Harry Torgle nestled in the dense landscaping between two palms. His head was spinning. Was he a good person? Surely waking America from beneath the wool of corporate greed and government corruption was a noble cause. And though Wakey, Wakey founder Roland Bellmeade had never tasked him with anything truly important, the tap dancing in his stomach told him this time was different. So did the nondescript car, never before seen on this street. It unnerved him. Eyes glued to the car, he nearly missed the woman fumbling at the base of his picnic table. His gut sank to his feet as she snagged his message.
Careful not to rustle the bushes, he whipped out his cell and texted:
PKG TAKEN. ORDERS?
An eternity of thirty seconds later, his phone buzzed a response:
RECOVER IT.
He cursed under his breath and fingered the lump at the small of his back. A cold sweat soaked his shirt. The last group member to fail a mission had washed up near Tampa Bay. Disappointing Bellmeade was not an option.
Kari Hamlin ran. She ran a little so she could keep eating burgers and pizza and drinking margaritas, but mostly to clear her head. Today's obsession was her perfect brother, Eric, who won trophies in wrestling, medallions for the National Honor Society, and merit badges in Boy Scouts. Even now, nearly twenty years later, Eric had the career and the family, while she survived mostly on temp jobs and temporarily good relationships.
Her phone rang, interrupting Soft Cell's relationship rant and jarring her back to the present. Without thinking, she smacked her bicep, where a sports band plastered her smartphone securely in place.
"Hey, Sis," said Eric.
Kari's face pinched as she slowed to answer. "Hey," she said between huffs.
"Is this a bad time?"
"Hold on a sec," said Kari, surveying the area for a place to rest. Luckily, she was near a tiny park complete with picnic tables, grill-out stations, and palm fronds swaying in the breeze.
She jogged toward the back row of tables, slunk onto a woven metal bench and wrestled her phone from the armband. But while raising the phone to her ear, Kari's elbow bumped the adjoining picnic table, knocking the phone from her grasp.
"Shit!" she said.
Muted sounds of her brother's voice echoed. "Kari?"
Praying a colony of spiders wasn't partying beneath the bench, she dropped to all fours and reached for her phone. That’s when she noticed it--a folded sticky note affixed to the inner side of the bench's front lip.
She grabbed the note and her phone then plopped onto the bench. "Sorry about that, Eric. You still there?"
"Yeah. Is everything okay?"
"I'm fine," said Kari. "I'm out for a run and my headphones are shit, so I couldn’t hear at first. Then, of course, I dropped my phone."
Eric chuckled. "Sounds like you. Anyway, I was calling because Jane and I . . ."
Images of Eric's perfect wife, Jane, filled Kari's head. She could almost hear the cheesy-toothpaste-commercial ding coming off Jane's gleaming smile. Plus, anytime Eric started with "Jane and I," Kari ended up on a blind date of epic fail proportion. So, she decided to tune him out and look at the note, unfolding it while murmuring a few timely uh-huhs. What she found was unusual--a string of letters and numbers, a-0-are-51-spy.
