“Indeed I have.” He stepped into line behind me, and the guard waved us through to the scanning machine.
“What about New York? The tour?” I put my backpack on the conveyor belt and automatically began unzipping it, when I remembered I had no laptop to pull out.
Jack put his things on the conveyor belt after mine and followed me up to the metal detector.
“Come through,” the woman said, so I did.
The machine lit up like a Christmas tree, so they pulled out the scanning wand.
“I’ve made a slight change,” he called, as he walked through in his stocking feet. Naturally, the lights did not blink even once. He’d replaced his shoes and put away his computer by the time they’d finished wanding and swabbing me for suspicious powders.
“I don’t know why they always pick me,” I muttered, as we waited for my pack to be x-rayed. “I lead the most blameless life ever.”
He grinned. “Perhaps ye always look guilty. And besides, it’s the blameless ones who carry the deepest secrets, aye?”
That might well be true, I thought, as I collected my pack and swung it up onto my shoulder. We turned down the long hallway leading to the gates.
“So, didja have a chance to begin the book?” he asked, with a certain casualness that rang utterly false.
“No— no, too busy dealing with the cops…” I began, but I totally caved as his face crumpled in disappointment. “Of course I read it. William’s love interest seemed—ah …”
“Human?” he asked, eagerly. “More realistic?”
“Umm-hmm. And kinda—familiar.”
His face creased a little as he tried to smother a smile. “Ah. You noticed, then.”
I opened my mouth to reply when a collection of heated voices rose up behind us. As we turned to look, there was a sudden explosion of activity at the very security station we had just come through.
Two guards—I couldn’t tell if they were policemen or not, had come marching down the other wing of the airport, escorting a handcuffed prisoner. One of the guards had his hand on the prisoner’s head as they ducked backwards through the security line, when the person shook free and ran right for us.
There was no time to react, apart from registering that the person wore enormous, white plastic-framed sunglasses and had long, flowing blonde hair.
“Susan?” I whispered, but not surprisingly, she didn’t stop to respond.
It was a futile attempt, in the end, as she only managed three or four strides before the guard tackled her to the ground, essentially right at our feet.
“Brutality!” she screeched, before landing a decent kick right under the guard’s kneecap with one five-inch platform shoe. “I’m goin’ to sue you cocksuckers, one and all. See if I don’t! This is fuckin’ police brutality! Is this the way you treat all your visitors?”
Jack and I joined the throng of travelers who were backing away as quickly as possible from the scene. By this time, a second guard had arrived and was actually sitting right on top of Susan, trying to avoid her flailing feet long enough to zap-strap them together. In the end, the woman who had patted me down dropped her equipment and held Susan’s heels together long enough for the guard to truss her up like a turkey.
As the final strap was tied, a large figure pushed through the security line.
“I’m wi’ her,” he cried when the woman with the wand tried to stand in his way. “They’re arrestin’ mah fiancée!”
“Hamish, Hamish—make them untie me,” Susan screeched.
In the melee, several of her extensions had come away and were wrapped around various body parts of the guards, who were by this time struggling to get her upright. As both her hands and her feet were tightly bound, it seemed unclear to me why they were doing so, since there was no way she could walk on her own. But they pulled her to her feet, and Hamish stood beside her, helplessly collecting knotted strands of blonde hair from off the floor and the guard’s uniforms.
“Look,” Hamish said earnestly, peering down into the very red face of one of the guards. “There mus’ be some mistake. We’re gettin’ married. I cannae leave without her! They’ll no’ let me stay in America!”
A line of police officers moved silently through the security line behind Hamish.
“Sir, I reckon you’d better come with us. This woman is Gail Lee Duncan, and she’s needed to assist our enquiries into a series of thefts from Berwick to Thirsk.”
The crowd watched in silence as Hamish’s face went a shade of deep scarlet that I recognized with a pang of dread. “There mus’ be a mistake,” he repeated, his hand closing to a fist. “This is no Gail Thingummy. This is mah Sunshine—mah wife to be.”