Until You

"There's nothing hallucinogenic about this recipe, though I guarantee the end result will make your head spin. Open that ice chest, will you? There should be a container of cream inside. Get out the bacon and eggs, too. Good. Now, pay attention, please. There are fishermen who'd kill for the Thurston recipe."

"From the looks of it, the recipe would kill them first. You've got to be kidding. Cream? Eggs? Bacon?" Conor shook his head. "Why don't we skip the preliminaries, just mainline the stuff straight into our arteries and get it over with?"

"I'm surprised at you, Conor, worrying about such things at your age." Harry broke three eggs into a chipped enamel bowl, poured in the cream and began whipping the mixture to a froth. "Besides, risk puts the spice in life. Isn't that what you always say?"

Conor's brows lifted. "Is it?"

"Well, maybe you don't say it but it's the message you always seem to send."

"Amazing," Conor said with a little smile. "Here I've been all these years, doing the job I was paid to do, while you were doing armchair psychoanalysis."

"We all like a little element of danger, or we wouldn't have gone into our particular line of work." Harry set the bowl aside, pulled another one towards him and began opening the canisters. "Lay half a dozen slices of bacon in that cast-iron skillet and set it in the embers on the hearth, please. Just make sure there's no flame underneath." He dumped cornmeal and flour into the fresh bowl, then reached for an array of spice jars. "Am I right?"

Conor, kneeling before the stone fireplace, looked up.

"I wouldn't know," he said with a lazy smile. "This is your recipe, remember? Not mine."

"I'm talking about risk. Danger. The stuff that gets the adrenaline pumping."

"My adrenaline's pumping just fine." Conor got to his feet and dusted his hands on the

seat of his jeans. "And so will yours be, once you finally get around to telling me what we're doing here today."

The older man looked up, his expression one of total innocence. "You know what we're doing. I told you, I thought it was time I introduced you to the peaceful joys of fishing."

"Fishing for what? And please, don't tell me the answer is trout."

Harry Thurston dipped the last filet in the batter, rolled it carefully through the cornmeal and flour mixture, then lay it in the now-sizzling skillet.

"Such distrust, Conor."

"Such subterfuge, Harry. Come on, let's have it. Why'd you ask me to come up here?"

Thurston looked at him. Then he plucked two bottles from the case Conor had placed against the wall and handed one over.

"Let's sit down, have a beer and talk."

"It's ale," Conor said with a little smile. Harry eased into a maple rocker that stood facing the fireplace; Conor sat down on the edge of the hearth. "Calling what's in this bottle beer is about the same as calling a trout a sunfish."

Harry shuddered. "Point taken." He twisted the cap from the bottle, lifted the bottle to his lips and took a long swallow.

"An excellent brew. And you were right, room temperature's best. Is it always, or is it just this particular brand?"

Conor put down his ale. He leaned back, his hands on the hearth behind him, stretched out his legs and crossed them at the ankles.

"Harry," he said softly, "we have discussed the best way to catch trout and to clean them. We've discussed how to cook the fillets and how to serve them. If you really think that now I'm going to get sidetracked into discussing the relative merits of chilled ale versus ale at room temperature, you're crazy. I want to know why we're here."

The older man sighed. "All right, I admit, I did have an ulterior motive in asking you up here today."

"Which was?"

Harry's eyes locked onto Conor's.

"Miranda Beckman."

The name, unspoken between them for weeks, seemed to echo through the little cabin.

"I'm finished with that assignment," Conor said coolly. "Had you forgotten? I turned in all my reports and handed the file off to Bill Breverman, as per your orders."