CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
Reparations
Summer had effectively ignored my efforts to reach her so far. Ghosting me was only fair, I suppose, but each passing day made it more likely that she wouldn’t stop. I needed to do something bigger. A grand gesture.
I considered going to her house, but that seemed overly aggressive and creepy. Especially since I didn’t know where she lived. Yes, in the modern information age, I probably could have figured it out. Few things remained hidden anymore. But I hadn’t looked. I wanted to come by it honest. All that being said, her work was fair game. She’d told me about it already. Her architectural firm had a small but elegant building on the edge of Scottsdale. Some guys would—but that didn’t feel right, either. Summer wasn’t a send-me-flowers-at-work kind of girl. I might not know her through and through, but I knew that much. Instead, I resolved the send her the most persuasive messenger I knew.
The Courier, Build-A-Dragon’s smallest mainline prototype, offered a reasonable cover story. It was a cute thing—a Wong design, as a matter of fact—but sales had been slow for the first few months. Then some talk show host had sent one to her friend on national television or something, and suddenly orders blew up. Now it wasn’t unusual to encounter little Couriers with their recognizable message tubes flapping overhead on city streets, or even swooping down an office hallway.
I put in a request with Sales, under the guise that I was doing product support and needed an example message tube. Then I went down to Chinatown, to find one of those little hand-carved puzzle boxes that would fit inside the tube. Cost me a small fortune, because the damn things were apparently harder to make small. But I figured out how to open it and put a little handwritten message inside. Mostly numbers: time, date, GPS coordinates.
She worked at the main branch, on the third floor. I saddled up Octavius with his courier tube, explained what he had to do, and smuggled him into the building in a backpack. I let him out on the third floor and hustled out of there; it would blow all the drama and mystery if she spotted me.
I told myself that Octavius should be fine in there. Most people gave one-way dragons a lot of leeway. The little reptiles were easy to recognize with their trademark message tubes, and there was an inherent sympathy for something that was on its way to die.
Last year, Build-A-Dragon had hired a marketing research firm to study people’s reactions to one-ways. They fitted a bunch of the little guys with GPS trackers and pinpoint cameras. Normally I don’t care much about marketing—it’s mostly fluff work, if you ask me—but their report was fascinating. Total strangers went out of their way to help one-ways. Took them in, fed them, gave them shelter. Moved out of the way to let them pass on crowded streets. I guess most folks didn’t want the one-way’s already short life to be any rougher than it had to be.
I kept running this through my mind while I waited for Octavius. In truth, I was worried he might be found out. He was an unlicensed, unregistered dragon. I’d already learned what Greaves did to those.
I loitered outside the building. Getting more nervous by the second. Wondering if maybe I’d made a big mistake. Grand gestures were fine and good, but my little dragon meant the world to me.
What was I thinking? I shouldn’t have risked him on this. What if he got hurt, or someone reported him? I’d be up to my eyeballs in crap at Build-A-Dragon. Even worse than that, they’d take him away. And probably send him to the desert facility, to die out in the unforgiving desert sun.
Damn it!
A shadow crossed the sidewalk. There he was, gliding languidly down from the building’s upper level.
“Octavius!” I snapped.
He saw me and banked over, taking his time about it, before landing on my shoulder.
“Took your time, didn’t you?” I couldn’t keep all of the hurt out of my voice.
He crooned noncommittally, as if he’d done his job and didn’t want to hear any complaints.
“At least tell me that you got the message to her.”
He trilled an affirmative.
My stomach did a backflip—one half excited, and the other half sick with nerves. Either I’d just earned a shot at winning Summer back, or I’d screwed things up for good.
Saturday morning, I waited in the Tesla at the coordinates I’d sent to Summer and hoped to God she would show. Things weren’t looking good, though. I’d said nine o’clock, and it was already ten after.
Not once in our time together had she arrived late.
By 9:15, I had to accept the inevitable. She’s not coming.
My heart sank. I don’t know why it surprised me. I’d been a total ass to her. Again. Girls like Summer didn’t stick around when you were an ass. They didn’t have to. There were ten guys like me who hadn’t screwed up yet and would be happy to swoop in. Just the thought of it twisted my stomach in knots. Stupid. I pounded my steering wheel in frustration.
Thunder rumbled in the distance and grew steadily louder. No, not thunder. A car engine.
I didn’t dare to hope until Summer’s recognizable Jeep rolled into view. Yes!
She had the top down, which explained her wind-tossed hair. She was no less gorgeous for it, though. We met in the empty space between our cars. Octavius took off to do a little circuit of the area but chirped a greeting at her as he passed.
Summer wore a pair of white strappy sandals, the first non-hiking-boot footwear I’d seen her in. How did she manage to get her feet perfectly tan? No sign of Riker, which made our greeting slightly more awkward. Never underestimate an overzealous pig’s ability to break the ice.
“Hey.” I wanted to hug her, but I could tell from her body language it wasn’t going to happen.
“Hey.”
“I’m glad you got my message. Was Octavius a convincing courier?”
“He missed my desk and landed in the trashcan.”
“Oh jeez. Sorry about that.” But not really, because it worked.
“So, I’m here,” she said. “What do you want?”
I did my best not to wince at her tone. “Well, I invited you for three reasons. First, I wanted to apologize for not calling you sooner. The Redwood thing . . . it just totally crushed me.” My voice shook a little. It wasn’t acting. “I didn’t know it did the same to you, and I’m really sorry.”
She looked away. “It’s fine.”
When a girl said something was fine, was not fine. I knew that much. I sighed to myself, because I didn’t want to burden her with this, but she clearly wasn’t going to be impressed with remorse. “I don’t think he died in an accidental fire. I think the CEO of my company had him killed, so he wouldn’t intervene.”
“Shit. Really?”
I shrugged. “It adds up. Redwood had called a meeting with the board. It was supposed to happen on Thursday. The day after the fire.”
“Damn.”
“The worst part is, I think it’s kind of my fault.”
She shook her head. “It’s not. Even if that’s why he died.”
It meant so much to me that she said that. It made me brave enough to confess reason number two. “Second, I wanted to say that I missed you. A lot.”
She looked away from me, out toward the desert. “It didn’t seem that way.”
“I know. But I really did.”
She pressed her lips together but said nothing.
“I even missed Riker a little.”
“Oh, now I know you’re lying,” she said. But a hint of a smile betrayed her lips.
“I’m serious. Pigs aren’t as bad as I thought.”
“All right, what’s the third reason?”
“This.” I held up the little watertight tube that we’d meant to set as our geocache, on the day we found the desert facility. The day we first kissed.
She brightened. “Our geocache. I almost forgot.”
“I didn’t. Do you know where we are?”
“On the southeast edge of Tonto.”
She meant Tonto National Forest. Which was technically correct, but not what I was going for.
“We are at the exact midpoint between the Tortilla Flat cache by the Salt River, and Red Rock Run in Sedona.”
She gave me a look that I can only describe as guarded. “Tortilla Flat was my first geocache in the league.”
“I know. Red Rock Run was mine.”
“How did you find that out?”
“Because I studied you, SumNumberOne. I know everything about your storied geocaching exploits.”
“So basically, you’re a stalker.”
That caught me off guard. I started stammering a protest. Then I noticed she was biting her lip. “You’re messing with me, aren’t you?”
She giggled. “Little bit, yeah.”
“You are mean.” The time felt right, so I hugged her. She hugged me back, and it was the most wonderful feeling in the world. I moved back, aware of the big dopey smile on my face but powerless to fight it. “Well, crap. The only problem is, I forgot to tell you to bring boots.”
“They’re in my Jeep.”
Relief flooded through me. “You brought them.”
“I never go anywhere without them.”
What a girl. “I like the way you look in those sandals, though.”
“Oh, shush.”
We hiked about a quarter mile from the road, cresting two shallow ridges that ran parallel to one another. After the second rise lay an almost-impenetrable wall of saguaros. Right in the middle was an ancient one absolutely riddled with woodpecker holes. Summer and I grinned at one another, because it was somehow fitting to put our cache in there. We climbed over to it, and both took a pinpoint reading on our watches. I took her hand and compared the numbers to make sure we got it right. Nothing was more frustrating than reaching someone’s cache but not being able to complete the end-goal.
“Looks good,” Summer said. She laced her fingers into mine and smiled at me.
Yes it does. “I’ll upload everything to the database tonight,” I said. “It should go live in a couple of days.”
“Aw, I feel bad making you do all of the work.”
“There’s a way you can make it up to me.”
“Well, that didn’t take long. What do you need?”
“You,” I answered quickly. “And Riker, if you want to bring him. To help me get back to the desert facility.”
She gave me a side-eye, but it was a playful one. “You need us to find a place you’ve already been?”
“So much.” I squeezed her hand.
She laughed. “All right. Count us in.”