Free Last Chance at Love by Gwynne Forster

slip he gave her in the airport the previous weekend with anything approaching generosity, and if he had to abandon the tour again so soon, she’d ask some questions. And she’d be entitled to answers.
    He pushed the button. “Hello.”
    “We’ve got word that an unknown operator placed an order for a mother lode of dynamite. We don’t want it delivered. I hope you can come up with a plan. I need it, pronto.”
    Jake leaned forward and rested his chin in his palm. This was not what he wanted to hear. “I’m in the midst of a tour.” He wondered why he’d bothered to voice it since the chief knew that. First the department, and now the agency knew his every move, maybe his thoughts, too.
    “We know, but this requires priority.”
    He canceled his Thursday morning interview and telephoned Allison. “I’ve postponed my remaining interviews for this week and tomorrow’s twelve o’clock book signing because I have to get back to Washington tomorrow night. Unless I let you know otherwise, I should be going to Boston Monday morning as planned.”
    “Didn’t the same thing happen last week when you suddenly remembered you had an appointment? I’d give a lot to know why your schedule is uncertain all of a sudden.”
    “And you’d pay too dearly, because there’s no mystery involved. I hope I haven’t spoiled your plans, but I’m learning that a six-week book-signing tour can be filled with glitches, changes, and disappointments. You’d better get used to it.”
    Dissatisfied with the idea of sitting in his old office trying to put together a plan to foil delivery of a load of explosives, Jake phoned the chief. “Give me the particulars, and I’ll find a quiet place somewhere and work it out. This is a tough one.”
    “What sort of place?”
    He could tell from the chief’s tone of voice that the idea didn’t please him. “Someplace where I can swim, fish, and get fresh air. Idlewild, for example.”
    “I’ll check out the place and get back to you in a few minutes.”
    Jake knew his boss would do everything possible to accommodate him. Putting together that kind of foolproof plan would challenge the most shrewd intellect, and although he considered himself sensitive to criminal behavior, guessing a man’s moves could backfire. He needed a clear head.
    “No problem,” the chief said when Jake answered his cell phone. “Get it to me as quickly as you can.”
    Jake didn’t bother to tell Allison he had changed his destination; time enough for that Monday morning.
    Jake phoned Morton’s Hotel in Idlewild and booked a flight to Reed City. Six hours later, he stood in an anteroom off the hotel’s lobby selecting a fishing rod.
    “Haven’t seen you around here before,” the woman said as she approached his spot carrying a rod, a reel, and a tin box in which he assumed she stored bait or lures.
    “I don’t suppose you have,” he answered, hoping to discourage conversation.
    “Staying long?” She threw out her line, and he knew he was watching an expert. Few occasional fishermen could cast with such deftness.
    “A couple of days.”
    “Not very talkative, are you?”
    “I’ve yet to catch a fish when I was talking,” he said, standing in order to cast farther from shore.
    “Hmmm. Where you from?”
    If the woman hadn’t been at least seventy, he might have answered sharply. He told her part of the truth.
    “I just came in from New York.”
    Within five minutes, the woman reeled in two pikes. “Well, I’ve got plenty for supper and some to freeze for winter. Stay as long as you like.”
    He told her goodbye and left after pulling in a bass, which he presented to the hotel’s cook.
    * * *
    “It must be him, ” Allison heard her aunt Frances say when she answered the phone that Friday night. “Who else could it be? When he stood up, he nearly knocked my eighty-year-old eyeballs out. And he had on his clothes. That one was a real looker. Just didn’t talk much. Closemouthed as a kid in a