Deep Fire Rising

SANTORINI, GREECE

Mercer stood at the rail of a three-hundred-foot inter-island ferry, glazing across the waves. The view from this ship was little different from what he’d seen from the Surveyor on the opposite side of the planet. His eyes felt gritty and his body was starting to ache from so much travel and so little sleep. Ira’s revelations about the possibility that Tisa had been lying to him only deepened his exhaustion. He’d spent the flight from Washington mulling the consequences and his next moves. He had a real fear that her group had installed towers like the one he’d seen near Guam over other hydrate deposits. The ecological devastation of a massive coordinated release of gas was incalculable.

The ferry was heavily loaded and it seemed hundreds of people were on deck waiting for the first sight of the island of Thira, better known as Santorini. A young German couple apparently on their honeymoon stepped close to Mercer, almost brushing into him. He turned so the blond husband wouldn’t feel the heavy automatic pistol slung under Mercer’s arm.

There was a commotion of pointing near the distant bow and soon everyone pressed to the rail. The smudge just forming in the distance was Santorini, a paradise of dazzling whitewashed buildings and domed roofs painted a distinctive blue seen on travel posters worldwide. Formed by volcanic eruptions, the crescent-shaped island had once been substantially larger until a cataclysmic blast thirty-six hundred years ago had destroyed half of the caldera and jettisoned a cloud of ash that many archaeologists believe caused the destruction of the Minoan civilization on Crete several hundred miles south. Home to black sand beaches and some of the most spectacular views in the world, Santorini was heavily developed as a European tourist destination.

As the weather-beaten ferry motored nearer to the island, more and more passengers found their way to the railing. With the height of the tourist season still months away, Mercer was still pressed by throngs of half-drunk backpackers pointing excitedly at their first glimpse of Fira, the island’s largest city. Situated inside the flooded caldera, the town clung precariously to the cliffs as if it had grown out from the living rock. Even from a distance it gleamed in the sun.

The ship passed inside the protective arms of the caldera and the steady waves that had rocked them since leaving Piraeus ceased abruptly. The more inebriated vacationers lurched on their feet. The bluffs towering over the ferry were barren stone and the small island in the center of the caldera was nothing more than a pile of rubble. If not for the town, Santorini looked primeval.

The big ferryboats usually docked at Athenios, about a mile beyond Fira, but none of the passengers disembarking were taking an automobile onto the island, so the lumbering craft edged toward the open-air port at the foot of the mountain directly below Fira. Nearly a hundred passengers hastily broke themselves from their reverent gawking and headed below to the pedestrain disembarkment ramp.

Mercer waited at the rail while they made their mass exodus. The small dock was soon a sea of milling humanity. There were three ways up to the town. There was a winding footpath of switchback stairs that people could climb. They could ride one of the dozens of sturdy donkeys that shared the path. Or there was a modern cable car that shot straight into Fira. Admitting he was too tired to hike the ascent and dismissing a donkey ride as too touristy, he decided on the cable car, but only after it made several runs to ease the congestion.

He hefted his light bag and meandered down two decks to where the ramp had been lowered. Once on the cement quay, the heat hit Mercer full force. There was no wind in the volcanic bowl and flies rose in clouds from the manure piles left in the donkeys’ wake. People climbing the trail looked as bowed as Sherpas under their packs. A few had already given up and were headed down again to take the cable car.

Mercer had to wait ten minutes for his turn to pay for the ride and climb onto the glass-enclosed car. Around him people chatted animatedly in a Babel of differing languages. To his ear, most sounded German or Scandinavian, though there were a trio of twangy Australian girls and a young American couple who looked like they just stepped out of a hippie commune. Through it all he could feel their excitement and wished a little would rub off on him. They were here for the trip of a lifetime. He didn’t know what to expect and in his present frame of mind he began to regard the unknown with suspicion.

The Beretta felt comfortably cool under his left arm.

The cable car lurched as it started up the steep mountain, swinging free for a moment like a pendulum. As they rose, the view grew more expansive and breathtaking. Far out in the caldera a snowy-sailed yacht searched for a breeze to send her on her way. In the distance the sun was beginning to blush, shooting lances of ruddy light skipping atop the waves. More of the town was revealed as well — narrow twisting alleys, barrel-vaulted churches, fabulous houses with balconies hanging hundreds of feet over the water.

If this was a favorite spot for Tisa, Mercer could understand why she felt safe here. It was an enchanting place, full of charm and dramatic beauty. He wished he were here for a vacation with Tisa rather than whatever she had planned.

The cable car shuddered as it reached the upper station. To the right, hundreds of mostly young tourists had gathered along the stairs and promenades of Nomikos Street, the most popular spot in the town to wait for Santorini’s notoriously beautiful sunsets. Their faces were pointed at the sun like flowers.

Mercer instinctively scanned the crowd, looking for anything out of the ordinary, like pairs of men wearing jackets that could conceal guns or someone watching people rather than the view. He spotted a few of those, but they were young men on the hunt for women or women on the prowl for men. On the ship he’d overheard enough people to know that Fira was famous across Europe for its nightlife.

The cable car doors slid open and Mercer followed the passengers outside, thankful because the miasma of patchouli oil from the bohemians was burning his sinuses. People often wore the pungent essence to mask the reek of marijuana in their clothes. Mercer would have preferred the dope.

He allowed the tide of people to push him toward Nomikos Street as he looked for Tisa. He was careful to keep one hand on his bag and the other casually draped across the shoulder holster so no one accidentally bumping into him would feel it. The crowd was too dense to pick out a single person and Mercer was drawing attention to himself by not watching the sunset as everyone else.

The faces around him were bright with anticipation, eagerly awaiting the simple delight of a setting sun. They were here to make a ritual out of the usual. Mercer had never felt more detached in his life. From the moment the gunmen had attacked him at the Luxor he’d felt a building sense of dread, like he’d glimpsed only the tip of an iceberg. Even if more of it hadn’t been revealed yet, he sensed it lurking just below the surface.

In the jostle of people still spilling onto the promontory overlooking the caldera he didn’t feel the figure sidle up to him until it was too late.

He reeled back and found himself staring into the laughing eyes of Tisa Nguyen. She’d just kissed him. He hadn’t realized she was almost as tall as he was. “I just knew you’d come,” she said with a mixture of excitement and embarrassment at her unbidden display.

Mercer didn’t speak. It was the crimson sun or the romance of the moment or maybe it was something deeper. No matter what the cause, he knew that he’d never seen anyone look more beautiful than Tisa standing there like an ancient high priestess holding rites at dusk. She wore sandals and a tight sleeveless dress that poured seamlessly down her body, rising at her breasts and flaring in at her waist. Her skin shone with a fresh tan that made the dress appear even whiter than white. She almost glowed.

“Er, hi,” Mercer managed to stammer.

“What a smooth rejoinder,” she teased. “Sorry I startled you, but you looked so serious. You were ruining the sunset by being so gloomy. What were you thinking?”

Mercer was about to tell her how hollow he felt. The words were already formed. Instead he smiled and said, “I was thinking how much better the view would be if you showed up.”

Tisa smiled at the compliment. “Wishing makes it true.”

He studied her in the dying light. It wasn’t just the outfit or the tan, he saw. Something else made her appear so buoyant. He remembered the suffering he’d seen in her eyes when she’d saved his life and looked for it again. Her sloe eyes were bright and clear. There was no trace of the agony that had made her vulnerable. Then, even as he watched, it flooded in, darkening her expression, crowding in on her simple happiness. Tisa turned away. It was as if just seeing him reminded her of her suffering.

“I suspected you’d actually come a day early,” she said. “I’ve met every ferry entering Santorini since I got here.”

Mercer hated that he’d already poisoned her happiness. “I would have if I could,” he said awkwardly. “You left some compelling evidence that I should take you seriously.”

She looked stricken for a moment. “You have to believe I didn’t know about that ship that sank. I heard it on the news. I was sick.” Her words came as a rush. “When I told you something unusual was going to happen in the Pacific, I expected that a research ship called the Sea Surveyor was going to discover the elevated levels of methane and eventually discover the tower.”

“I just came from the Surveyor.”

“Then you know they were doing studies on deep-ocean currents. Part of my job within the Order is to monitor some of our more prominent sites around the world, to ensure that nothing happens to them. I learned months ago about the Surveyor’s mission and was sure that they would find the hydrate deposit. Please, I didn’t know about the navy ship that went by there earlier.”

Her tone was plaintive. Mercer glanced around. A few tourists were watching them. From their sour expressions, it looked as though they thought Mercer and Tisa were having a lovers’ quarrel and fouling the romantic atmosphere. “We should get out of here,” he said.

Tisa immediately understood. “Where are you staying?”

Ira’s office had handled the travel arrangements. From inside his jacket pocket Mercer withdrew his itinerary. “Let’s see, the Hotel Kavalari.”

“Okay. I don’t think it’s far.”

“You don’t know?”

“Hey,” she protested playfully, “I’ve never been here before and I’ve spent most of my time at the ferry dock waiting for you.”

Since the moment she asked him to meet her on Santorini, Mercer had believed she knew the island well and felt safe here. It was yet another assumption that had been proven wrong.

The sun was well down on the horizon and the crowd was beginning to disperse. Tisa led Mercer toward the center of town, climbing a winding set of stairs to Ipapantis Street. The narrow lane was hemmed in by bars that were just getting going and glittering jewelry shops that were just closing. The air was scented with cooking smells, lamb and beef and the light aroma of the world’s premier olive oils. Packs of rowdy teens roamed in search of the opposite sex, their mood carefree and alive.

Like so much of the town, the rambling hotel was built into the cliff face and the rooms were accessible only by walking down rickety stairs. The maître d’hôtel checked Mercer in and led him and Tisa down three flights along the serpentine steps to a private balcony and the room. The room itself had been carved into the stone, and once inside they saw the bathroom had been left as undressed rock.

Mercer tossed his bag on the bed and excused himself to use the bathroom while Tisa stared at the darkening sea lapping a hundred feet below. He shaved as quickly as he could using the tepid water, dragged a stick of deodorant under his arms, and changed his shirt.

He paused coming out of the room. A breeze had kicked up, snapping and tangling Tisa’s hair around her head. She’d removed her glasses and faced the salt-tinted wind with her eyes closed. Her mouth was slightly parted, as if tasting the air. He was struck again by her beauty and how innocent she looked when he could not see her eyes. He committed the moment to memory.

Tisa felt his presence and quickly put on her glasses. She turned to face him. She looked guilty. “Do you want to talk here?”

Mercer grinned. “Nope. I want a drink. I spotted the hotel bar two floors above us.”

Five minutes later they were seated at an intimate table overlooking the caldera. The night had turned chilly and tall gas heaters threw coronas of warmth over them both. Not trusting an unfamiliar bartender with his usual, though not usually popular, vodka gimlet, Mercer had a double vodka and soda with a standing order for at least two more. Tisa drank water.

“Okay, now we can talk,” he said, feeling the knots of muscle at his shoulders losing a fraction of their rigidity. “Tell me about the tower.”

“In order for you to understand, I have to give you a little background. Do you know anything about acupuncture?”

Mercer hadn’t expected such an odd question and was taken aback. For a fleeting moment he was back in an underground cell in Panama with a psychotic Chinese torturer named Mr. Sun, his skin pierced with hundreds of tiny needles that Sun used to induce unimaginable pain from all parts of his body. The memory was fresh and while Mercer hadn’t been physically harmed, the mental scars still felt raw. The old terror welled up, forcing him to swallow heavily at his drink to cleanse his throat. “I know a bit.”

Tisa hadn’t seen his discomfort. “Then you know that the body is connected by force lines that transfer a person’s chi, or essence, and that these pathways can be manipulated to relieve stress or pain.”

“Or to cause it,” Mercer said mildly.

“There is a dark side to the art,” she acknowledged. “But used properly, acupuncture is a proven healing technique that works on animals as well as people. Do you believe that?”

“How’s this? I don’t not believe it.”

“Good enough. Now, what if I told you the earth was like the human body and that it too has pathways for a chi force.”

“Are you talking about magnetic lines?”

“No, not a tangible force. Something more” — she sought the right word and failed — “intangible.” She paused again. “I will give you the proof in a while, but for the sake of this discussion, accept that the earth has a life force, like a person.

Mercer nodded. “I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. For now.”

She shot him a secretive smile, as if she would make him pay for his skepticism. “This force is very real, you’ll see. Now if someone can detect the force and understand how it concentrates in certain places on the earth’s surface, they can also manipulate it.”

Mercer raised an eyebrow. “Acupuncture for a whole planet?”

“Exactly!” Tisa was delighted he understood.

“Please don’t tell me you built the tower as a giant acupuncture needle to ease earth’s aches and pains.”

She frowned at his mocking tone. “In a sense, that’s exactly what it is. What I’m about to tell you can be verified by checking oceanographic data. Over the past fifteen years a new ocean current has developed in the Pacific that is raising mean bottom temperatures.”

“Yes, I know. I spoke with scientists aboard the Sea Surveyor. My theory is that your group knew about it, and also knew that a large hydrate deposit was right in the current’s path. You built the tower to keep it stable.”

“You do understand. Methane hydrate can exist in only a very narrow range of temperatures and pressures and the new, warmer current would eventually cause a tremendous release. We had to do something. The tower uses the current itself to power machinery to chill a special liquid that keeps the deposit from erupting. Some methane manages to escape, however. That’s what I thought the Sea Surveyor would find and follow back to the site.”

“You said that you monitor other sites for your organization.”

“The Order.”

“Yes, the Order. Are there other towers like the one I was just at?”

“That’s the only one, but I think I know what you’re really asking. Are there other installations that can be used to harm people? The answer, I’m afraid, is yes. But I don’t know if my — if the splinter faction I mentioned has tried to gain control of them. I doubt it because many sites have full-time employees. The tower was easy for them to commandeer because it ran autonomously.”

“If you knew about the current and the methane hydrates, why not tell the world? The UN or someone? Why do it yourselves.”

“Because that is what we do, or at least that’s what we’ve been doing for almost twenty years.”

That shook Mercer and he asked incredulously, “Your group is a hundred years old?”

“Oh, gosh no. Its roots date back almost five hundred years. It’s only been the past two decades that we’ve done anything other than monitor the earth’s chi.”

“Five hundred?” Mercer rocked back in his seat. He had assumed the Order had only formed recently, another New Age fringe group speaking of chi and force lines. Five hundred years made it feel more like a religion.

“Yes, since the time of Admiral Zheng He and China’s treasure fleets.”

“I’m not familiar with—”

“Not too many people are,” Tisa said. “Zheng He was a eunuch slave who became one of China’s greatest military commanders. From 1405 to 1433 he was in command of seven epic journeys that ranged as far as the Persian Gulf, Madagascar and the mainland of Africa. Some say he went to South America too, and there’s archaeological evidence to back that claim. His ships were the most magnificent ever built and the largest too. The treasure ships were four hundred feet long at a time before Christopher Columbus used a puny ninety-footer to discover America. If I’m not mistaken, Admiral He’s ships were the biggest until the Industrial Revolution.”

“I had no idea.”

“You’re the victim of a Western-biased education,” she said to tease. “This period during the Ming Dynasty was the only time in China’s history that they looked beyond the Middle Kingdom and sought trade with other nations rather than wait for traders to come to them. The Ottoman and Persian empires were in full flower and the trade of goods and knowledge were unprecedented. The Ming navy was the most powerful in the world and stood poised to dominate the sea-lanes had they chosen. No nation could have stopped them. And then the emperor decreed an end to ocean commerce and China once again closed her borders to all but a few struggling along the Silk Road. The fleet of ships was destroyed, crews and captains who’d seen the distant lands were put to death. Much of what had been brought to China was burned.”

Mercer was enthralled with her story, imagining the vast wealth the Chinese must have accumulated. “Why?”

“No reason need be given. No one dared question the orders of the emperor. But one man did. He was a Confucian scholar named Zhu Zhanji, a master scribe in the emperor’s court who decried the destruction and risked his life to spirit away the best of what the traders had brought back. The cache included scrolls and texts gathered from the four corners of the globe, works of advanced mathematics being developed in the Arab world, as well as priceless pieces of art, ivory carvings, gems and tons of gold. It was a storehouse of knowledge and human ingenuity, perhaps the greatest ever amassed.”

“You’re describing something along the lines of the Library of Alexandria.”

“Perhaps some of that collection was part of what Zhu gathered. Who knows? Legend has it that an observer standing on a tall mountain couldn’t see the entire length of the caravan. Zhu Zhanji took the treasure trove deep into western China, into an isolated valley called Rinpoche-La, and bade the local people to guard it well. Zhu died on his return to the imperial court and the archive appeared lost for all time. But Zhu hadn’t chosen this valley by accident.

“Rinpoche-La was an enigmatic place, fabled because even though it was high in the foothills of the Himalayas, it remains warm year-round. The village was built near geothermal springs deep inside the mountains, allowing for a standard of living not found anywhere else in that barren part of the country.”

“Sounds like James Hilton’s book, Lost Horizon.”

“His story of Shangri-La is very likely based on the legend of Rinpoche-La,” she concurred, “similar to how Bram Stoker was inspired to write Dracula after hearing of the Transylvanian king Vlad the Impaler. For a hundred years the archive was left in vast underground storehouses beneath the monastery. Then some of the monks began to decipher what Zhu had left them. One particular part of the treasure caught their attention.”

“I assume the gold.”

“More Western bias,” she teased. “No, it was a set of blueprints and some texts, a gift to the emperor from the Sultan of Muscat, perhaps the richest man in the world at the time the treasure fleets roamed the Persian Gulf. No one knows how he came about the documents. It is believed they were created by one of his great mathematicians. When I heard these stories as a child, I imagined him to be like an Arab Leonardo da Vinci. It took generations for the monks at Rinpoche-La to understand the full potential of what they were studying, and many more years, centuries, in fact, for them to attempt to build the oracle described in the sultan’s plans.”

“An oracle?”

“They called it the Navel of the World, a machine that could accurately measure the earth’s chi. They completed the work in the 1850s and set about to see if the machine was right. And soon found it was. Uncannily so. For years they sent people to chronicle the effects of the chi and report back to the Lama what they’d seen. And that’s the way it remained until the summer of 1908 when a cataclysmic event upset the planet’s delicate balance of forces.”

The year triggered another memory for Mercer. “Can I venture a guess as to the exact date? June thirtieth, 1908.”

This time it was Tisa’s turn for a moment of stunned silence. “How did you…?”

“That’s when a meteorite slammed into Siberia near the village of Tunguska and leveled several thousand square miles of forest. The blast was heard in Scandinavia and darkened the sky as far as London. Can’t be too many other cataclysmic events that year.”

Her eyes were still wide. “Few people have even heard of the event and yet you know the exact date.”

“I’ll tell you the story why sometime,” he said evasively, then steered the conversation back to her tale. “You believe the impact changed the earth’s balance in some way.”

“Not the planet’s, obviously, but the chi forces. Up until then, the earth behaved as the oracle at Rinpoche-La predicted. After the event, the predictions were no longer accurate. The Lama and his acolytes became concerned. The times and locations between predicted events diverged further as the years passed. Twenty years ago it was decided that the Order had to do something to correct it. We would heal the earth and restore its proper balance of chi.”

“And the tower is one way you do this?”

“Oh, no,” Tisa dismissed. “That is just one small project. A short-term, ah, Band-Aid.” She smiled at her turn of phrase. “Our main efforts are a little more subtle. You see, to rebalance the world we must focus on points where the earth’s chi lines intersect. This is becoming more difficult because humanity is also beginning to affect chi with such things as atomic bomb tests and hydroelectric dams that shift rivers. These all change the force lines.”

Mercer was having a hard time keeping the skepticism from his expression. There could be some truth in the history Tisa had told him, but he didn’t believe a word about the interpretation. He was taunting when he said, “So you guys must hate what China is doing at the Three Gorges Dam, the biggest hydro project in history.”

“On the contrary,” she replied quickly. “Members of our group were on the committee to see it built. Three Gorges is an important nexus point for chi. The weight of the water is helping to bring the earth balance.”

Mercer scoffed. “Come on, Tisa. This is ridiculous.”

“Eight years ago you were approached by a company called Jaeger Metals to help them in the development of a copper mine in Brazil. Do you remember that?”

“Vaguely,” Mercer said uneasily. “I turned them down. How do you know about that?”

“Because the Order controls Jaeger Metals. Do you recall why you refused the job?”

“They wanted to shift billions of tons of overburden for a copper deposit that didn’t justify the expense. I tried to tell them they were pouring money into a hole with no bottom but no one on the board of directors cared.”

“Do you know what happened to Jaeger?”

“Yeah, they went ahead with the project, dug a three-mile-wide, eight-hundred-foot-deep pit in the middle of the jungle and went bankrupt.”

“What you didn’t know, what no one knew, is that spot in the jungle was a chi point and by removing all that dirt we managed to regain five minutes of accuracy.”

“I—” Mercer checked his sarcasm. Could that possibly be true? At the time, he’d suspected that the whole debacle was a financial swindle of some sort. He’d followed the story in trade magazines after bowing out and recalled that Jaeger had blown about seventy million dollars before giving up, but when the mining company folded no one came forward with a complaint. An SEC investigation after the collapse found all the money had come from a private source that was satisfied with Jaeger’s “good faith” efforts. Could Tisa’s group be that private source? Could all they have wanted was a giant hole and not the copper?

They did build an undersea tower just to keep a hydrate deposit stable, a little voice reminded him. This appeared to be an organization where you couldn’t question their methods or their motivation.

Tisa watched the play of conflicting thoughts in Mercer’s eyes. She looked pleased. “Jaeger’s just another example of how we work. You should see the oil field we paid a company to develop in the middle of Australia, about a thousand miles from the nearest oil deposit. They thought we were nuts but took our money and drilled eleven hundred wells for us, every one of them dry.” She frowned. “I hate to admit all that work only corrected another six minutes. Don’t worry, you’ll understand better tomorrow.”

“What happens tomorrow?”

“You just have to wait and see. I ask for one night of patience. If you don’t think I’m right then, well, nothing matters much after that.”

She spoke earnestly, and Mercer recalled what she’d said the night they met. “The end of the world?”

“As we know it, yes.” In the moonlight, her eyes began to glisten.

Mercer knew it didn’t matter if he believed what she was saying. It was abundantly clear that Tisa was certain. The deep melancholy that so wracked her features was back, worse than ever.

“What time is it?” she asked, just to say something.

“Eight o’clock. That reminds me. I have something for you.” Mercer hastily reached into his jacket pocket. He opened and then handed across a slim black case. Inside on a bed of satin was a woman’s gold Raymond Weil watch. “I remembered you don’t have one and always seem to ask for the time. I bought it for you at Dulles on the way to Greece.”

Mercer had expected her to be delighted. Instead Tisa regarded the watch as though it were a poisonous snake. He was at a loss.

She quickly regained her composure. “I’m sorry. It’s beautiful. It’s just that I, well, I’ve never gotten in the habit of wearing one, but for you I will.” She snapped it around her slender wrist and studied it for a moment. “Thank you.”

He hadn’t known what to expect when he saw her again. But certainly it wasn’t the disaster this night was turning out to be. He reached across the table and took her hand. “I’m sorry about the watch. Obviously I hit a nerve. How’s this? For the rest of the night we’ll just be two people on a date in the most romantic place I’ve ever seen. We will eat too much for dinner, have too much ouzo and forget the rest of the world even exists. What do you say?”

Tisa wiped at her eyes and smiled. “A date? I guess that wouldn’t be too bad.”

He stood and set a handful of bills on the table, eager to get away from the dark mood he’d seemed to create at the bar. “Then let’s get at it.”

They climbed back to Ipapantis Street, flowing with the tide of revelers until they came upon a tiny restaurant that had an even more spectacular view than the hotel bar. There were only six tables. The elderly owner was in the kitchen. His spry wife served as waitress. She brought a bottle of wine without waiting to take their order and a moment later brought bread and garlic-scented olive oil. She never asked what they wanted to eat. Apparently the restaurant didn’t have menus. Their dinner was going to be whatever the chef decided. And by the second course they knew to trust his decisions. The meal was excellent.

For a while, Mercer and Tisa were uncomfortable together. The conversation started and stopped a dozen times. After her second glass of wine she admitted that this was the first date she’d been on in a long time.

“I find that hard to believe. You’re beautiful. You must have to beat men off with a stick.”

She looked into his eyes. “You think I’m beautiful?”

“Good God, don’t you own a mirror? You’re stunning.”

Her smile spread and her cheeks turned flush with embarrassment and delight. “Thank you.”

“If I knew you could smile like that, I’d have told you hours ago.” Mercer was pleased with himself. “And truth be told I haven’t been on a real date in a while either.”

“Oh, please. You must have had dozens of women.”

“I — well, yes, sort of.” The comment had caught him off guard. “What I mean was I don’t date that much. I’m traveling seven or eight months out of the year, and I don’t think much of the idea of a one-night stand.”

“Though you have had them.”

“Uh, a few,” he admitted, not wanting to tell her the truth but unwilling to hide it from her. “I guess I just haven’t taken the time to get involved with anyone seriously.”

“Maybe you haven’t found the right person.”

Mercer laughed. “You don’t happen to know a guy named Harry White, do you?”

“I don’t think so. Why?”

“You two sound a lot alike.”

“Is that good or bad?”

“He’s my best friend. It’s good.”

“Now that’s someone I’d like to hear about. Philip Mercer’s best friend. Tell me about this Harry White.”

After that, things went better. With Harry as a subject, Mercer didn’t even have to try to get Tisa laughing. When they left the restaurant two hours later neither was surprised at how natural it felt to hold hands as they strolled. Mercer had removed his shoulder holster in the men’s room and tucked the gun into the back of his slacks so he could drape his blazer over Tisa’s shoulders.

There was no need for any artless wile on Mercer’s part or false coquettishness from Tisa. Both knew where the evening was headed as they walked and talked, and yet that certainty made neither impatient. Everything unfolded at such a natural pace that when they finally arrived back at Mercer’s hotel they simply continued down the stairs to his room without pause.

There wasn’t one moment of awkwardness. They felt only the joy of discovery as their lips met for the first time and as clothes began to pile on the floor. Together on the soft bed, their acts became more intimate until Mercer found himself doing things he hadn’t done since his days of college experimentation. But this wasn’t about pushing boundaries, it was about Tisa giving more and more of herself and he being willing to receive. There wasn’t any fear of going too far, for when he looked in her eyes he saw he’d just scratched the surface.

They did not separate, but clung tightly to each other as they both drifted toward sleep. It was only as the last spark of consciousness faded that Mercer recognized the words Tisa had panted as she reached her climax. He could have sworn she’d been repeating, “I love you. I love you.”