The noise made by the excited kids outside drifted upwards and though the window. They entered Patrick's subconscious and he groaned and opened his eyes. As a soldier he had woken up in many strange places, in tents and trenches all over the world, once he had woken up in hospital after coming of worse in an encounter with a landmine, but for a moment, he didn't know where he was.
He looked around the sparsely furnished room and it all came flooding back.........
Not many life changes can be traced back to a single event, but his could. It all started when he put his hotmail address on a public forum. Talk about a butterfly flapping its wings, how on earth could that act lead to encounters with ex cia hitmen, wedding proposals, and an adventure that crossed continents and ripped apart lives?
Can I have your e-mail address?
Such a simple request.
He had been chatting on a public forum about a kidnapping case that was making headlines around the world. His kids were grown up and living away, he and his wife worked strange hours and so rarely saw each other and it was a way of passing the time. As an ex military cop, he liked to look at things from a different perspective and it always lead to lively exchanges on the forum whenever he said his piece. After all while an imaginary image would build up of the regulars who he chatted and argued with, some were intelligent and witty, some seemed barely able to communicate and some loved to do nothing but hurl abuse, all of which added to the fun.
One stood out.
A woman.
She would wait for him to come online and then chat directly to him, asking him questions, always using his name, making it seem personal, intimate almost. As the days drifted into weeks, he found himself looking forward to her coming online, they would chat about the case that was still ongoing, but would also drop little hints about themselves and where they were in the world. He was in England, she was strolling Venice beach in Los Angeles.
Then came the day she asked for his e-mail.
He gave it willingly and waited for that first mail, that mail that was going to lead to flights across the world, to run ins with American authorities, brushes with the dark underbelly of American life, and to the highest highs and deepest lows he had ever known.
Her first e-mail was quite bland but chatty, a written version of a woman in a bar making eyes at you but leaving it up to you to take it further. His hotmail address was a very simple one, just his name followed by the address and funnily enough, her was in the same style, but with a very unusual name. Curious to try something he had heard about, he searched her name. It came up in a list of company directors, in a list of ex pupils at a posh public school and various hippy, new age groups. The best part though was that they were around the same age group. At least he knew he wasn't developing cyber feelings for some spotty teenager.
The first dozen or so e-mails flew backwards and forwards, sometime crossing in cyber space as they both typed and laughed at each others humor. Finally she asked for a picture of him. He made a few jokes about how ugly he was and how he would scare her away and in the end they decided they would both send a picture at the same time.
He only had one picture stored on his computer and dint know how to upload more to his hard drive. He didn't think asking his children would be a good idea and his wife knew even less than him and so he sent the only one he had.
It showed him lay by a hotel swimming pool. He had on a pair of very tight speedo swimming trunks, his tattoos won both arms were plainly visible, as was the fact that he was semi erect under those Trunks.
