Page Ch. 05

Quirnious: Have we gotten anything else out of the documents I captured?

Leda: There's a bunch of highly classified stuff in those - I'll contact you again soon, please be patient.

With that the special window closes and the messaging says 'Secure session terminated'. It feels very incomplete.

"What? That's it? That's all she's giving us?!" I ask angrily.

"Ry, there are things going on that aren't cleared for us. She's - we've probably said too much even admitting there's top secret information. She gave us quite a bit."

Deflatedly I respond, "I guess, but she didn't even say who the woman in my condo was or why she was there or what she - just fuck -"

"It's another group; maybe the committee you're on -"

"No. Why would that matter? It doesn't make any sense. I'm not going to be on that committee in a couple weeks; January is almost here."

The whole thing has me much more upset than I expect. Page is looking at me sorrowfully and strokes my cheek; it's not her fault and I feel bad for yelling. Then she leans in for a kiss and my anger seems to melt away. I want to continue to be angry but simply can't as the kiss is soothing and her hands on my back are relieving the tension that'd built up during the chat.

When she breaks the kiss, she says, "Let's go get in the hot tub."

Anger and surprise flash over me again, "You knew about that, too?"

"Sorry, I try to know about my surroundings and the tape on the door was askew."

"Tape?"

"I put clear tape on all the doors and windows to make sure -"

"Talk about straight up 'old school spy shit'!"

"Well, we don't want any surprises, I'm just watching out for us. Come on you need to calm down," she said pulling me from my seat.

"I love you. One day though, I'm going to surprise you; I swear."

"You do - every time we -"

My reluctance to follow her lessens with her alluded compliment, so I follow her to the bedroom where we both strip down. I grab a couple of big towels from the linen closet, hand her one and we head to the back porch. Opening the kitchen door, I glimpse the tape she'd mentioned, shake my head and simply close the solid metal door behind us. The door clicks causing me to turn and observe a light on the lock blinking, indicating it is secured. We lay our towels over the railing and remove the top from the tub together. Warm steam rises up into the cool air of the darkening dusk as late afternoon becomes evening and she climbs the steps to settle herself gently into the water.

"Wow - this is nice. Come on and get in here with me."

I'm still a little uptight about all the secrets and mystery but her nudity and soothing voice call me like a siren song. Only a small amount of light is visible from the kitchen window but my eyes adjust enough to see the controls. After pressing the buttons to start the jets and turn on the soft lights, I join her in the warm frothing water. The soft jets shoot tingling bubbles against my back inducing a deeply relaxed state and we sit wordlessly for a while as the night settles in quickly.

I can literally feel the temperature dropping as a fog settles over the cabin, secluding it in the darkening cloud that's enveloping us. A little shiver runs down my spine and I slump lower in the warm water to ward off the chill. Page follows my example and emits a shivering 'burr' as she moves next to me. Cuddling together I can tell that she's thinking about my earlier outburst and presume that she's considering how and what to tell me about the things she hasn't told me during our year apart.

Trying to break the ice I ask, "So, the piercings -"

"That's a funny place to start, but I guess they are the biggest visual change."

"I like them for the most part. You've stopped wearing the extra ones in your ears."

"Here's the thing, I'd gotten several extra earring holes and the birth control implant with Dad's permission. Then I had a training accident that gave me a small scar below my navel. So another hole and a dangly bit of flash to cover it. Of course the scar is nearly invisible now."

"Was it that self-defense thing you do?"

"Yes, Krav Maga requires practicing contact combat and I went a little too hard. So, while I was at the parlor getting the navel dangle, there was another woman there getting her clit pierced. I didn't do it right then, but I went home and read about it. After a month, I decided I was going to do it as a surprise for Carl. It was dumb, I know, but I thought I loved him and he had a bunch of piercings and tattoos."

The image of Dad being a bottom for some guy with piercings and tattoos flashes through my mind and sends a shiver down my spine. I reflexively say, "Whatever floats your boat, I guess."

"Sorry, I know what you were thinking. Anyway, that's what started it and I got the nipple pierced on the same day since the guy threw it in for a reduced amount."

"Your clit and nipple rings are my favorite, it's hard to say which I prefer."

"Same."

"What about all the hacking you did over the past year, it was legal right?"

"Much of it was sanctioned. Legal is determined by those that write the laws."

"And the money you made hacking?"

"I did a ton of freelance stuff before I really got involved with what Leda was doing. I'm easily bored and don't always sleep."

"You were in Stanford's high school program two years ago; so, haven't you been involved with Leda for a while now?"

"Yeah, I was in that before I got into the page thing for the House. I took one of her white hat security classes. But I wasn't involved in what she was doing until I came back."

"You could have probably taught the course," I tease.

"That's what she said."

"So you stopped freelancing then?"

"I didn't right away, but have now. I think I have enough money, between the cash, market investments, securities and Bitcoin; I'm probably worth around five or six million."

"WoW."

"That's why I'm holding off on making any decision about school or working for anyone. I know my skills are desired."

Her last words exciting me, I pull her onto my lap facing me and say, "I desire you for you."

"I know, I feel the same way. We could just run away together," she replies as she wiggles my stiffening member insider her and bends to kiss me openly on the lips.

The warm water is soothing and I love having her atop me in the water. It places her face even with mine and we continue kissing as she slowly works herself against me. The cool breeze raises goosebumps on both of us, but it doesn't cause her to rush tonight. Slowly her hips slide backward and forward as I glide within her velvety entrance. The water in the hot tub sloshes gently from side to side and the bubbles fizz up onto us, coating us in a fine warm mist. The colored lights cast us with ever changing glowing hues and our shadows dance in them upon the exterior stone walls of the cabin.

Page sees me watching them and says, "I love it! It's like having liquid Christmas lights bathe us."

I know I'd give just about anything to keep seeing the joy I see in her face. An observer might believe I have trusted her too easily or too much, but I know in my heart that she loves me and is doing everything she can to protect us. I hold her about her waist tightly as we continue our gentle love making. The warm water is so relaxing, I can feel all of my tension disappearing. There is only love here for me now. I lean down to suck upon her nipples which have contracted in the cool air. Alternating between them, I find myself reflexively raising my hips to meet her forward motion.

"Page, I'm going to come soon, are you almost there?"

"I've had a couple little ones, I'm waiting for you to have my big one."

Her words seem to delay my orgasm as I push her harder towards her summit. I can feel her gripping me in response as her excitement rises. We're sloshing water over the edges of the tub as we climax in a tumult of grunts and guttural vocalization. Our breath sends steam into the cold night air.

Relaxing in our afterglow, we remain coupled in the water, but I move us off the seat so we can immerse ourselves in the warm bubbling water up to our necks. We hover in the water like that for the longest time and she pouts a little when my cock softens and comes out.

"There is no place on earth I'd rather be right now," I tell her softly.

She hugs me tightly and we remain an entangled floating jumble of limbs until well past the point of our fingers becoming prunes. We only stir from this relaxing embrace when the wind picks up again. I retrieve our towels and toss them next to the door so they won't get wet and we reposition ourselves to sit on the seats closest to the cabin, slumping down to watch more weather roll in around us.

After another half hour or so, sleet and freezing rain begins to fall as the worsening weather of the night draws in upon us more completely. A bone chilling wind accompanies the rain, blowing droplets in from the north so that some begin landing upon us. After a few minutes we both reach the conclusion that it isn't letting up, so we decide that we are done and arise to climb out of the tub at nearly the same moment. I put the system into standby mode which circulates the water and turn off the lights. After we get the lid back on, she punches in the code to open the heavy door and we traipse back into the kitchen with our slightly dampened towels wrapped tightly around our bodies. The cabin is warm and the heat kicks on as we close the door behind us.

We agree we both just want a light dinner, so I cook a couple chicken breasts on the stove while she throws together a nice salad with the mixed greens and vegetables we have. While we eat sitting across from one another at the table, I can feel her obsessing about the information we don't have. There is some tension in her jaw that remains even when she isn't chewing, but I don't know what if anything I can do for her. We finish eating and inertia seems to hold me in my seat as I feel my eyes getting heavy. The heat of the hot tub and our activities in it have tired and relaxed me to the point I'm nearly falling asleep in the chair.

Page looks over at me, "You should go to bed; I'll clean this up and come to bed in a while."

"Huh? Oh, yeah okay. I'm sorry I'm being so sleepy." I say yawning at her suggestion. "But don't think that I don't know you're going to do some more snooping on your computer."

"Yeah, of course. I have to keep us prepared."

Rising from my seat, I hug her tightly and head off to the bedroom. All of the day's stress is gone, but it's worn me out physically. I hang my towel in the bathroom to dry, fold up most of the clothing that I'd left on the bed and crawl into the bed where sleep finds me in moments. What feels like a very short time later, Page joins me in bed and I roll toward her. She kisses me lightly and then snuggles into me and I drift back off with my arm around her.

Stirring slightly from my slumber, I roll over toward Page only to find her space empty. My mind is a fog of confused thoughts as dreams mix with waking. A kind of vague longing to hold her flits through my mind as I try to remember a feeling I was having inside a wonderful dream I want to resume. There's a soft distant voice somewhere, words are being spoken in a whisper. My eyes want to stay closed but involuntarily open ever so slightly to see light peering through a small crack in the door to the main room.

Hmm, she's probably just playing the computer game; everything is okay, I resolve to drift back off but her voice raises just a bit at that moment. What's making her tense? I wonder as I find myself reflexively paying closer attention.

"No, he's asleep," she says.

There's a long silence as she paces around the main room of the cabin. I feel her presence close by the door and sense the light dimming.

"I have told him some but I want to read him in completely."

Who's she talking to? I wonder vaguely, as soft footfalls pace and stop.

"I'm not trained for this and keep saying things I shouldn't. He really needs to know as much as we do and he -"

I'm not really trying to eavesdrop, but they seem to be discussing me and it makes me want to rush out and ask a hundred questions.

"I understand," she says followed by a long pause. "I know."

As the conversation continues, it seems that passively laying here silently, I will actually have a better chance of achieving my goal than getting up to do direct interrogation.

"You know this isn't what I signed up for -" she says in a nearly bellicose tone.

Did she sign up for something? And does it involve me?

"Look, there's something I haven't told you."

Now I worry, She's not going to tell someone about us, is she?

"No, not over the phone."

The long silence is broken by her sitting at the desk and tapping her fingers. It might be keystrokes, but she's on the phone.

"I know it's secure, but they're probably recording it. We need to meet."

Meet? What? Where's she going? I wonder as I hear more tapping or typing. Maybe she's using the one phone for the computer connection while talking on another.

"I don't know; it might change everything."

What's changed? I worry.

"Okay, I'll meet you there around seven."

I wonder where they are going to meet as I hear quick footfalls approaching the room, the light is flicked off and she rejoins me in the bed. She spoons into me and I snake my arm around her to accommodate her repositioning the covers. Her skin is cool to the touch and I can feel the goose bumps along her midriff. She repositions my hand up to her breast and pulls the covers even higher. Without thinking about it I involuntarily tweak her nipple.

"Ryan?" she whispers.

I know I'm busted, "Uh-huh?"

"Did you overhear?"

"I didn't mean to, but -"

"It's fine, I really want to tell you everything. I'm going to meet her in the morning."

"You mean Reba - sorry - Leda?"

"Yes."

"You're going to leave me?" my worries tumble from my lips.

"Nooo," she says, turning to me and hugging me close.

"But Leda's in -"

"No, she's in DC for the winter break. I just need to talk to her face to face without anyone overhearing or recording us."

"So you're going to tell her?"

"Sweetie, that's just it. I don't know what else to do. I don't want to."

"I hear a 'but' in there."

"Well, I'm open to suggestions."

"Did you come here for the reasons you've stated or was there another agenda?"

"I've been honest with you about that, completely."

I think about it for a moment and then mount the elephant in the room, "It just feels like we're wrapped up in this vast conspiracy. It's about the election and me and I don't understand why or how but somehow you are involved too."

"I've been thinking about that too, Ry. There probably is a connection, but I don't want to speculate without talking to her first."

"When are you going?"

"Right after sun up."

Glancing over at the clock, I can see that daybreak isn't that far away. I hold her tightly, not wanting her to go. I worry that she might not come back or that if she tells Reba about us that there will be some huge fall out. I don't want anyone to know, but I want everyone to know. There is nothing clearer in my mind as we lie together, our nude bodies pressing against one another. I want to be with her, have her with me and keep her safe. This week has bound me to her in ways I couldn't imagine were possible. When 6:00 AM comes, she gets up and dresses to go.

"Go back to sleep; I'll be back before you know it," she says kissing my forehead.

"I don't know if I can. How long do you expect to be gone?"

"Probably a few hours, I need to approach this as diplomatically as possible. Are your keys in your jacket?"

"Yes, please be careful."

"Come on, I'm not going to hurt your car."

"That's not what I meant. You can burn the car for all I care, but I want you back here alive and safe. I feel like I should go with you."

"I'll be fine, I can handle myself."

"I love you; don't you dare get hurt."

"I love you too. I'll be careful, I promise," she says and squeezes me tightly.

After she leaves the bedroom, I hear her gather the keys from my jacket in the front room, the door opens, closes and a few moments later my car starts up. I get up and rush to the front window thinking about the freezing rain. Looking outside, I see the headlights heading down the drive. There's no ice outside, I guess the temperature warmed. Sadly, I walk back to the bedroom and lie in bed restlessly for fifteen minutes or so.

With Page gone, I worry about all the different things I've heard over the past several days and simply cannot stay in bed. So, I get up, make an espresso with cream, set it on the desk with our laptops and turn on the Christmas tree lights and the desk lamp. After I log on, I start the virtual machine and piddle around for a while: check my e-mail, look at some real-estate sites to see what kind of land is available in the area, check some news websites and get bored with the whole mess. I pause the VM and close the laptop so it'll sleep. Looking out the front window again, I see that it's getting fairly light.

Getting up, I pace around the room anxiously. She's been gone over an hour now, but I need to trust that she's okay and look for something to distract my mind from my worries. I drink some more of my espresso and pace and pace some more. I shouldn't have let her go alone. Pausing to look at the tree, I think it looks fairly nice for having only a few dozen ornaments and twinkling LED lights.

An odd reflection from one of the ornaments has me looking at an inverted image of the master bedroom door. Something there sends me into that room for the first time during our stay. Inside I find the arrangement pretty much mirrors that of the guest room. Only the sheer is covering the window and the light from outside paints the room with an odd dreary gloom.

When I'd stayed as Gary's guest, I'd assumed there were other differences between the bedrooms, so as I look around I try to make note of what they might be. The bed is on a platform just like the one in our room and the bottom drawer has the same panel for opening a panic room. There is a door that opens into a bathroom with a simple shower just like ours. There's just the one window over the bed and a similar closet arrangement.

I'm about to give up when I notice that the built-in travel rack book shelf in the master bedroom has a few pictures on it. There is one of Gary with his girlfriend, one of his parents and some I presume are his brothers and sisters. As I examine them, the diffuse light that is coming in hits just the right angle to show the tiniest amount of wear on the floor. If I'd been there at a different time of day or weather conditions, I probably wouldn't have seen it, but in this light I can make out an arc in the low pile carpet.

I know immediately that the built-in must swing out on a hinge somehow, so I begin looking for a mechanism to make it open. I move all of the pictures around and find nothing. I try pressing various places and pulling to see if it'll open, but have no luck. Then I have the thought that perhaps it is opened from the other panel and I return to the foot of the bed to open the drawer. I punch in the code and instead of the bed moving, the panel opens. A thick steel door behind the panel slides into a pocket revealing a large interior room and a set of stairs leading downward with another door at the bottom with another access panel.

The room is fairly narrow, has no windows and I conclude it must be in the center of the house somehow. Looking at the door at the bottom of the stairs, I infer that it must lead to a room directly beneath this one. The security layout of this room has the LED window and door indicators like the other one, but it has a larger nine panel display that's lit up with several camera feeds. One is gray and I presume that is the one in our bedroom that Page disconnected. There's also a couple of cots that fold down from the wall, a gun rack with what I presume is a thirty-ought-six, a couple of shot guns, four different handguns and ammo cases for each. I open a big wall cabinet and find it's filled with MREs, some water jugs and a couple of bottles of wine. I wonder about Gary's idiosyncrasies sometimes, I guess he didn't want to go out without a final drink.