Caitlin shifted Monique to her left breast and stroked the baby's head as she struggled to stay awake. She heard Bret grunt and throw back the covers in the next room. He soon appeared in the doorway, dressed in brown U.S. Army boxers and a white T-shirt.
He yawned. "You want some coffee?"
"When she's finished," she answered, stroking Monique's head again. "I had one while I was feeding her the other day, and man, it was like she'd snorted a line of speed or something. Didn't sleep all day. Warm milk and honey would be nice, though."
"Got it," he said in a voice still hoarse with sleep. Her husband disappeared into the depths of the farmhouse to stoke the wood-fired stove and dole himself out a small serving of black market coffee, another perk of her job. The rattle and tink of metal cooking pots drifted across the small stream from the camp, which was quickly coming awake as people spilled out of the big twelve-man tents. She could see quite a few children already, picking up the games they'd been forced to abandon by nightfall the previous evening, running through the dew-soaked grass, chasing and being chased by four or five dogs. Strictly speaking, the young'uns were supposed to be boarded elsewhere; there were schools for foreign children, again mostly Americans, in both Swindon and Basingstoke, but Caitlin had heard nothing good about them, and she quietly used her connections in London to allow as many families as possible to stay together at Melton Farm. One of the tents was given over to an all-ages school run by three teachers who'd been traveling through Italy when the Wave hit. It was one of the things that made placements on their farm so popular.
Bret returned just as Monique fell off the breast, fast asleep and sticky with milk. "Look at her, would you." He smiled as he passed Caitlin her warm honeyed milk, making sure to keep it away from the child. "It's a good thing she got your looks and brains, sweetheart, because she is a lazy-ass sleepin' fool just like her old man, and she's gonna need something to fall back on in life."
Caitlin nodded, honestly wondering how her nearly-narcoleptic husband had ever made it through ranger school.
"Well, we don't know that she'll be a rocket scientist," she said. "But she is pretty."
"Like you," Bret said as he leaned forward to kiss her on the forehead.
"Guess I could have had my coffee, after all," she said.
"Take mine," he offered. "I don't mind milk and honey."
"I can't do that. You're down to half a bag of beans."
He shrugged. "You'll get more. You are still going to the city, aren't you?"
She nodded, a little distracted. She was already planning her morning run. Maintaining her fitness was not negotiable. Bret did not bother as much now that he was a self-proclaimed househusband, although farmwork kept him fit and strong enough. Caitlin, however, had no choice. She still answered to her old paymasters even though she was no longer on field duty.
She had run five miles just a couple of days after Monique had been delivered by elective cesarean. (And hadn't there been some tut-tutting from the midwitches over that.) A week further on and she was back in the gym she and Bret had set up in a sunroom overlooking the swimming pool. And yes, she had been more than a little surprised to find a working English farmhouse with a heated in-ground swimming pool, but that had been one of the things that had attracted them to the property. That and the peppercorn rent paid to the government, an indulgence in return for her services as a "consultant" to Echelon.
Bret stood by the window, silhouetted by the rising sun, causing Caitlin a momentary rush of blood. There had been a time in both their lives when they would have instinctively avoided exposing themselves in such a manner. Her husband had been able to get over it.
She hadn't.
Arguably, Caitlin did not need to maintain her combat readiness and field craft the way she did. Her consultancy consisted almost entirely of analytic and training work, and having hunkered down here in the heart of the English Home Counties, they could hardly be more secure. Bret had tried to get her to ease up, but her Echelon training had taken hold down at a cellular level. She could not stop being who and what she was. Looking at her husband, she often envied his ability to simply walk away from his army past.
Monique stirred and grumbled in her mother's arms, perhaps disturbed by her dark shift in mood. Bret turned away from the window where he was watching the workers' camp come to life and offered to take the baby. His limbs were all heavily muscled, and the small swaddled infant disappeared into the crook of one arm without waking. He started to pat her lightly on the back, rocking her gently and humming an old Willie Nelson standard. "My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys." The song never failed to have a magical, soothing effect on the baby, and Caitlin could tell that Monique was falling more deeply asleep in her father's arms.
She stepped back into their bedroom and quickly changed into her running gear: black Lycra leggings, an old T-shirt of Bret's, and a Berreta M9 pistol in a specially fitted holster at the small of her back. Her husband didn't give it a second glance. He had spent his adult life around weapons and knew his wife well enough to understand why she would never stop carrying one.
"Are you riding up to Swindon today to that GM crop briefing?" she asked. "I'll just tell the stable guys is all, if you're gonna need one of the horses."
Bret eased the baby back into her crib and stood up, stretching his back with an audible cracking of bones. Like her, he carried a good deal of scar tissue and old injuries.
"Thought I might take the mountain bike up if you don't mind," he said quietly. "I could do with the cardio workout."
"You could," she teased him, grabbing for a fold of skin at his belly. He wasn't carrying any fat, but he batted her hand away defensively anyway.
"Hey, you squeeze it, you buy it, lady."
"Really?" she said, closing on him.
When she grabbed at him this time, he didn't resist. An hour or so later, jogging on the spot to keep her heart rate elevated, Caitlin enjoyed taking in a deep draft of chilly morning air and shooting one last glance at her home before plunging back into a long cross-country run. Thick tendrils of coal smoke were creeping out of the kitchen chimney, where Bret would be preparing hot drinks for the foremen before briefing them on the day's work. They'd be plowing the new GM soy into the eastern paddock today, half a mile up the road toward Stitchcombe, and without a gasoline ration, as usual these days, it would all be done by hand. Most of the camp would turn out for that, although a smaller number would be at work in the southern fields, scattering a new weed-n-feed mix as part of a trial for the Resources Ministry. They were being paid in fuel coupons for letting the government's eggheads conduct field tests on their property.