"Wow, thanks for letting me know. He seemed fine this morning when I fed him."

"That will be the tell," said Katie. "If you open the top to feed him and he doesn`t come, then you`ll know that he has probably died in one of his burrows. If that happens, I`ll take care of it when I get back."

"Just make sure that you invite Taylor to the service," Tyler said.

"A funeral service for a jerboa?" Katie asked.

"Taylor would likely hold a funeral service for a housefly that she had killed herself with a flyswatter," Tyler joked. "Seriously, she is enamored with the little guy, so I would considerate it a favor if you let her grieve for him when the time comes."

"Well this isn`t a very romantic conversation," Katie said. "By the way, when does Taylor get home?"

"She`ll arrive back into LAX on Saturday morning. My parents will pick her up bring her back here on Saturday afternoon so they can see the condo for the first time. If you want to meet my parents, that would be your chance."

"I volunteer at the shelter on Saturday morning," Katie said. "What time do you expect them to be bringing Taylor home?"

"I`m not certain, but I can suggest that they try to arrive around the middle of the afternoon so that they can get a tour of the condo before we have an early dinner. They`ll like the idea because it means that they can get back to Pacific Palisades before it gets too late."

"That would work for my schedule. Here`s an idea for you, before they get there, come over to my place teach me how to make your wonderful Margaritas. I`ll mix up a batch so that after their tour, you can bring them over for drinks. I`ll make dinner reservations for us and it will be my treat. Do either of your parents have any dietary restrictions or dislikes?"

Katie expected Tyler to voice some objection to her suggestion that she pay for dinner with his parents, but he was nodding at her as he said, "That sounds like a good plan, and as far as what my parents will eat, I think curry would be the only possible ingredient we might want to avoid. My father once got food poisoning from food at an Indian restaurant, so the smell of curry isn`t one of his favorite things."

Katie`s cellphone emitted a notification sound. "Hang on a second," she said. Without waiting for a response, she paused their video call to check the notification. Her image reappeared within seconds.

"They`re in the lobby waiting for me," she explained to Tyler. "Let me go meet them and check out the SSR. I`ll call you back before I leave the hotel. Okay?"

"Sure thing," said Tyler. "Good luck. I hope the SSR is everything you`re looking for."

"Me too. Tyler, while this hasn`t been one of our most romantic conversations, I enjoyed it. I want to let you know that I don`t think that I`m falling in love with you any longer."

"Don`t get cute with me young lady," Tyler said with a grin. "We both knew that we could only fall for so long. The `falling` is over for me too. Now we get to start building on the love that we landed in."

Katie`s smile was as radiant as Tyler had ever seen it, and he wished that he was with her in person to see if the air around her was glowing. He had never seen her glow captured in any of the pictures of her, even though he had seen it in person at the time that some of the pictures had been taken. Video apparently didn`t capture her glow either.

"I do love you Tyler. I`ll call you in an hour or so. Bye."

They blew each other kisses before terminating the video call. Tyler left his cellphone on the dining room table and headed for his morning shower with a smile on his face.

~~~

"There you are..."

"Sorry I`m late," Tyler said to Dennis as he passed his desk on the way to his own. "You wouldn`t believe the challenges I had trying to move Katie`s truck in her garage this morning. Where`s Claire?"

"Would you believe that she`s on her way to Sacramento? Apparently, she is interviewing for the district supervisor vacancy for the State Police in San Bernardino. So, what were these challenges you`re talking about?"

The California State Police was merged with the California Highway Patrol in 1995, but remained the oldest law enforcement agency within the state. While charged primarily with protecting State property and officials, such as the Governor and Attorney General, the State Police had several other investigative and patrol responsibilities within the State.

Tyler got his laptop situated on his desk and then turned his chair to face Dennis, "You ever drive a vehicle with a manual transmission?"

"Only in a simulator," Dennis replied. "Didn`t all manufacturing of manual transmission cease around 2020?"

"Probably," said Tyler, "but Katie`s truck is a classic from back in the Sixties. I found a video online that showed me how to use the clutch and shift through the gears, but getting the feel for how to actually do everything in synch was much harder than I imagined."

Dennis laughed and said, "I remember in the simulator, it took me almost an hour to get the thing moving without stalling it."

"Stalling was the least of my challenges," Tyler moaned. "All I had to do was depress the clutch and release the parking brake to get her truck rolling out of her garage. The hardest part was trying to back it back in. I was so tense about running the back of her truck through the wall of her garage that I barely gave it any gas as I was releasing the clutch, so the damn thing either stalled on me or rolled father out into the alley with every attempt I made."

Dennis tried not to laugh, but failed terribly. "So, what did you do?"

"I finally decided to just turn the truck around in the alley and then park it front-first into the garage. You would have to sit in the cab of this truck to understand, but it is a weird experience to gauge your distance from the wall when you`re basically placing the windshield right against it."

"How can you position the windshield almost against the wall without the front of the truck not damaging wall first?" Dennis asked.

"I`ll show you," said Tyler. He did a quick internet search on his phone and showed the picture of a truck the same model year as Katie`s to Dennis.

"Jesus!" said Dennis. "Parking that thing would be bad enough, but riding in it would pucker my sphincter for sure. Your face would be inches from anything in front of you."

Tyler put his phone back into its case and said, "Been there, done that. Anyway, anything new from Alfaro?"

"Yeah. As we anticipated, once we let him know about that Blackwater company in Idaho possibly being the registered owner of the mystery woman`s car, he contacted his counterpart, the Attorney General for Idaho and asked for her assistance getting cooperation for us with this company. She denied his request and encouraged him not to pursue any administrative subpoenas for this company`s records because they would not be honored by any law enforcement agency or court in her state."

"How did Alfaro respond?"

Dennis pointed to Tyler`s computer and said, "You should have an e-mail from him directing you to prepare the subpoena duces tecum for the registration records immediately. When Idaho refuses to honor it, Alfaro will request an immediate hearing before the Ninth Circuit for the Court of Appeals. Idaho will naturally appeal any ruling by the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco to the Fourteenth Circuit Court in Boise. Whoever this mystery woman is, she`ll be using a walker rather than driving a car by the time the courts settle anything."

Tyler shook his head and turned back towards his computer, "No, once Alfaro leaves office or gets some other feather up his ass, the appeals will get dismissed by all the courts involved. I`ll get the subpoena done this morning regardless."

"From what I`m hearing," Dennis said, "all it would take is a bad cut in the wrong spot to get Alfaro out of office."

Tyler turned back around and asked, "What?"

"You ever hear of `Bombay Blood`?" asked Dennis. When Tyler just shook his head, Dennis explained.

"Everyone has heard that there are four basic blood types, right? Type A, type B, type AB and type O, and then there is the positive and negative version of each of those. What most people don`t know is that there is an extremely rare blood type called `Hh`. It has something to do with the antigens of this blood type not being compatible with any of the other blood types, so a person that has Bombay Blood cannot receive a transfusion from any other blood type. That`s how I heard about this with Alfaro. His protective detail tried to get his parents to donate blood in case Alfaro ever needs a transfusion, but both of them have type `Aa` blood. I have a friend in protective services and she was telling me how serious this could be if Alfaro gets shot or has any need for a blood transfusion. They`re trying to convince him to establish a storage pool of his own blood, but the man is too afraid of needles to allow them to draw any."

"He would have an acute hemolytic transfusion reaction," said Tyler. "I knew someone in college whose blood type got mis-identified and he died within hours of having a blood transfusion. Something about his own blood attacking the donor blood..."

"Exactly," said Dennis. "So needless to say, the folks in protective services are sweating things until they find a source for blood in case Alfaro ever needs free porn."

Tyler chuckled and said, "I wonder if this will prevent him from making so many public appearances for a while." Then more seriously, he asked, "Your friend didn`t mention any heightened risks or known threats against Alfaro, did she?"

"No, but there are enough threats against him on any given day simply by virtue of the office he holds, and his polarizing political beliefs to give his protective detail a heightened level of concern."

"Well," said Tyler, "as of right now, he is still the boss. What are you working on today?"

Dennis said, "I will be following up with some contacts who have resources within the Defense Department that might be willing to cooperate with figuring out any national security interests in the Shoreline Mall incident." He had a grin on his face as he added, "Then at one, I have an appointment to get my tux for tomorrow night`s date with Haley Simmons."

"You dog!" laughed Tyler. "That was fast, even for you."

Dennis just shrugged and said, "I would like to think that it was my dashing looks, irresistible charm or virile presence that did the trick, but I know it was your recommendation that sold Haley on letting me be her escort. That, and her agent convincing her that being seen with a black man would be good for her career. At least that`s what she told me when we made the arrangements last night."

"I just got you in the door," Tyler said. "I`m sure that once you and Haley spend a little time together, she`ll appreciate you as more than a `trophy` escort. She really is a sweet kid."

Tyler heard the notification of an incoming text message on his cellphone. Retrieving it out of the pouch on his belt, he glanced at the screen. "I`ll be right back," he told Dennis as he walked out of the office with his cellphone still in his hand. He returned in a few minutes.

"That was Katie," he explained to Dennis. "She just wanted to let me know that she bought the car, truck, whatever they call the thing, and is going to check out of her hotel. Once she`s on the road, she`ll call me."

Dennis rose from his desk and packed up his laptop as he said, "Seems like a lot of trouble to go through to get a vehicle that she won`t hardly be able to drive here. Does she know that anything with an internal combustion engine made prior to the emission regulations deadline will have restrictions put on its use when it gets registered?"

"Yeah," Tyler said, "but as Katie explained it to me, she is officially a non-resident student in California, so as long as she registers the thing in her state of residence, which is Texas, she will be exempt from the restrictions placed upon residents of California. I guess her dad will get the title and registration arranged for her, which he must have some pretty solid connections to do that with the vehicle not even being present for inspection at the time of registration. Speaking of dads, I need to remember to call mine this morning to check their plans for next Saturday. Katie wants to meet them and take us all to dinner."

Dennis checked the clock on the wall as he picked up his computer bag. Placing the strap over his shoulder, he told Tyler, "Traffic should be died down enough by now for me to make it to the Los Angeles Air Force Base without too much of a delay. Call me if you need anything, otherwise, I`ll see you tomorrow morning."

Tyler gave a mock salute and said, "Drive safe. I`ll be here holding down the fort if you need anything."

Once Dennis had left, Tyler began catching up on the morning e-mail messages. As Dennis had promised, there was the one from the Attorney General himself directing Tyler to prepared a subpoena duces tecum demanding access to the vehicle registration details of Blackwater Holdings. There were a few other mundane departmental notices, but one of these stood out in Tyler`s mind as awfully coincidental. It was a reminder to all agency employees of their required compliance with the State Employees non-disclosure policy. Tyler couldn`t staunch his suspicion that this reminder was somehow related to the revelation that Dennis had shared earlier about Alfaro`s rare blood type.

His cellphone rang, and since he was alone in the office, he immediately put it on the speaker of the phone when he answered it.

"Hi Katie. I take it that the SSR is everything that you had hoped?"

"Tyler, this truck is amazing!" Katie exclaimed. "It has everything I was looking for and is so fun to drive. I might even let you drive it sometimes just so I can watch your reaction to how it handles. It`s like a Corvette with a truck bed."

Tyler chuckled at Katie`s exuberance and asked, "Have you put the top down yet?"

"I did while at the hotel parking lot, but it`s up now since the noise on the interstate would make hearing you on the phone a challenge. I got onto I-35 about six miles back. I should be in Wichita in a little over two hours."

"Are you taking I-35 all the way to I-40?"

"Heavens no," Katie said. "In Wichita I`ll cut over to US-54 and use that to cut the corners of the Oklahoma and Texas panhandles. It will drop me onto I-40 just before Tucumcari, where I`ll stop for the night."

"At this rate, you could be back here by late Wednesday or early Thursday."

"I know," Katie agreed. "By taking I-40 and timing things right, I`ll avoid any major cities except Albuquerque and any rush hour congestion that might cause a delay. You realize of course that I may be looking for my boyfriend to sleep with me this week on a school night."

"You know something, I like being considered your boyfriend. It makes me prouder than I could ever explain to have that honor bestowed upon me. However, I hope you know that I have loftier ambitions."

"Do tell," Katie giggled.

"Would the role of `lover` be too much of a leap for you. I mean you don`t have to introduce me as such, but I would like to hold that place in your heart and mind at some point."

He could hear Katie`s gasp before she composed herself and replied, "Oh, me too Sweetie. I would love nothing more. We better pause this for now or I`ll end up driving straight through, and that wouldn`t be safe. See? I am keeping myself safe just as you and my father would have wanted."

Tyler laughed heartily and said, "That`s my girl. Bring my lover home to me safe and sound."

"With that kind of inspiration, you can count on it!"