her glasses and looked at him from around the tree's trunk.
“You have a location where we can watch the boathouse?” she asked, her voice as close to incredulous as it probably ever got.
Ty grinned. “Stick with me kid, I'll show you places.”
“I will truly love you forever if you can get us good surveillance of the boathouse. It's our weakest point.”
“Then I hope you're ready to commit,” he teased. “I think you're going to like what you see.”
Dani swung down from the tree and surveyed the surrounding area. “We'll have better visibility of the water from here, too,” she noted.
Ty nodded. “It should be pretty good, and could be very good, depending on the equipment Cotter has.”
“He has the best,” Dani said.
“The recon team will have to watch each other's sixes, but other than that, it should be a good spot,” he commented. It was true, whoever took recon on the south end of the bay would have to watch the back of the man, or woman, on the north side, and vice versa. But it wasn't anything anyone hadn't done before, so it would be duly noted, but not a concern.
“This is great, Ty,” Dani smiled as she took her GPS unit out of her pocket and noted the location. “When we get back, I'll give this info to Cotter and walk through the locale with him. So, I take it you're granting us permission to use your land?”
He made a grand gesture with his arms that encompassed the woods and water. “It's all yours, but try to be kind to the trees. My mom likes to gather the sap from the maples in early spring.” Dani smiled at the comment and glanced around. “The picture is more charming than the reality,” Ty continued, “though I can't complain with the results; there's nothing quite like the taste of homemade maple syrup. Come on, we've got one more place to go and it's getting late.”
They'd just turned onto the road when Dani surprised Ty once again. “Do you have any siblings?” she asked through the radio headset.
Ty paused, wondering if he'd heard right—if he'd really just heard her ask another personal question. “Yes. I have a brother who is three years older than me and a sister who is a year older.”
“So you're the baby.”
“Yes, but I'm the biggest.” He could almost feel her smile.
“Do you see them often?” she asked.
“As much as I can. My brother lives in Seattle. He's a tech guy but he runs his own security company.”
“As in personal security?”
“No, as in testing the reliability of security systems, which may or may not include people, machines, robots, computers, phones, and a whole host of things I can't even begin to imagine.”
“Hunley,” Dani said, making the connection.
Ty nodded as they passed through the quiet neighborhoods heading from the south point of the bay to the north.
“And your sister?” she asked.
He took a tricky curve before answering. “She's a social worker. She lives in Taos, New Mexico, where my parents are.”
“I thought you were from here?”
“We moved here when I was twelve. My dad got a job, and my mom thought we'd get a better education here. We loved it, but after I moved out and my dad retired they decided they missed New Mexico, so they moved back.” They were clipping along the coastal road, the ocean to their side, the breeze against their bodies. Almost like a real date with real conversation.
“Do you see them often?”
“They come in the spring and then again for a couple months in the fall, and I make it out as often as I can. It usually ends up being a couple of times a year,” he answered.
“Sounds nice.”
“It is. What about you? Do you see your sister often?”
“Like you, as much as I can, which isn't as often as I would like. We're close though, we talk at least once a day when I'm not on assignment.”
“Once a day?” Ty asked with mild incredulity. In his mind the phone was pretty much good for making business calls or ordering food for dinner, beyond that, it was a nuisance.
Dani laughed. “We're identical twins, we've got that twin connection thing. I talked to her yesterday when I landed in Portland and I'll probably call her tonight, even though I'm working and she knows it. With my work schedule and her travel and family schedule, we can't always talk, but we try.”
This little insight hit Ty from way out of left field. “Wow,”