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baby.”
    “We got to get a picture of this monster,” one said, and corralled a pair of the lovers to operate the camera so all four of them, and the fish, could be in it.
    Taylor waited until the couple had snapped several pictures, then tossed the fish back over the side.
    “Oh,” one of the old timers said.  “It’s a shame you lost your handle on that honey.  She’d have fed a family for a week,” but the other two seemed to know exactly what happened.
    Taylor would gladly take a filleting knife to Arlen Cob.  Maybe even Alexander Longknife, but he had no wish to take out his frustrations on some poor fish that just happened to get in his way at the wrong time.
    Besides, his wife hated fish, no matter who cleaned them.
    Taylor folded up his gear, cleaned it at the washing station, and headed back to where he’d rented it, all the time contemplating the need to warn Leslie and the even stronger need to keep his fingerprints off any alert. 
    The four retirees were at the rental place.  They included one Taylor thought he remembered.
    “Albert, can I borrow your phone?  Being on vacation, I seem to have left mine on the dresser.”
    Albert, who’d retired five years ago from the Bureau, couldn’t avoid the flick of his eyes that took in the computer at Taylor’s wrist, but he was offering his own commlink without batting an eyelash.
    Taylor typed out a quick message.  I left a file relating to our last case in my secure briefcase.  Be careful retrieving it, I wouldn’t want you splashed with acid.
    Taylor handed the commlink back.  Albert glanced at the message before he did the unique magic that got messages sent over the different net providers and various equipment systems that somehow could never standardize on a single interface.
    “The old acid security joke, huh.  She a new kid?” Albert asked after reading the old joke.
    “Still new enough to benefit from a warning to keep safe,” Taylor admitted.
    “She the kid that came out to have lunch with you?”
    “Yep.”
    “They get younger every year.  Next year I swear, they’ll be recruiting in kindergarten.”
    Taylor laughed at the old joke and headed for home.  With any luck, Leslie would get the message, know what it really meant, and take the caution to heart without it being traced back to Taylor.
    He whistled softly to himself as he waited for the bus.  One was along as soon as the transit company promised and he was home before the kids got off from school.  Today, he’d see if he could still do eighth grade homework.  His two upper school kids would, no doubt, turn up their nose at dad’s offer of help.
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter 9
     
     
    Next morning, Taylor actually did do something vacation-like.  He took his wife to the Japanese Gardens on a hill above Wardhaven.  They walked the quiet grounds, listening to a water wheel and the soft call of birds.  Sitting on a cool stone bench, quietly letting a rock garden whisper to them, his wife said.
    “You’re not really on holiday, are you?”
    “I’m here with you,” he countered.
    “Physically.  Today.  Yesterday.  The day before that.  Please don’t lie to me, and no, I don’t want to know what is actually going on. I’ve survived twenty-seven years as a Bureau wife.  Just don’t make me a widow.  I deserve the full retirement pension.  It may be double of you and half of the pay, but it beats what widows get.  You hear me.”
    ‘I think I do.”
    “Good.  Be careful.”
    “I will.”
    The next day he took her to a movie she’d been wanting to see.  The leading character was one his wife swore she was in lust with, almost more than with him.  He paid extra to get seats near the center of the theater.  That gave them the best view of everything happening around them.
    “I love the way you always know when he comes on stage,” his wife said.  “Some of the new actors these days, they can be on stage a couple of minutes before you know