Alec Hardy goes to Gracepoint

Chapter 2

Alec arrives in Gracepoint and opens his big mouth

Alec shook her hand. "Alec Hardy, nice to meet you finally. You do know we just spent hours on a plane and hardly spoke a word to each other?" he smiled.

"Yeah, sorry about that, I just didn't feel like talking much although my mum says sometimes I never stop. It's just that I used to travel all the time with someone who never stopped talking so this time I just wanted some peace and quiet. I must have annoyed you though, the music, the magazine, oh and the tapping."

Alec was about to say not to forget the hip swaying but thought better of it. "That's ok and by the way, you're welcome for the hand to hold on take-off and the arm when you fell asleep."

"Oh, sorry about that, I'm more used to travelling on Zeppelins than planes so I'm not keen on the take-offs, it's just they take so long on distance travelling. I'll be glad to get to my hotel and get some proper food and some sleep. How long are you staying for?"

"Not sure, a month, maybe longer, depends. I'm in no hurry to get back."

"You on holiday or business then, if you don't know how long you're staying?" she laughed.

Alec just smiled and said he didn't know as he was contemplating seeing if he liked the place and maybe stay even longer, there was nothing for him to go back to as his daughter was still having nothing to do with him, he may as well be on the other side of the Atlantic for all the good his phone calls had done. "What about you, it's a lot of luggage for someone on holiday on their own."

"I'm on an exchange program, seeing how a small town American Police Department works, they've sent someone over to Police headquarters where I work and I was chosen because of my excellent qualifications," she joked. "No, really, everyone was scrambling for it because it was supposed to be San Francisco but it got changed. So I volunteered, I like travelling to unknown places."

She thought back to when she was oh so far away in her own universe travelling to distant planets but now, she was Earthbound but still managed to travel thanks to her position within Torchwood, going out and meeting new people and going to new places when there had been signs of anything strange going on and just north of San Francisco had been of interest lately so her cover of working in the Police had come in useful and she had completed her training as a liaison officer between the Police and Torchwood in the UK which helped and had got her in with no problem to the Gracepoint Police Department with a view to Torchwood opening a branch there but the Americans had no concept of what her true mission was. Her job was to smooth things over when Torchwood took over even though a lot of top senior officers knew about them and they were well known in some places as 'special ops'. Still she was used to that, travelling with The Doctor all that time ago. She was prepared to do her job in order to get a good look around the town and see if it was worthwhile sending a team out under some guise or other and in fact it had been touch and go if her step-father was going to let her go on her own, he was going to send Jake with her but she enjoyed a challenge.

Glad that at least now he knew her name but not sure if she wanted to have anything more to do with him once they arrived, he supposed that being a small town they would run across one another at some point but if she was working then he may find out where she was staying and maybe ask her out to dinner since there probably weren't many more people from the UK going to be there.

It took an hour to arrive at the bus terminal which was little more than a drop off point and Alec waited until most of the other passengers were getting off before handing down Rose's shoulder bags and getting his own down and made his way to the front of the bus, helping Rose down the last deep step as she stood and looked at it, taking her bags from her then offering his hand. Their cases were side by side on the pavement, the driver must have assumed they were travelling together when he had seen them arrive at the bus and Alec had been in charge of the luggage and the driver nodded to Alec as he retrieved his case, put his shoulder bag on top and offered to help Rose. "Might as well see it through," he thought as he picked up her case and asked her where she was staying – the same hotel as he was.