Part 7

The next day, Mick stirred when he heard Rollie was descending the staircase. "Morning," Rollie said.

"What?" Mick said, rubbing his eyes to remove the remnants of sleep from them. "Sorry mate, about falling asleep on ya. Must have been the jet lag. I just got into town last night," Mick responded while pushing himself into a seated position.

"No worries." Stealthily, Rollie crossed the room and sat facing his friend. "So, what’s the story?"

Without much preamble, Mick began to talk about all the events leading up to him being in New York. "This exchange program thing is just a cover, a way to hide me. It’s a little too hot for me in Australia right now. A group of law-enforcement agencies, including mine, have conjoined to fight certain activities. I’ve been tracking down this reprobate, a criminal who's planning to detonate a series of explosions around the world.

We really don't know much about what the guy's doing or why, just that he's doing it. We think he’s been testing out his plan and is responsible for the death of over a hundred people, worldwide. The criminal’s been operating out of Oz for while, which is how I got involved. A few months ago, he’s left there, and returned to America. Anyhow, this exchange program was the easiest way to get me into the country."

Rollie nodded sympathetically, knowing how much red tape was involved to allow someone to work in a foreign country.

"Look, you don’t need all the details. I’m here because I need your help to catch him." Mick looked at Rollie pleadingly, fervently hoping Rollie wouldn’t deny his request.

"Of course, what ever you need, it's yours. I owe you."

"Thanks, mate. I knew I could count on ya."

"What do you need?" Rollie inquired.

At that moment, the two men heard someone unlocking the door. Simultaneously, they looked in that direction in time to see Angie walk in, her arms full of papers, packages and assorted things. Distracted, Angie said, "Rollie, we should have just eloped. It would have been easier than making all these..." her voice trailed off as she noticed a second man, a tall, rugged, handsome stranger, in the room with Rollie. Who was he? And what was he doing here?

Hearing Angie’s comment instantly brought Rollie's mind back to a discussion they had many weeks earlier. The one when she first suggested eloping. He had almost fainted at the suggestion. He was appalled she would even think of such as thing. It was important to Rollie that they have a traditional wedding. He was intransigent about that fact. Seeing how vehemently Rollie reacted to her suggestion, Angie didn’t pursue it. In fact, she rather liked the thought of having a conventional wedding, although she wouldn't admit it to it if anyone asked her. She was having too much fun teasing him about this sentimental part of his personality. He had argued that they didn't do many things like the rest of the world, but they could do this right and turn it into something to tell their children.

"A wedding should be a celebration not a secret, Angela. I want the whole world to know you belong to me, and I belong to you, for all time," he had said. He wanted to see her in a long white gown, with him in a tuxedo. Even now, just recalling that conversation made his feel giddy. He could feel a goofy grin develop on his face, but he didn’t care. He was eagerly looking forward to his wedding.

Bringing himself back to the present, Rollie walked over to where Angie stood. He took her belongings from her arms and placed it on a nearby table. Then he started to give her a quick kiss, which turned into something more than he intended. Reluctantly, they broke apart when they heard a discrete cough from behind them.

"Oh, yeah. Angie, this is Mick Williams. We grew up in the same area back home. Mick, this is Angela Ramirez, my fiancée."

"Nice to meet you. What brings you here?" Angie inquired suspiciously, as Rollie hadn’t mentioned that he was expecting any visitors. Not that she didn't like people to drop by, it's just that unexpected visitors from Australia had a tendency to bring trouble with them.

"Hey, you didn’t tell me, Rollie. Congrats." Mick responded, carefully avoiding answering Angie’s innocently phrased question.

Rollie accepted his friend’s comments gracefully. "Uh, Mick, you better tell her."

After taking a deep breath, Mick weaved his story of mystery, intrigue, murder, and world domination. What he said would have made a great movie plot, if it wasn't true. He concluded with "I'm here because I need Rollie’s help to catch this malefactor."

"And I’m giving it to him," Rollie quickly said, in a peremptory tone. Angie shot a quizzical look back. Rollie rarely spoke this way. Before she could say anything, Mick resumed talking. "We intercepted a transmission from one of his followers to him be we couldn't identify it. The lab's workin’ on it, but it’s got a low priority. And since you’ve got such an array of computers and information at your disposal, I was hoping you could cop a squiz?" He extracted a disk from his pocket, and held it up.

"Ang?" Rollie asked, cocking his head in her direction.

Silently Angie plucked the disk from Mick's hand and headed up to her work area to start analyzing it. As she ascended the staircase, she wondered why is Rollie getting us involved in this sort of stuff again? They hadn't been involved in any police work for months. However, she knew Rollie. Always willing to help a friend in need. Sitting down, she loaded up the disk and got so involved in it's contents that all other thoughts were vanquished from her mind.

Downstairs, once Angie was out of sight, Mick turned to Rollie. "She doesn’t look happy. Are you sure this is OK? I don’t to cause any trouble between the two of you."

"It’s fine, don’t worry about it. How about some brekkie?" Realizing Rollie wanted to change the topic, Mick agreed. If Rollie didn't want to discuss it, he wouldn't press.

While they ate, they got caught up on what had happened since they’d last seen each other. Rollie asked about Mick's sister Doxie. Her real name was Doxada but no one has ever called her that. Rollie and her were childhood sweethearts.

"She's married with three kids. Lives near Perth, now. In fact, just the other day, she found a picture of you two at the carnie. You’d won a huge stuffed koala for her. You guys were what? 12 and 11 at the time."

"Yeah, something like that."

Twenty minutes later, Angie returned to the loft’s lower level, prepared to give her results. "It’s data from a siesmograph. It's some sort of an earth movement, a fairly big one. Look at the P and S waves. It could be an earthquake, perhaps some sort of explosion. I can't tell from this."

"Can you determine where?"

"Not from this, If I knew what type of explosion it was, or where the monitoring station was, I could guess but without more info, it’s virtually useless."

"I could hack into seismograph monitoring station to find out likely sources, but I’m not that familiar with that sort of stuff so I’m not sure how long it’d take to get something useable."

"Why would he care about siesmograph readings if he was planning a bomb?" he asked more of himself than the special effects duo. As he mulled this over, Rollie and Angie watched as Mick's face paled as he realized the implications of this. Shocked, he said, "The criminal going to set the explosions near the fault lines to get maximum damage. The world would be in chaos and easy for him to take control."

He extracted his cell phone from his pocket and dialed a long series of numbers. Turning his back, he spoke in hushed tones. Less then a minute later, he hung up. "How about another cuppa, Rol?"

****

Thirty minutes later, the trio was lingering over the remains of their tea. Finally, Mick’s cell phone rang. He excused himself and went to the far corner of the room. He listened to what the caller had to say, then hung up without speaking a word.

"Abnormal activity’s been reported near the Garlock fault. Geologists have been going crazy because they can’t find an epicenter nor did it fit a typical earthquake. He's there. I know he is. I'd like you to come out there with me. To help me, just for a couple of days. This bloke's crook and has to be stopped. You’ve got with the skills I need to find this guy."

"Rollie, say no," Angie ordered as she jumped up from the table.

"Excuse us," Rollie said. He grabbed her around the arm and dragged her to the other side of the loft, out of Mick’s earshot.

"I can't tell him no. He needs my help. He wouldn't ask if it wasn't important."

"Did you forget our wedding is in two weeks?"

"No I didn’t. But you heard Mick, it's only a few days. We wrapped yesterday so work won't get neglected. The wedding details are almost done; just a few more have to be made today. You can make the rest on your own. There's no real reason for me not to help."

"Because I'm asking you not to isn't a good reason?" she hissed.

"Yes, no. Look, Angela, I owe him. I have to do this."

"You owe him? For what?"

"I have to help him." Rollie replied emphatically, carefully sidestepping her questions.

"I don’t like this, Rollie. I really don't. If you go, I go." she said, with a look of determination on her face.

"Angie, you don't have to do this."
"If you go, I go," she repeated.

Rollie sighed, resigned to letting her accompany them. Angie could be intractable at times. "Fine, I'll tell Mick."

Angie remained standing where she was, watching Rollie walk back to Mick. Rollie was definitely acting strangely. She wrote it off as nerves. He had confessed to her a few days ago that he was scared. He wanted to get married but was afraid he would disappoint her. He had had few role models on how to be a good husband and was worried he wouldn't be one.

He had never shared everything with anyone like he wanted to with her. When she pointed out that Mangela knew everything, he replied that was different. Mangela just knew but he would have to talk to Angie, share his feelings, fears, and emotions with her. He was afraid he couldn't do that and that she would resent him for it.

In response, Angie shared her own similar fears. She has been independent for so long, could she really share her life with someone? Would she really make a good wife? She hadn't had a role model in that area either.

With those fears out in the open, both felt better. Sharing wasn't so hard as they had imagined. After all, they had just shared something intimate, and intrinsic, and felt better for it. It gave them the confidence that their marriage would work out. Maybe it wouldn't be a typical marriage but it would be a good one. Instead of trying to be what they thought they should be, they could just be themselves. After all, she didn't fall in love with Rollie because she thought he'd be a good husband. She fell in love with him because he was Rollie.