Free Megan's Cure by Robert B. Lowe Page B

front of the canoe after her cast.   “It was like I knew her.   But I didn’t.”
     
    “Did she…did she say anything?” asked Novak.
     
    “No,” said Megan.   “She was high up in the room.   Filling it.   I was below.   And she was just, you know, watching me.   I usually don’t remember my dreams.”
     
    They were silent for a minute.
     
    “How is your mother?” asked Novak.   Megan had called her mother on the cell phone Novak had bought at a convenience store on the way to the lake just before they climbed into the canoe.
     
    “She wants me to come home,” said Megan.   Her voice jumped half an octave as she mimicked her mother: “Come home.   Come home.”
     
    Novak nodded sympathetically.
     
    “But I said I can’t,” she continued.   “You said it isn’t safe.   Not yet.   I told her soon.   Everything is okay.   You are taking care of me.”
     
    “She remembers me, right?” said Novak.
     
    “Of course,” said Megan.   “How can she forget?”
     
    “And I told her, ‘Don’t tell anyone,’” she continued.   “Like you said.   ‘Don’t trust anyone.’”
     
    Novak nodded his agreement to the messages conveyed.   They were quiet again, watching the water that was disturbed only by the occasional touch of a flying insect .  
     
    “Look!” said Megan as the red and white float ducked below the water and then popped to the surface.   It dipped again.   The third time, it stayed down.   She flipped her wrist to set the hook and began reeling it in.   After a few seconds, the fish broke the surface in a splash of brown and white.   In another 20 seconds, she had the 11-inch bass in the boat.
     
    It was Megan’s third fish, equaling her catch of the previous day.   She had caught their dinner again.   Novak had caught his one and only fish an hour earlier.   Megan had hooked her fingers securely into the gills of that one and held it up admiringly as it flipped in desperation.  
     
    “It’s BIG,” she had announced, although it looked to Novak no larger than ones she had caught.  
     
    It was a hard 20-minute paddle back to the house.   The sun was already down when they tied up and unloaded the gear on the dock, Megan looked at him questioningly.   He knew she wanted to jump in.   She was wearing denim shorts, a white T-shirt and flip flops.   They hadn’t bought a swim suit for her.
     
    He nodded.   Two shakes of her feet to remove the flip flops and one leap later she was under water.   She came up eight feet away, spitting out water and tossing her head to shake the water out of her bangs.   Her grin was infectious.
     
    She swam 30 feet away and then floated on her back, staring at the darkening sky for awhile as she slowly moved her arms back and forth as if she were making a snow angel.   Then she turned on her stomach and swam back.
     
    Novak reached his hands down toward Megan.   He grabbed her wrists and pulled her up, holding her high for a second as if she was the trophy catch.   Then he set her down on her feet.   They gathered up their fish, poles, oars and other equipment and ambled up the dock, across the small yard to the house.
     
    An hour later, Megan was cleaning the fish when Novak turned on his laptop and checked his private email account.   In his in-box was a message from a sender identified by a string of seemingly random numbers and letters.   He knew who had sent it.   He clicked it open.
     
    The message was short and to the point.
     
    “The British are coming,” it read.
     

Chapter 19
     

     
    CHIEF CLIFF DAVIDSON walked up the front steps of the small, well-kept house surrounded by a lawn watered to a lush thickness by the fickle but heavy Gulf Coast rains.   It sat on supports that held it two feet off the ground.   The gap underneath was hidden by lattice panels.   He knocked on the door.
     
    The barrel-chested man who opened the door had long gray hair tied in a ponytail in the back.