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their fingers through.
    I didn’t know I had been holding my breath until he smiled, his hand still hanging in the air. “You okay?”
    “Yes, yes I am.” I grinned, discovering that he, indeed, had a fine manly grip. “I’m sorry to drag you away from work.”
    “Nah. Nothing going on there that I can’t do at home anyway.” He sat in the empty chair beside the tea set, placing his knapsack on the ground. After loosening his dark blue silk tie, he shuffled off his blazer. “Besides, a day out of the office is something I never pass up.”
    “Thanks for coming.” I pulled the scrunchie from my hair, letting it fall loose. “Don’t mind me, have a bit of a killer headache.” I wrinkled my nose. “Not exactly ready for my photo shoot.”
    “I can’t imagine what you’ve gone through.” Jessie nodded. “I’m just glad you’re still alive.”
    “Yeah. So am I.” I glanced at David. “Can we use the upstairs? I’d rather you open the shop back up again and go about your day as normal. Don’t want to seem suspicious.”
    “Sure.” David frowned. “Should I be preparing for trouble?”
    “Maybe.” I got to my feet, finished off the tea and replaced the mug on the tray. “Let’s just say that the way things are right now I don’t want anyone to know I’m here. And you’re one of the only links to me, so…”
    “Got it.” The elderly man tapped the side of his nose. “The stairs are where they always were and the room’s yours. Didn’t change a thing.”
    “You figured I’d be back?” I shot over my shoulder as I walked towards the rickety old steps, Jessie a few paces behind.
    “Be prepared,” David replied.
    “You were never a Boy Scout.” The stairs were as noisy as I remembered them to be, a great security feature. Keep your fancy alarm systems. Give me a good set of creaking wood planks that’ll be impossible to stop from making noise.
    “I always wanted to come up here.” Jessie chuckled as he followed me into the small apartment. “He never rented it out after you left, you know. Kept it until we saw you that first time on the television, then joked about making it into a museum. Charge admission to see where the famous Surf started out.”
    I shook my head. “Wouldn’t have gotten much.”
    The stairs led out onto a single large room that would have passed for a loft in better circumstances but had been divided up by bookshelves that there hadn’t been room for downstairs. True to his word, David hadn’t changed much, leaving a pair of wooden chairs, a desk and a ratty old couch in dark forest colors taking up much of the open area. The kitchenette, for lack of a name, consisted of a single small sink barely large enough to wash plates in and a few cupboards in the corner. Another room held the washroom and shower stall.
    All in all, a classy pad if you wanted to live cheaply. And when I had been here I hadn’t any money, and David had offered to let me work in the bookstore and live here with a bit of spending money on the side. In retrospect it had probably been the best time of my life, pre-super.
    “So, what’s going on?” Jamie settled himself at the desk and pulled out a laptop from his black backpack. “David wouldn’t say much other than that you needed my help.” His chest puffed out a fraction. “And who am I to say no to the great Surf?”
    “Please don’t call me that. Jo is just fine.”
    He opened his mouth as if to ask, then closed it. “Sure.” He tapped the screen with a long, slender finger. “So what can I do for you?”
    “I need you to defuse a bomb.”

Chapter Four
    Jessie jerked back in the chair. “What?”
    “Here.” I tapped the back of my neck. “I need you to either deactivate the plug or figure out a way to cut it off from receiving transmissions.” I locked eyes with him. “Otherwise the Surf is going to be nothing more than a headless body on the floor here.”
    Jessie drew a shaky breath, glancing at the laptop