Two from the Heart(54)

Chapter 46


Six months later


It’s not CNN Breaking News. It’s just filler—a little human-interest story with a science twist. Correspondent Lisa Ling drew the short straw. It took her a day and a half just to get to the location. Now she’s standing in the middle of a dusty desert street, trying not to sweat through her pancake makeup. She holds the mic firmly under her chin and does a walk-and-talk toward the camera:

It’s a town so small, it doesn’t even have a name. Population, seven hundred.

And until this week, it was pretty much stuck in the Stone Age. It’s so remote, there was no cell reception, no cable service, and only a few primitive landlines. And, if you can believe it—just a single computer. But today, that’s all changed… thanks to a special dedicated communications satellite, designed, built, and donated by Bron Aerospace.



The report cuts to a pan of the Bron Aerospace logo, then dissolves to stock footage of an Atlas rocket launch, then back to Ling in a tight close-up.

That means big changes for businesses and for families here in the middle of nowhere… and especially for the schoolchildren…



The shot widens to show Ling surrounded by a crowd of kids, all holding up laptops and iPads.

… maybe our next generation of aerospace engineers. I’m Lisa Ling, for CNN.



Her eyes hold the camera, waiting for the clear sign. Behind her, a very happy ten-year-old boy jumps up into frame for an epic photo bomb—holding up an ornery rooster.





Chapter 47


BRON NEVER thought about buying a house. He was just fine with the two-bedroom luxury condo. And he certainly never thought about buying a place out here in the middle of the desert. But it turns out he really likes the quiet. And the open sky.

He and Sunny are resting on matching recliners in front of the glowing embers of their fire pit. They’ve turned off every light in the house and around the helicopter pad so they can get the best possible view of the heavens.

“Where is it?” she says. “Show me.”

Bron leans over toward her and extends his arm. You see Andromeda there, right above Polaris?

“I do.” She is now an absolute master of the sky chart—so good she could almost teach Bron’s astronomy lecture on her own.

Bron checks his watch. “At this time of night, this time of year, it’s probably passing by right between those two points about… now.”

Of course, he’s exactly right. Twenty-two thousand miles up, a gleaming communications satellite rotates slowly to reorient its solar panels. The bright light of tomorrow’s morning exposes the name stenciled in huge block letters on the side panel:

SUNNY-2





Chapter 48


Near Wilmington, Mass.

“… SUNNY-2”



I type the final words and pull the page from my Selectric. I place the page on top of the manuscript pile.

Pretty good ending, if I do say so myself. Even if it wasn’t entirely my idea. I think I write better back here in the civilized world—if you can call my house civilized. At least I can get a meatball grinder and the Celtics scores whenever I want.

And in my world, finishing a book calls for a beer.

Before I can even complete the thought, a frosty Corona appears in front of me.

“See? I told you he’d figure his life out for himself,” says Daisy. “All you had to do was write it down.”

Of course, she’s right. She’s been right on just about everything all along. It just took me a while to realize it.

She bought my books when nobody else did. Big points there. She got Tyler Bron to trust me with his life. Not easy. She built me up when I thought I was going nowhere.

And, no shock—she’s one hell of a wedding planner.

Daisy leans over me, her dark hair spilling across my neck. We kiss. She stands back up and pulls her hair away from her face. She walks toward the bedroom.

“Coming, Shakespeare?”

I watch. Then I follow.

Daisy Crane. My beautiful, brilliant wife.

If you ask me, there’s no better sight in the whole universe.





Detective Lindsay Boxer investigates the most explosive case of her career.





For an excerpt, turn the page.





THE MAN KNOWN AS J.


THAT MUGGY morning in July my partner, Rich Conklin, and I were on stakeout in the Tenderloin, one of San Francisco’s sketchiest, most crime-ridden neighborhoods. We had parked our 1998 gray Chevy sedan where we had a good view of the six-story apartment building on the corner of Leavenworth and Turk.

It’s been said that watching paint dry is high entertainment compared with being on stakeout, but this was the exception to the rule.

We were psyched and determined.

We had just been assigned to a counterterrorism task force reporting back to Warren Jacobi, chief of police, and also Dean Reardon, deputy director of Homeland Security, based in DC.

This task force had been formed to address a local threat by a global terrorist group known as GAR, which had claimed credit for six sequential acts of mass terrorism in the last five days.

They were equal-ethnicity bombers, hitting three holy places—a mosque, a cathedral, and a synagogue—as well as two universities and an airport, killing over nine hundred people of all ages and nationalities in six countries.