Page 2 of The Mouse and the Maestro

“It’s unavoidable. I’m a bubbling cauldron of testosterone.” She laughed, hard. “Thanks for finding the humor in that. Be right back, going to go add more weeping to my avatar.”

She let him go to clutch her stomach. “Stop it. I’m getting to that stage of laughter where I’m not going to be able to control it, and you know Ridge hates it when you make me giggle during meetings with outsiders.”

“Outsiders? What are we, a cult now?”

“Blue, please,” she gasped, doubling over.

Ridge pushed open the door. His eyes went first to his wife, doubled over with laughter, and landed next on Blue, standing rigidly away from her, his red eyes swollen to four times their normal size. They were giant orbs with slits for pupils. Ridgesputtered and pressed his lips together. “Everything, uh, okay in here?”

“You’re laughing at how I look, huh?” Blue asked.

Ridge sputtered a little laugh and cleared his throat. “Absolutely not. That would be unprofessional, Betty Boop.”

Maggie looked up at Blue. “Oh, the big eyes, Betty Boop. I’m dying.” She doubled over again and this time stumbled into the wall laughing.

“Great, she’s lost to us for the rest of the day, and this time it’s on you,” Blue said.

“I hear your words, but it’s really hard to take you seriously when you look like a Muppet,” Ridge said, and Maggie dropped to the floor, laughing so hard she lost the ability to support herself.

“Remember when you never talked to anyone and didn’t have a sense of humor? I miss those days,” Blue said to Ridge.

“Screw up this case, and you’ll see them again,” Ridge promised. “Are you actually okay? Do you need to go home? Because you can. That looks really painful.” He sputtered again but got himself back under control.

“I’m fine,” Blue said.

Maggie clutched at his calf. “Muppet. Like Sam the Eagle,” she gasped before dissolving into uncontrollable laughter again.

Blue shook her off. “I’m glad you guys find so much humor in my misery.”

“Please, please, please say ‘It’s the American way,’ for me,” Maggie pled, wheezing now.

“You broke her, you fix her,” Blue said to Ridge, shaking Maggie off again as he sidestepped her out of the room.

“Come on, baby girl, put the stopper back on the bottle.” Ridge stooped to pick Maggie up and Blue closed the door, not wanting to see what would undoubtedly be a charming resolution to their little scene. They really were adorable. Ifhe didn’t hate them together so much, he would find them delightful. As it was, their unmitigated joy in each other’s presence only served to deepen his misery.

Chapter 3

They hated her, of course. And why wouldn’t they? She had pepper sprayed one of them before the morning even began. And then she accused their leader of being a misogynist for using a term of endearment on his wife. Jane sat in the meeting room clutching a bottle of water, hands shaking, trying to get herself back under control. She had desperately hoped to go into this day with a clean slate, with no one realizing how incredibly awkward and different she was. Instead she had exposed herself to all of them within the space of five minutes. She had outed the secret herself: she was an outsider forever with no hope of fitting in.

Cameron Ridge stood at the front of the meeting room. His team became immediately silent as if he were the teacher and they the restless classroom. “Good morning, everyone. I’d like to introduce Dr. Jane Dunbar. She specializes in mid-east artifacts from the Middle Ages. She’s agreed to consult with us on our current case. Dr. Dunbar, is that how you prefer to be addressed?”

Jane couldn’t tell if he was making fun of her or if it was an honest question. “Jane will be fine, thank you,” she replied.

“Jane, let me introduce our team. This is Maggie Ridge, my wife and our information coordinator. Maggie compiles, controls, and maintains the flow of information for each case. She’ll coordinate everything you give her and put it into a workable database for us to have at our fingertips. She specializes in cross referencing which doesn’t sound like much, but when you maintain as much data as we do, it comes in handy.”

Maggie gave Jane a smile and a little wave. Jane gave her a nod of acknowledgement in return.

“To my left is Ethan, our field agent and a new addition to the team. He’s leaving for Iraq tomorrow, so you won’t see much of him. Our contact will be sporadic at best, so we like to have as much information ready to go at a moment’s notice whenever he gets the chance to check in.

“On Maggie’s right you’ll find Babs and Ellen, our data entry specialists. You do not want to go against them in a typing contest. Spoiler alert: it will end badly for you.”

The door opened and closed. Someone sat to Jane’s left. Ridge smiled at the newcomer. Maggie sputtered a laugh and bit her knuckle. “And joining us is Blue Bishop, our aforementioned hacker extraordinaire. You two will be working, ah, closely together. Any questions?”

Everyone looked at Jane and she could feel her heart pounding. She shook her head.

“Great, let’s get started with what we know.” Cameron Ridge reached for a remote and the screen at the front of the room popped to life. “2010 began the Arab spring, a series of uprisings that aimed to overthrow oppressive regimes. I won’t go into the other countless issues surrounding that because we’ll be narrowing our focus to one thing: forgery.

“All the instability in the region allowed looters and gangs to raid museums and libraries, stealing priceless artifacts andselling them on the black market. At the same time, they began doing a series of forgeries and selling those, too. Over the last year, we’ve begun to see two disturbing patterns. One, the forgers and thieves seem to have unified into one powerful group. Two, the money from those thefts and forgeries is being funneled into multiple terror groups, one of which has recently pinged on our radar in a major way.

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