Carole Buck - Resolved To

“Thanks. I’m gonna wait a couple of weeks before I start programming the specialty functions. ‘Cause, like, I figure people need time to get used to the basic system before they can decide what kind of shortcuts they want.”

“That sounds sensible.”

“Just one thing.” Wayne’s expression became wheedling, underscoring his youth. “Are you sure you don’t want me to load the encryption system I showed you last week? I’ve been using it at my workstation since Christmas. It’s awesome, Lucy.”

“I’m sure it is.” So awesome, she didn’t have a due about how it worked or why the agency would want to utilize it. About the only thing she remembered from the enthusiastic demonstration Wayne had given her was the sequence of keystrokes that supposedly enabled him to send coded E-mail anywhere in the world.

“Well, then—”

“We’re not the Pentagon, Wayne.”

“Jeez, I hope not! Do you have any idea how easy it is to access most of the Defense Department’s data banks?”

Lucy stiffened, flashing on a scenario in which Gulliver’s Travels was invaded by federal agents and shut down as a hotbed of hacker activity.

“Oh, hey...” the young man forged on, apparently oblivious of the alarm his previous—and pray God, rhetorical—query had triggered. “Speaking of security and breaking into things. You know how we’ve been wondering what they’ve been storing in the vault next door? Well, a friend of a friend of a friend of mine knows this guy who’s related to somebody in the police department, and he says he heard—”

“Wayne!”

The source of this urgent exclamation was Jim Burns, another one of Gulliver’s Travels’ top agents. He was short, superenergized and given to wearing plaid shirts with polka-dot ties. His rather checkered résumé included stints as a short-order cook and a used-car salesman.

“Jimmy?” Lucy questioned, instantly concerned. The last time she’d seen her co-worker looking so distressed had been the day he discovered that the cruise package he’d put together as the grand prize for a local Halloween charity ball had landed the couple who’d won it in the middle of a modern-day pirate drama. The aftermath of the episode—the capture and prosecution of the members of a drug-smuggling operation—had been front-page news. Fortunately, Gulliver’s Travels had suffered no negative PR fallout. Not only that, the couple who had gotten caught up in the adventure had already booked another trip through the agency. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m being overrun by aliens from a parallel universe!”

She gawked. Aliens from a parallel universe?

“Did you try the death beam?” Wayne asked calmly, unfolding his lanky frame and getting to his feet.

“Nonfunctional.” Jimmy pulled out a handkerchief and blotted his perspiration-sheened brow. “Even worse, I forfeited my powers of transmogrification when I cut a deal with the Fungocians on level three.”

“You cut a deal with the Fungocians?” The office assistant was visibly startled. Even his nose ring seemed to quiver with disbelief. “Jeez, Jimmy. They’re the scum of the universe!”

“I thought I could double-cross them before they double-crossed me.”

“Never going to happen, dude.” Wayne glanced at Lucy. “‘Scuse me. I gotta go kick some alien butt.”

“Have fun,” she answered ironically.

Jimmy lingered in the doorway after the younger man exited. “Sorry about that, Lucy.”

She brushed the apology aside, not really upset at having had her conversation with Wayne interrupted. “Another computer game?” she asked knowingly.

“A Christmas gift from the kids.”

“Ah.”

The agent shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “I was only fiddling with it because things have been really slow.”

“No need to explain, Jimmy.” And there wasn’t. Jim Burns had his share of eccentricities. But when it came down to the crunch, Lucy knew he could be counted on to deliver for the agency. If he wanted to spend his spare moments fighting aliens from a parallel universe, she had no objections. “I know how quiet it’s been. I’m about ready to tell everyone to pack it in till next year.”

“Give us a jump on celebrating the auld lang syne, eh?”

“Something like that.”

“Everybody’s really excited about having the rest of the week off, you know.”

“It’s no more than you deserve. The agency had a terrific fourth quarter. Mr. Gulliver is going to be very pleased.”

“Have you heard from him lately?”

“Not since I got that fax requesting all those honeymoon brochures.”

“He actually got hitched on Christmas Eve, huh?”

“So I gather.”

“I’ll bet there’s quite a story behind that marriage.”

“Probably.” Lucy kept her voice noncommittal. What inside information she had about their elusive boss’s sudden plunge into matrimonial waters, she didn’t intend to share. Nor was she about to mention her unwitting but undeniably crucial role in the affair. “I don’t think we should go digging around trying to find out what it is, though.”

“Butt into Mr. Gulliver’s personal life?” Jimmy shook his head in unequivocal rejection. “No way. Nosiree. What he wants me to know, he’ll tell me. What he wants to keep private, I’m gonna keep my nose out of.” He paused, his expression turning thoughtful. “It kind of creeped me out in the beginning, you know. Mr. Gulliver’s only communicating with us through faxes, E-mail and over the phone, that is. And it was always business, business, business-with him. But I started sensing a change of tone right after Thanksgiving. Well, no. A little before that, actually. I mean, even though you said you’d square it away with him, I expected to get fired once he found out about my booking Josh and Cari Keegan on a cruise that turned out to be a front for drug runners! But the boss was really understanding about it. And then he personally picked up the tab for the agency’s Christmas open house—”

“The First Annual, Fabulously Famous Gulliver’s Travels Holiday Party, you mean,” Lucy corrected, invoking the grandiose title by which the bash was known around the office.

“Yeah. Right.” Jimmy grinned reminiscently. “That was some blowout, huh?”

“That it was.”

“Think the boss might spring for another shindig around Mardi Gras?”

“Jimmy!”

“Just kidding. Although it would be a good way to recycle those masks Tiffany bought for that big New Orleans promotion we did about eighteen months back.”

“I can definitely picture you wearing the one with the purple plumes,” she retorted with a quick laugh.

“Nah. I’ve got my eye on the alligator headpiece.” He winked. “Speaking of holiday shindigs—what kind of plans do you have for tonight?”

The query caught Lucy off guard, although it probably shouldn’t have. She managed a casual shrug and reverted to-the paper-shuffling ploy she’d used with Tiffany. “Oh, this and that.”

“Meaning you’re going to stay home by yourself. Just like last year. And the year before that.”

She looked up. She did not want to go through this again. “You think there’s something wrong with that?”

“No. Of course not. I mean, you have mixed feelings about the holiday, right? I can understand that.”

Lucy’s heart seemed to skip a beat. “You...can?”

“Sure. For all the hoopla, New Year’s Eve is really a time for taking stock. And that can be a little depressing. You find yourself looking back on all the things you intended to get done in the previous three-hundred-sixty-odd days and realizing that you never got around to doing any of ‘em. Then you feel compelled to make a bunch of resolutions that you know deep down you’re never going to—”