Page 5 of Alaskan Blackout

Two

Three days into his standoff with McKenna O’Brien, Quinton sipped a late-afternoon cup of coffee while he worked from a corner booth at the Cyclone Shack. With a wireless device in his ear, he was able to converse with the main office of his tech company in Sunnyvale, California, to make sure the business remained on track in his absence. Not that it required much overseeing this quarter. He’d been away from the main office for months since his father had died and work had still been accomplished efficiently and on time. Punching the button to put his screen in sleep mode, Quinton slid the earpiece off and set it on the wooden table. The sound of classic rock hit his ears, the bar stereo tuned to an AM radio station that played a lot of seventies music.

By now, he had a routine for visiting the bar, establishing himself by the dinner hour at the booth in the back so he had a clear view of the front door to scope out newcomers and potentially find locals he hadn’t yet asked about Clayton.

Most of those conversations came to nothing as customers scratched their heads to recall the man whose name had been on the deed for the place for three years. By all accounts, before McKenna took over the business eighteen months ago, Clay had simply hired locals to staff and run the place, rarely ever setting foot in the bar himself. A couple of folks remembered meeting him but couldn’t say where he called home.

By this point in his quest, Quinton didn’t hold much hope for that route to finding his brother. The private investigator the Kingsley family had hired months ago had hit a wall in his search too.

Now, Quinton needed McKenna’s help.

His gaze found her as she shoved through the door from the kitchen to breeze around the tables and check in with her patrons. Today she wore her burnished auburn hair in a loose ponytail secured by a scrap of white nylon rope. Black jeans and an oversize gray hoodie with the name of a locally based fishing trawler screened on the back were variations of what he’d come to recognize as her everyday work attire. Dark colors and warm layers were the norm for her in the drafty bar. Yet the idea that today’s hoodie might belong to a man in her life—because it was too big for her, because he didn’t think she’d ever worked on a trawler herself—made the taste of his coffee turn sour on his tongue. He set aside his empty brown mug and stared at her, willing her to stop at his table next.

As if she felt the weight of his stare, she glanced up from where she leaned over Ms. Weatherspoon’s table, reading aloud the list of ingredients in the fish stew to the gray-haired retiree who’d shown up every afternoon at the Cyclone Shack along with Quinton.

He had already gotten to know a few of the regulars in the days he’d been a fixture in the bar. Ms. Weatherspoon had proved the most talkative of the bunch, perhaps driven by the fact that she lived alone and counted on the daily outing as her social time. Quinton had overheard McKenna counsel her on everything from which fish would be freshest at the local market to how to recover a lost password for one of the woman’s apps.

McKenna narrowed her blue eyes at him before she returned her attention to her customer. After jotting something on a pad of notepaper she carried, she moved in his direction. All day long she hustled to meet the needs of patrons. Except for him. Because whenever she headed his way, those normally efficient steps slowed considerably. As if she wasn’t willing to get any nearer. Was that because she genuinely didn’t want to interact with him? Or did she feel the same zing that he did when they were near, and she was simply treading warily around that?

“I noticed your Royal Kingsley-ness staring.” She tucked her pen behind her ear and the notepad in the kangaroo pouch of her sweatshirt. “Can I assume you’d like to order something else from the menu? Or is this another attempt at an information shakedown in the middle of my workday?”

He whistled low between his teeth as she stopped short in front of the booth.

“Looks like you’re in razor-sharp mode this afternoon,” he observed, closing the screen on his laptop and sliding it farther from him. “And possibly jumping the gun to blame me for something I’m not doing. I’ve been careful to save my questions about Clay until the end of your shift.”

Her full lips flattened. Thinned. “There’s a first time for everything. More coffee then?”

Glancing down at his empty cup, she reached for it.

At the same moment, Quinton laid his hand over the rim to keep the mug on the table. Effectively putting their fingers on a collision course. And for a brief instant, McKenna’s cool palm brushed the backs of his knuckles.

Electricity coursed through his veins, a leap of something hot burning his chest as her eyes darted to his.

Oh yes, she felt that zing too. He could see it in her gaze, in the spots of color on her cheeks.

“No. Thank you.” His fingers curled against the ceramic sides of the cup as the front door of the place swung open and a boisterous crowd of young guys walked inside, laughing and jostling one another.

The group of men were of little interest to Quint, aside from the fact that he hadn’t asked them about Clay yet. However, as he turned his attention back to McKenna, he noticed her shoulders were tense. Her chin jutting as she watched them.

Protectiveness surged through him just based on her body language.

“Are they bad news?” he asked in a low voice as the group slid into a booth a few tables away. The spillovers dragged chairs from another table to join their friends.

Snapping her head around to face Quint once more, she pulled her lips into a mulish frown. “No worse than you, Cowboy.”

And then she was gone, returning to her high-speed work pace as she grabbed menus for the newcomers and slapped them down on their table before taking drink orders.

Quint followed the interaction until a cry of dismay from closer to his table distracted him.

Pale faced, Ms. Weatherspoon shook her head as she peered at her phone screen, eyebrows scrunched as one weathered hand covered her mouth. Sensing trouble, Quint rose to his feet and closed the space between them.

“Everything okay over here?” he asked, taking in the remnants of a barely touched chicken salad sandwich.

“I think I made a bad mistake,” she answered in a hoarse whisper, never taking her gaze from the screen. “An embarrassing mistake.”

Glancing down at the object of her attention, Quint saw flashing red-and-black graphics—a hooded skeleton head interspersed with a symbol for poison.

“Did someone send you that?” He pointed toward the screen. “Do you think you opened a message that contained a virus?”

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