Borderline [On hold for major revision]

Chapter 19: Reminiscence

Chapter 19

Terra woke up at six in the morning and suddenly remembered something. She was supposed to have picked up some security tapes for Cal last night.

            Whoops.

            She groaned and sat up in bed. She considered herself a morning person, but still hated the few minutes after waking up when her mind was all foggy and every little sound in the room seemed louder than a train wreck.

            After she dressed in her CBP uniform, she decided to run rather than drive to Bambino Orso, the Italian restaurant where Cal had been attacked a few days earlier. It was also where she’d gotten food for him and his family yesterday, so maybe the guy would recognize her. That would probably make things easier.

            The restaurant was only three miles from her house, so she managed to make it in just under twenty minutes. She stood outside the door a moment, enjoying the cool air of the early morning. After taking a deep breath of fresh air, she decided to just get it over with and go inside.

            The door was unlocked, but no one was there. She forgot that they didn’t open until two in the afternoon since they only served dinner. She shrugged and went inside anyway.

            She had expected to need to go rooting around through things to find the tapes she was looking for, but they were sitting right on top of the counter in a takeout bag for her to pick up. She grabbed the bag and wrote a note on a napkin thanking the guy—whoever he was—for letting them borrow them.

            It took her a few minutes longer to make it back home since she’d had a bag banging against her leg as she ran, but it wasn’t even seven yet by the time she was back at her house.

            Cal had been secretive about what was on the tapes that he needed her to pick up, but it was really easy to guess what the whole thing was about. He was probably curious about who it was that was chasing him that day when that secretary was shot. She decided to watch them first to see if she could find anything before he had a chance too. It would save him the time and satisfy her own curiosity all at once. Kill two birds with one stone, as her dad used to always tell her.

            She didn’t have a VHS player plugged in anymore, but she dug through some cardboard boxes in her attic and managed to pull out an old one she hadn’t used in years. She spent a few minutes trying to figure out how to turn it on, and finally the screen turned a fuzzy gray and she knew it was working.

            She slid one of the security tapes into the player and waited for it to come on. She pressed the play button when the date came up, but then paused it so she could get some popcorn. If things were as crazy as Cal described, watching these security tapes would be more fun than seeing a movie.

            It turned out that the first two were duds. The restaurant wasn’t very accurate with their time stamps and she had to fast-forward through four hours of random strangers eating to find what she wanted. When she got to it, she slowed down the video to half the regular speed so that she wouldn’t miss anything.

            For the first couple minutes everything seemed normal. Cal sat at one of the tables meant for four people outside next his date and they ordered drinks. The secretary seemed to be talking nonstop, and Cal had the same bored look that he had when Rogers used to berate him about insubordination. Suddenly, though, his head shot up like he remembered or perhaps realized something, then he twisted to view a lone man sitting next to them. Cal abruptly grabbed the Rivera woman and dove out of his chair to the ground away from the man he’d been looking at. The camera didn’t have any audio, but Terra could just make out some of the stuffing inside the cushioned chair puffing upwards. That must have been when the shooting started.