Black Angus for a prime rib dinner and she had consented after token complaints. Underneath it all, of course, she had to admit to herself that he was right. They both needed a break. In police work, you could drive yourself for days and weeks to exhaustion, and it was often counterproductive. Always, she had to remind herself of her instructors’ words in Quantico: “Better to sleep for eight hours and solve the case in one, than to stay up all night and be unable to think at all.”

Around them, the activity in the restaurant was subdued. It was after nine now, and most of the dinner crowd had already left. They sat together in a darkened private booth that would have been romantic if she hadn’t been in such a sour mood. They had lost track of three suspects now—Vance, Ingles and Nog—and still the internet was burning. Johansen ordered two margaritas without asking her if she wanted one. When the drinks arrived, she stared at hers for a moment, then took a gulp. The frozen slush pained her sinuses at first. Then it tasted good.

“This report is grim,” she told him. He watched her expectantly. His margarita was half-gone, but she knew from experience that alcohol had little effect on his bulky body.

She spoke in a hushed tone. “The internet has sustained significant damage. Approximately forty percent of the known servers have suffered some form of attack and it is estimated that most of the rest have a latent form of the virus hiding on disk, waiting to strike.”

Johansen nodded and leaned back a bit in his chair. “It’s like we’re fighting a thousand viruses at once, rather than just the latest one of the month,” he said. His hand slid down to his waist, and—although she couldn’t be sure—probably popped open the top button of his pants. Immediately after this move, he faked a cough and touched his hand to his mouth. There were a lot of large dishes stacked on his side of the table, and he had cleaned them all. Vasquez smiled down at her report.

“Let’s go over tomorrow’s checklist,” she said.

“Again?”

“Again,” she replied firmly.

Nodding, he produced a notepad. Even from across the table, she could see his neat, dark strokes of pen and pencil. The man really knew how to take good notes, and that had always impressed her. Vaguely, she wondered if that made her an obsessive-compulsive. She supposed that it did, but argued with herself that such a trait was often an advantage for a cop.

“Nog has been pinpointed at Brenda’s residence shortly before the police arrived. Witnesses noted his distinctive appearance and his Lincoln Towncar—” Johansen looked up from his notes with a grin, “— a fat guy in a huge white whale of a car must’ve impressed the kids.”

She nodded and smiled vaguely, hinting with the incline of her head that he should keep going. He caught the look and must have realized that she was doing some real thinking, because he snapped back to the notebook and dropped the levity from his voice.

“The presence of the police-band emissions detector—” here he lifted a small black box from his pocket and placed it on the table, “— seems to support the idea that Nog had recently been present,” Johansen paused for a moment to finger the box. “This is a nice piece of homebrew work, the electronics techs told me. It seemed like they were impressed, almost like they wanted to hire this Nog guy when we caught up with him.”

Vasquez nodded. “He’s clearly a genius.”

“It almost lends credibility to Vance’s claims.”

Vasquez looked at him. “You think Nog released the virus?”

“I’m beginning to wonder.”

She nodded. “Pray continue.”

He did, detailing the possible presence of Vance at Brenda’s and ending with their odd collision with Sarah Vance at Ingles place and Ingles’ disappearance.

“We have put an APB out on Ingles now as well, but so far have come up with nothing,” he said, closing the notebook and downing the rest of his margarita. “There’s still no sign of Vance’s kid, either.”

She took another sip of her drink. It was half-gone now, and she was starting to feel the tingling, relaxing effects of the first drink she had had in weeks.

There it was. It was everything and it seemed like a big nothing. She knew now that other teams were on this investigation. There were the national security people, an FBI homicide team and possibly another team from the military. Still, though, she felt the pressure to succeed. It had started out as their case, and they had made progress, but without tangible results. They still had no arrests and they still had done nothing to halt the electronic plague that continued to damage the nation’s newest growth industry.

She closed her eyes and settled back in her chair. She ran the whole story through her head and sought an angle, an answer that might break the case like a magic shoe-size in a Sherlock Holmes story. But there was nothing, or at least she couldn’t see it. She opened her eyes again and found that Johansen watched her intently.

She glanced at him, pursed her lips and shook her head. He sat back in disappointment. He had such faith in her that it hurt to see that she had let him down. She smiled at him. He had actually believed she was about to come up with some stroke of genius, some witty connection that everyone else had missed. Such faith made him more endearing.

She sighed and drank more. The whole thing had grown too big. She had even begun to believe that they themselves were being followed by agents, with orders to jump in when something broke. That was both reassuring and disturbing. It meant the brass trusted them to birddog the quarry, but not to make the collar themselves. She supposed that their superiors were just being cautious, as there was too much at stake to let one team’s pride get in the way.

“You know,” she said, running her finger around the top of her margarita glass and knocking the crust of salt off as she went, “I don’t think we’re going to solve this one tonight.”

He laughed. “In that case, I’ve got just the thing.”

She looked up then, with eyebrows raised. She caught something in his eye—a twinkle you might say, she thought to herself—but then she chided herself for having such ideas. She turned her eyes back down to her drink. Her finger still ran around the top of the glass. It was beginning to make a singing, moaning sound now that she liked.

“Tell me,” she said quietly.

Johansen grinned and opened his mouth, but snapped it shut again as two men appeared at their booth. Their haircuts and their suits said it all: They were government agents, through-and-through. Neither man was smiling.

“Agent Vasquez? Agent Johansen?” asked the taller of the two. He was a black man with a mustache and a set of large rings on his fingers.

“Yes?” Johansen answered. He automatically put his hands on the table and chair back, as if ready to throw himself to his feet.

“I’m Agent Verr out of Virginia,” he said, flashing his ID and badge. “I’m here to tell you that my team is taking over this investigation. Here are my orders, and yours.”

He presented them with piece of paper. Vasquez eyed it, realizing it was a fax, of all things. How many years had it been since she had seen a fax? With the internet problems, they had gone back in time twenty years overnight.

Johansen took the fax somewhat reluctantly. Vasquez followed Verr’s eyes as they swept over the dinner table, pausing at the margaritas and possibly Johansen’s popped-open pants. She felt a flash of hot embarrassment. It was a sickening feeling that she wasn’t used to.

“I would appreciate it if you could provide a briefing in the morning,” continued Verr after a short silence. His eyes ran over the table again and pointedly looked at the drinks. “At say, ten o’clock? We could meet you at the police headquarters.”

“Make it seven,” snapped Vasquez. “We’ll be there.”

Verr pursed his lips and nodded. “Seven it is, then.”He left without offering to shake hands.

“What a prick,” said Vasquez, staring after his back. “He did that just to show us he could.”

“What?”

“Coming in here like that. Showing us that he could find us at any time, like it was nothing for him. He could’ve waited until we reported in tomorrow, but he just couldn’t wait to tell us he had taken away our assignment.”

Johansen sighed. “We just took too long, that’s all. The brass got nervous and decided to make a change. Any change would do, we can’t take it personally.”

“Well, I do,” growled Vasquez.

Johansen read the fax. They both glanced at them and grimaced.

“It’s true. We’re relieved,” said Johansen. “Funny word, that. Relieved. Hmph. More like: ‘found incompetent’, or ‘summarily forgotten’, or ‘discovered to have screwed pooch’.”

Vasquez gulped the last of her drink and sat back in her chair. Maybe the word was right. Maybe it would be a relief to give up on this case. She pursed her lips, not liking the idea. Then she looked back at Johansen and a new idea formed.

“What were you about to suggest before they arrived?” she asked him.

He glanced at her and blinked for a moment in confusion. “Oh, that maybe we should go to the bar for another drink.”

“An excellent suggestion,” she smiled.

His face slowly melted as they eyed one another for several quiet seconds. Then she felt another hot flash of embarrassment over what she was thinking. She got up and headed for the bar. He picked up the bill and followed her.

#

Events flowed smoothly and naturally for the rest of the evening. First, they had more drinks. They stuck to margaritas, and by the time she had finished her third he was done with his fifth. She didn’t drink much, and as she was small, the effects left her floating somewhere just above the surface of her barstool.

Together, without any planning conversation, they headed across the street to the Ramada where they were currently staying. The flowing river of white headlights and red taillights that formed I-80 looked surreal and almost magical. Johansen stood beside her as they looked down the grassy embankment at the roaring swooshing cars. A breeze came up and ruffled her hair, which had somehow come down and now hung all around her face in a soft circle.

She looked at him, smiled and put her finger to her lips. He smiled back, looking mildly perplexed and curious. She knew this was absolutely not like her, but she didn’t care. She thought that Johansen must be all but baffled at any kind of playfulness, and the thought made her smile.

She took his hand and led him up the concrete steps to her room. After a few seconds of fumbling with the key and giggling, they slipped into the room and shut the door behind them.

In the dark room he reached for the light switch, but she put a hand on his to stop him. At that moment—at that touch—she felt a real electric tingle. It was strong, almost magnetic. There, in the dark, her fingers felt incredibly small and delicate against his blocky hand. She took his hand away from the light switch and guided it up to cup her left breast. That one was slightly larger than her right and she hoped like a high-schooler that he would be impressed by the weight and firmness of it. She could hear his breathing now. It had grown heavy with desire.

Johansen needed no more encouragement. He swept her up for their first kiss. It was hot, wet and suffocatingly long. When it was over, she wondered how they had possibly held out for so many months.

After that, things progressed quickly. Soon he was on the bed with her, and she was glad she was still on the pill, despite nearly a year’s worth of abstinence. As gently and delicately as he could with his great weight and strength, he ravaged her.

They kissed hotly for a time, still saying not a word. It was much better that way, she knew. To hear his voice might ruin everything, might make her freeze up and realize what she was doing, how crazy it was.

She learned that his belly wasn’t flabby. It was as rock-hard and ribbed as his back. Years of habitually working out in the gym had given him a body beneath those ill-fitting suits that was a pleasure to her senses.

When she finally realized that her panties were off and he was entering her, she gave a gasp of surprise and mild pain. He was big, even bigger than she had expected. She was a small woman, and out of practice. She knew that if he thrust with abandon it was going to hurt a lot.

He seemed to sense this and proceeded to move his bulk over her slowly and probed only shallowly at first. Only when she began to moan and clutch at him did he allow himself the luxury of sinking in more deeply.

He came quickly, but she beat him to it. She surprised herself, as she rarely had an orgasm during just straight intercourse without additional stimulation. It felt wonderful.

After he sighed and slid off of her, she spooned herself up against him and finally felt fully relaxed. She grunted as she checked the alarm. It was set for six, which would have to do.

She feared that he would want to begin pillow-talking, that he would want to know what this all meant, and many other questions that she had no answers to. She was greatly relieved when he kept up their pact of silence.

For the first time in years, she fell asleep without fussing with her hair nor brushing her teeth.

Her last thought was of a single word: Relieved.