“We could take my car,” Steve offered as he walked to the parking spot under the awning in front of his apartment.

“No, I have a rental I have to return, sir,” Ann replied briskly. “You might want to follow me to the airport. It’ll simplify things when you come back.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Steve agreed, unlocking the white Dodge Caliber he’d driven for several years now. It had been a good little car, about right for running to work, and he didn’t need anything better. “Tell you what. If we get separated, meet me at the Alliance parking lot at the airport.”

“That should work, sir,” she said, turning to walk toward a Cadillac Seville parked not far away. He couldn’t keep from watching; she had on high heels, and it made her butt move very seductively. Not bad, he thought. He set the suitcase in the back seat, then got in and started up the Caliber.

It was about half an hour from his apartment in Dillon to the Huntsville airport; the traffic wasn’t particularly heavy, and it was easy to keep the Caddy in sight. It gave him plenty of time to think about this whole thing, and he couldn’t make any sense out of it. There wasn’t any hint of what this was all about, and while the mysterious blonde had come right out and said that she knew more than she was telling him, she hadn’t told him much. Really, all she had said was that his barely remembered Uncle Homer wanted to talk to him, there was no hint of what it was about. He suspected that she knew more about him than she had let on – but none of it even started to make sense. What’s more, none of it offered any chance of making sense until he talked to Uncle Homer. The best that could be said about it right now was that it had the possibility of being more interesting than sitting around in his apartment and watching whatever crap the cable company put on his TV set, or going over job postings that he’d already looked at.

Perhaps this really was the time to be doing something different with his life, he thought. There was no reason he had to stay in the area. He didn’t owe any money except for his monthly bills, his car was paid for, and he didn’t have much in the way of friends and no family in the area. What’s more, he had money in the bank and more in his market accounts, so it wasn’t like he had to be working again right away. When he got right down to it, he’d led a pretty dull life, especially after getting out of college, and if he was going to do something radical, then there probably wasn’t going to be a better time to do it.

The problem was, what? This wasn’t the first time he’d had the thought, but nothing had particularly called to him. About the only idea he’d had was to go out west, maybe Denver or someplace, and try to come up with something different. If he was careful with his money, he had a year, maybe two, before he had to do anything, and if he got serious he figured he could have his MBA by spring. But then what? There were times that he’d been sorry that he’d gotten out of the army – at least they moved people around fairly regularly, and gave them new areas and new jobs to work on from time to time. On the other hand, from the stories he’d seen on the news about the mess in the Middle East since he left the Army, he was just as glad that he wasn’t involved.

Maybe, just maybe, whatever it was that Uncle Homer wanted him for would give him an answer, even though he had no idea what it could be. It wasn’t as if he knew Uncle Homer well, because he didn’t. He’d met the man at family gatherings of one kind or another a few times over the years, all before he left Bradford to go to the Army – and that was fifteen years before. None of those occasions had been very extensive – Uncle Homer had just been some older guy who was vaguely a relative. It seemed unlikely that they’d exchanged a hundred words in those meetings. He could remember his father saying that Uncle Homer had some money but some people considered him to be a little weird, so no one in the family knew him very well. He remembered someone once saying that Uncle Homer lived in a big house outside Wychbold. He had a mental picture of, well, nothing in particular – an older guy, medium size, medium build, gray hair. He couldn’t picture a face with those memories, at least with all the time that had passed.

What could Uncle Homer want with him? There was no telling without meeting him. The information that the beautiful but mysterious babe with the sunglasses provided didn’t add much to what he already knew. There was nothing to do but wait and see what happened.

The route to the Huntsville airport was familiar, not that Steve was much of one to go anywhere very often, and it was easy to follow the wine-colored Cadillac. Before long they’d left his car at the parking lot. He threw his suitcase into the back seat of the Seville, and she drove the short distance to the car rental place. It only took her a few minutes to drop off the car, and they caught a transfer bus to the main terminal. “One of the problems,” Ann commented as they walked up to the airline counter, “Is that there’s no good way to get from here to there. About the best way I could work out was to take a commuter airline to Atlanta, and a regular airliner from there to Detroit. The connection isn’t very good, I’m afraid, sir.”

“It could be worse,” Steve said as if it was unimportant. “The last time I went to Bradford it was commuter airlines all the way, and I think they stopped at any city that had more than a dozen stop lights. It took most of a day. I could have driven it in about as much time, and usually did after that, not that I go to Bradford very much.”

“That would not have been an option for me,” she replied nonchalantly. “I don’t want to leave Mr. Taylor alone any longer than necessary, but this trip had to be made, and I was the logical one to do it. I have to travel for him every now and then, and we always try to make it as brief as possible.”

“You make it sound like he can’t get along by himself,” Steve observed.

“For the most part he can’t, sir,” Ann replied. “He really is not in very good health, but he swore he could get along without me for this trip. When I talked to him a couple hours ago he said he was getting along fine, but still I’m worried about him. I’ll call him again before we get on the plane.”

“You sound very dedicated to him.”

“I like to think I am, sir,” she sighed. “I owe him a good deal and want to repay him in any way I can.”

Their conversation, brief as it was, had to be cut short as they went through the airport security checkpoint. That was another reason that Steve didn’t fly very often: it was a pain in the ass, especially with the extra waiting around it involved. He could get a good many miles under his butt in the Caliber in the time that was wasted, and on the whole he found the driving a lot more pleasurable.

When they finally got cleared through security, Ann said, “We have plenty of time now, Mr. Taylor. It’s over an hour before we need to be at the boarding ramp. Would you like me to buy you lunch? I’m afraid I took you away from yours.”

“It’s still a little early for me,” Steve said. “My schedule has gotten a little flexible since I’ve been laid off. Besides, if we’re having lunch, shouldn’t I be buying it for you?”

“I appreciate the thought,” she replied with a slight smile on her lips, “but sir, this is business, not pleasure.”

“We might as well have something,” he agreed reluctantly. “I guess I have to say that I’m not used to letting beautiful women buy me meals.”

“Oh, Mr. Taylor is buying it,” she smiled slightly again, “but thank you for the compliment, sir. Do you have any preferences?”

“Whatever you’re comfortable with,” he told her. “I know a hamburger in this place is going to cost what a steak would cost at a good restaurant. When they have a captive audience they charge like they mean it.”

“Let’s just get something light from one of the places along the concourse, sir,” she suggested. “Flying and a heavy meal doesn’t work very well for me, and I guarantee you that the food on the plane will not be worth the expense. It was not this morning, I assure you, sir.”

“You flew in this morning?” Steve commented, not that it was a real surprise for some reason.

“Yes, and I left very early. It was a difficult trip for me but it had to be done. At least this way I can be back tonight.”

They wound up getting lunch from the counter at a place that Steve would never have considered if he’d found it in a mall, and they sat down in rather uncomfortable chairs at a table nearby. The food came wrapped in paper and tasted like plastic or sawdust, depending on what it was. Since the purpose of the exercise was to kill some time, Steve decided to try and get some conversation going – after all, a woman as beautiful as Ann seemed to call for some attention, despite the fact that there was something about her he couldn’t put his finger on. Something, well, eerie, for the lack of a better word. “So,” he said, “how long have you been Uncle Homer’s lawyer?”

“Me? A lawyer?” she laughed – the first time he’d gotten more than a slight smile out of her. “I barely made it out of high school. What made you think I’d be Mr. Taylor’s lawyer, sir?”

“Well, you’re dressed like one,” he smiled. “When I met you, I figured I was being sued for something. And you don’t talk like you barely made it out of high school.”

“Mr. Taylor likes me to dress in a businesslike fashion when I’m on business for him, sir,” she said. “I’m afraid my tastes reflect his to a good degree. I would not be caught dead in jeans and a T-shirt any more. As far as my manner of speaking, I’m afraid that’s another trait I exhibit as a direct effect of his influence. Let me assure you, sir, although I am in fact a high school graduate, my education had not even started when I first met Mr. Taylor.”

“So what do you do for him?”

“Whatever I can,” she sighed. “I suppose you could say I’m his companion, his secretary, his nurse, his nanny, his cook, his housekeeper, and his errand girl. As I said, I owe him a good deal, and I do what I can for him to repay what he’s done for me.”

That made Steve even more curious. “What did he do for you that you feel you have to repay him?”

“Sir, the simple answer to that is that he gave me my life,” she told him. “At least he gave it back to me.”

“How did that happen?”

“That’s a long story, sir” she said, “and not one for telling now, and perhaps never,” she replied icily, and changed the subject. “You said you were in the Gulf War. What was that like?”

“Mostly hot and dusty,” he replied, and truthfully, realizing that he’d pushed the envelope as far in that direction with her as he could, at least for now. “The truth be told, most of the war part of it I rode around inside an armored personnel carrier, not seeing much of anything, and mostly sweating from all the heat, and with a headache from all the noise. I never fired a shot in anger, although I did see a few fired by others.”

“You have no big, heroic war stories?” she nodded, confirming that she approved of the change in subject.

“Hardly even any small, dull ones,” he told her. “I was there, I sweated, and I came home, and really, that’s about all there is to say about it.”

The first leg of the trip was just a short commuter hop, but the messing around and waiting due to security was long enough that Steve figured it was about a dead heat against driving. The same thing couldn’t be said about the next leg, the more-than-an-hour flight to Detroit on a bigger, faster plane. They’d barely settled into their seats in first class, a new experience for Steve and one that he was still getting used to, when Ann said, “Mr. Taylor, I hope you won’t take this as impolite. I’ve been up for a very long time and I’m finding myself very sleepy. Would you mind terribly if I took a short nap?”

“Fine with me,” he smiled. “It’s probably a more productive way to spend your time than being awake.”

“Thank you, sir,” she replied, then rested her head on the headrest of the upright seat.

Not a bad idea, Steve thought. He wasn’t particularly sleepy himself, and he wished he had brought a book or something to help kill the time. This had come down so quickly that he hadn’t thought that far ahead. All he could do was to lean his own head back against the headrest, try to relax a little, and figure out what this was all about. Ann hadn’t really given him many clues, and he didn’t know Uncle Homer well enough to have any good ideas. Really, there wasn’t much to do but think about how strange this all was. Nothing had made sense from the first and still hadn’t come any closer to it.

After a while he glanced over at Ann and it appeared to him that she was indeed asleep, at least as far as he could tell. As she was still wearing the mirrored wrap-around sunglasses, he couldn’t tell if her eyes were closed or not. He still didn’t have a ghost of an idea of what her eyes looked like; he’d never seen her without the glasses, even for an instant. It was relatively dim here in the cabin of the plane, but then if she’d wanted to sleep, having them on probably was a good idea. There was still something strange about her, adding to the strangeness of this whole situation, even though he couldn’t put his finger on what it was.

Who the hell knows, he thought, and turned his attention back to anything else that could help pass the time. About that time the coach-class passengers began to board, having to work their way past the comfortable seats in the front of the plane to be crowded like sardines in a can into the aft section. There were the expressions of pure, undisguised envy on at least some of the faces he made eye contact with. For once one of those faces wasn’t his, and he felt just a little guilty about it, but not guilty enough to want to trade places with anyone.

In fact, there was a little envy on his face at the sight of at least a few of the coach-class passengers, who were carrying books of one kind or another. It sure would have been nice to have something to read right now, he thought. But without a book there was nothing he could do but to let his thoughts turn inward, as they had been doing all too much lately.

While he had no idea of what was going on with this strange summons from his barely remembered great-uncle, in the back of his mind he hoped that it would be something different, something interesting. Perhaps, with a little luck, something that would bring some change to his life and give it some direction. While he’d been what he considered to be a good worker and a good manager, he hadn’t realized how much his life had been centered around his job until it vanished before his very eyes. In the weeks that he’d been out of a job it had been a little dissatisfying to realize just how true that was, and he’d realized that he needed to do something to fix it, although he had no idea of where to start. Certainly not with Teri; she had been fun at times, but he’d been aware right from the start that she was not the kind of person for him to try and make a life with. Someone else was going to have to put up with her running around; it wouldn’t be an issue that he would deal with. It was just as well that he hadn’t tried.

As his mind wandered listlessly through the same old channels, he was vaguely aware that time was passing. He hadn’t had any idea of what the plane’s schedule was, but after a while it began to dawn on him that they must be running late. The cabin passengers had all boarded now, but still the plane sat at the gate. Eventually there came a cabin announcement, a man’s deep, gentle voice: “Looks like we’re going to be a while before departing, folks. There’s some congestion problems, but they should be rolling us away from the gate in another twenty minutes or so.”

Well, crap, Steve thought. Time to spare, go by air. He glanced over at Ann, who had no obvious reaction to the announcement. She must really be asleep, he thought. Lucky her. She was a good-looking woman, and in fact pretty appealing, although he had no idea what his chances with her might be, if any. He knew he hadn’t learned very much about her, but there were some strange things mixed into what little he had learned, things that didn’t make sense now but might later with more knowledge.

But it was just double-doming, random thoughts without order. Guys like him didn’t wind up with beautiful, mysterious women like her. He was, as he had often accused himself, too much of a loner, and it seemed likely that he wouldn’t wind up with anyone. How would he ever find the courage or the motivation or whatever it took to take the first steps with someone, then follow through? Did he even want to?

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