‘No. I don’t.’
She was surprised by his slightly hostile reaction to what was, after all, just by-the-numbers small-talk. Screw him, she thought, with an unaccustomed little wave of anger. He was a security guard: he should be making her feel secure, not uncomfortable.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘good night.’
Chuck stepped smoothly between her and the doorway. Annette felt an electrical flicker of disquiet pass up her spine and burn on her ears. She met his eyes in surprise, then ducked her head submissively low. She had not come this far in a man’s world without knowing when to make concessions, and her mind raced as she made this one.
What did he want? Why was he doing this? Was he the one who didn’t like her? The answer seemed suddenly clear. But why? The first surge of confused panic gave way to more sensible flashes: Scott was in the car. She was not alone. He wouldn’t dare do anything. She would tell. In the morning she would tell. She would get him fired. She would feel bad, but she would get him fired. This was too much.
With her anger came strength.
‘Excuse me, please,’ she said, surprising herself with the steadiness of her voice.
Chuck said nothing. He could see the report was on rudder-servo assemblies. He’d done his senior-year final paper on rudder servos: ‘Rudder Valves – Faults, Failures and Fine Tuning’. Dr D’Agostino had told him he loved the alliteration. He’d got an A–.
‘Rudder-valve assemblies,’ he said mildly.
Annette felt a rush of relief. He wasn’t being threatening: he wanted to talk shop. The guy just had no social skills, was all. She could handle that: she’d been surrounded by science geeks with no social skills since graduating from high school. Relief washed over her, like a cool breeze on a hot day.
‘Yes.’ She smiled up at him.
And he hit her with Neil Abbotsham’s backstroke trophy.
25
SAFETY – WHEN THEY’D both expected to be dead at several points during the day – brought more tears to Ness and cold anger to Tom. Mostly at himself. His inability to protect Ness filled him with frustration and made him long stupidly for a big gun and a second chance.
He had put her in his perennially unmade bed and sat with her as she sobbed. She flinched when he touched her shoulder, and he didn’t blame her. He was relieved when she slept so that he didn’t have to pretend to be strong for her.
What a fucking joke that was.
She had been the strong one. He had leaned on her narrow shoulders as they stumbled away from the warehouse-for-hicks, his balls protesting at every footfall; she had sat him down beside the two-lane blacktop and flagged down a truck; she had concocted the story of carjackers and escape to account for their injuries; she had kept it together for both of them.
His only contribution had been a pained expression of thanks for the ride, and the donation of a quarter so they could call a cab to the gas station off the 710 freeway, where the cheerfully incurious trucker had left them.
At the hospital he’d been steadfastly ignored as his leg bled steadily onto the floor, until someone who looked like an angry janitor fetched a junior doctor to stitch him up.
Dr Joi was young and pretty but her name was deceptive. She had closed his wounds with all the finesse typically shown by a Civil War field surgeon. If Ness hadn’t been with him, Tom would’ve left halfway through the twenty-eight clumsy stitches. Or cried. Possibly both.
Now he lowered himself gingerly to the couch and tried not to think about the shambles his life had become. He felt for the remote under his right buttock and clicked on the TV. The plane in Oklahoma, smoking in the darkness now, reminded him cruelly that Ness wasn’t the only woman he’d let down today.
And Chris Stern’s widow? a mean little voice in his head taunted. Tom was annoyed at the voice. He hadn’t let Vee down today, for Chrissakes! Letting Vee down was just an ongoing situation that would probably never be resolved.
When the mean little voice tried to bring Sylvia Alvarez into it, Tom rebelled and rolled off the couch with a wince.
It was three a.m., six a.m. in DC. He picked up his landline phone and thumbed through a barely used address book. Sometimes old technology was the best.
He found the number he wanted scrawled in pencil in a margin. He hadn’t used it in a long while but he punched it into the handset now before he could think too hard about it.
To his relief, Kitty was awake. She told him that Lenny Munro was lead on Oklahoma.
‘Great. Just what I needed.’
‘Sorry, Tom.’
‘Ah, fuck it.’
‘You okay? It’s, like, three a.m. there.’
‘Yeah, I’m fine. Can’t sleep.’
‘You should take a pill or something.’
‘Has that dick got a prelim cause?’
‘Gee, Tom, it’s only sixteen hours old!’
Was it really only sixteen hours? Lucia’s call seemed like a hundred years ago.
‘Off the record.’
‘Off the record, it’s only sixteen hours old.’ Kitty lowered her voice: ‘You know I’d tell you.’
‘Thanks.’ He sighed. ‘You got any jobs lined up for me? Pete’s car sprung an oil leak? A grease fire at McDonald’s?’
‘Tom …’
‘Figures.’
