Steal the Lightning: A Field Ops Novel (Field Ops #3)(66)

Angel said, “So how do you want to tackle it?”

“I want the bugger locked up. And whatever he’s still got from us, I want that locked up, too. Somewhere very, very safe.”

“Not enticing.”

“It’s enticing to me.”

“You,” she said, “are not the one needs enticed.”

I have enemies, he’d written.

I wrote back: I understand.

And once more: I can help.

Ten minutes passed. We waited. I ordered more scotch.

He wrote: Have you come to take me home?

I looked at her, and she mouthed, “Yes.”

By this time, it was nearly dawn.

And there was nothing else.

Perhaps I’d said the wrong thing after all.





Chapter 54

Echoes from Nowhere




Have you come to take me home?

I was back in our room. Staring at the conversation on the screen, as if it were a code to be unraveled, or a poem that wouldn’t yield its meaning.

This wasn’t poetry. Or any code that I could crack.

Home. That was a good thing, surely? So where was “home”? And what was it?

And why the hell would he assume I’d take him there?

I checked my phone. I put off doing anything, just waiting for the call, the message.

Angel brought us sandwiches. We ate them in our room. The strain was telling on her: gray-faced, and dark rings under her eyes. I’d told her she should sit this out, go back to her mum and dad a while, get well.

She’d told me: no chance.

“I’m better when I’m busy. Besides, if this is what we have to deal with—” and she sat down on the bed “—I’m dealing with it. Right?”

“You’re in a bad place now.”

She curled up, arms around her knees.

“There’s lots of people in a bad place, Chris. But they take their kids to school, do their jobs, fill out their tax returns. Bad place is no excuse.”

“That’s not the same.”

“How not the same? If you’re a doctor? A soldier? A cop?”

Because they’re not you, I thought.

I could have said it. Instead, I held my hands up, turned away, pretended to be watching something out the window . . .

And then, I was watching, because what was out the window was just slightly—very slightly—off.

It was the light.

We were ten floors up. In the street below, people were gathering for the parade. They had their sun hats and their toy balloons, their flags and banners . . . But I was watching through a fog. A thin mist seemed to have collected in the air, sparkling sometimes, as if struck by some stray beam of light, invisible for moments, then shining like a film, stretched across the void . . .

I said, “Your situation’s not good.”

“No. But, there you go.”

I wiped a hand across the glass. It made no difference to the view.

“Tell me about it.”

“Boring. Kid’s stuff, really.”

I looked skeptical.

“I’m dealing with it!”

“Tell me.”

I glanced out again. Police were clearing the stragglers off the road, herding them back to the crowd, behind the barriers.

A flash, then, in the middle air. A flash, a flicker— Did anybody notice? I couldn’t tell.

“It’s just . . . yeah. It’s trivial, you want to know. It’s kid’s stuff. And I’m over it, I am so over it. But . . .”

She leaned back on the bed. She wasn’t looking at me.

“It’s like when you’re a kid, you know? And people say, what do you want to be when you grow up? And you think you just decide, and, that’s what you do. Yeah?”

“I was going to be an astronaut.”

“Exactly!”

“But I didn’t.”

“No.”

“On the other hand, the school careers teacher said, get a job in a bank, and I didn’t do that, either. One up, I suppose.”

“This is hard for me to talk about,” she said. “Please, Chris . . .”

“Sorry.”

She sighed. She stretched her legs.

“It was always one thing for me. Always the same thing. It was always music.”

“Yeah. I got that.”

“Turned out I could sing. And I got voice coaching, piano lessons. And I joined the school band and tried out every kind of instrument they had. I was lucky. School had money for it, then. And I heard Mozart and Bach, and after school it was hip-hop, r’n’b—and then these other guys, like Bartók, Messiaen. And that’s when something flipped inside me, and I just thought, this. This is what I want to do. One way or another, somehow—”

“And you do.”

“No, I don’t. I did a Ph.D. on something else entirely, I’ve written a few papers. Taught a few classes.”

“You sing—”

“Amateur. Choir.”

I started to protest, but she held a hand to stop me.

“I’m not putting myself down here, Chris. Yeah, I can sing. Some talent.” She looked at me. “Not enough.”

“I don’t see where this is going.”