State Of The Union

Thinking about his deceased father often led Scot to think about the man who had become like a second father to him. It was this same person whom the president had tapped to head the new OIIA-former Deputy Director of the FBI, Gary Lawlor. Having been the number two man in the world’s premier law enforcement organization, Lawlor was a perfect choice. The president also appreciated the special relationship that existed between Lawlor and Harvath. It was precisely that relationship Harvath was considering when his girlfriend, Meg Cassidy, walked into the bar.

“Have you heard from him?” she asked as she sat down on the empty stool next to Scot.

“Nothing,” he answered, spinning his cell phone on the bar in front of him. “What about in the room? Any messages?”

“None at all. What did the airline say?”

“It took my contact a while to get to the bottom of it, but he said that apparently Gary had gotten on the plane and that just as they were preparing to close the doors and push back, he jumped up and demanded to be let off. Flashed his credentials and everything. It freaked the hell out of the passengers.”

Meg looked at Scot as he absorbed this piece of information. It would all probably turn out to be nothing, but for now it seemed worrisome, especially in light of his new job. Though Scot didn’t go into a lot of detail, the fact that they had met when he had rescued her from a hijacked airliner in Cairo, and that in his mid-thirties he was in better shape than most men even ten years younger, told Meg that the new position the president had assigned him to probably didn’t involve pushing a lot of paper. He was a soldier on America ’s front line in the war against terrorism, and Meg was smart enough to know what that meant. It meant not asking a lot of questions and being prepared for anything, even the worst. She was willing to do that for him. In the little over six months they had been together, she had come to care for Scot Harvath very deeply. So much so, that she was even considering relocating her entire business from Chicago to Washington, DC, moving away from all of her friends and contacts, and building a new life with this man.

With his ruggedly handsome face, sandy brown hair, blue eyes and muscular five-foot-ten frame, Scot Harvath was quite a catch by any woman’s standards, but it was the man inside that had most attracted her from the beginning. In addition to his wit and intelligence, there was something else. He was driven by one simple objective-doing the right thing no matter what the cost. In a world so often governed by self-interest, being in the company of a man like Scot Harvath made Meg realize what a noble life worth living was really about, but she also realized that the quality she most admired in him might also turn out to one day to be his downfall.

Scot’s desire to always do the right thing had made him an unwilling to compromise or bend even a fraction of an inch when it came to his principles. He had been called arrogant at times, and Meg could understand why, but people who saw arrogance in him were missing the point. Scot Harvath believed. He believed in himself. He believed in his abilities, and what’s more, he believed in his country and the jobs it sent him to do. No matter what the risk or how great the danger he always willingly stepped up when his country needed him.

Right now though,he needed something and it was more information. “What would make Gary jump up and demand to be let off the plane like that?”

“All I can think is that maybe he received a call or got paged at the last minute or something. He wouldn’t go through all of that just because he forgot to turn the iron off at home.”

“Have you tried the office again?” asked Meg, who was equally concerned and growing more worried by the moment.

“I’ve left messages everywhere and have been ringing his pager and his cell every half hour. Not only is he not answering, but nobody seems to know where he is-nobody. And that’s not typical Gary. The guy sets up lunch dates months in advance. You should see his Day-Timer. I think people back in DC are beginning to get nervous about it.”

“Do you think something happened to him?”

“At this point, I don’t know what to think. Gary was a friend of my father’s since before I was born. Half the reason he chose to head up the Bureau’s San Diego field office instead of Miami was so that they could be closer together. They were like brothers and I know how much my mom means to him. It’s not like him to miss something like this and not call.”

Meg had known the memorial was going to be tough, and the absence of Gary Lawlor had only made things more stressful. Though Scot hadn’t said anything, she knew he appreciated having her along.

“Okay,” she replied, after the bartender had poured her a glass of wine and then walked to the other end of the bar, “what about calling hospitals? I hate to go that route, but it seems to be one of the only rocks we haven’t looked under.”