Droning overhead, one of those slow-moving planes hauling a banner.
“A mirror up there, I’d always be worried it’d come crashing down.”
“You worry about things like that, Frank? You have anxiety issues I should know about?”
“I’ve made a pretty good career out of worrying.”
“Maybe we should just lie here and be quiet.”
“What’d you mean about the angles?”
“See, that’s what I’m talking about. Frank-the-interrogator, can’t shut it off, got to keep digging. We should just shut up till the rush subsides and we’re normal again. Right now we’re too naked. We shouldn’t talk.”
Can you be too naked? Frank wanted to say, but didn’t.
He was silent, staring at the white ceiling. Wondering what they’d just been talking about. How it had turned testy so fast. Trying to run it back, hear it again, tease out the hidden messages. But he was too fuzzy-headed, too mellow. But still, something was off. Something he couldn’t name, didn’t want to name. If he could only shut down that part of his brain, the part that was always itching to go one layer deeper, peel the onion all the way to the pearl, he’d be a happier guy. A different guy, too. Dumber, but happier.
They napped for a while. Frank woke and watched her sleeping. Then lay back and went away for half an hour. A lazy Saturday.
When he woke again, she was in the tiny living room watching tennis on his TV. Wearing one of his T-shirts, an old, paint-spattered one he’d picked up in Cabo San Lucas years ago.
He stood in the doorway and watched. It was some tennis match. Two blond banshees screaming when they hammered the ball, two different shrieks. One a two-part who-hoo and the other more like an orgasmic wail.
He went back into the bedroom, pulled on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. The bureau drawer was still open from Nicole’s helping herself. She hadn’t asked where he kept his T-shirts. She must’ve looked through his drawers till she found the one she was wearing. Making herself right at home at the Silver Sands, room 106. Which Frank didn’t mind at all.
“You a tennis fan?”
“It’s the channel that was on.”
“Play any sports?”
“StairMaster. Is that a sport?”
“If it makes you sweat, I think it qualifies.”
“Well, if that’s all it takes, then August in Miami, standing around in the shade, that’s an Olympic event.”
She looked back at him and gave him a smile.
“Something I wanted to show you,” he said.
“Oh, good. I was afraid I’d seen everything you have.”
Frank retrieved his briefcase from the bedroom, laid it on the coffee table, and dug out a manila folder.
“Couldn’t get NSA to cooperate with satellite imagery, and Miami PD wanted too much for their drone. Anyway, that fricking thing is so loud they’d hear it coming a mile away. So one of my guys, Sanford, he’s got his own Cessna, he did a flyover yesterday. Slid these under the door this morning while we were otherwise engaged.”
Frank laid the stack of photos out on the console seat, dealt the top one.
Four black kayaks trailed a white fishing skiff, Prince Key’s eastern coastline visible at the edge of the shot.
“Four guys and someone in a floppy hat driving the flats boat.”
“So?”
Frank put that one on the bottom of the stack and held up the next.
The island itself from about two or three hundred feet.
“Sanford came in lower than I wanted. Not far over the trees.”
“It’s out of focus.”
“The other ones are better.”
They looked through the rest of the shots. One small tent was on the island, and a much larger one, a single solar panel, and other structures.
“Looks like an obstacle course,” Frank said. “Like they’re training for something. A wall, a balance beam, old tires for agility drills.”
She was silent.
“And the kayaks, that’s interesting.”
“What about them?”
“You ever seen a black kayak?”
“Why? Is that unusual?”
“I’d say so,” he said. “Normally they’re bright red, yellow, orange, colors you can see from a distance, so you don’t get run down by speedboats. Black is rare. It suggests to me they may have done a custom paint job, picked black so they can disappear in the dusk or at night.”
“ELF is going to attack the nuke plant at night? That’s what you’re suggesting? Converge in kayaks.”
“I’m just thinking out loud, brainstorming. What’s wrong? This is your operation. You don’t seem very engaged.”
“It was my operation. Now I’m not sure.”