Kate James - When I Found You

“Appreciate it, Carly,” he said, when she placed the bottles and glass, along with a small bowl of nuts, in front of them.

“I like adaptability in a person,” he said with a chuckle when they were alone again, gesturing to her beer.

Obviously he wanted to change the subject.

He raised his bottle and clinked it to Ariana’s glass, then took a long, slow sip. “What made you choose security as a career?” he asked.

“I thought you wanted to discuss your new procedures.”

“I do. It doesn’t mean we can’t get to know each other a little first. With Brody gone, we’re likely to be working together again.” He flashed her a smile.

Ariana placed her glass back on the coaster, reached for a candied nut, popped it in her mouth. Okay, they could play it his way. She was curious about him, too. “It matters to me to make a difference. Keeping people safe is important.”

“And why the airport?”

She tilted her head. “I’ve been fascinated by airplanes since I was a kid. My father was an engineer. He went to school in England, where his father was from. I learned about mechanics and laws of physics from an early age, but to this day I remain in awe of the fact that we can get a nearly four-hundred-thousand-pound, one-hundred-and-fifty-or sixty-foot wingspan piece of machinery, loaded with people and cargo, into the air, and it stays there over great distances.” She laughed. “Silly, I know, but flying fascinates me.”

“I never thought of it that way.” He watched her for a few moments. “If you don’t mind me saying, you don’t look British.”

“My grandfather was English. My grandmother, Brazilian.”

His long, contemplative gaze caused all sorts of odd sensations inside her.

“That explains it,” he said, and surprised her by touching the back of her hand. “And it explains the color of your hair. But where does the eye color come from? Your father?”

She chuckled. “My mother’s side. She’s blonde and blue-eyed, as mostly everyone is on her side of the family. American for generations, but her ancestry is Swedish.”

“That’s an interesting combination. Do your parents live in California?”

“No. They moved back to England a couple of years ago. Enough about me,” she interjected before he could ask her more questions. She didn’t want him digging any deeper, even though she found it effortless to talk to him. “What about you? Why did you become a cop?”

“I wanted to make a difference,” he said with an easy smile, echoing her own words. “I wanted to contribute in a positive way to people’s lives. And it runs in my family. Both my father and grandfather were lifers on the job. My father was the chief of police for Burbank.”

She thought his eyes were clouded with sorrow for a moment.

“My parents, my mother in particular, might have wanted for a different career for me,” he continued. “Maybe a doctor or a lawyer, but that wasn’t happening. I wanted to be a cop as far back as I can remember.”

His comment made her think of her own childhood dream of becoming a police officer, but she pushed it aside. “If you’re from Burbank, what brought you to San Diego?”

He raised a shoulder, let it drop again. “My dad was a hero. A figure larger than life. As much as I loved and admired him, I didn’t want to live in his shadow. I also wanted to know that I’d be making it on my own. Not because of who he was, what he’d accomplished or how highly people regarded him. I wanted it to be on my own merits. I wanted to build my own career.”

Ariana watched him carefully, searching for any sign of bitterness or envy, but all she saw was pride and admiration. To her, that said a lot about Logan, and it was all good. She saw a decency and a depth she hadn’t expected.

“Speaking of making a difference,” Ariana said with a smile. “What will happen to the women on Flight 396?”

Logan grunted. “Yeah, we made a big difference there! They’ve been charged, as I said. Public mischief. It’ll probably be reduced to a misdemeanor. Even before they sobered up, they were both bawling. It only got worse when their parents showed up.” The laughter was gone. “They won’t soon forget it. Nor should they.” He reached out, brushed his hand over hers again. “But it gave me a chance to meet you.”

His proximity and especially his touch triggered those sensations again. She absorbed the warmth that had come into his cool blue eyes. “There is that,” she said softly, and meant it, but she leaned back, subtly sliding her hand out from under his.

Logan reached for his bottle and took another drink. “So, will there be civil consequences for the women? They inconvenienced nearly two hundred other passengers, and the cost to the airline, the airport, not to mention the military for the fighter jet escort...” He rolled his eyes at that. “The expense has got to be substantial.”

Ariana didn’t know what to make of the feelings he was stirring up inside her and tried to remind herself of all the reasons why she wasn’t interested in him. With effort, she concentrated on the question he’d posed. “Yes, there are significant costs associated with the incident, but I don’t think there’ll be any legal action. The airline might do some posturing, mostly as a deterrent to other would-be troublemakers. They’ll have to cover costs associated with rebooking passengers who might’ve missed connecting flights to some of the outer islands and, if need be, overnight accommodations as well as the expense of bringing the plane back. Pursuing a claim against the women would cost them more money than they could hope to recover.” She shrugged. “The military escort? I have no idea how much that would’ve cost. We got confirmation that they used the incident as a training exercise, as we suspected. For the airport...” She smiled again. “It’s all in a day’s work for us. What about the police department?”

“All in a day’s work, too. For us, the real issue is that while we’re dealing with something like that, we’re not out there addressing real threats to the public. With our limited resources, it’s about trade-offs. We prioritize based on risk—likelihood and potential outcome. Though the likelihood of an explosive device being aboard that plane was deemed negligible, we couldn’t ignore it. That means we weren’t dealing with other matters.”

“I get that. There are never enough resources to do all that needs doing,” she murmured. She was thinking of her own department as much as the police.

“You’re right.”

Sipping her beer, she looked around. She watched a young couple sitting near the middle of the room and frowned.

“Hey, you with me here?”

Ariana shifted her gaze back to Logan and let out a short laugh. “Sorry. I can’t help it. It’s sort of a game I play, whenever I have a quiet moment in a public place.”

“What kind of game?”

This time the discomfort came through in her chuckle. “Since I was a kid, when I first decided I wanted to...” she’d been about to say “be a cop,” but caught herself “...to work in my field, I’ve tried profiling people. Maybe that’s the wrong word. I don’t mean like what law enforcement organizations do. Just reading people better, I suppose. I took a course in college, too. I do it mostly to amuse myself. It does come in handy at times in my field, though, as you can imagine. Studies have shown that profiling airport passengers based on their behaviors can be an effective adjunct to security screening. I like to watch people and try to figure out what they’re all about.”

She saw his eyes track to the couple she’d been observing. He motioned with his bottle toward them. “So, what’s their story?”