Daniel Ganninger - Icarus Investigations 03 - Snow Cone by Daniel Ganninger Read Free Book Online

nice salesman from the store informed us that Greenland was cold—damn cold—and this wasn’t even the winter.  We thanked him for his overly observant statement.
    Our flight to New York from Nashville was in two days.  From there we would have a day layover in Iceland.  We were trying to focus on being prepared for a situation where we were going in blind.  It was not a good feeling.
    In the mean time, Jane informed us she had found us an office in “The Gulch”, an area of swanky shops near downtown Nashville.  We gave her the go-ahead to make the purchase for the lease and to set up the office as she saw fit.  It was an order that should have come with more guidelines.  When we arrived at the new office the next day, I discovered she not only had gotten the lease in an incredible amount of time, but she also had furnished it with all the latest amenities. 
    I began to realize this would have been an impossible task in the amount of time we gave her, and that it was another behind the back ploy by her and Galveston.  They had found the office weeks before, and Jane had completed the decorating touches with a designer in Nashville.  It was another tactic by the pair to force me into our new location.  I should have been upset, but I hated making design decisions and was secretly grateful they had taken it upon themselves to get it done.  I would never let them know that, however.
    As we became acquainted with our new office and the new coffee machine that loaded those little pods of tea or coffee, we gave our new office its indoctrination—a cheap champagne toast and a sign that read “Icarus Investigations–Nashville”.  It gave me warm fuzzies.  We now had a real office that didn’t have a yellow couch and a coffee machine that was growing eight million types of bacteria.
    After basking in the glow of our newest venture in the investigatory world, we settled back at the hotel to get a good night’s sleep before our flight the next morning.

-Chapter 10-
     
    Joe met us at the airport the next morning at 7:00 A.M.  He looked refreshed and carried a well-worn climber’s backpack.  He also had two small, plastic bins that contained his research materials. 
    Joe looked us over, and in a thoughtful tone said, “I think we may need to go through your gear when we get to Iceland.”
    I wondered why until I looked at Galveston.  His backpack was so incredibly huge that it ran the risk of not fitting in the cargo hold of the plane.  I saw myself in the reflection of the window at the terminal entrance and knew that I also looked ridiculous.  The packs were so large and heavy that we teetered from side-to-side, and the items we shoved on top of the backpack stuck out over our heads. 
    As Galveston and I laughed and pointed at each other over our ridiculousness, Joe waved his arm to a person walking toward us.  We both turned and saw a twenty-something woman bounding down the long terminal hall with a smile on her face.
    “Is that his girlfriend or something?” Galveston asked me as the woman approached us wearing a normal sized backpack.
    “I think he’s married.  I hope we haven’t gotten ourselves in the middle of some type of student love affair.”  I meant the statement as a joke, but by the look of the embrace between Joe and the woman, my thoughts didn’t appear to be that far off.
    “I’m so glad you made it, Sally.  Sorry for the short notice.”
    “No problem, Joe.  I didn’t have anything else going on.”
    “I bet,” I thought, as I flashed Galveston an uncomfortable look.
    “Guys, this is my niece, Sally.  She’s also my research assistant I told you about,” Joe said as he squeezed Sally’s shoulder.
    “Your niece,” Galveston and I said in unison, feeling guilty about our previous assumption.
    “You guys didn’t think something else, did you?” Joe said with a smile.
    “Of course not, Joe.  We knew it was your assistant, just not your niece,” Galveston