Exiles (Aaron Falk #3)(26)

Falk looked at her. Stay. He just nodded.

“Great. Thanks.” She leaned in with pursed lips and, job done, picked up her silverware.

“You’re heading off tomorrow?” he said as they began to eat. He tried to keep his tone casual. “Just here for tonight?”

“Yeah. Got to get back. I’ve got a seventeen-year-old at home, even though I’m sure he’s in no particular rush to see me.” Gemma focused on her food, but she was gauging his reaction to that information, Falk could tell.

“What’s his name?”

“Joel. He’s my stepson, technically, but—” She paused to save a twirl of pasta threatening to fall off her fork. “He’s a smart kid, and no trouble, really. Can be trusted on his own for a night, at any rate.”

“That’s good.” Falk was curious what the current relationship status was between Gemma and her stepson’s father, but she didn’t offer an explanation and so he didn’t ask. “Have you always lived there?” he said, instead.

“In Marralee?” Gemma swallowed and shook her head. “I grew up there, but I was at uni in Sydney, and then after I graduated I worked in the States for a few years. In California.”

“Oh yeah? You don’t have the accent at all.”

“No, I’m not sure I ever did. And it was a while ago now.”

“You were in the events industry there?”

“Not even close, actually.” Gemma laughed. “I should make you guess; people are always surprised. I was in programming back then. The whole silicon start-up scene. I worked for one of the tech companies.”

“Really?” Falk was impressed. “Which one?”

She nodded subtly toward a businessman a few tables away who had his laptop open to a website and was scrolling and typing one-handed as he ate. “The big one.”

“Seriously? What was that like?”

“God, full on. It wasn’t quite as big back then; the competitive landscape’s changed, obviously. But yeah, I got an internship from uni, managed to turn that into a job. Working mainly on all the back-end functionality that goes into the consumer product.” She took a sip of wine, remembering. “Looking back now, it was a crazy few years, but I learned a lot.”

“I can imagine.” Out of the corner of his eye, Falk saw the waiter lighting a candle at a neighboring table with a familiar flourish before zeroing in on their own unlit tealight with concern written all over his face. He took half a step toward them, but was fortuitously derailed by a request for more water. Falk turned his attention back to Gemma. “Do you still do it at all?”

“The programming?” She shook her head, but not unhappily. “I can still remember some of the stuff I used to work on—muscle memory, I guess?—but I think you become obsolete in about five minutes these days, let alone this many years.”

“So what brought you back here?”

“From the States to small-town SA? A few things, really.” Falk waited for her to elaborate, but instead she looked at him over her glass. “Would you ever go back to live in your hometown?”

Falk blinked. “God, no.”

“Okay.” She laughed. “That was pretty definitive.”

He had to laugh, too. “I suppose it was.”

Falk’s feelings about Kiewarra ran deep, but in fact had softened considerably in the last few years. Still, just because he could look back on his memories of the place with a new fondness didn’t mean he was in a rush to make a whole lot of fresh ones. But that was a story for another day, so instead he said, “I like it better here.”

“In the city?”

“Yeah. Well, Melbourne specifically. And the job and everything.”

“Enjoy working for the AFP?”

“I do, yeah. For the most part. I like the investigations, the financial stuff. Seeing where the money takes you can be pretty eye-opening. It’s not for everyone, but it suits me. Some of the other stuff—the meetings and politics and paperwork—are a little less—”

As if on cue, his phone beeped in his pocket. They both heard it. He ignored it, but it beeped again, then twice more.

“Shit, sorry.” Falk took it out to turn it to silent. “I thought I’d better leave it on in case Raco—”

“No, don’t worry,” Gemma said. “Go ahead. I’ve got to go to the bathroom, anyway.”

She wiped her hands on her napkin and stood. She held the fabric of her dress clear of the table as she edged out, and Falk felt the faint heat from her body as she passed. He watched her cross the room. His phone beeped again, insistent, and he dragged his eyes downward.

When she came back, he was still deep in it. He looked up as she squeezed by.

“I’m so sorry. We’re right in the middle of this—” He cut the excuse short, hit Send, and turned to her. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

“No. It’s not, it’s rude. Work’s just hectic, but still…” He put his phone down.

“Busy time?”

“Yeah, it always is, but I recently got placed—for God’s sake, I’ll—” A return reply bounced in. Marked urgent, of course, but they always were. He tapped back a single-word response, put his phone on silent, and buried it in his coat pocket, where he felt it buzz almost immediately. He made himself ignore it. “I got placed a few months ago onto this task force and it’s—” He felt his phone buzz again. Ignore.