The Passionate G-Man

He took his time getting out of the pickup, not that he had an option. By the time he’d done three slow laps around the parking area, his muscles had loosened up enough so that he barely limped, even without the cane.

Mind over matter. His body might have been screwed over pretty thoroughly, but his mind was still in first-class working order.

Although there’d been some argument over that when he’d signed himself out of the hospital.

Following the road map, he left the interstate at Roanoke Rapids and took an east-southeasterly course, using two lanes and what was euphemistically called “other roads.” There was no deadline. He had three months before he had to make up his mind whether to put in for early retirement or go back on line.

At least where he was headed there wouldn’t be any reporters. Or any drug-runners, terrorists, or survivalists, any one of which was bad enough. When the territories started overlapping, things got spooky.

And when there was a leak from somewhere in the chain of command, things got even spookier. The wrong people started dying.

“How’d you want your burger, hon? We can’t fry ‘em rare no more, gov’ment rules. We got sweet onions up from Georgia, though. A thick slice, and even shoe leather’d taste good.”

Lyon ordered two burgers, well-done with extra onion, extra cheese and a quart of coffee. When the waitress leaned across in front of him to realign the salt and pepper shakers, offering him a front-row seat in her balcony if he was interested, he said, “To go, please. And could you give me directions to—”

“Any old where, darlin’, you name it. You here for the huntin’ or the fishin’? I could show you some real good places.”

“Yeah, both,” he muttered. I’ll just bet you could, sugar, and I’d probably enjoy them all, but not today, thanks. “Could you point me in the direction of the nearest hardware store, supermarket and the local tax office?”

Jasmine was depressed. All the way across the country she’d been pumping up her expectations. She’d managed to keep them high during the long drive from the airport to the nursing home, but there they’d collapsed like a wet souffle.

Her grandmother didn’t know her. Her only living relative, whom she hadn’t seen since she’d moved with her mother from Oklahoma to California eighteen and a half years ago, didn’t know her from Adam.

Make that Eve.

And the worst part of it was, Hattie Clancy wasn’t interested in knowing her. She was sweet and polite and a little vague—well, a lot vague, actually—but Jasmine could tell right off that she was more interested in playing cards with her friends and watching her favorite soaps and game shows than she was in getting to know the granddaughter who had flown all the way from the West Coast to see her.

Jasmine told herself it was probably for the best. Why get attached to someone who lives thousands of miles away, someone who’s old and might die—someone who’s probably set in her ways and wouldn’t be interested in moving to L.A., even if Jasmine could afford to move her there?

All the same, it would have been nice...

She shook off the sense of depression. It hadn’t been a total waste. She’d met her only living relative, after all. Now when she sent snapshots and letters and greeting cards, she’d have a face to attach to the name and address she’d found among her father’s papers after he’d died.

Having barely known the man before he turned up one day on her doorstep, sick and broke, she’d been surprised to learn that his mother—her own grandmother—was still living, much less living in North Carolina. She would have thought Oklahoma if she’d thought at all, because that’s where her parents had parted company.

Jasmine had written to Hattie Clancy immediately. She hadn’t heard back, but she’d continued to write. For an actress who was unemployed more often than not, she’d been too busy trying to pay off her father’s medical bills, along with her own living expenses, to have much free time, but she’d made time to send cards and brief notes, and sometimes a clipping when she happened to land a part and her name was mentioned in a review.

Which was practically never.

To make ends meet she’d done a few commercials and taken a fill-in job in a dress shop. It paid minimum wage, plus a tiny discount on clothes she couldn’t afford to buy anyway.

And now she’d spent money she didn’t have to fly east to see a grandmother who didn’t know her and didn’t seem particularly interested in getting acquainted. She might as well have stayed home. It had been a total waste of time and money.

No, it hadn’t. She’d earned herself a vacation. The last one had been—

Yes, well...that was another reason she’d needed to get away. Her last vacation had been with Eric. A week after they’d come back from Tahoe, Eric had started seeing her best friend. Jasmine had made excuses for him at first. She was good at that.

What was that popular song? Cleopatra, Queen of Denial?

Boy, was she ever. Her friends said she was easygoing. Laid-back. Which meant more or less the same thing—that she didn’t blow her stack at the least little thing, which was a definite advantage in the dog-eat-dog world of acting.

All the same, she hadn’t felt very laid-back when Cynthia had breezed into the shop one day last week and said, “Guess what! Eric and I are getting married. You’ve got to be our maid of honor, you’ve simply got to! After all, if you hadn’t introduced us, it never would have happened.”

Right. Smartest thing she ever did. Introduce the man she was in love with to her best friend, who was blond and beautiful and had a continuing, if minor, role in Wilde’s Children.

“When?” she’d managed to ask. Actually, it had sounded more like a whine, but Cyn had been so wrapped up in her own euphoria she hadn’t noticed.

“Valentine’s Day. Isn’t that just too, too perfect?”

Jasmine had agreed that it was just too, too perfect. And then she’d come up with the too-too perfect excuse. “Oh, but my grandmother—it’s her seventy-ninth birthday. Actually, her birthday’s on the fifteenth, but I promised to help her celebrate. You wouldn’t want to wait until next year, would you?”

They couldn’t possibly wait, and so Jasmine had been stuck with her excuse. She’d told herself it would be a lovely thing to do, to surprise her grandmother—her only living relative, unless her father had taken a few more secrets to the grave—and so she’d flown all the way across the country on a ticket she couldn’t afford, and gone still deeper in debt renting a car to drive to the nursing home, which was hours away from the airport.

And now, here she was at loose ends for a whole week. She’d planned to stay near the nursing home, only there wasn’t really any place to stay—at least no place she could afford. She’d asked for a weekly rate on her car, and planned to drive her grandmother around, just the two of them, and talk about her father and her grandfather, and any aunts or uncles and cousins she might have.

Family things. Things like, who else in the family had kinky maroon hair and legs that went all the way up to her armpits?

Things like who else in the family loved animals, hated insects and was allergic to cantaloups?

Things that would have taken her mind off the fact that Cyn and Eric were at this very moment honeymooning in Cancún.

Instead, she’d spent a day at the nursing home, looking at pictures of grandchildren of people she didn’t even know, watching soaps and seeıng a few people she did know, but not Cyn, thank goodness—and being largely ignored by her own grandmother.

She.’d played cards with three lovely old ladies, gradually coming to realize that they weren’t all playing with a full deck. She’d strolled around the grounds once the rain had let up, exclaiming over straggly little flowers and squishıng through the mud to pick a bunch of red berries for one of the residents who admired them.

She’d had to battle great swags of Spanish moss and several thick, hairy vines to get to the things, but when her grandmother had asked for some, too, she had gladly waded into the jungle again to oblige her.

What else were granddaughters for?

Feeling lost, rootless, she’d woken up the next morning and considered her options. If she went back now—that’s if she could even exchange her tickets—she’d have to pay the daily rate for her car instead of the cheaper weekly rate.

Of course, she would save on her motel bill, but money wasn’t her only problem, or even her biggest one. Eric and Cynthia would be back on Friday. Cynthia would insist on giving her a detailed description of the honeymoon. Cynthia insisted on giving anyone who would listen a detailed description of her entire life. It was one of her charms—her breezy openness.

And Eric, blast his gorgeous hide, would gaze adoringly into his bride’s eyes the way Jasmine had dreamed of his gazing into her own eyes, only he never had, and she’d probably throw up or something equally embarrassing.

Dammit, he knew she loved him! She hadn’t even tried to hide it. They’d met thirteen and a half months ago at a New Year’s Eve party and it had been one of those magical, magnetic moments that come once in a lifetime.

They had everything in common. They’d both grown up in the Midwest in single-parent households, but they’d been happy, comfortable households. They both believed in love at first sight, in fate. They both liked vinegar on their french fries.

The first time they’d gone away for a long weekend together, Jasmine had thought of it as a honeymoon. She’d been waiting ever since for a proposal, being just old-fashioned enough to believe it was the man’s prerogative. Which was a hoot considering she was an actress who had lived in L.A. for nearly five years.

And then she’d made the fatal mistake of introducing Eric to Cynthia.

After driving aimlessly for hours, she pulled into a service station, filled her tank, hoping her credit card wasn’t maxed out, and splurged on a candy bar and a diet cola. Savoring the unfamiliar aroma of nature in the raw mingled with diesel oil, she studied the map in search of anything of interest between where she was and the airport.

She’d had to ask the attendant where she was. It seemed she was somewhere in the vicinity of Frying Pan Landing, not too far from Gum Neck, smack dab in the middle of that part of the map labeled Eastern Dismal Swamp.

Dismal. If she’d been looking for something that suited her mood, she couldn’t have found a better place.