Chapter Six
One Month Later
Jess was fiddling with the files in his office. He hated filing, hated paperwork in general. Why he was a professor, and a research scientist, he wasn’t quite sure. Maybe he should have been a baseball player, he thought, as he stared out the window at the day outside. It was a good baseball kind of day. He could imagine himself out on the green field in the middle of summer, putting a good pocket into his old glove, waiting for a fly ball. He fingered that old glove fondly. It always laid on the edge of the worktable beside the picture of Ashley and her plane.
“You know what pisses me off?” The voice rang out with amazing clarity, cutting into Jess’s thoughts with its direct but decidedly playful tone.
Jess turned around to see Ashley standing in the doorw
