Smacking his fist against his forehead to clear his thoughts, Arnie saw the play, mapped it out, and then stopped to ask for clarification.
“Give it to me straight. Is this infiltration or extraction?”
The silence that followed his question made him uneasy. When Dottie sidestepped the question and stuck to business, he knew some serious shit was hitting Washington’s fan.
“There’s a short hold in play while State tries to manage things. Less than forty-eight hours. Get your house in order, Arnie. Once the decision gets handed off, things will move quickly.”
He squeezed his eyes shut. At the very least he still had all of today with Summer. With any luck, the heavy lifters at the State Department would find a work-around and avoid an international crisis, thereby leaving him off the hook.
One could hope.
“Sorry for interfering in your happy family reunion.” Dottie chortled.
He pulled the phone from his ear and glared at it because he couldn’t glare at her.
“Don’t be a bitch, Quickie.”
“Don’t call me Quickie, you asshole.”
Arnie smiled. His life would be a lot less meaningful without Dorothea Anders, aka Dottie Quick, stirring the pot. She’d been his main handler since, well, since the people who ran things gave him a front row seat at the grown-ups table. She kept him sane, explained away his occasional fuckup, and never let him forget that what they did was important.
“Dad says hi,” he told her before he forgot his manners.
“Aw, that’s nice. Tell Ned I waved back. How’s he doing?”
“He got a tattoo,” Arnie drawled. “Runs down his side under his arm. He swears it’s Elvish script, but to me, it just looks like a mess.”
“Elvish?” she asked with a laugh. “You mean from Lord of the Rings?”
“One and the same. Some rubbish about wandering and getting lost.”
Dottie’s barking laughter made him smile.
“Good lord, Arnie, really? You can recite endless cartoons, chapter and verse, but Tolkien leaves you stupid? It’s a quote, you moron. Not all who wander are lost, and I’d say it describes your dad to a T.”
On an impulse, he suddenly asked, “Dottie, do you remember me telling you about Merlin’s cave?”
“Of course. It’s your vision space. Where you go to do that thing you do. Why do you ask?”
“Just wondering. It’s not something that comes up in conversation a lot.”
“Meaning it has recently? Arnie, what’s going on? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” he assured her, maybe a tad too quickly.
“Uh-huh. I sense your fingers in a cookie jar of unknown origin. Care to elaborate?”
Some part of him wanted to unload on his surrogate mother and tell her about Summer and how he was falling for the pretty little waitress, but he held back—for now.
“I’m thinking about getting a cat and calling it Merlin. That’s all.”
“Darnell Templeton Wanamaker, the goddamn third. The day you add a kitty litter box to your apartment is the day I’ll know hell had a frost alert. Nice deflection, though. Well executed.”
“Yep, that’s me. The king of deflection. And on that note, you old biddy, I’m out. There’s a three-hour time difference, in case you’ve forgotten. I haven’t been up long enough to scratch my balls.”
“Noted, and Arnie? Don’t fuck around. Be ready to haul ass when the call comes.”
“Say what you want about fast food being nasty,” Summer joked, “but there’s nothing like a breakfast croissant from Jack in the Box. Egg, bacon, ham, and melted cheese on a mass-produced croissant. Yum.”
He couldn’t disagree. Not when he was about to finish his second sandwich.
“Better than an MRE,” he mumbled through a mouthful of food.
“Huh?” Summer’s face was adorable as she tried to translate his garbled words.
Taking a slug of a mocha iced latte that was mostly sugar, he washed everything down and tried again.
“MREs. What the military thinks are meals ready to eat. Some of that shit is disgusting. Personally, I think Congress should be forced to eat them.”
She laugh-snorted. “Oh, my god. My brother says the same thing. He sent me a beef stew meal and told me to try it. To be honest, I didn’t know what to think.” Her eyes searched his face and narrowed. “Wait. You never said you were military. What do you know about battlefield rations?”
Oops. Arnie cleared his throat. “They aren’t restricted to war zones.”
“Uh-huh. And?”
Other than Dottie, he’d never met anyone who read through his smoke screens like Summer. It was unnerving and exhilarating.
He shrugged. “When the government signed my paycheck.” And held my leash, he thought with a shudder of memory.