Chasing Fire

reports. I’ll have to brief with L.B. at some point, and squeeze in daily PT, after which there must be more food.”
    “There must.”
    “Then I believe it’s going to be a time for relax-into-a-nap sex.”
    “I can write up an agenda on this, just so we don’t miss anything.”
    “It’s all here.” She tapped her temple. “So . . .” She strolled naked into the bathroom. “Let’s get this party started.”
    Rowan considered the first round a knockout. Now that she felt a hundred percent human, and with Gull shaving off the scruff in her bathroom, she went out to dress.
    She picked up the note someone must have shoved under her door in the last forty minutes.
    FULL BRIEFING ALL CREW
    OPS
    THIRTEEN HUNDRED
     
    “Oh, well. Round two’s going to have to be postponed.” She held the note up for Gull to read.
    “Maybe he has some answers.”
    “Or maybe he’s just got a whole lot of questions. Either way, we’d better scramble if we’re going to get any food before thirteen hundred.”
    “Marg might know something.”
    “I’m thinking the same.”
    Since Marg liked him well enough, Gull went with Rowan to the kitchen.
    Probably not the best timing, he realized as they walked into the heat and the rush. Marg, Lynn and the new cook—Shelley, he remembered—turned, hauled, chopped and scooped with a creative symmetry that made him think of a culinary Cirque du Soleil.
    “Hey.” Lynn filled a tub with some sort of pasta medley. “Shelley, we need more rolls, and the chicken salad’s getting low.”
    “I’m all over it!”
    “Bring the barbecue pan back when you come,” Marg told Lynn while she swiped a cloth over her heat-flushed face. “They’ll be ready for it by then. I know how they suck this stuff down.
    “Briefing at one o’clock,” she muttered, and wagged a spoon at Rowan. “Right in the middle of things, so they all storm this place before noon like Henry the Fifth stormed, wherever the hell that was.”
    “I could chop something,” Rowan volunteered.
    “Just stay clear. Once we get this second round of barbecue out to them, they’ll hold awhile.”
    “You were right.” Lynn bustled back in with a near-empty pan. Together, she and Marg filled it.
    “This tops everything off but the dessert buffet. Shelley and I can get that.”
    “Good girl.” Marg flipped out two plates, tossed the open rolls on them, dumped barbecue on the bottom, scooped the pasta medley beside it, added a serving of summer squash. Then pointed at Gull. “Get three beers and bring ’em out to my table. Take this.” She shoved one of the plates at Rowan before grabbing up flatware setups.
    She sailed outside and, after setting the plate and setups down, pressed her hands to her lower back. “God.”
    “Sit down, Marg.”
    “I need to stretch this out some first. Go on and eat.”
    “Aren’t you going to?”
    Marg just waved a hand in the negative. “That’s what I’m after,” she said, taking the beer Gull held out to her. “I’ve got the AC set to arctic blast, but by the time we’re into the middle of the lunch shift, it’s like Nairobi. Eat. And don’t bolt it down.”
    Gull lifted the sloppy sandwich, got in the first bite. Warm, tangy, with the pork melting into sauce and the combination melding into something like spiced bliss.
    “Marg, what’ll it take for you to come and live with me?”
    “A lot of sex.”
    “I’m good for that,” he said over another bite, pointing to Rowan for verification. “I’m good for that.”
    “Everybody’s got to be good for something,” Rowan commented. “What’s the word, Marg?”
    “L.B.’s on a tear, that’s for certain. You don’t see that man get up a head of steam often. It’s why he’s good at the job. But he’s been puffing it out the last couple days. He had every chute, every pack, every jumpsuit gone over. He’d have used microscopes on them if he could have. Every piece of equipment, every tool, every damn thing. He’s having the jeeps gone over, the Rolligons, the planes.”
    She took a long, slow sip of beer, set it aside, then surprised Gull by lowering smoothly into a yoga down dog. “God, that feels better. He called Quinniock out here.”
    “He wants a police investigation?” Rowan asked.
    “He’s made up his mind Leo managed to do this. He may be right.” She walked her feet up to a forward fold, hung there a moment, then straightened. “Irene’s leaving him. She’s already packing up. The