Borderline [On hold for major revision]

Chapter 4: The Meeting Was...Crashed

I decided that I want this story to be less action-y than past writings of mine (mostly because it's becoming monotonous to write much of the time) so I decided to kind of squeeze it all into the beginning. This will be pretty much the main action scene up until around chapter 30 or so (which at the time I'm typing this I haven't gotten around to posting on Wattpad yet), but with short action scenes scattered throughout the beginning chapters. Just wanted to give any readers a head's up in case that discourages you from reading farther.

Dedicated to MaitreyatheNovel for pointing out all those pesky [LG]s and for being a generally awesome person.

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Chapter 4

Sierra was already at the restaurant when I got there that evening. The place was almost completely deserted, probably because the sun set a half an hour ago and it was way past regular people's dinnertime. We decided to sit outside in the cool night air with birds chirping around us. I'm not one to get sentimental, but it sounded kind of pretty.

Once we were seated, I took out a pencil and unfolded the napkin at the table in case I needed to take notes or write anything down. “So, what is an oral report?” I said. “Do you just ask questions and I answer them? I've never actually had to do this before.”

“Something like that. But we have plenty of time for all that, for now let’s just…talk.”

Suddenly I gave Terra’s earlier words a lot more credibility than I had before. Sierra was starting to sound a little creepy. And I hadn’t noticed it before, but she was wearing an expensive-looking green dress that was several times more formal than my old jeans, plaid flannel shirt, and boots.

"So, tell me about yourself," she said. Okay, I think that may be the number one most cliché comment anyone has ever said to me. This meeting was going in a completely different direction than I was intending.

"Uh...how much detail do you want me to go into?"

"Just whatever you want to share. Childhood, likes, dislikes, you know...about yourself."

I knew I didn’t have any obligation to answer and the smart thing to do would be to leave and wait until official CBP hours to talk to her about the actual report I was supposed to be giving, but I went ahead anyway. "Alright then. Um...” I hesitated for a moment, then laid out my entire life’s story.

I told her about my home in Arizona that was far too small for the amount of people living there, my religious upbringing in a private school that we barely managed to afford, even about my pet hamster named Bucky. She listened the entire time, but seemed to perk up when I talked about my brief stint in the FBI up in Sacramento working on a taskforce as part of the Innocence Lost Initiative. I wasn’t there long before I realized that I belonged down south and was recruited into the Border Patrol.

Finally, I ran out of things to say and just sat there in silence. A server came and took my order, and while he was getting Sierra’s marked down I took the opportunity to look around.

Someone had clearly gone to a lot of trouble to make the place appear fancy; they succeeded too. All of the twelve tables evenly spaced in the outdoor seating area were covered with tablecloths and menus. There were ornate lanterns hanging above each door and in the middle of the group of tables. Italian renaissance music played lightly in the background. Since we had arrived, two groups of people had shown up as well. One was a family of three, a man and woman with a small toddler-aged girl. All three of them were giggling as they took their seats several feet away from us. Then there was another man in the table next to us. He looked really focused on something, but I couldn't see what it was. All of this was enclosed behind a four-foot high cobblestone wall surrounding the veranda on every side.