‘They knew you were on the right trail. They wanted me to keep you away from the truth and stay close to you. I was a convenient spy.’
‘You knew they were going to steal the fan disc?’
Her silence confirmed it.
‘So that little charade out in the desert …’
Her eyes slid away from his and colour rose up her throat.
He felt like the biggest kind of fool. ‘Yeah, I thought so …’ The memories of that night flashed in his head for the millionth time – his desperate schoolboy heat, her sudden cool retreat. The wound to his ego was crippling. He tried to shake it off, feeling all his emotions closing down, apart from bitterness, anger and desperation.
‘And the fire?’
‘I didn’t know, Tom. I swear! I swear to you I didn’t know!’ Her lip trembled. ‘I don’t know if you were meant to die there, or even if I was! I was so out of my depth. I had no idea what to do. I was just reacting to whatever happened.’
‘And feeding information back to them.’
‘I had to! I was already in deep with the cards – I couldn’t just go to the cops! You don’t understand, Tom. They aren’t small-time crooks, they’re killers!’
‘They sure are,’ he shot back. ‘You told them Lenny Munro had the bolt and they killed him for it.’
‘I didn’t know they were going to kill him. I didn’t! They wanted it back.’
‘Well, they’ve got it now,’ he spat. ‘Trashed my place and hers and would have killed me too!’
‘I know,’ she near-whispered. ‘I hoped they’d find it in Oklahoma. Then you would’ve been safe. But they knew you’d taken it.’
‘How?’
‘I don’t know. I didn’t tell them. I didn’t even know that!’ Her eyes glistened with tears. ‘I only wanted to protect you, Tom. I told them Munro had the bolt so they’d go after him, not you.’
‘Why? Why protect me? What’s so fucking special about me, Ness?’
Ness’s voice was low, husky, as she said, ‘Because when you still had your job, you were useful.’
Tom felt sick. The job he’d fucked up. The job he’d wasted. The job he’d finally thrown in Pete LaBello’s face. It had been all that had kept him alive. Without knowing it, he’d quit a lot more than a job the day he’d tossed his phone onto the Santa Ana freeway. He felt gouged out, only vaguely aware of her still talking.
‘It was useful to them to know what was happening inside the NTSB, how close you were getting, whether anyone else took you seriously. What you were doing to track down the parts and the paperwork. When they knew what you were doing, they knew how to avoid you. But then you got too close, I guess …’
‘Am I still useful, Ness?’ he asked, without a shred of emotion.
She sighed as if with exhaustion.
He nodded, understanding.
She turned to open her shoulder bag and held out an airline ticket. ‘To DC. Tomorrow. Under your seat you’ll find a file with all the evidence you need.’
He glanced round at Lucia. ‘Just the one ticket?’ He’d said it to hurt Ness, and was pleased when he saw in her eyes that it had. ‘Why should I believe you?’
She shrugged. ‘It’s the truth.’
He put the ticket into his jeans pocket.
‘I have to go.’ She picked up the gun and put it into her bag. He followed her to the door. When they were hidden from Lucia’s view by the bathroom wall, Ness turned to him and spoke so low he almost didn’t hear her. ‘Be careful, Tom.’
‘What do you care?’
She caught her lower lip between her teeth and turned to go. Tom grabbed her arm and spun her back to face him, seeing he was hurting her and glad of it.
‘Ness.’ He lowered his voice too. ‘I get it. I get it all. Except the hospital. The disc was gone. We hadn’t found the bolt. So what the fuck was the hospital all about?’
She put a hand on his chest, the warmth of her slender fingers like electricity on him, then tugged her arm out of his grasp, slipped out of the door and closed it quietly behind her.
Tom stared at the fake wood-grain for a long time, then went back to the bed and untied Lucia. He stripped off in silence, then got into bed beside her.
They should get out of there. If Ness had found him, others could too. Tom knew that but he was physically exhausted, and Ness’s revelations had corralled his brain into a corner where it ran in small circles and got nowhere fast. He didn’t know who to trust, where to go or how all this was going to end, and that sense of fragmentation left him by turn terrified, enraged and – finally – numb.
‘Are you angry with me?’ Lucia said softly.
‘What about?’
‘Anything.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Nothing is your fault. Nothing.’
In the morning they dressed in silence. Then he asked if she wanted to go to DC with him.
‘Yes,’ she said, and looked at him levelly, as if she expected a fight.
