#3 Where Monsters Lay

Chap. 5_playful ping-pong and friendly closeness?

"No offence, Sarah, but that Mr Harmison guy was a bit weird."

"I know what you mean, but I kind of have soft spot for the guy."

"Oh really?"

"Well, not as big as my soft spot for you!"

It was the usual flirting, the casual, playful ping-pong of vomit-inducing wordplay. Sarah and Frank, when not talking about the Histon case, had simply been all over each other since Rob had left them alone that night. And although he was pleased to see them all friendly again, it did bring a little sadness.

He and Riley had been like that a long time ago. Until they'd had Aaron. Don't doubt it, Rob loved Aaron and he loved Riley, but with this job, he was away almost all of the weekdays, always till late at night.

He left before Riley arose and got back after she'd gone to bed.

He missed the casual flirting, even if it brought people's dinners back up. He missed playing with Aaron, and being the Dad that his Dad was to him. He wanted to be a role model. But he couldn't, and it troubled him.

And Frank and Sarah weren't anywhere near getting married and having kids, Rob knew that. But he still harked back to the times before Aaron. The times when the future didn't exist. And he revelled in those moments quietly, unflinchingly, as he motored them all back to pick up some gear from the Den. Because they were in for another long night.

*****

"Whadda we need, then?" Frank called past Sarah's ear to Rob. He had his left arm around her waist and Rob stood on the other side of her as the three of them, three-a-breast, walked slowly into the warehouse.

"I'll stick it quickly up on the screen," Rob replied, face in his phone.

Sarah remembered the times when she thought Rob couldn't use a computer to save his life. The times before they really knew the threat of what was happening. The more innocent times, she thought intimately.

And now Rob was controlling a projector display via his phone.

The world changes, Sarah. Get used to it. And she cast a lazy eye towards Frank, still right next to her, enjoying the moment.

"You're never going to get tired with gadgets, are you?" she said, admiringly at Rob, changing her focus entirely.

"Never," he replied with his signature cheeky smirk. He carefully waltzed over towards a long filing cabinet at the other edge of the room.

"You see," he spoke in transit, "Mr Harmison reminded me of something."

He reached the cabinet and pulled out the top drawer, flapping his hand about deep inside it, before coming out and revealing a piece of paper.

"This document," he explained, "is called a requisition 16. And basically, it means that we can file it off, and have some gadget either bought..."

He paused for dramatic effect.

"... or built for us, and delivered within two days."

Both Sarah and Frank were smiling, and Frank gently squeezed Sarah's waist.

"Okay, so that's nothing but amazing!" Sarah replied after the moment of silence. "But why did Mr Harmison remind you of that?"

"Here's the clever bit," Rob said proudly. "There's also another feature to the requisition 16, which is that each gadget, built or bought for any one of the services in the MIs gets filed under a certain hashtag. They've been doing this for a bit now, and this means that you can put in certain requests for all of a specific hashtag. Like, if you asked for the gadgets from the coffee hashtag, you'd get an array of coffee machines, cos that's what I expect the Military Intelligence do all day-"