Serial Story: English Breakfast, Part 1
Dear readers...this excerpt thing just isn't doing it for me. Sorry. I miss posting the serial stories. They motivate me in a way that nothing else does - it's how I started out publishing, and after a lot of thought, I just don't want to give them up.
So even though I've previously posted excerpts from this story-in-progress, today I'm posting everything I've written so far (about 2300 words or so) to get us all caught up (there are bits and pieces missing from the posted excerpts thus far). And then the story will continue every Friday with whatever new words I get done during the week, typical serial style.
This will not affect the holiday serial - those stories will be posted on their respective holidays. And if you follow my other pen names, those blogs will both be updated with new serial stories later today/tonight as well. I may even create a blog for my new fantasy endeavor, if there's any interest in reading that as I go...
If you're not a serial fiction fan, that's okay too. You can just skip over the Friday posts, and catch the books when they come out.
All that said...I give you Part 1 of English Breakfast - in unedited draft form, as usual. Enjoy, and happy Friday!
English Breakfast, Part 1
Karen flipped the sign on the front door of her new tea bar, Cup & Saucer, to “Open” and tried not to be disappointed that no one was waiting outside. The grand opening wasn’t scheduled until Friday and advertising had been minimal, but she’d still hoped the neighborhood would be excited. Turning away, she went behind the long mahogany bar she’d bought from a nightclub downtown when it closed. She checked the temperature again on each of the hot taps, straightened the china and glanced at the door every few seconds, suddenly absolutely certain that her family was right, and the shop was a failure not even an hour into its first day.
The delicate bells on top the door jingled softly and she turned away from the tea canisters that didn’t need dusting to smile at her first customer.
“Welcome to Cup & Saucer - what can I get you today?”
The woman was nearly a caricature, wearing a white wrap-dress with black polka dots cinched by a thick black belt, saddle-style black and white pumps and huge dark sunglasses that looked like something from the seventies. The outfit was topped off with a wide-brimmed white straw hat, the band of which matched the fabric of her dress.
“Do you have cups to go, dear?” she asked with a glance a the china lined up and waiting. “I’m really in kind of a hurry, but I could use a hit of something strong. English Breakfast, perhaps?”
Karen nodded, reaching for a paper cup and insulating band. “Of course. I’ll have that ready for you in a minute. It will be two-fifty, please.” She placed a scoop of tea leaves into a wide filter bag and placed it in the cup, then poured boiling water over it from the hottest tap. Snapping a lid over the top of the cup and filter, she set a timer the size of a child’s watch face and stuck it to the side of the cup before taking the money the woman laid on the counter.
“What’s that?” the woman said, frowning at the device as she picked up her cup.
“It’s a timer. When it beeps, your tea is done, and you should remove the teabag for optimal taste.” Karen held her breath, hoping it didn’t sound too odd. Everyone had scoffed when she came up with the idea, but she couldn’t think of any other way to ensure to-go patrons would get a cup that wasn’t oversteeped. She’d approached the company to build a prototype and paid far too much for the first batch, hoping they’d catch on.
The woman shrugged, her frown dissipating. Or Karen thought it did. Impossible to tell for sure behind those glasses.
“What a novel idea - thank you.” She pulled something out of her purse and laid it on the bar. “Now if you wouldn’t mind, a gentleman will come in later today and order English Breakfast as well, in a china teacup. Be a dear and give that to him, won’t you? Thank you!”
It was Karen’s turn to frown as she picked up the small black flash drive. “What’s his--” she looked up as the bells on the door jingled again. The woman was gone.
Karen put the drive under the bar beside the cash register, stifling the urge to plug it into her laptop and see what was on it. Before deciding she needed to find herself, she’d worked at the same security firm her now ex-fiance worked for, doing forensic discovery on hard drives, networks, and anything else that spoke binary. It had been rewarding, but draining, and she was glad that part of her life was over.
Not that many people would probably be coming in, but if more than one man came in and ordered English Breakfast, how would she know which one to give the thing to? If she gave it to the wrong guy, would it be a security breech of some sort? She shook her head. It probably didn’t matter, and it definitely shouldn’t matter to her. Not anymore.
Maybe the guy would ask for it. That would help.
Measuring out a teaspoon of her best Yunnan tea into a stainless steel filter basket, she placed it in her favorite mug and filled it with water just barely under the boiling point. She set a timer for four minutes and waited. At least if the shop failed, she would never run out of tea.
* * *
Patrick O’Neil parked across the street from his ex-fiance’s new tea shop. As expected, it was perfect, from the lacy cream window swags to the jaunty teacup and saucer hanging from a wrought-iron fixture above the door. It would be neat and tidy inside, with everything clean and in its place. Karen had always liked everything in order. Everything had to make sense, or it would eventually have to be purged.
Just as he had. Though he still wasn’t sure exactly what hadn’t made sense about their relationship.
He got out and locked the door, looking up and down the quaint little street full of shops similar to hers before he crossed the cobblestone street, one of the last of its kind in Bellvue. She wouldn’t be happy to see him, he knew, but she was the only one he knew who could decrypt this particular information. There wasn’t time to find someone else with her particular skill set.
An airy, tinkling sound announced his arrival when he opened the door, and Karen glanced up absently from her place at a long, beautiful wooden bar.
“I’ll be right with you,” she called out, looking down again. He kept moving forward, through the neat rows of small square tables set on the diagonal with matching chairs. She froze in place the moment his identity finally triggered in her brain, and then slowly lifted her head.
“What are you doing here, Patrick?” She didn’t smile, pinning him with the intense stare meant to intimidate. Somehow she still didn’t seem to realize that it had never worked on him. Not in the way she wanted it to, anyways. Carefully adjusting his trousers, he slid onto a bar stool and tried to focus on his purpose for being there.
“Good to see you too, babe. I’ll take a cup of English Breakfast, if you don’t mind. And a woman should have brought in a flash drive for me?”
Karen retrieved the drive and slid it across the bar to him.
“I’ll make you a cup to go. That will be two-fifty.” Her words were measured and professional, with a healthy layer of stress threaded through. It probably would have been wise to send someone else, considering her reaction, but he’d wanted to see her again, selfish as that was. She’d turned his life upside down when she walked out, and for what? Some mid-life crisis? She’d never been one-hundred percent clear, and he wanted closure.
Right after she unlocked the contents of the drive for him.
“I’ll stay,” he said, earning a sharp glare. “Karen, I need your help.”
Her brows drawn together, she shook her head but he held the drive up before she could argue.
“To be clear, there’s a young woman who needs your help. And I don’t have time to find someone else who has the skills to hack this drive. She doesn’t have time.”
“I don’t do that anymore, Patrick - you know that. What are you going to do, come here every time you need a hacker? I’m sorry, and I’m sorry for whatever trouble that girl is in, but I just...can’t. I can’t.”
She turned away, dispensing water into a to-go cup over a bag of tea leaves. Slapping a small watch-face to the cup, she put a lid on and set it in front of him.
“No charge. Now please leave.”
He leaned forward, steeling himself against her icy gaze.
“A young journalist was kidnapped today, and her best friend thinks it’s because of the information on that drive. She received it by courier the day before yesterday and after she accessed the files, she hide the drive in an air duct, unaware that her friend was watching. That night, she never came home.”
“I left all the programs I developed at the office. One of the other geeks should be able to figure it out. What about Ken?” Karen leaned against the back counter, arms crossed over her chest. She was trying to resist, but he could see her resolve crumbling, hear it in her voice.
“Ken’s out on a long-term assignment, Jake’s on vacation and can’t be reached, and Derek...well, he’s distracted right now. Kane says it has to be you.”
She stared past his shoulder, worrying her lower lip like she always did when she knew there was no other choice. A quick shake of the head, and she reached across the bar to reclaim the drive.
“Fine. Give me half an hour, and I’ll see what I can do.”
* * *
Damn him.
Karen went to the end of the bar and opened her laptop on the desk area underneath the surface. Patrick had known she wouldn’t be able to say no, especially with someone’s life potentially in the balance. It wasn’t fair, and as soon as she got the data off the drive, she’d send him packing in no uncertain terms.
Firing up a program that would isolate her USB port to protect her computer from potential viruses, she inserted the disk and waited.
As she watched the screen, she was all too aware of Patrick’s presence. That heady scent of rich spice and musk, those broad shoulders that took up most of the space in a room, and that magnetism that drew in everyone within a twenty-foot radius...it was all too overwhelming. Whenever they were in the same room, all she wanted to do was strip him down and...
A window popped up, prompting her to enter a key. She fired up the encryption program she’d written and watched as an indicator bar moved across the window. It reached the end and stopped, opening a blank dialogue box with an error code displayed.
“Smart. Very smart. But not as smart as me,” she murmured, her fingers flying across the keyboard.
She clicked enter, and several documents opened in the background as a big white dialogue box popped up over the center of it all. There was a single line of text in the box.
Access Outside Protocol. Ten minute destruct delay.
A countdown clock started ticking down just before the white box disappeared. Experimenting with a few mouse-clicks, she accessed the file structure without issue, but any attempt to copy files appeared to be blocked. Shaking her head, she looked up at Patrick.
“I’m in, but it looks like I triggered a self-destruct sequence of some sort. Better come take a look, quick.”
He came around the bar and she moved aside as he started glancing through the files. “Any chance we can move these off the USB before it goes?”
“Doesn’t look like it. Pen and paper? I might have some around here.”
He shook his head and reached into his jacket pocket for his cell phone. “Pictures might work.” He snapped a photo of the file open on the screen, closed it, and then opened another. “How much time do we have?”
“Not enough.” She checked her watch. “Maybe three more minutes, if we’re lucky. We should move back. Like now.” Karen took a step back, then another and another as he frantically clicked one last photo.
“Come on, Patrick! Now!”
A window shattered at the front of the store and she turned toward the sound, confused at the distraction as a small metal cylinder bounced off the tile floors. Struggling to process two potential threats at once she turned to warn Patrick, but he was already running toward her.
“Get down!” he yelled as a loud pop sounded behind him, presumably from the USB drive. Then a ball of flames and smoke burst up in the center of the room and Karen felt Patrick’s body slam into hers, knocking her to the floor behind the bar.
* * *
Patrick didn’t think Karen was hurt, but his heart raced as he sheltered her with his body. The heat and flames roared on the other side of the bar, and staccato pops told him their attackers hadn’t left yet.
“Come on,” he said, getting to his knees and pulling her with him. “We have to get out of here. Back door.”
Thankfully she didn’t argue, just nodded and led the way as they crawled the length of the bar and through a doorway into the kitchen. The sounds were muted and they stood up to run through the galley to the door in the back wall.
Karen stopped, looking back with a pained expression on her face. Patrick stepped in to block her view, grabbing her upper arms until she looked at him. The emptiness in her gaze made his heart hurt for her, but getting them both to safety was the priority right now.
“You know there’s nothing we can do. We have to go. Right now.”
She nodded and turned away. He followed her out the back door and down the alley, where she stopped, apparently unsure of which way to go. Patrick took her hand and tugged her with him around the corner, stopping just shy of the front of the building.
“I’m gonna see if they left. Stay here, okay?”
Karen nodded again and Patrick let her fingers slip free, a bad feeling knotting his stomach. She was going to bolt. He could feel it. Letting go was absolutely the wrong move.
Reaching back, he grabbed her wrist just as she was turning away.
“On second thought, come with me. You know the drill.”
Enjoy
this post? Support your author:
So even though I've previously posted excerpts from this story-in-progress, today I'm posting everything I've written so far (about 2300 words or so) to get us all caught up (there are bits and pieces missing from the posted excerpts thus far). And then the story will continue every Friday with whatever new words I get done during the week, typical serial style.
This will not affect the holiday serial - those stories will be posted on their respective holidays. And if you follow my other pen names, those blogs will both be updated with new serial stories later today/tonight as well. I may even create a blog for my new fantasy endeavor, if there's any interest in reading that as I go...
If you're not a serial fiction fan, that's okay too. You can just skip over the Friday posts, and catch the books when they come out.
All that said...I give you Part 1 of English Breakfast - in unedited draft form, as usual. Enjoy, and happy Friday!
English Breakfast, Part 1
Karen flipped the sign on the front door of her new tea bar, Cup & Saucer, to “Open” and tried not to be disappointed that no one was waiting outside. The grand opening wasn’t scheduled until Friday and advertising had been minimal, but she’d still hoped the neighborhood would be excited. Turning away, she went behind the long mahogany bar she’d bought from a nightclub downtown when it closed. She checked the temperature again on each of the hot taps, straightened the china and glanced at the door every few seconds, suddenly absolutely certain that her family was right, and the shop was a failure not even an hour into its first day.
The delicate bells on top the door jingled softly and she turned away from the tea canisters that didn’t need dusting to smile at her first customer.
“Welcome to Cup & Saucer - what can I get you today?”
The woman was nearly a caricature, wearing a white wrap-dress with black polka dots cinched by a thick black belt, saddle-style black and white pumps and huge dark sunglasses that looked like something from the seventies. The outfit was topped off with a wide-brimmed white straw hat, the band of which matched the fabric of her dress.
“Do you have cups to go, dear?” she asked with a glance a the china lined up and waiting. “I’m really in kind of a hurry, but I could use a hit of something strong. English Breakfast, perhaps?”
Karen nodded, reaching for a paper cup and insulating band. “Of course. I’ll have that ready for you in a minute. It will be two-fifty, please.” She placed a scoop of tea leaves into a wide filter bag and placed it in the cup, then poured boiling water over it from the hottest tap. Snapping a lid over the top of the cup and filter, she set a timer the size of a child’s watch face and stuck it to the side of the cup before taking the money the woman laid on the counter.
“What’s that?” the woman said, frowning at the device as she picked up her cup.
“It’s a timer. When it beeps, your tea is done, and you should remove the teabag for optimal taste.” Karen held her breath, hoping it didn’t sound too odd. Everyone had scoffed when she came up with the idea, but she couldn’t think of any other way to ensure to-go patrons would get a cup that wasn’t oversteeped. She’d approached the company to build a prototype and paid far too much for the first batch, hoping they’d catch on.
The woman shrugged, her frown dissipating. Or Karen thought it did. Impossible to tell for sure behind those glasses.
“What a novel idea - thank you.” She pulled something out of her purse and laid it on the bar. “Now if you wouldn’t mind, a gentleman will come in later today and order English Breakfast as well, in a china teacup. Be a dear and give that to him, won’t you? Thank you!”
It was Karen’s turn to frown as she picked up the small black flash drive. “What’s his--” she looked up as the bells on the door jingled again. The woman was gone.
Karen put the drive under the bar beside the cash register, stifling the urge to plug it into her laptop and see what was on it. Before deciding she needed to find herself, she’d worked at the same security firm her now ex-fiance worked for, doing forensic discovery on hard drives, networks, and anything else that spoke binary. It had been rewarding, but draining, and she was glad that part of her life was over.
Not that many people would probably be coming in, but if more than one man came in and ordered English Breakfast, how would she know which one to give the thing to? If she gave it to the wrong guy, would it be a security breech of some sort? She shook her head. It probably didn’t matter, and it definitely shouldn’t matter to her. Not anymore.
Maybe the guy would ask for it. That would help.
Measuring out a teaspoon of her best Yunnan tea into a stainless steel filter basket, she placed it in her favorite mug and filled it with water just barely under the boiling point. She set a timer for four minutes and waited. At least if the shop failed, she would never run out of tea.
* * *
Patrick O’Neil parked across the street from his ex-fiance’s new tea shop. As expected, it was perfect, from the lacy cream window swags to the jaunty teacup and saucer hanging from a wrought-iron fixture above the door. It would be neat and tidy inside, with everything clean and in its place. Karen had always liked everything in order. Everything had to make sense, or it would eventually have to be purged.
Just as he had. Though he still wasn’t sure exactly what hadn’t made sense about their relationship.
He got out and locked the door, looking up and down the quaint little street full of shops similar to hers before he crossed the cobblestone street, one of the last of its kind in Bellvue. She wouldn’t be happy to see him, he knew, but she was the only one he knew who could decrypt this particular information. There wasn’t time to find someone else with her particular skill set.
An airy, tinkling sound announced his arrival when he opened the door, and Karen glanced up absently from her place at a long, beautiful wooden bar.
“I’ll be right with you,” she called out, looking down again. He kept moving forward, through the neat rows of small square tables set on the diagonal with matching chairs. She froze in place the moment his identity finally triggered in her brain, and then slowly lifted her head.
“What are you doing here, Patrick?” She didn’t smile, pinning him with the intense stare meant to intimidate. Somehow she still didn’t seem to realize that it had never worked on him. Not in the way she wanted it to, anyways. Carefully adjusting his trousers, he slid onto a bar stool and tried to focus on his purpose for being there.
“Good to see you too, babe. I’ll take a cup of English Breakfast, if you don’t mind. And a woman should have brought in a flash drive for me?”
Karen retrieved the drive and slid it across the bar to him.
“I’ll make you a cup to go. That will be two-fifty.” Her words were measured and professional, with a healthy layer of stress threaded through. It probably would have been wise to send someone else, considering her reaction, but he’d wanted to see her again, selfish as that was. She’d turned his life upside down when she walked out, and for what? Some mid-life crisis? She’d never been one-hundred percent clear, and he wanted closure.
Right after she unlocked the contents of the drive for him.
“I’ll stay,” he said, earning a sharp glare. “Karen, I need your help.”
Her brows drawn together, she shook her head but he held the drive up before she could argue.
“To be clear, there’s a young woman who needs your help. And I don’t have time to find someone else who has the skills to hack this drive. She doesn’t have time.”
“I don’t do that anymore, Patrick - you know that. What are you going to do, come here every time you need a hacker? I’m sorry, and I’m sorry for whatever trouble that girl is in, but I just...can’t. I can’t.”
She turned away, dispensing water into a to-go cup over a bag of tea leaves. Slapping a small watch-face to the cup, she put a lid on and set it in front of him.
“No charge. Now please leave.”
He leaned forward, steeling himself against her icy gaze.
“A young journalist was kidnapped today, and her best friend thinks it’s because of the information on that drive. She received it by courier the day before yesterday and after she accessed the files, she hide the drive in an air duct, unaware that her friend was watching. That night, she never came home.”
“I left all the programs I developed at the office. One of the other geeks should be able to figure it out. What about Ken?” Karen leaned against the back counter, arms crossed over her chest. She was trying to resist, but he could see her resolve crumbling, hear it in her voice.
“Ken’s out on a long-term assignment, Jake’s on vacation and can’t be reached, and Derek...well, he’s distracted right now. Kane says it has to be you.”
She stared past his shoulder, worrying her lower lip like she always did when she knew there was no other choice. A quick shake of the head, and she reached across the bar to reclaim the drive.
“Fine. Give me half an hour, and I’ll see what I can do.”
* * *
Damn him.
Karen went to the end of the bar and opened her laptop on the desk area underneath the surface. Patrick had known she wouldn’t be able to say no, especially with someone’s life potentially in the balance. It wasn’t fair, and as soon as she got the data off the drive, she’d send him packing in no uncertain terms.
Firing up a program that would isolate her USB port to protect her computer from potential viruses, she inserted the disk and waited.
As she watched the screen, she was all too aware of Patrick’s presence. That heady scent of rich spice and musk, those broad shoulders that took up most of the space in a room, and that magnetism that drew in everyone within a twenty-foot radius...it was all too overwhelming. Whenever they were in the same room, all she wanted to do was strip him down and...
A window popped up, prompting her to enter a key. She fired up the encryption program she’d written and watched as an indicator bar moved across the window. It reached the end and stopped, opening a blank dialogue box with an error code displayed.
“Smart. Very smart. But not as smart as me,” she murmured, her fingers flying across the keyboard.
She clicked enter, and several documents opened in the background as a big white dialogue box popped up over the center of it all. There was a single line of text in the box.
Access Outside Protocol. Ten minute destruct delay.
A countdown clock started ticking down just before the white box disappeared. Experimenting with a few mouse-clicks, she accessed the file structure without issue, but any attempt to copy files appeared to be blocked. Shaking her head, she looked up at Patrick.
“I’m in, but it looks like I triggered a self-destruct sequence of some sort. Better come take a look, quick.”
He came around the bar and she moved aside as he started glancing through the files. “Any chance we can move these off the USB before it goes?”
“Doesn’t look like it. Pen and paper? I might have some around here.”
He shook his head and reached into his jacket pocket for his cell phone. “Pictures might work.” He snapped a photo of the file open on the screen, closed it, and then opened another. “How much time do we have?”
“Not enough.” She checked her watch. “Maybe three more minutes, if we’re lucky. We should move back. Like now.” Karen took a step back, then another and another as he frantically clicked one last photo.
“Come on, Patrick! Now!”
A window shattered at the front of the store and she turned toward the sound, confused at the distraction as a small metal cylinder bounced off the tile floors. Struggling to process two potential threats at once she turned to warn Patrick, but he was already running toward her.
“Get down!” he yelled as a loud pop sounded behind him, presumably from the USB drive. Then a ball of flames and smoke burst up in the center of the room and Karen felt Patrick’s body slam into hers, knocking her to the floor behind the bar.
* * *
Patrick didn’t think Karen was hurt, but his heart raced as he sheltered her with his body. The heat and flames roared on the other side of the bar, and staccato pops told him their attackers hadn’t left yet.
“Come on,” he said, getting to his knees and pulling her with him. “We have to get out of here. Back door.”
Thankfully she didn’t argue, just nodded and led the way as they crawled the length of the bar and through a doorway into the kitchen. The sounds were muted and they stood up to run through the galley to the door in the back wall.
Karen stopped, looking back with a pained expression on her face. Patrick stepped in to block her view, grabbing her upper arms until she looked at him. The emptiness in her gaze made his heart hurt for her, but getting them both to safety was the priority right now.
“You know there’s nothing we can do. We have to go. Right now.”
She nodded and turned away. He followed her out the back door and down the alley, where she stopped, apparently unsure of which way to go. Patrick took her hand and tugged her with him around the corner, stopping just shy of the front of the building.
“I’m gonna see if they left. Stay here, okay?”
Karen nodded again and Patrick let her fingers slip free, a bad feeling knotting his stomach. She was going to bolt. He could feel it. Letting go was absolutely the wrong move.
Reaching back, he grabbed her wrist just as she was turning away.
“On second thought, come with me. You know the drill.”
Enjoy
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