“Yeah, and we need to talk about that once we’re at the hotel,” Keenan said, and turned onto the highway.
The drive would have been pleasant enough if Rose hadn’t felt compelled to check for a signal on her phone every thirty minutes. Keenan drove with a resolute silence and attention to traffic and roads that said this wasn’t his first time hauling ass across a country in a crowded off-road vehicle, a GPS navigation system suction-cupped to the windshield. They stopped along the way for a light supper and arrived in Cappadocia just as the sun was setting. Eons of wind and rain had carved ancient lava flows into sloping valleys, leaving behind jagged, protruding formations known as fairy chimneys. By the time Rose had Grannie settled in bed, reading, with Florence and Marian in a room across the hall, she was all but vibrating with tension.
Keenan lived in this country. He was a SEAL, and if she remembered correctly, Jack said he specialized in communications. Surely he could help get her phone working.
“I’m going to do some work,” she said to Grannie.
“You’re being ridiculous, but I know from past experience that won’t stop you,” Grannie said without looking up from her botany guide.
Keenan’s room was two down from hers. She knocked softly on the door, and listened. No sounds inside, no TV, no breathing, no nothing. Maybe he’d gone out for a run. She took the elevator to the lobby, where the night clerk managing the desk had just enough English to point at the sign giving the hotel’s WiFi network and password.
She thanked him and turned around, and saw Keenan sitting in the hotel bar, a glass by his right hand. His face and the book in his hand were lit by the lamp at his shoulder. The light washed out his beard, turned his mouth into a thin, almost cruel line. Heat welled inside her, slowly saturating nerves and flesh, although if someone had asked her to explain why, she couldn’t have put it into words. Her response came from deep inside, powerful, right, and a little scary.
“You are a professional woman succeeding in a male-dominated industry. You can have a conversation with a man in a bar,” she said, shaking off the nerves. She straightened her shoulders and marched into the bar. The furniture was a charming shabby chic: red velvet rubbed worn, dark tables, lamps shrouded with red-fringed shades.
“You always talk to yourself like that, Jetlag?” he asked without looking up.
Fuck! “Did you hear me?”
“No,” he said. “But I’d guess you were talking yourself into something.”
Out of something, actually. “I still can’t get cell service,” she said.
He looked at her phone, in her hand, then up at her face. “Did you get an international plan before you left home?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Talk to your carrier.”
“I would do that,” she said with what she thought was admirable patience, “except my phone doesn’t work.”
He sat back and linked his arms behind his head. “WiFi?”
“Yes, except trying to VPN into the network and into work is like swimming through molasses.”
He held out his hand for her phone. “Take a seat,” he said. She peered over his shoulder as he methodically looked through her settings. “Is it unlocked?”
“No. The I.T. department assured me it would work.”
That earned her a snort. “You rebooted it?”
“Yes,” she said. “Twice. Once at the airport, and once at dinner.”
“I’m out of ideas,” he said. “If you have an international plan, it should work. If it’s unlocked, you just swap out the SIM cards and buy minutes. Is this the first time you’ve taken it overseas?”
“This is the first time I’ve taken myself overseas, much less my phone.”
“Email your I.T. department tonight and maybe they’ll get it fixed while we’re on the road tomorrow.”
“You do not know our I.T. department,” she said. “It’s a ten-business-day request turnaround. I’ll be home before they get to it.”
“Ten days is for soft civilians. Try a couple of months.”
Elbows on the table, she blew out her breath and rested her head on her fingertips. “I am so fucked,” she said to the polished surface.
His glass, visible in her peripheral vision, disappeared for a moment. She heard him swallow, then he set the empty glass down. “You were planning to work on this trip?”
“Yes.” She saw his phone resting face down on the table beside the glass. “Can I use yours?”
“No. I’m sorry,” he added, softening the blunt refusal. “It’s locked down pretty tight. Security.”
Head still in her hands, she looked up at him. “I thought you didn’t reenlist.”