Dry Rot

part of the BobsWorld universe

by Setcheti

 

 

Disclaimer: I do not own Bob the Builder.  I just love him a whole lot and want him to be happy – isn’t that how fic usually happens?

 

About BobsWorld:  The BobsWorld universe is based on the premise that the Bob the Builder characters are real people, living in a real world.  To find out more about BobsWorld, please go here.

 

It was a perfect day for skiing.  The sun was bright, the snow just right, and the weather destined to hold on for at least the next three or four days.  Which was just fine with Wendy Avery, since that meant she got to ski all weekend…and then the train would still be running to take her sister home once their little ‘mini vacation’ was over.  Wendy loved Jenny, she did, but being snowed in with her was no fun at all.

 

And if it was no fun for her, it was considerably less fun than that for poor Bob…

 

Wendy stopped herself.  She did not want to think about Bob right now, she wanted to ski.  Bob did not ski.  Bob was back in Sunflower Valley, working.  Probably drinking coffee like there was no tomorrow because she wasn’t there to stop him.  Wendy made a face, absently brushing snow off her blue snowsuit.  He knew too much caffeine was bad for him, but every time she left town…

 

“You know, you should have just dragged him up here with us,” Jenny chortled in her ear, startling her.  The younger woman’s ski suit was white as the snow around them, with a hot pink racing stripe that matched the hot pink streak in her blonde hair.  She looked like exactly what she was, an unrepentant ski bunny.  “I’m sure these guys would just love to have ‘Bob the Builder’ up here for two days.”

 

Her sister rolled her eyes.  “He’d need a vacation from my vacation, Jenny – they  have an espresso machine, he’d never sleep at all!”  Her frown became a scowl when the deep blue eyes so like her own began to sparkle with the kind of mischief that made Bob afraid of Jenny.  “Don’t even go there, Jen, I mean it.”

 

Jenny winked.  “I didn’t – you did.  Would you just marry him already?  You don’t have to wait for him to ask you…”

 

“He did.”  It slipped out before Wendy could stop it, and she bit her lip, shaking her head at Jenny’s openmouthed look of pure astonishment.  “Sort of, I mean.  But we...got a little sidetracked.”  Wendy had to look away from her sister’s suddenly narrowed eyes.  The spy who’d snuck onto the island four months ago wasn’t something she was allowed to talk about with anyone, and especially not with someone from outside the Project.  Jenny knew something had happened, knew something was wrong…but Wendy couldn’t tell her what it was.  She shook her head again.  “Are we going for another run?”

 

Jenny’s frown became a scowl, she started to say something else…and then she pulled the words back and let it go.  Again.  “Yeah, let’s do that,” she said, twisting the strap on her ski pole, not looking at her older sister.  This chunk of uncomfortable silence between them was the Project’s fault, she knew, not Wendy’s.  “Come on, while we’ve still got the light.”    

 

The gratitude in her sister’s smile made Jenny grudgingly glad she’d let it go.  They made the run again, and then took the lift back up to the top.  Jenny was just chatting with the lift attendant and Wendy was checking the clamps on her boots when an out of place sound began to chatter through the air.  It sounded like…  “Oh boy,” the attendant said, grimacing.  “Something big must be going on, we just about never see the ‘copters.  That’s headquarters,” he informed the wide-eyed Jenny.  “Last time they did a flyby on us was a few months ago.  I wonder what they’re heading for this time?”

 

Headquarters, almost never, and a few months ago; Jenny connected those pieces of the Project puzzle with her sister’s unhappy silences over the last four months and then filed them away for later consideration.  The helicopter, a white one with a stylized golden-yellow sunflower emblem on the side, drew closer and then dipped below the crest of the mountain, angling for its rocky treed foot.  Just moments later, however, it rose again and headed straight for them.

 

Wendy stared at it, frozen where she stood; the last time she’d seen that helicopter, it had come to pick up the man who’d kidnapped her.  Her heart almost stopped when the helicopter settled onto the snow on the opposite side of the lift.  The rotors didn’t stop, but a door on the side opened and a man in a white flight suit got out, ducked, and ran over to her.  Wendy kicked off her skis and ran to meet him halfway.  “What…”

 

“You need to come with me,” he interrupted her, taking hold of her arm.  “Right now!  I’ll explain once we’re in the air.”

 

“My sister…”

 

“Your sister should stay here,” the man told her.  “She’ll be safe here, you have my word.”

 

Wendy wasn’t inclined to argue with him.  The fact that someone from Project headquarters was there in a helicopter to pick her up off the ski slopes in the middle of her weekend vacation told her that something awful had happened, and his saying that Jenny would be safe there implied that someone else or somewhere else wasn’t.  She turned and waved to Jenny, who was standing near the abandoned skis, staring.  “I have to go!” Wendy called out.  “Stay here!”  Then the man tugged her arm again, and she ran with him back to the helicopter and climbed inside.

 

Jenny stood on the slope and watched the helicopter take off, then picked up her sister’s skis and went back to the lift attendant.  He was listening intently to his radio, which had gone off just before the helicopter had reappeared, and as she approached him he told whoever was on the other end, “Will do, we’re on our way down,” before tucking the radio back into his belt.  “The island is in lockdown,” he told her, taking the extra set of skis out of her hands and moving her in the direction of the lift with a wave of his hand.  “We’ll take the lift down to the lodge.  I’ll answer all your questions once we’re on our way.”

 

“All?”  She arched an eyebrow at him.  “About what happened a few months ago too?”

 

“Yes.”  He didn’t even hesitate, which surprised her; his expression, however, was grim.  “You just got full clearance, I’ll tell you anything you want to know – or at least, I’ll tell you everything I know.  But we need to get out of the open and back to the lodge right now.”

 

Jenny’s already bad feeling got ten times worse.  She followed him to the lift and got on, taking Wendy’s skis when he handed them to her so he could get on himself, and then they were off – at double speed, she couldn’t help but notice.  “So what’s going on?”

 

He made a face.  “No one knows for sure, yet.  But it looks like someone tried to kill Bob McKinney again.”

 

 

Half an hour after leaving the mountains, the helicopter with the sunflower logo on the side landed directly in front of the small medical center that served Sunflower Valley, on the small landing pad that existed just for that purpose.  The co-pilot jumped out with Wendy, making sure she kept her head down until they were clear of the whirling rotors, but once they were he let her go with a quick exchange of goodbyes and she ran for the open door where Dr. Johnson stood waiting for her.  Wendy skidded to a halt when she reached him, almost running right into his arms.  “Bob…”

 

“He’s going to be fine,” the doctor said, catching her and holding on until they were inside.  “How I don’t know; he must be the luckiest man on this island, if not on this planet.  Most of the house missed him.”

 

Wendy wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or not; ‘most of the house’ wasn’t the same as ‘all of the house.’  “Which part didn’t?” she blurted out.  “And how did a house fall in on him in the first place?”

 

“Two of the ceiling beams, part of the roof, and some of an interior wall,” Johnson answered.  “And we think maybe a stray rock from the fireplace, the rest of which luckily fell out of the house and not into it.  As for your second question…we don’t know.  Mike has people standing guard on the site, and Charlie called in an investigative team from the mainland.”  He took her arm.  “Wendy, what we do know is…it couldn’t have been an accident.”

 

She shuddered; she’d known it too, the minute the co-pilot on the helicopter had told her what had happened.  “I want to see Bob.”

 

“He’s called out your name a few times, so that feeling must be mutual,” the doctor told her.  He started leading her down the hall, forcing her to walk when what she really wanted to do was run.  “He really is going to be fine, Wendy.”

 

Wendy looked up at him.  “But?”

 

Johnson sighed.  “But he’s got a bad concussion and a hairline skull fracture, he’s in and out right now and that could last for a while.  But he keeps getting agitated, which isn’t good for him, and that’s when he starts calling out for you.  But what he needs most right now is to have you with him – hence the surprise helicopter ride.”  They were standing in front of a closed door; he pushed it open and held it for her.  “If he gets agitated again, try to keep him calm if you can.  I’m going to go get us some coffee – who knows, maybe he’ll wake up when he smells it and ask if he can have some.”

 

Wendy didn’t respond, just moved slowly into the room, and Dr. Johnson closed the door behind her and started back down the hall, murmuring to himself, “But he could have died today, and it’s a damned miracle he didn’t.  And if that doesn’t kick-start the two of you into taking the next step in your relationship, I don’t know what will.”

 

 

Inside the room, which was an interior one with no windows and fluorescent lighting that made her think of rainy days, Wendy walked to the side of the single bed and looked down at the man she loved.  There was a bandage covering the left side of Bob’s forehead and temple which had leaked a swollen bruise down his cheek and swirled a mottled red and black ring around his left eye.  His thick brown hair had been combed back away from the bandage, but her favorite unruly lock had still managed to fall across it.  He was pale, and breathing shallowly but steadily in soft counterpoint to the harsher hiss from the oxygen tube under his nose.  “Oh Bob,” she whispered, her eyes filling up with tears.  She picked up one hand that lay so still on top of the blanket and held it carefully, reassured by its warmth and the familiar roughness of calluses and small scars.  “Bob…”

 

“He’ll be all right, Wendy.”  She hadn’t even noticed that Fred Pickles was standing there, and when she started he moved up beside her and put a comforting arm around her shoulders.  “They told you what happened?”

 

She nodded, sniffing, but didn’t let go of Bob’s hand.  “Dr. Johnson said it wasn’t…it wasn’t an accident.”

 

“No, it couldn’t have been,” the older man confirmed.  He looked as grim as she’d ever seen him.  “I was there.  I’d stopped by to ask Bob about some fence he was going to put up for me.  He was up on the roof, he had his safety line anchored, and all of a sudden he got this alarmed look on his face and started to call out something…and then the roof just sort of opened up underneath him and he fell.  The rest of the house folded up like a house of cards, I’ve never seen anything like it.”

 

Wendy looked up at him, gratitude in her eyes.  “You got him out?”

 

Pickles shook his head.  “I didn’t dare go in there, no way of knowing where he was under all the wreckage – and he didn’t answer when we yelled.  I sent Scoop to get Lofty and called Todd and Mike for help, and I had Spud run back to the farm and bring Scrufty out.  He sniffed around until he found Bob, and then we dug our way in to him.”  He actually shuddered.  “Every time we moved one of the beams, the whole mess shifted.  I don’t think I’ll ever be able to play pick-up sticks again as long as I live.”

 

“I’m glad you were there.”  Wendy gave him a one-armed hug.  “And I owe Scrufty a great big bone the next time I see him.”

 

“He’d like that.”  The farmer returned the hug for a moment, then disengaged from her and went to the corner of the room to drag over a chair.  “Here, sit down.  Or do you want to go get out of that snowsuit first?  I’ll stay here with Bob.”

 

Wendy had forgotten about the snowsuit, and it wasn’t until he mentioned it that she realized how hot she was starting to feel.  She tried to remember what she had on underneath it, and finally had to tug down the zipper to look; she found a sweater, and thought she remembered putting on jeans that morning too.  Reluctantly letting go of Bob’s hand, she pulled the zipper the rest of the way down and unfastened a few clasps, then kicked off her snowboots and shimmied out of the suit.  Yes, it had been jeans – her good jeans, the ones she didn’t wear to the yard.  Wendy looked around for a place to put the snowsuit, but Pickles took it from her.  He was grinning.  “I think young Bob here is going to be sorry he missed that,” he told her with a wink, then scooped up her boots as well and took it all out of the room.

 

Wendy returned her attention to Bob, feeling tears well up in her eyes as she remembered the way his face always lit up when he saw her wearing something other than work clothes.  He would have been stammering and blushing right now if he were awake, and smiling that shy, delighted smile…

 

Wendy sat down on the chair, picked up his hand again, holding it in both of hers this time, and started to cry in earnest.

 

 

Fred caught Dr. Johnson while he was still in his office, just hanging up the phone, and shook his head at the other man’s questioning look.  “Give her a little longer, Todd.  If we’re really lucky, he’ll hear her crying and wake up to stop her.”

 

“I thought the smell of coffee might work too,” Todd told him.  “She didn’t even try to tell me he shouldn’t have any.”

 

“She had something more important on her mind than regulating Bob’s caffeine intake.”  Fred shrugged it off.  “Any more news?”

 

The doctor shook his head.  “The forensic team just got there, we won’t know anything for a while.  But Charlie and Mike are planning to keep us in lockdown until we find out exactly what happened.”

 

“You mean who happened,” Fred corrected grimly.  “That house didn’t rig itself to come apart like that, and especially not while Bob just happened to be on the roof.  Any word on the Millers?”

 

“Nada.  After they left the island and went through headquarters, they just disappeared.”  Todd rubbed his forehead, trying to push back the headache that kept trying to form.  “We need Bob to wake up and tell us what he saw, Fred.  But I can’t…I might be willing to push things if it was just a simple concussion, but it’s not simple and once you add in that skull fracture it’s nothing to mess around with.”

 

“And I don’t see you messing around with it,” Fred observed.  “I’m sure Charlie doesn’t have a problem with that.”

 

“You know he doesn’t.  And Mike made sure I knew how not to ask a leading question once Bob does wake up enough to make any sense, and then he told me to keep him posted.  He said he’d tell the investigators that I’d let them in as soon as Bob was stable and conscious.  Which probably won’t be until tomorrow morning, at the earliest.”  The doctor left off trying to rub away the headache and rummaged in his desk for the aspirin bottle.  “It was too damn close, Fred, too damn close.  If you hadn’t been there…”

 

“Don’t.”  Fred lifted a warning hand.  “Just…don’t remind me.  I can see that roof caving in underneath him every time I blink, and I don’t even want to think about what’s going to happen when I try to sleep tonight.”

 

“I’ve got concerns of my own in that direction,” Todd told him.  “If he hadn’t been wearing his hardhat…”

 

“Bob always wears his hardhat.”  Fred didn’t quite shudder.  Bob’s hardhat was still in the wreckage of the house – or rather, under the wreckage, crushed flat as a pancake.  It had apparently been knocked off by the impact of the stray fireplace stone, a loaf-sized chunk of  river-smoothed pinkish granite that would have crushed their friend’s skull instead of just cracking it had the full force of the blow not been absorbed and deflected by the tough yellow metal-reinforced plastic of the construction helmet.  “We’ll have to get him another one.”

 

“He won’t be needing it for a while.”  The doctor shook his head.  “This isn’t like the time he broke his leg.  He’s not going to be sneaking out to ‘supervise’ some job Wendy’s doing any time soon.”

 

“Yeah, because Wendy won’t let him.”  Fred snorted.  “Not that anyone’s going to be asking either of them to do anything any time soon, not after this.”

 

“Be kind of hard for them to, since Bob’s cell phone is still somewhere under what’s left of the Millers’ house,” was Todd’s comment.  “Mike said the GPS tracker is still working, but he can’t hear the phone ring when they try the number so it’s probably almost as flat as the hardhat.”  He sighed.  “Did I mention it was too damn close?”

 

“It was so close I can’t blame you for repeating it,” was the other man’s response.  “I’ll even put one in for you:  It was too damned close.”

 

“Yeah.”  Todd washed two pills down with a swallow of coffee and took off his glasses, rubbing the bridge of his nose.  “Twice in four months just can’t be a coincidence.”

 

Fred winced.  “I know.  I think everyone else probably does too.  Has anyone checked on…”

 

“That was the first place they checked, but he’s been accounted for the whole time and he’s just as clueless as the rest of us,” the doctor said, obliquely referring to the spy turned kidnapper they’d caught on the island four months ago.  An overly idealistic twenty-something named Matt, the young man had been ‘working’ as an environmental terrorist before being hired to get a piece of the A.I. technology from Sunflower Valley – by any means necessary, up to and including murder.  “That kid thinks Bob walks on water, he’d never have kept his mouth shut about something like this,” Johnson continued, shaking his head.  “But he apparently thought it was too much of a coincidence too, because he told Mike to check back four months and see if they could find signs that anything out of the ordinary had gone on around the same time he got on the island.  I guess in the circles Matt used to run in, using the fallout from someone else’s assignment as a cover for your own is a pretty common practice.”

 

“Great, just great,” Fred said glumly.  “Piggyback spies, what will they think of next?”

 

“I don’t want to know.”  Todd sat back in his chair.  “I also don’t want to know what Tom McKinney is going to do when he finds out about all of this.”

 

“When…”

 

“Charlie said he was going to do it, my outside line is disabled,” the doctor bit out.  “Total communications blackout, remember?”

 

“I didn’t forget – but Tom’s gonna kill Charlie when he finds out he wasn’t notified immediately, and not just about what happened today.”  Fred shook his head.  “This used to be a really nice place to live, you know?”

 

“Paradise, or just about,” Todd agreed.  “And now we’re finding snake tracks.  I guess it was bound to happen sooner or later...”

 

“I just wish it had been later,” Fred finished for him, dredging up half a smile.  “Much later – like after I was dead.”

 

Todd picked up his coffee cup with a sigh, not wanting to think about how close the other man might have been to getting his wish just a few hours earlier.  Because luckily for Fred, most of the Miller house had collapsed inward, not outward, when he’d been standing there beside it talking to Bob.

 

 

After about an hour Dr. Johnson left Fred in the office – half asleep in a chair in spite of all the coffee – and went to check on his patient again.  Wendy looked up with relief when he opened the door.  “Bob is…I couldn’t…”

 

“I should have shown you the call button, it’s okay,” Johnson soothed, keeping his voice low.  Internally, though, he was cursing himself for not checking up on Wendy sooner; he’d wanted to give her some time, but the call button was red and plainly visible near the head of the bed.  He put down the cup of coffee he’d carried in with him and lay his hand over the slender fingers that were all but clenched around Bob’s limp ones.  “Let go for a minute, Wendy,” he requested.  “I need to have a look at Bob right now – he’s been restless, hasn’t he?  I know it’s disturbing to watch, but it’s actually a good sign.  You drink some of that coffee, all right?  You look like you need it.”

 

It took her a minute to let go, and several seconds more before her hand stopped flexing around emptiness and reached for the coffee.  Johnson made himself busier than he actually needed to be checking vitals and bandages and straightening blankets, watching her out of the corner of his eye.  He waited until half the coffee was gone before saying anything else.  “Well, Bob is doing just fine.  How about you?”

 

She blinked at him, her eyes puffy from crying.  “I’m…fine.”

 

“And you’re not much better at lying than Bob is,” the doctor told her.  “You were on vacation when a Project helicopter swooped down and pulled you off the ski slopes because your fiancé had a house collapse on him, and then I told you that someone made the house collapse on purpose.  And you’ve been sitting here next to him, and he looks like…well, like a house fell on him, and he’s been twitching and making noises like he’s in pain.”  He cocked an eyebrow at her.  “Are you still fine?”

 

Wendy looked down at the coffee cup her hand was clenched around.  She sniffed.  “I’m…numb.  I don’t know what I am.”

 

Johnson nodded.  “Okay,” he said.  He had definitely left her alone too long.  “Are you still angry with Bob?”

 

She almost dropped the cup.  “I’m not…”

 

“It’s been four months since he followed up proposing to you by earning himself a night in jail,” the doctor contradicted.  “And then he almost gets himself killed before the two of you can sort things out.  I’d be mad as hell.”

 

“Not at Bob.  I’m not mad at Bob.”  She took a deep breath, focusing on the coffee cup instead of the doctor.  “I was…before, for a little while.  He was so understanding, he gave me all the space I needed to sort myself out, he didn’t push.  And part of me was angry because he didn’t, part of me wanted him to lose control, to demand my attention.”  She sniffed, and swiped at her eyes with the back of one hand.  “But Bob…he usually doesn’t demand things from people, and I finally realized that no matter how hard he was trying, I couldn’t expect him to read my mind.  I hadn’t been trying to read his.  I hadn’t even thought…”

 

“We were watching him,” Johnson assured her.  “He was…jumpy for a while.  And he might not demand attention, but he has learned to ask for help.  When he’d start worrying too much, he’d call one of us and talk it out.”  He smiled.  “Of course, he also bought that fancy new GPS tracker so he could always find you no matter where you were.”

 

Wendy sniffed again, took a sip of coffee…and then stiffened as several things the doctor had said in the last few minutes suddenly connected in her mind.  “Wait a minute, Bob told you about…he told you he proposed?”

 

“Oh honey, he didn’t have to.” The doctor wrapped his hand around hers, over the coffee cup.  “John guessed the night you were kidnapped, and Fred figured it out before the end of the first week without Bob or John ever saying a word.  At first…well, Bob thought you might change your mind, move back to the mainland.  He wasn’t sure you’d be able to stay on the island after what happened, and he knew he didn’t want to leave.  He was afraid you’d ask him to – or maybe that you’d change your mind about him too – so he just didn’t bring it up.”

 

Somehow finding out Bob had been afraid to talk to her, afraid she’d want to leave him behind, hurt Wendy worse than anything else, and a sob caught in her throat.  What if he’d…she couldn’t even think the word, much less say it.  What if ‘most of the house’ hadn’t missed him?  She stared at nothing, into nothing.  She’d never told Bob she loved him, not even once.

 

“He knew.”  Dr. Johnson’s quiet observation startled her; Wendy hadn’t realized she’d actually said the words out loud.  The doctor shook his head, taking the coffee cup away from her and clasping her now-shaking hands in both of his.  “Wendy, he knew; you didn’t have to tell him.  He just wasn’t sure it would be enough.”    

 

“How could it ever not be?” Wendy all but whispered.  She was crying again, and she freed one of her hands to swipe at her eyes.  She latched back onto Bob’s hand with a fierce grip, wishing she could shake him.  “Damn you, Bob McKinney, how could you ever even think you weren’t enough?  You’re…you’re everything!”

     

“No…”  The word was barely more than a sigh, and Johnson caught his breath; Bob hadn’t reacted to Wendy crying, but apparently he’d heard just fine once she’d started to get angry and called him by his full name.  He saw Bob’s fingers flex in Wendy’s tight grip before gently curling around her hand.  “No, don’t…be mad.  Wendy…”

 

“Bob?”  Her voice had a tremor in it.  “Bob?!”

 

“Hmm?”  Bob’s unswollen eye flickered open, the other struggling under it’s burden of bruise to keep up.  He blinked at her in confusion for a moment, and then he smiled.  “What a…nice sight to wake up to.”  He tried to look around, wincing when he attempted to turn his head.  The hand Wendy wasn’t holding came up, trailing an IV line, and encountered the bandage that marked the source of the pain.  His confusion returned.  “What…”

 

“Do you remember what happened, Bob?” Dr. Johnson asked before Wendy could say anything.  “You were working on the roof of the Miller house.”

 

Bob frowned, and winced again when frowning made his head hurt more.  He felt like the inside of his skull was full of wet cement.  And hammers, great big ones, that were pounding on the inside trying to get out.  “I…I think I remember doing that.  Dry rot...”

 

Johnson shook his head.  “Fred said you started to yell out something, Bob.  What was it?  What did you see when you were up there on the roof?”

 

Another frown, another wince…and then Bob’s unswollen brown eye widened.  “Little holes, bored down…into the beams.  A wire…”  He tried to bolt upright in the bed, but the doctor had anticipated that reaction and moved quickly to hold him down.  “Wendy!”

 

“I’m right here, Bob,” Wendy reassured him.  She forced him to look at her, alarmed by how upset he’d gotten so quickly – and by how white he’d turned when he’d tried to move.  “It’s all right, I’m right here!”

 

Bob stared at her as though he couldn’t quite believe it…and then his eyes screwed shut and he groaned.  “Ohh…”

 

Dr. Johnson had been expecting that too.  “It’s okay, Bob, it’s okay.  Just stay still.  You have a concussion and a cracked skull, not to mention some broken ribs and a lot of bruises everywhere, so you’re not going to feel like moving around very much for a while.”

 

Bob didn’t quite nod against the pillow, eyes still closed, his jaw set against the pain and the movement-induced spasm that was threatening to turn his stomach inside out.  He had a feeling that throwing up would hurt even more, and he didn’t want to find out if that feeling was right.  It took a minute for him to get enough on top of things to relax, but as soon as he could he opened his eyes again, squinting this time.  Wendy was still there, and she looked all right.  “You…weren’t you at the house with me?  I can’t remember…”

 

“I wasn’t there,” she confirmed, feeling unreasonably guilty.  That was why he’d been calling out her name: he thought she’d been on the roof with him, which normally she would have been.  “I wasn’t there, I was…skiing, with Jenny.  Fred was there, and he called for help.  They dug you out and then sent a helicopter to get me.”

 

He looked surprised, then made a face.  “Skiiing…oh, your vacation.  Sorry.”

 

“Don’t be.”  Wendy stroked his cheek.  “I’m sorry I wasn’t here with you.”

 

“Don’t take this…the wrong way, but I’m glad you weren’t,” he sighed, closing his eyes again.  Wendy’s own eyes filled with tears again; he’d said the same thing once before, not quite four months ago.  He’d also in a roundabout way asked her to marry him that day, and in the same roundabout way she’d accepted.  As though reading her mind, the corners of his mouth quirked up.  “And we still need to build a bigger house.”

 

“Yes, we do,” Wendy choked out.  “I…I’ll start ordering the materials.”

 

His smile widened, albeit drowsily.  “You do that.  I…have some plans drawn up already.”

 

And then he was asleep again.  Wendy slowly withdrew her hand.  “Oh Bob…”

 

“He may do that a lot for the next day or so,” Dr. Johnson told her softly.  “Fall asleep without warning, that is.  And his mind might wander when he’s awake, he’ll have a hard time focusing enough to stay on track when you’re talking to him.”  He sighed.  “I need to call Mike, tell him what Bob said about the holes in the roof, and the wire.  We can try to ask more questions the next time he wakes up, but I’m surprised he remembered that much – it’s more the norm for someone with a head injury to have no recollection of what happened to them at all.”  He reached across the bed and tipped Wendy’s chin up so that she was looking at him.  “Why don’t I have John run by the yard later and get those plans?  You’ll have to figure out which materials to order.”

 

She sniffed.  “We’d have to figure out where the house is going to be built first.  The yard isn’t big enough…”

 

“No, but the plot Bob’s been pestering Aaron about is,” Johnson told her, smiling at her look of surprise.  “It’s on the west end of town, I understand he’s been driving everyone at headquarters crazy this past month trying to get his allotment changed so he can build a new yard there, something about the machines needing more room.  Not that he’s been fooling anybody, of course.”

 

“He doesn’t, usually.”  Bob was the most transparent person Wendy knew.  Which made the whole thing even worse, in a way, since she hadn’t even realized he was making plans.  “I can go…”

 

“No, you can’t.”  The doctor waved a hand at the room.  “Wendy, haven’t you wondered why I have Bob, who can’t stand to be confined indoors, stuck in a room with no windows?”

 

She hadn’t, actually, but she caught on quickly.  “You think someone might try…”

 

“I think someone already did,” he said.  “And no one is giving them a chance to finish the job if we can help it.  I didn’t say anything when you first got here because you had enough to deal with…but you have to know that you can’t go home either until we’re sure you’ll be safe.”  Her eyes widened, and he shook his head.  “Mike said he and John were going to take part of the investigative team and check out Bob’s house, your house, and Fred’s house – Fred’s stuck here too, just like you are.”  Johnson made a face.  “In fact, he’s asleep in a chair in my office.  And all the machines are at the park.”

 

Wendy had almost forgotten about the machines.  “Oh dear, Scoop was with Bob when the house…”

 

“Yes, but he’s fine – he didn’t panic then, he’s not panicking now, and he’s apparently keeping all of the other machines calm.”  The doctor smiled.  “Bob’s done an incredible job with Scoop, and the others are all coming right along too.  Says something about the kind of father he’ll make someday, doesn’t it?”

 

“He’ll be wonderful.”  She blushed.  “I…we haven’t talked about…that yet, though.”

 

“Well, you’ll have time now – remember, inside this building you can talk about whatever you want.”  That was something Johnson had insisted on when he’d signed on with the Project, and full approval for the exception was written into his contract: his medical center was completely exempt from the restrictions and penalties of the contractual decency clause.  “Once Bob starts feeling better, the two of you can get everything sorted out,” the doctor said, pushing his chair back a little so he could stretch out his long legs and fishing his cell phone out of his pocket.  He didn’t think he should leave Wendy alone again just yet, but he needed to let their constable know what Bob had said.

 

Wendy watched him make the call and listened with half an ear as he told the constable about the holes and the wire Bob had said he’d seen on the Millers’ roof.  The other half of her attention was focused on Bob, her partner, the man she loved…the man she’d left dangling for four long months.  The man who’d almost died a few hours ago.

 

She wasn’t sure if she was ever going to be able to stop crying.     

    

 

As Dr. Johnson had warned, Bob was in and out for the rest of the evening and on into the night.  He would wake up, try to carry on a conversation with whoever was in his line of sight, and then fall back to sleep in the middle of a sentence.  Or he would wake up calling for Wendy, thinking she’d been on the roof of the Miller house with him, and then fall back to sleep in the middle of apologizing for not remembering and for waking everyone up.

 

Wendy was never alone in Bob’s room for more than fifteen minutes.  The doctor and Fred Pickles came and went at regular intervals, John Dixon came by and brought supper just before sundown and stayed for several hours after it, and then Constable Rickey showed up and stayed for several hours after that.  The constable said he was there to see Bob and Wendy, not to ask questions, and he didn’t seem impatient at all for Bob to wake up and start making sense.  “Some things you just can’t rush,” he told Wendy.  “A head injury is one of them.  Got my bell rung a few times playing hockey, it’s like having a skull full of wet mud.”

 

Wendy had to smile at the idea of a younger Mike Rickey going all out on the ice, and Fred, who was sitting near the foot of the bed, chuckled.  “Now there’s a pastime we haven’t tried to introduce to Sunflower Valley,” he said.  “I used to skate, a long time ago.  Remember going to the city with my folks one Christmas and skating at Rockefeller Center.”

 

“We could build a rink,” Wendy offered softly.  She was holding Bob’s hand, and the two men saw her squeeze it gently, as though she were trying to include her unresponsive partner in the conversation.  “It wouldn’t need to be very big.”

 

Rickey shrugged.  “When I was a kid, we used to practice in this field one of the guys’ dads let us use.  As soon as the ground froze up, he’d start watering it to layer up the ice.  Took about a week to get it thick enough, but after that it lasted all winter.”

 

“Now that’s ingenuity,” Fred approved.  “I don’t know if the ground in the Valley stays cold enough for that, though.  I know my small ponds don’t ever freeze all the way solid; Spud almost fell through the ice on one of them last winter.”

 

“Spud also weighs as much as you and I put together,” the constable reminded him.  “But yeah, you’ve got a point.  I guess we’d just have to give it a try and see how long the ice lasts.  Oh, and speaking of Spud, he finally stopped trying to sneak out of the park.  And Scrufty went home for the night with Dr. Lykins.”

 

Fred just nodded.  Rickey had said up front when he’d arrived that he couldn’t discuss what had happened or how the investigation was going, so asking if Scrufty staying with Dr. Lykins meant the farmhouse wasn’t safe was definitely out.  That was when Wendy spoke up again.  “What about Pilchard?”

 

“She’s with Dr. Lykins too,” Rickey answered immediately.  “I took her over there myself.”

 

Fred sighed; apparently the building yard wasn’t safe either.

 

 

John Dixon brought breakfast the next morning, along with a change of clothes for both Wendy and Fred, and he hung around in Bob’s room while the two of them showered and changed.  Dr. Johnson sent Fred off to get some more sleep not long after that and then went back to his office for a little while, leaving Wendy in her chair by Bob’s bed, once again holding the builder’s hand in hers.  Constable Rickey arrived about an hour later, looking much less relaxed than he had the night before and with two of the mainland investigators trailing along behind him.  Wendy got up when she saw who was with him, moving to stand between the newcomers and her partner.  “Bob is asleep…”

 

“I know, but we need to see if he’ll wake up for just a few minutes to answer some questions,” Rickey told her.  He didn’t look any happier about it than she felt.  “Dr. Johnson okayed it for us to try.  And Agent Dirk here needs to talk to you for a few minutes too,” he said, gesturing to one of the strangers, a younger woman with short dark hair and a serious expression.  “It shouldn’t take long.”

 

Wendy looked at the young woman, then back at Rickey.  “I…she can talk to me here.  I don’t want to leave Bob.”

 

“It’ll just be for a few minutes,” the constable reassured her.  “It’ll be fine, Wendy.”

 

She looked him in the eye, seeing that he meant he was hoping it would be, not that he was sure.  “I don’t have a choice, do I?”

 

Rickey sighed and shook his head.  “I don’t either,” he told her.  “There are things we have to find out that just can’t wait.  But I’ll be the only one talking to Bob, I promise.”

 

She held his eyes a moment more, then looked away and moved past him to the door.  “Tell him I’ll be back soon.  He gets…upset if he can’t see me when he wakes up.”

 

“I know.”  He jerked his head at the waiting officer, giving her a warning look at the same time; no matter what the lead investigator, Agent Rook, wanted, they were supposed to be conducting interviews, not interrogations.  He waited until Wendy was completely out of the room before he took over the chair she’d been sitting on, pulling it even closer to the bed and taking a good look at his friend.  The bruising around Bob’s left eye had darkened a little more and looked distinctly worse, even if some of the swelling had gone down, but aside from that the builder looked a little better than he had the night before and he seemed to be sleeping more easily.  Rickey wished he didn’t have disturb him, especially not for something like this.  But Rook had been insistent that they needed to question Bob and Wendy as soon as possible, before anyone slipped and said something to them about the investigation…so here they were. 

 

It took several minutes of the constable calling Bob’s name and cautiously, gently shaking his shoulder to get the builder awake, but once the brown eyes were open and focused on him Rickey didn’t waste any time; he hadn’t forgotten the night before, when the other man had been falling back to sleep practically between one blink and the next without any warning, and he wanted to get this over with before that could happen.  “I’m sorry I had to wake you, Bob,” he said, meaning it.  “But I need to ask you some questions, okay?  About yesterday at the Miller house.  What can you tell me about the Miller house, Bob?”

 

“Dry rot,” Bob answered at once, not quite fighting back a yawn that made him wince sleepily.  “In the attic.”

 

“Don’t go back to sleep,” the constable requested.  “Why did you go out to the Millers’ house?”

 

“They had dry rot.  I was going to fix it.”  Bob blinked, looking confused.  “Why are you asking me that again?”

 

Rickey ignored the question.  “How did you know it was dry rot, Bob?  Had you already been out there?”

 

Bob blinked again.  “I…no.  Lee brought me a sample, from the attic.  He said he’d gone up there to check…”  He thought about it, obviously trying to dredge up the memory.  “He said he’d thought they had bats, or birds, or something like that.  He went into the attic to see if they were there…and that’s when he found the fungus growing on the beams.  He brought me a piece.”

 

“Of the fungus?” Rickey wanted to know.

 

“Of one of the beams, with the fungus on it.” More blinking.  “I think they must have had too much insulation put in.  There shouldn’t have been that much humidity building up in the attic.  And there must have been a roof leak somewhere too…or maybe a gutter leak along one of the eaves…”

 

Rickey broke into what he knew from experience was about to turn into a rant about shoddy construction.  “Bob, no,” he insisted gently but firmly.  “That wood didn’t come from the Miller’s attic.  Where did the wood come from, Bob?  Where did you get it?”

 

Bob stared at him.  “I just told you.” The emphasis apparently hurt and he winced, raising a hand to the bandage on his temple.  “Lee brought it to me, from his attic.  He thought they had…bats, yeah, it was bats.  Tonya is afraid of bats, she thinks they all have rabies.  She hadn’t wanted him to go up to check, but Lee knew bats wouldn’t bother him unless he bothered them first.  But instead of bats, he found the fungus.”  That seemed to strike him as funny, although he didn’t quite laugh.  “He thought they were mushrooms.”

 

“I just bet he did.”  The constable sighed.  “Did you keep the wood he brought you?  What did you do with it?”

 

“I…”  Bob had to think about that for a minute.  “I put it in a bag, airtight.  And then I boxed it up and put it in the mail to headquarters.  They’ll need it for evidence.”

 

In the background, Rook made an interested noise; Rickey ignored him.  “Evidence, Bob?”

 

“Yeah, for the insurance.  Whoever built Lee and Tanya’s house…”

 

Rickey headed off the rant about shoddy construction a second time.  “No, Bob.  So the wood is in the mail, on its way to headquarters.  But the wood didn’t come from the Millers’ house, we know that – you know that, you were on their roof.  Tell me about what happened when you went out to their house.  Was anyone there?”

 

Bob started to shake his head and then stopped, wincing again.  “No. Once I explained what the fungus was, Tonya refused to stay in the house until it was all gone.  Lee said they’d use some of their vacation time, go over to the mainland for a week and have some fun while I fixed the attic.”

 

“Did they say where on the mainland they were going?”  Bob responded in the negative, and Rickey pressed on.  “Okay, so you went up on the roof.  Why did you do that instead of going inside and checking the attic yourself?”

 

“Once I got to the house, I spotted some damaged shingles and what looked like a depression.  I thought maybe that was where the leak had come from, so I went up to look.  Fred was there, he steadied the ladder for me.”

 

Rickey was sure Fred had insisted on steadying it, not wanting to witness a repeat of the falling ladder incident from two years previous.  “Did Fred see the damaged shingles?”

 

“I don’t know, I didn’t ask him.”  Bob rubbed the bandage at his temple as though he were trying to rub the pain underneath it away.  “Why are you asking me all these questions, Mike?”

 

“Because we need to know what happened, Bob,” Rickey responded.  He glanced back over his shoulder when he heard the door open, and saw Johnson slip in.  He nodded to the concerned doctor, then turned back to the man he was questioning.  “Now tell me about the depression in the roof.”

 

Bob looked up at him, suspicion and possibly hurt starting to show in his face.  “I told you about the roof.”

 

The constable steeled himself not to react to that, and saw Johnson’s concern deepen into a frown as the doctor moved around to the other side of the bed.  “Tell me again.”

 

“The shingles were just over halfway up the roof, almost to the peak.  So I attached my safety harness and started pulling up the damaged shingles.”

 

“What damaged them?”

 

“I don’t know; it looked almost like they’d been pulled on from underneath.  I thought maybe they were sagging over the worst part of the rot, so I started pulling them off to look at them…but the beam underneath was just fine.  Except that there were little holes drilled into it, with something stuffed in them, and a wire was running in and out.  It was stuck to one of the shingles, so I pulled that one off next…and there was a spark and I saw this puff of smoke and the beam just sort of came apart…”

 

Rickey steeled himself again.  “Did you drill those holes, Bob?”

 

The builder’s brown eyes went from pain-narrowed to wide with shock.  “Why would I…”

 

“Did you set up the charges that would bring the house down?” Rickey interrupted.  “Did Fred being there, distracting you, cause you to make a mistake with the wire and set the explosives off accidentally?”

 

Bob turned dead white.  “You think I…you think I tried to kill Wendy?!  Why would you…Mike, how could you think that…”

 

“He doesn’t think that, Bob,” Dr. Johnson broke in, sitting down on the side of the bed.  “No one thinks you would do something like that, I promise.  Now you need to calm down.” 

 

Rickey moved in closer as well so that the agitated builder wouldn’t have to move to see his face.  “Bob, I just…oh hell, I’m sorry, okay?  You know I wouldn’t think something like that of you.  But we had to ask, it’s…procedure.  Right now someone is asking Wendy the same questions, she’s probably as mad as a wet cat.  But we all know neither of you were involved with this mess.”

 

Bob blinked at him a few times, painfully gulping in air.  “You don’t think…”

 

“Bob, I promise you I don’t.  I promise that no one who lives in the Valley does, and no one at headquarters does either.  We just had to ask.”  He forced himself to slip into a more casual, almost bantering tone.  “Now calm yourself down before Wendy comes in here and kicks my butt for upsetting you, okay?  Please?”

 

Bob looked at him for a minute, still wide-eyed, and then nodded, wincing.  “I know…you’re just doing your job, Mike.”

 

“And I’m still sorry I did it,” Rickey told him.  “I’ve got to go now, we’ve got bad guys to catch.  But if it’s all right with you, I’d like to stop by for a visit again tonight.  Would that be okay with you, Bob?  No more questions, I just want to stop by and see how you’re doing.”

 

To his relief, Bob produced a faint, pained smile for him.  “You know it’s okay, Mike.  I kind of remember you being here last night.”

 

Rickey smiled back.  “Glad to hear it.”  He patted his friend’s hand and stood up.  “I’ll be back tonight, then.  If you remember anything else, you tell the doc and he’ll let us know.”

 

The constable pulled Agent Rook out of the room with him, careful to close the door quietly, and then headed off down the hall.  The agent kept pace with him, frowning.  “I didn’t expect him to react…”

 

“I did,” Rickey interrupted him.  “He can’t seem to keep it in his head that Wendy wasn’t out there at the Millers’ with him; I had a feeling that when we got right down to it he’d think he was being accused of trying to hurt her.  That’s why I had to be the one asking the questions, so I could lay that one to rest as soon as it came up.”  He glanced over at the frowning man.  “I hope you got what you needed, though, because Johnson’s not gonna let you or your questions into that room again any time soon.”

 

“I got what I needed,” Rook confirmed.  “I’ve got some more digging to do there, but it’s digging I’ll do someplace else.  I shouldn’t need to question Mr. McKinney again unless a red flag pops up.”

 

Rickey snorted.  “You’re not going to find anything, Rook.  We’ve all told you…”

 

“I heard all of you, too,” the investigator said.  He didn’t quite smile.  “And once I’ve proved that you’re right, then I’ll believe you.  But until then, what I’m paid to be is a suspicious bastard, and I’m gonna earn every cent.”

 

A door farther down the hall slammed open, startling both men, and Wendy stalked out.  She was red-faced, and the sound of a sharp demand from the young investigator still inside the room made her whirl around.  “Yes, we are finished!” she yelled back into the room; drawing closer, Rickey could see the tears making her blue eyes glimmer.  “And you can just stay away from us, do you hear me?  I won’t talk to you again!”

 

The next whirl put her practically right into Rickey’s arms, and he caught and held on.  “Wendy, calm down.”

 

She pushed against his hold.  “Do you know what she asked me?!  Do you?!  She thought…”

 

“No, she doesn’t.”  The constable didn’t let go.  “I’ll tell you the same thing I told Bob:  Nobody thinks that.  It’s just a question we have to ask.”

 

Wendy stiffened, wet blue eyes widening.  “You didn’t ask…”

 

“Yeah, I did.”  Rickey stared her straight in the eye, facing down the fury and the sick fear he saw there.  “Or at least I was going to, but he figured it out and beat me to the punch.”  He stopped the next vicious twist to get free with a rough shake.  “Wendy!  Think for a minute!  We had to eliminate Bob as a suspect—and you, too.  Which means we had to shake the tree for these mainland cops and show them that nothing was going to fall out, got it?”

 

“Our job is ugly, Miss,” Rook said by way of agreement, his heavy face serious.  “But so is what I’ve seen here on your little slice of paradise today.  Those explosives were set by a pro, and they were set to kill.  And the only person on this island certified in demolitions…”

 

  Wendy beat him to it. “Is Bob, I know.  But he wouldn’t…”

 

“Kid, don’t you think I know that?” Rickey demanded gently.  “Don’t you think Charlie knows that?  But this guy here,” he gestured at Rook, “he doesn’t know that – he doesn’t know you and Bob.  So him we still have to convince.”  He caught her eyes again and held them.  “Wendy…your house was wired too.  And a few people remember seeing somebody they thought was Bob up on your roof not too long ago. Someone they thought was Bob,” he interrupted sharply when she started to protest.  “We’ve got people looking through the yard’s records right now to find out where Bob was that day, and I’m betting it was no place near your house – they wouldn’t have dared try a trick like that if he’d been in town.”

 

She was staring at him.  “Was it…was it Lee?”

 

Rickey sighed.  “I don’t know.  Whoever it was, though, I promise you that we will find them and they will pay for what they’ve done, okay?  This is not like last time, we’re not sweeping this one under the rug.”

 

“You shouldn’t have swept the last one under there,” Rook snorted.  “If we’d had that guy in custody…”

 

“He wouldn’t have told you anything,” Rickey interrupted.  “The only reason we found out as much as we did was because Bob sat up half the night talking sense into him; the kid spilled everything he knew after that, he thinks Bob is the greatest thing on the face of the planet.”

 

“Be that as it may, I still can’t believe you kept the little bastard here and told everyone not to talk,” was the detective’s reply.  He saw Wendy’s wince and made a face.  “Sorry, Miss.  But they should never have done it – and they should never have forced you to share the island with him, either.”

 

Wendy’s blue eyes dropped, and she sniffed.  “That’s what Bob said.”

 

“Only he said it a lot louder,” Rickey confirmed.  He gave Wendy an assessing look.  “You calmed down enough to go back in there now?”  She nodded, sniffing again, and with a sigh he pulled her into a quick hug.  “Try to get some sleep today, okay?  I’ll be back tonight to see everyone – and tell Fred I’m gonna get him a pair of ice skates for Christmas.”

 

That almost made her smile.  “He said he was going to get you a New York Rangers jersey.”

 

The constable chuckled.  “He would – I’ll wear it while I watch him fall all over the ice.  Now get on back to Bob, kid, he needs to see you’re all right.”

 

She returned the hug he’d given her, and then darted back down the hall and went into Bob’s room, closing the door behind her.  The young female agent who had been questioning Wendy came out of the room they’d been in…and then Fred Pickles emerged from another room down the hall.  The look on Fred’s face told Rickey that the older man had heard at least part of what had been going on.  “And here’s the last person you might need to talk to while we’re here,” the constable told Rook.  “Morning, Fred,” he called out, not loudly enough to carry back to Bob’s room.  “Got a few questions to ask you, if you’re awake enough for it.”

 

“Oh, I’m awake all right.”  Fred flicked a look that wasn’t quite a scowl at the young female agent as he came past her down the hall.  “But if they’re the same as what I’ve just been listening to, then my answer is hell no.  And I wear a ten and a half.”

 

Rickey accepted that with a nod.  “All right, Fred.  That’s a large for me.”

 

“I figured.”  He clasped the constable’s arm in a gesture of camaraderie that surprised the watching mainland investigators.  “You coming back tonight?”

 

“Yeah.”  Rickey smiled.  “Bob said he kind of remembered me being there last night.”

 

The older man smiled back.  He released Rickey’s arm and gestured down the hall.  “Do I need to…”

 

“No, not unless you need to,” Rickey told him without hesitation.  “I didn’t let him get too worked up, and Todd was right there.  Everything’s under control.”

 

“Then I’m gonna go see if I can get a few more hours of sleep,” Fred replied, holding back a yawn.  “The farm…”

 

“Wired, just like Wendy’s house.  Kenny’s, too.”  Rickey clapped him on the shoulder.  “We’ll get it sorted out, Fred.  There’ll be bomb experts here tomorrow – maybe even tonight.”  He hesitated a bare second, then made up his mind.  “We’re gonna be checking every house in the Valley.  The recycling center is clear…”

 

The older man snorted.  “Because Jack and Lucy never leave.”

 

Rickey had to agree with that.  “Probably the reason J.J.’s yard is clear too, yeah.  And we didn’t find anything in Bob’s house…but what we found buried along the back wall of the yard more than likely would have taken out at least part of the house when it went anyway.”

 

“Bob would have noticed it inside his house, or in his workshop,” Fred observed, shaking his head.  “Was it Lee?”

 

“No idea – and even if I had one, I couldn’t share it right now,” the constable told him apologetically.  Rook’s cell phone buzzed at that moment, and the agent turned aside to answer it, taking a few steps away from the other two men.  That suited Rickey just fine.  “You doing okay, Fred?” he asked the older man quietly.

 

“No,” Fred answered without hesitation.  He looked tired, and for the first time since he’d known the man Rickey could actually see his age.  “But I’m a damned sight better than Wendy is right now.”

 

Rickey made a face.  “Yeah.  She’s hanging in there, though.  Now go get some more sleep, we’ve got it all under control.”

 

Fred raised an eyebrow.  “When’s the last time you got some sleep, Mike?”

 

“I don’t need sleep, I’m a Mountie.”  Rickey held up his hands to fend off the look the older man gave him.  “I’ll come back here and catch a few later; I have it on good authority that my jail’s no good for that.”

 

“So Bob says,” Fred agreed, but he wasn’t laughing.  “So they got your house too, huh?”

 

Rickey sighed.  “Yeah.”  He accepted the one-armed hug, then slapped the older man on the shoulder.  “Go on, get back to bed.  If anything changes, I’ll let you know.”

 

“Know you will,” Fred assured him, starting back down the hall again – and offering another glare to the young female agent who was still standing there.  “See you later.”

 

Agent Rook saw the glare and managed not to sigh; he was going to have to have a private chat with his young co-worker about exactly how you don’t question a distraught, sleep-deprived potential victim/possible suspect – especially not when other witnesses can hear you doing it.  They’d have a devil of a time getting Pickles to cooperate now, and if the scientist complained…well, Rook didn’t think he would, but he’d scare her with that possibility too so she’d maybe remember not to do it again.  And he’d have to do it soon, because half the people on the island had connections that made him cringe. He finished his phone call and turned back to the island’s constable, who he was actually starting to like – working with local law enforcement, especially in the mad backwater like this, was always a grab bag when it came to what kind of help you’d get and how much interference you’d have to fight your way through. Mike Rickey, though, was a good man.

 

Of course, he was also giving Agent Dirk a slightly more professional disapproving glare, meaning that if Rook didn’t get to her for their chat pretty quickly, Rickey was probably going to have something to say about it.  At the moment, though… “Well, I guess we have one more witness to question?”

 

“Yeah.”  Rickey lost the glare when he switched his gaze to Rook, but he jerked a thumb at Dirk.  “You need to find that one somewhere else to be for a while.  If she tries to get ‘tough’ with Scoop, she could end up causing the disaster we’ve so far managed to avoid.”

 

This time Rook did sigh, but he nodded.  “Go back to the Command Center,” he ordered his subordinate, and at her slightly rebellious look added, “When I come back, we’ll discuss it – but he’s right, there is no way I want you within 100 feet of one of those machines right now.  Get going.”

 

She gave a glare of her own to Rickey – who was unimpressed – but did as she was told, and the two men trailed her outside.  Rook watched her stalk away, sighed under his breath, and then followed Rickey off in the opposite direction.

 

It was a beautiful day in the pretty little village called Sunflower Valley, and Martin Rook took that in absently while he thought about who he was on his way to talk to and tried to shore up his nerve.  He’d been given this assignment the previous morning, and on his way out of his supervisor’s office he’d asked when the techs would have the data from the machines’ hard drives for him. The CSIS assistant director had blanched and called him back in, telling him to shut the door.  And then he’d explained about the machines.

 

Rook hadn’t liked it then – hadn’t wanted to believe it, in fact – and he’d liked it even less once the A.D. had shoved a disk at him and told him to be sure and watch the Sodor video on his way out to the island.  Which he’d done, and by the time his chopper had landed he’d had to fight off a case of the shakes like he hadn’t had since his rookie days.  Sentient machines that could think and feel and talk…and kill, if provoked.  And even with just the details he’d been given in his briefing, it had been all-too obvious to Rook that someone had been hoping to supply that provocation.  The question he’d needed answered was why. 

 

He’d considered revenge first.  There weren’t any disgruntled former employees in the equation, but if anyone around could be said to have been burned by Dr. Allen and Project Sunflower it was Bob McKinney and his ‘business partner’ Wendy Avery.  The seasoned agent didn’t actually think someone like McKinney would have done the deed himself, but it was possible that the builder had helped someone else – namely the missing Lee Miller – set the situation up as a way to get the both himself and his not-so-secret girlfriend out from under the draconian restrictions of Project’s airtight employment contracts…and away from the boss who had swept said girlfriend’s kidnapping under the company rug and kept her kidnapper on the island while ordering them both to keep quiet about the whole thing.

 

Rook had never even entertained the idea that McKinney had wanted to kill his partner, although he hadn’t let anyone on the island know that. He’d needed to, as Rickey had put it, “shake the tree” to see what fell out.  Not much had, certainly none of the things he’d been hoping for had, and so now he was going to have to shake one more tree…that could possibly run over him before going on a screaming rampage through the village if he shook too hard or in the wrong direction.

 

For the first time since his rookie days, Martin Rook thought there was a really, really good possibility he might wet his pants during an interrogation.  Especially since he could now see the backhoe he was about to confront…and although it was smaller than a regular one, it was still a hell of a lot bigger than he was.

 

Not to mention, it was looking right at him.    

 

 

Charlie was sitting on a park bench and talking to Scoop and Dizzy – or rather, he was talking to Scoop and Dizzy was whizzing around the area and occasionally throwing out a question which the scientist would patiently answer as best he could.  He didn’t stand up when Rickey and Rook approached him, although he had a smile for his constable and a nod of greeting for the CSIS agent.  “Agent Rook.”

 

“Dr. Allen.”  Rook looked the wide-eyed yellow backhoe over, trying not to let his trepidation show.  “You’re Scoop?”

 

“That’s me.”  Scoop blinked at him.  “You’re Agent Rook?”

 

“That would be me.”  Rook glanced at Charlie, saw he wasn’t going to get any help from that direction the way he had from Rickey with Bob McKinney, and decided just to plunge right in.  “You were with Mr…”  Rickey elbowed him – hard – and the agent corrected himself with a frown for the near-oversight.  “You were with Bob when the house collapsed, right?”

 

The yellow bucket bobbed a nod.  “Yes, I was.  Farmer Pickles was there too, and Spud.”

 

“Okay.”  Rook had already had it explained to him why it wouldn’t do any good to question Spud, and had secretly been more than relieved – the idea of the A.I. scarecrow freaked him out even more than the talking, thinking, potentially homicidal machines did.  “So I hear you’re Bob’s regular ride when he goes out on a job, right?”  The bucket bobbed again.  “Okay, you took him out there yesterday.  Had the two of you gone out there before that?”

 

The bucket shook from side to side, making the backhoe rock a little bit on its tracks.  “Not since last winter, when we were clearing the roads.  They hadn’t needed anything fixed.”

 

“Okay.”  The agent paused for a moment, making sure he phrased his next question carefully.  “Do you know what explosives are, Scoop?”

 

“I know what explosives are – we use blasting caps to take out stumps.  Bob always makes us stay back when he sets them off.”  Scoop visibly thought the matter over.  “We haven’t had to do that for a long time.  But it wasn’t Bob’s blasting caps that made the house fall down.”

 

Rook was surprised by the intuitive leap, and it showed.  “How do you know that?”

 

Scoop made a movement with the bucket that was almost a shrug.  “Bob uses special ones that make colored smoke, so he can tell what he did from anything that might be a fire.  But there wasn’t very much smoke at the Millers’ house, and it was white.  If it had been one of ours, it should have been green and gone straight up in the air.”  He eyed the agent a bit suspiciously.  “You didn’t think Bob blew up their house, did you?  He wouldn’t have done that.”

 

Another surprise.  Either the machine was damned smart, or someone had been coaching it – and Rook doubted it was the latter.  “Why not?”

 

Whirling up beside the larger machine, Dizzy laughed.  “Because then we’d have to build another one, silly!”

 

Scoop laughed too, but he shook his bucket at her.  “Dizzy, Charlie said you’re not supposed to interrupt, remember?”

 

“Oops!  Sorry!”  The little mixer whirled off again, and Scoop turned an apologetic gaze on Rook.  “Don’t be mad at her, she just forgot.”

 

“That’s okay, she’s fine.”  He saw Charlie’s eyebrow go up and quickly added, “I’m not mad – and she answered my question, anyway.  So is that right?  Bob wouldn’t have blown up the house because then you’d have to build another one?  What if he’d just wanted the house gone?”

 

Scoop blinked at him.  “You don’t tear a house down just because it has fungus in the attic, that would be wasteful.”

 

“Did you see the fungus?” the agent wanted to know.

 

“Bob showed it to me once he had it in a bag,” the backhoe told him.  “I thought Lee was right about it looking like mushrooms, but Bob said it was just related to mushrooms and that was why it looked like that.  He was really unhappy that it was growing in the Millers’ attic.  He said that  meant whoever had built the house was sloppy and probably only cared about doing things fast, not doing them right.”

 

Rickey coughed into his hand, and Rook had to smile; so that was what the constable had kept interrupting back at the medical center, a long-winded and no-doubt passionate rant about incompetent builders and the crappy work that they did.  The agent nodded to the backhoe.  “I can see why he would be unhappy about that, yeah.  Bob takes a lot of pride in his work, does he?”

 

“We all do!  The only way to do a job is to do it right!”  The backhoe grinned at him, pride shining in its big round eyes, and Rook recognized the source of the grin immediately even though he’d never actually seen the man it had to have come from using it.  Which was yet another hole in his theory that marked McKinney as a sidelines suspect; if he was reading it right, a guy who shares his passion for quality work with someone to that extent isn’t very likely to sacrifice the person he’d shared it with just to clear the way for some nookie – no matter how pretty his little blonde secret girlfriend happens to be or how mad he is at his boss on her behalf.

 

The agent cleared his throat.  “Sounds like your boss is my kind of builder,” he said, meaning it, and saw Charlie almost visibly relax. Interesting; he’d follow up on that later.  “I bet he’s got lots of friends around here, with a work ethic like that.”

 

“Everyone likes Bob,” Scoop confirmed.  “Even Mr. Bentley, even though he pretends he doesn’t sometimes.”  The backhoe correctly interpreted Rook’s surprised expression as a need for further explanation and provided it without being asked.  “He has to pretend, because he’s our building inspector and Bob does the work that he inspects, so he has to be professional when it’s about work.”

       

“So he’s nice to Bob the rest of the time?”

 

Scoop shrugged again.  “He’s Mr. Bentley-nice.”

 

“Mr. Bentley’s a very…formal sort of guy,” Rickey put in quietly. 

 

He looked amused, not worried, which Rook took to mean that the island’s constable didn’t think Bentley hadn’t been pretending.  Still, the agent made a mental note to ask the guy some questions anyway.  “I think I know what you mean,” Rook told Scoop.  “What about the Millers, did you know them?  How did they like Bob?”

 

 “I knew who they were, but we didn’t seem them very often – I’d only met Mrs. Miller once.  They never had any work for us to do at their house, until the fungus.”  Another bucket-shrug.  “I know Lee liked Bob, and he wasn’t pretending.  I could tell.” 

 

“Okay.”  Somehow Rook didn’t doubt that – and even if he had, he wouldn’t have questioned it right here and now.  He cleared his throat again.  “I need to ask you about Wendy now.”

 

“Everybody likes Wendy too.”

 

“I’m sure they do.”  But the agent didn’t smile.  “Scoop, can you think of anyone besides Bob who really likes Wendy?  Maybe someone who comes around to see her when Bob’s not there?”       

 

Rickey’s mouth dropped open, and Charlie actually gasped.  Rook saw that the backhoe had noticed both reactions.  “Do you mean,” Scoop asked slowly, after a long moment of thought, “do I think anyone was jealous enough of Bob to want to hurt him?”    

 

Rook kept his own jaw from dropping with an effort.  “Yes, that’s what I mean.”

 

The yellow bucket nodded acknowledgement.  “Then no, not anymore.  There was a man once, who came to work at the labs for a while.  A scientist.  He came to see Wendy when Bob wasn’t there, and then he came to see Bob when Wendy wasn’t there – he said he didn’t know she wasn’t there, but he did.  I could tell.  He wasn’t nice to Bob, and he ignored all of us.  But he was only here for a few days, and then he left the island and never came back.”

 

“Because I wouldn’t let him.”  That came from Charlie.  “Two years ago, Dr. Chester Langfield.  He’d met Wendy while she was at the mainland training center, and he’d apparently thought she would be happy to keep him entertained while he was visiting the island.  She sent him packing after a couple of days, and I recalled him to headquarters early.”  That had been addressed to Rook, but then he turned his full attention on the surprised backhoe.  “Mr. Beasley was walking by the yard that day, Scoop, and he heard what Dr. Langfield said to Bob.  He and some other people told me that Dr. Langfield’s behavior was unacceptable, so I told him he couldn’t come back to Sunflower Valley again.”

 

Scoop’s eyes were wide.  “Was he mad?”

 

Rook had wanted to ask that question too.  “No, he wasn’t,” Charlie told both of them.  “Dr. Langfield is a not-very-nice person because he doesn’t care about what other people think or how they feel.  He was only jealous of Bob because Bob had Wendy’s attention and Dr. Langfield wanted her to pay attention to him instead.”

 

The backhoe was nodding thoughtfully.  “I understand that.”  He looked over at Rook.  “Did you understand that, Agent Rook?”

 

“Yeah, I understood it.”  The agent raised an eyebrow at Charlie.  “So Dr. Langfield wasn’t emotionally invested in the first place, and he’s never been back here since?”  The scientist shook his head, and Rook sighed.  “No other complaints in the last two years, from here or the mainland?”

 

“Not a single one.”

“Maybe he was confused.”

 

The apparent non-sequitur startled Rook.  “What?  Who?”

 

“Lee.  Maybe he was confused.”  Scoop looked at him as though it were obvious.  “The way Matt was a few months ago.  People had told him things that weren’t true, and he was confused; that was why he tried to hurt Bob and he took Wendy.”  A shiver of emotion went through the backhoe’s yellow frame.  “Could Lee have made his house fall on Bob because someone had told him things that weren’t true?” 

 

 “It’s possible, Scoop,” Rickey answered carefully.  “But we can’t accuse people of doing things – even if we think they may have just been confused – unless we can prove that they did them.  Do you know something that makes you think Lee might have been responsible for what happened?”

 

The backhoe shrugged.  “Not really – not like a proof-something, anyway.  But why would Lee have lied to Bob about the fungus if he didn’t know about the explosives?”

 

“That’s a good point,” Rook commended.  “It’s not proof, but it’s a good point – and that’s a question I’m going to be asking Lee once we find him.”  Something else occurred to him.  “How did you know Lee lied about the fungus?”

 

“Bob said he didn’t see any, when he was on the roof of the house.  And I didn’t see any after the house fell down, not on any of the roof beams.”

 

“You looked for it?”

 

Another shrug.  “I was helping Lofty move the beams out of the way.  I didn’t see any fungus on any of them, or in any of the other wreckage, and Bob had said the sample Lee had given him was so big that there was probably going to be lots of fungus in the attic.  But I didn’t see any at all, and Lofty and Spud didn’t either.”

 

“You’re right, there wasn’t any,” Rook confirmed.  “So we do know Lee lied about that.”  That led to a question he really didn’t want to ask – the backhoe, anyway.  “How did you know that Bob wasn’t the one who lied?”

 

He’d been afraid the question might make the backhoe angry, but it was the little orange cement mixer that shrieked.  “Hey!  Bob doesn’t lie to us!  Bob wouldn’t…Bob’s not a bad man, he doesn’t do bad things like that!”

 

“Dizzy, he knows that.”  Scoop raised his voice just enough to cut through her shrieking, sounding disapproving in an older-brother sort of way.  “He asked how I knew Bob didn’t lie.”

 

“Oh.”  She was still trembling, and she moved closer to the backhoe and looked at Rook.  “Sorry. “

 

“That’s okay,” the agent told her.  “You thought I was calling Bob a liar, I understand why that would upset you.  Scoop?” 

 

 “I was there when Lee brought the fungus to the yard,” the backhoe said immediately.  “He didn’t go into the office with it, he knocked and said he wasn’t sure he should bring it in so Bob came outside to talk to him instead.”

 

Rook smiled.  “That’s really good, Scoop.  We call that kind of proof ‘eyewitness testimony,’ and it’s one of the best kinds there is.”  Out of the corner of his eye he saw Agent Dirk approaching them and moved to head her off.  “I’ll be right back, just a second.”

 

Dizzy was frowning.  “Does that kind of proof mean that Lee will get punished and have to go stay in the jail?”

 

“If Lee  - or whoever – did all of these bad things then yes, he’ll have to go to jail,” Rickey confirmed.  “But he won’t go to my little jail, they’ll put him in a really big jail called a prison and he’ll be there for a really long time.”

 

Scoop hummed over that, bucket nodding.  “I remember Bob said that how long you stay in jail depends on how bad the thing you did was.”

 

Dizzy snorted.  “Then Lee should be in there forever!”

 

“If he did the bad things, he could be,” Charlie told her.  “But even if he isn’t in there forever, he won’t ever be coming back here.”

 

“No, he won’t be.”  Rook was back, without Dirk.  He gave the curious backhoe and the mixer a tight smile and a nod.  “Thanks for answering my questions.  I may come back out here to talk with you again later, if that’s okay with you.”

 

“Yeah, it’s okay,” Scoop replied, bucket bobbing.  He reversed himself and backed up a little, getting ready to turn around.  “You’re trying to help fix things.  That’s a good thing to do.”

       

“Thanks, I appreciate that.”  He waved a hand at the two equally curious men.  “Charlie, Constable, if you wouldn’t mind coming with me?  We’ve had…a development.” 

 

 

Jenny was curled up on the end of one of the overstuffed sofas in the lodge’s great room, staring into the fire.  She felt like she hadn’t done anything but think for the past day and a half – ever since the white helicopter had carried off her sister and left her behind at the lodge, ever since she’d been given ‘full clearance’ and had found out exactly what had been going on in nice, quiet, perfect Sunflower Valley.  A shooting.  A kidnapping.  A daring, idiotic rescue.  A night in jail for her sister’s boyfriend.  And rumors of a marriage proposal, to her sister from same – after the shooting, before the kidnapping and the jail.

 

Many aspects of this situation made her mad.  The Project gagging everyone so they couldn’t talk about it, even though she understood the reason why.  The idiot contractor turned prospective fiancé turned heroic rescuer who’d just had to be a boyscout and turn himself in at the jail after doing his rescuer thing, leaving her sister alone that night – although she understood the reason for that, too.  Jenny wasn’t stupid, but understanding didn’t stop her from being angry.  At the Project.  At Bob.

 

At Wendy.  Not because she hadn’t said anything, but because Jenny knew that if she’d told someone that she needed to talk to her sister about things, they would have worked out some sort of clearance for her to do so in a heartbeat.  But she hadn’t asked, which meant that a good chunk of the silence between she and her sister actually had been Wendy’s fault.  And Bob’s for not pushing the issue.  And the Project’s for not realizing there was an issue there in the first place – did they think people just ‘got over’ being kidnapped out of their own homes at gunpoint?  And as far as gunpoint went, Bob was probably messed up in the head over it too.  He wouldn’t have asked to talk to his brother Tom any more than Wendy would have asked to talk to Jenny.  Thinking of Tom made her snort softly; she hadn’t met Bob’s twin, but Wendy had told her about him.  If they thought she was mad…

 

The sometime lift attendant who was actually a seismologist, Jeff, came into the room and settled on the other end of Jenny’s couch, reaching for the TV remote.  Jenny started to get up; she just wasn’t in the mood to lose herself in digital drivel.  Jeff, however, waved her back down.  “No, I think you’ll want to see this,” he said, flicking until he found a news channel.  “They found the Millers.”

 

Jenny’s blue eyes narrowed.  The Millers were the ones whose house had been rigged to kill Bob; they’d conveniently left on ‘vacation’ the day prior to the incident, telling everyone in town that they hadn’t wanted to be in Bob’s way while he checked out the dry rot that was supposedly eating up their roof.  She turned around, facing the man and the television.  “I thought this had to be kept quiet, how did it hit the news?”

 

Jeff made a face.  “Somebody shot them, it’s a murder investigation.  And we have to let it run, the Project can’t even have anybody remotely connected with us show up over there.  It would tip off whoever’s behind it all, we might never catch them if that happened.”

 

“Good point.”  It was.  They watched the news unravel, most of it beyond Jenny’s interest at the moment, but then the segment devoted to the murders came up and she concentrated on soaking in every detail.  Lee and Tonya Miller, both shot execution style in the upstairs master bedroom of a house that was empty and on the market in a quiet suburban neighborhood.  Police suspected they’d been looking at the house with a realtor, and neighbors confirmed seeing a dark-haired man driving a white sedan with the realty company’s logo on the side at the house the evening before.  No signs of forced entry.  No signs of violence, other than the shooting itself.  The realty company hadn’t had an agent out there in two months, and it was assumed that the Millers knew their killer…Jenny’s mouth fell open.  “They…”

 

“Spies, had to be.”  Jeff’s voice was flat, he looked sick.  “I know the investigative team said the Millers had to have known about the explosives, but…” he swallowed, “…but I guess we were all hoping they’d been…blackmailed or something.  They’d been up here before.  Nice, friendly people, just like everyone else in the Valley.”

 

Jenny shrugged; she’d never met them.  “Good actors,” she said.  “I guess you’d have to be, in that line of work.  How long had they been here?”

 

“Pretty much since the beginning.”  Jeff still looked a little off.  “They were some of the recruits from the international AI shutdown, Americans who’d been working for a lab in France.  Tonya liked to talk about France, I guess she’d really liked it there.”

 

“That would be a pretty cushy assignment,” Jenny agreed, and then she stopped, eyes widening at she stared at the man across from her.  “American scientists in France…I wonder if they were spies there too?”

 

Jeff stared back.  “Oh shit.”

 

 

That was the way Charlie felt about it as well; he, Constable Rickey and Agent Rook had retreated to the jail to discuss the new development privately, and none of them were very happy about it.  “We screened them and they passed,” Charlie kept saying.  “I interviewed them myself.  I hired someone else’s spies and stuck them right in the middle of the Project.”

 

“Where they hung around for two years and never caused any trouble at all,” Rickey reminded him.  “Maybe they’d gotten tired of the spy business and were playing it straight, maybe they’d even gotten out of the spy business and someone played a trump to call them back in.”

 

“That would have to be one hell of a trump if it got them gunning for Bob McKinney,” Agent Rook observed wryly.  He patted the file that was laying on the desk. “And I’m not gonna apologize for insisting on questioning him, but you were both right; his background is as squeaky clean as his kitchen.  If he has any enemies I think he’s probably sharing them with Captain America.”

 

Rickey looked up sharply at that.  “Captain America got taken out by an assassin’s bullet on the steps of the federal courthouse, Rook.”  He weathered Charlie’s chuckle with a shake of his head.  “Hey, we all have our things, you know?  Mine’s Cap – and I’ll have you know my collection’s worth enough for me to retire on.”

 

“Only if you’re able to actually let go of it,” Rook shot back, but he was grinning.  “I was always a Dark Knight man myself, but to each his own.  I’m just saying, your builder guy is Dudley Do-Right without the comedy, his closets just don’t have any skeletons in them.  This hit had to be job-related.”

 

“You mean machine related,” Charlie said with a sigh.  “And I’ve been telling you that from the beginning; we already knew nobody would target Bob unless they were trying to get to the machines.”

 

“Yeah, well now I know it too.”  Rook settled back a little more in his chair, running a wise eye over the older man.  “You know this isn’t your fault, right?  The Millers had to have been on deep cover to begin with, spying on the French program, maybe even sabotaging it a little here and there – we’ll most likely never know too much about that.  But your records don’t show any funny business going on the two years they’d been on your payroll, so I’m guessing whoever set them up just wanted intel.  Until now, of course.”

 

“Of course.”  Charlie was back to thinking, his words coming out in a distracted, offhand way.  “And I know, logically, that none of this is my fault – it isn’t any of our faults.”  That was tossed toward Rickey, who snorted but didn’t comment.  “What’s bothering me is that the only possible outcome of the…plan it looks like we’re uncovering would be to recreate the Sodor disaster.  And that doesn’t make any sense unless something bigger than corporate greed is involved.”

 

“Just say ‘The CIA did it’, would you?” Rook complained.  He made a face.  “We all know that’s where this is pointing, so there’s no sense the three of us dancing around it when it’s just the three of us.  The Millers were most likely American spies, we know that.  The corporation that sent your little gun-toting treehugger boy swimming over here was from the good old U.S. of A. too – and that corporation has government contracts out the wazoo.  I don’t have to be a big brain or some kooky conspiracy theorist to do that math and get the right answer.”

 

Charlie winced, and Rickey shook his head.  “Bob’s an American…”  The look on the other man’s face made him grimace.  “Okay, yeah, you’re right; they wouldn’t care about that.  And they weren’t stupid enough to try to turn him.”  Charlie winced again, and this time Rickey scowled.  “Nobody liked having to do it, Charlie – not you, not me, not Todd.  But Bob knew who he was talking to and yeah, he got a little upset by some of my questions, but dammit, who wouldn’t?”

 

“And those were the questions I insisted you had to ask if you didn’t want me to ask them, don’t forget that part.”  Rook got up and poured himself another cup of coffee.  “No one ever said this job didn’t suck, you know.  Nobody likes to question an injured witness, and I’m not exactly jumping for joy over here because I made you ask the Greatest American Boy Scout if he was really a terrorist who tried to kill his own girlfriend while he’s laying in a hospital bed with a cracked skull.”   

 

“We had to ask,” Rickey reiterated, shaking his head.  “After what we found at Wendy’s, and then her neighbors saying they’d seen Bob up working on the roof…we had to get his statement and Wendy’s so we could eliminate him as a suspect.  Between that and the building yard’s files, now we have proof positive that Bob couldn’t have been the person they saw.”

 

“Which probably means that the person they saw was Lee,” Charlie put in glumly, slouching a little more in his seat.  “Up on the roof of Wendy’s house, planting explosives and trying to frame Bob for killing her.”

 

“It might have worked if your boy hadn’t accidentally set off the explosives in the Miller house while he was on their roof,” Rook observed, sipping his coffee.  “Near as our expert can tell, the trigger for those explosives was on the trap door to the attic; he’d have been dead before the dust had settled if he’d been standing where they expected him to be.”

 

“Thank God for dumb luck,” Rickey said with feeling. “Bob’s had a lot of it going his way lately.”

 

This story has not been completed.