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  “You skipped San Sebastian?”

  “At that point we were more interested in the countryside and the smaller towns. Barcelona was big enough to satisfy any big-city cravings. We could have spent a week there and not seen half of it.” She ran a fingertip along the top edge of the laptop lid. “Now, I believe you were going to show off your sleek silver baby?”

  “Not so fast. I want to hear more about this trip.” Anna smiled, some of her normal ease coming back to her. “And then I’ll show off my sleek silver baby.”

  “Deal.”

  CHAPTER 3

  They hadn’t actually agreed to meet again.

  Which was silly, considering that they’d lingered for so long over coffee and tales of travel that they’d decided to have lunch together as well. Since it wasn’t quite noon yet, Anna had suggested a walk along the river path to stretch their legs, get some air, and pass the time until the restaurants were ready to serve. Elizabeth declared herself happy to join her, and their conversation had never faltered, carrying them through a dizzying array of topics and right through lunch as well. But when it came time to say good-bye, Anna’s tongue had failed her again, tying itself into a shy and stumbling knot. For her part, Elizabeth had merely said she hoped they’d see each other again.

  It left Anna slightly depressed. After all, if Elizabeth had enjoyed their conversation as much as she seemed to, surely she would have offered an invitation? Or even a “same time next week” gesture? But she hadn’t, and Anna could only conclude that her attraction had been one-sided. While she’d been looking at Elizabeth as definite friend material and possibly something more, Elizabeth appeared to view her as a nice acquaintance that she might run into again.

  It wasn’t until Tuesday afternoon, while Anna was walking across campus to the Oak Creek Building, that a different thought occurred to her. Maybe she hadn’t misread things at all. Maybe Elizabeth had wanted to meet again but hadn’t felt comfortable asking. After all, she’d made the initial invitation. That meant it was Anna’s turn to reach out, but she’d been such a bumblehead that she hadn’t said a word.

  Great, now she’d gone from being depressed to feeling like an idiot.

  There might be an easy solution, however. The Oak Creek Building housed research facilities for a number of colleges, including the College of Forestry. It was why Anna had volunteered to take what looked like a boring service request clear on the other side of campus. Initially, she had just hoped to bump into Elizabeth, but now she had a greater purpose. It was time to stop living up to the stereotype of socially inept computer geek.

  She bounced up the steps of the Oak Creek Building and took herself on a side trip through the forestry labs and offices, passing by one closed door after another until she finally found an open one in a small back hallway. She tapped lightly on the door, leading the occupant to swivel her chair around.

  “You look lost, honey,” said the woman in a smooth Southern accent. “Are you looking for a person or a place?”

  Anna paused, wondering what had given her away. “How did you know I’m looking for someone?”

  Smiling, the woman said, “Because nobody comes down this way unless they have an office here or they’re lost. And I know you don’t have an office because I’d have noticed the female population of this hallway doubling.”

  Her smile was infectious, and Anna liked her on sight. “Well, you’re right. I’m looking for Elizabeth? She was just hired.”

  “Elizabeth?” Her forehead crinkled. “There’s no Elizabeth in our lab, and we haven’t had any new hires in a year.”

  Damn. The College of Forestry had offices and labs in three different buildings. Obviously, it had been too much to hope that she’d find Elizabeth on her first attempt. “Well, I’ll try Peavy Hall,” Anna said.

  “That’s your best bet. That’s where the admin offices are; they’ll know where she is.”

  “Okay, thanks…” Anna glanced at the nameplate on the door. “…Dr. Willoughsby.”

  With a chuckle, the doctor said, “Well now, I don’t often get called that. Thanks for the thrill.” She waved before turning back to her computer.

  Anna retraced her steps to the lobby and then into the pharmacy labs, where her service request led her to room 117. An hour later, she’d removed not one but two adware infections from the computer of a hapless research assistant who had not been able to understand why his browser kept opening eight or nine popup windows and then freezing. After checking his browser history and cleaning his machine, Anna gave him a short lecture on the safety risks of visiting religious sites. Contrary to popular thought, religious sites were often dangerous because they were usually run by volunteers who knew nothing about Internet security. By contrast, professional porn sites were usually safe, because their owners were highly invested in security.

  “For the safety of your computer, I’d stick to the porn,” she told him. “But for the safety of your job, I’d keep that out of the office altogether.”

  “Are you going to report me?” he asked fearfully.

  “Not this time. But if I get called out here again, I will, so don’t let it happen.”

  He was effusive in his thanks, and she had some difficulty extricating herself. Upon finally exiting the building, she shook her head. What kind of moron surfed porn at work and didn’t erase his browser history?

  It took a block to get past what she considered the ugly part of 30th Street—the section next to the vast Reser Stadium parking lot—and into the tree-lined beauty of the main campus. Before the end of the next block, she turned left and walked up the path to the entrance of Peavy Hall. Her friend Michele worked here as an administrative assistant, and chances were good she’d know where to find Elizabeth. Unfortunately, chances were also good that she’d figure out why Anna was asking.

  She found Michele bent over a mess of papers on her desk, with red and blue pen marks circling text here and making arrows pointing there. “I bet I know what that is,” she said as she stopped in front of the desk.

  Michele looked up. “Hey, I haven’t seen you in a while. And yeah, I bet you do. We’re in grant application hell.”

  “When’s it due?”

  “Tomorrow, five o’clock Eastern time.”

  Anna winced. “So you’ll be going home tonight around…?”

  “Never, probably.” Michele lowered her voice. “The profs waited until the last minute, as usual, and now suddenly it’s an emergency. I’ve got to get all these bits and pieces assembled into a coherent application, and have you seen how these people write?” She held up a page covered in hieroglyphics.

  “Is that writing?” Anna asked. “It looks like drawing to me.”

  Michele snorted as she dropped the paper back to the pile. “Are you here to take me away from all this? I could use a coffee break.”

  “What a coincidence, so could I.”

  They walked across the street to West Dining Hall and made their way to the coffee shop. It wasn’t as good as the Bean Grinder, but it was close by, and that was what mattered.

  Once they were seated, Anna enjoyed a few minutes of catching up with her friend before casually mentioning that she’d run into someone from her college recently, and did she know of an Elizabeth who’d just been hired?

  “No, but Forestry’s a big college,” Michele said. “We’ve got four departments, and I wouldn’t necessarily know about a new hire in one of the other departments. But if she’s doing forestry research, she may not be in the college at all. She might be part of the Forest Sciences Lab, and most of those people are state or federal. I don’t know anyone over there. Why don’t you just look her up in the school directory?”

  “I don’t remember her last name. When we first met, I wasn’t really paying attention. And the last time I talked with her, I was too embarrassed about forgetting it to ask. The only thing I remember is that it started with an M.”

  Michele was sharp; she read between the lines in about two seconds.
Within two minutes she wormed a confession out of Anna that she had met the mysterious Elizabeth for a breakfast that had ended up turning into a river walk and then lunch, and that Anna was an idiot for letting her get away. All told, Anna had to sit still for far too much teasing considering that she hadn’t learned anything at all.

  They parted ways outside the dining hall, and Anna enjoyed her walk through the heart of campus, across the Memorial Union Quadrangle, and back to her own building. When she entered her office, Martin was elbow-deep in a PC tower, replacing a hard drive by the look of it.

  “Hey,” he grunted without raising his head. “That took a while.”

  “It’s a long way to Oak Creek,” she said, dumping her laptop case on her desk. As the senior technicians, she and Martin shared an office that was separate from the main service lab. In theory, she was senior to him and the de facto manager of their little group, but in practice she rarely acted like it. Universities lived and died by the hierarchical political system, but she had never been comfortable with that and preferred to keep her little corner of the campus free of it.

  “Everything go all right?”

  Anna smiled, remembering the research assistant and his panic. “I had to pull two adware programs off an RA’s computer, and guess what I found in his browser history?”

  “Porn,” said Martin.

  “Okay, how did you know that?”

  He shrugged. “Guy. Computer. You grinning.”

  “Here’s what I don’t get. It’s bad enough that he was surfing porn on a work computer and didn’t clear his history. And that he didn’t use private browsing to begin with. But why didn’t he just use his own damn phone? He could look at all the porn he wanted to, and it wouldn’t be on his work system.”

  Martin stopped and looked up at her. “Seriously?”

  “What?”

  He rolled his eyes, then brought his hands up and held them four inches apart. “Smartphone screen.” Moving his hands two feet apart, he said, “Work monitor. Do you see the difference?”

  “He’s risking getting fired because he wants to look at bigger pictures?”

  “You can hardly see anything on a phone screen.” Martin picked up his tools again, then paused. “Of course, this is all just conjecture on my part.”

  “Of course it is.” She chuckled and sat down to write up her service report.

  CHAPTER 4

  After her dual failures in tracking down Elizabeth, Anna tried a third option: searching the faculty and staff listings for both the College of Forestry and the Forestry Research Lab. She came up empty. That wasn’t too surprising; Elizabeth was a new hire, and college websites were notoriously slow to catch up with personnel changes. But it was a bit daunting, because it left her with only one more possibility. She would try to catch Elizabeth at the Bean Grinder on Saturday. Not that going to the Bean Grinder was an imposition, but if she wanted to be sure of catching her quarry—if indeed Elizabeth even went there this weekend—she was going to have to get there early.

  Which was why Anna found herself stumbling out of bed at an ungodly hour on Saturday. She spent more time than usual dressing and fixing her hair, and managed to walk into the Bean Grinder just after eight. She was so early that there was an entire pile of scones in the display case.

  “Good morning, Ms. Petrowski,” said Kyung. “The usual?”

  “Yes, please,” Anna said. “Except with an extra scone.”

  “Sure thing. Both scones on the plate or one to go?”

  “One to go. I’m buying it for someone else, but she might not be here.”

  “Ah, for Elizabeth? She hasn’t been in yet.” He picked up a plate and tongs.

  “I am amazed at your memory,” Anna said, watching him pull out a scone. “How do you remember the name of one new person out of all the people you meet here?”

  Kyung set the plate in front of her and whipped open a bag. Reaching for the second scone, he said, “I don’t. But I remember hers because she’s your friend.” He put the bag next to the plate and turned to the steamer, leaving Anna with a smile on her face. She wasn’t sure if Elizabeth really was her friend, but hopefully this morning would give her a more definitive answer.

  After collecting her plate, mug, and bag, she made her way to the only open table. It wasn’t her favorite, but it had a good view of the door, which was her only requirement this morning. She booted her laptop, sipped her mocha, and settled in to wait.

  Half an hour later she had a new understanding of the word distracted. It was impossible to read anything of depth in her news feeds, because her eyes kept fixing themselves on the door every few minutes. She read sentences and whole paragraphs two and three times, retaining nothing, too afraid to get deeply involved and miss Elizabeth’s arrival. Of course, all of this might be moot, since there was no guarantee Elizabeth would even come. This could be a long morning.

  But even as she thought it, the door opened and Elizabeth walked through, wearing jeans and a thick sweater and looking like an ad for some high-class British brand of soap. She didn’t see Anna, instead making her way straight to the end of the line at the counter.

  Anna tucked her laptop under her arm and walked up beside her. “If you’re buying a scone, don’t bother. I already picked one up for you.”

  “Anna, hi! I didn’t expect to see you here. Isn’t this early for you?” Elizabeth’s smile was bright and welcoming, and Anna decided her personal sacrifice had been worth it.

  “A bit, yes,” she said. “But the advantage of coming early is that there are more scones to choose from. Can you join me?”

  Elizabeth’s face fell, taking Anna’s premature hopes with it.

  “I’d love to, but I’m on my way out of town. I have meetings at the Hatfield Marine Science Center on Monday, so I took the excuse to spend the weekend at the coast. I’m already leaving later than I’d planned.”

  Anna managed to drum up a smile. “Then you’d better take your scone with you. Let me get it.” She trudged back to her table, picked up the bag, and returned just as Elizabeth was stepping up to the counter.

  “Just a latte, please,” Elizabeth said. “To go.”

  “With extra foam?” asked Kyung.

  “Not this time, thank you. But you have an amazing memory,” Elizabeth said, and looked startled when both Kyung and Anna laughed.

  “I just told him that half an hour ago,” said Anna. “No wonder he’s acing a double science major.”

  “Well, I hope I’m acing it,” said Kyung. “Please don’t jinx me.”

  As he steamed the milk, Anna said, “First time to the coast?”

  “Yes, and I can’t wait. We don’t see much ocean in Michigan.”

  “Don’t you have a Great Lake or two, though?”

  “Not the same. Beautiful, but not the same. And I’ve been doing research on your coast here, which makes me think two days won’t be nearly enough. I have a list a mile long of things to see.”

  “Are Yachats and Cape Perpetua on that list?”

  Elizabeth looked thoughtful. “No, but I remember seeing them on the map. They’re south of Newport, right?”

  “Right, about half an hour’s drive. If you get a chance, go. Yachats is like a storybook village, and Cape Perpetua is the highest point on the central coast. The view from the top is glorious. And if you’re a hiker, that’s the place for it.”

  “I’ve got my boots in the trunk. Thanks for the advice; it looks like I might need to rearrange my priorities.” Elizabeth accepted her latte from Kyung and dug into her wallet to pay, then scooted to the side to make room for the next person. “Can I pay you for that scone?”

  “No, but you can buy me one the next time we meet.” Anna congratulated herself on a very smooth invitation.

  “Done deal,” said Elizabeth, taking the bag in her other hand. “I’m in town next Saturday.”

  “Me too.”

  “See you here at your usual time?”

  “I’d like that,�
� said Anna. “Drive safely, and be careful on the curves.” The highway from Corvallis to the coast was notorious for them.

  “Will do. I’m looking forward to the drive. See you next time, then.” With a nod, Elizabeth turned and went out the door, leaving Anna feeling as if a dark cloud had settled over her head. Of course there had been no guarantee that Elizabeth would be available, and in hindsight, that was probably why she hadn’t asked to meet again last weekend. But reality was a poor substitute for the daydreams she’d indulged in for the last several days.

  She was halfway back to her table when the realization hit.

  After all of the preparation, the early morning, the nervous wait, and actually managing to catch Elizabeth on her way out of town, she still didn’t have a last name.

  CHAPTER 5

  “I don’t understand what happened! I was just typing along and suddenly the whole screen lit up blue and then all my text vanished! Everything! I’ve been working on this for hours and if I lose all that work I’ll never make up the time, and Professor Gimbal needs this done by Friday and—”

  “Cynthia…Cynthia…CYNTHIA!” It wasn’t until the third, rather loud call that Cynthia Robertson subsided.

  “Yes?” she said in a small voice.

  Anna took a relieved breath as she switched the phone to her other ear. “It might not be as bad as you think. You’re still in Word, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Have you touched anything since it happened? Typed anything else?”

  “No, I was afraid to. I called you right away.”

  “Okay. Now I want you to try this. Go up to the menu and click on edit.”