The Chaos Kind (John Rain #11)(31)

Of course, she could make an argument that he owed her. He had wanted out of the life before she had been ready, when she was still in the grip of a one-way allegiance to her birth country, Israel, and her employer, Mossad. He had given her an ultimatum that backfired. And out of stupid male pride had disappeared from her life for years afterward, before finally coming to his senses and crawling back.

He took a sip of his drink, something called a madre de dios. Watching him in profile, she felt a wave of affection. She knew she could be difficult with him. Partly because he put up with it. Once, she’d told him she recognized the dynamic, that she was grateful for how he had learned to stay cool even when she was running hot. He had laughed and told her it was all about survival. She’d mock-punched him for that. And, then, more seriously, he had told her it was something called amaeru.

“Which is what?” she had asked.

“A kind of . . . relationship glue. All humans have it, but it’s more central in Japan. Which is why they gave it a name.”

She was intrigued. John rarely talked about the Japanese half of his heritage, and when he did, it was always as they, never we. Though in fairness, he never talked about America as we, either.

“All right,” she had said. “Tell me about this glue.”

“It’s . . . when you want to test whether someone really cares about you. And foster that caring, too. You behave a little selfishly. Even childishly. And the other person puts up with it. Because he loves you.”

“Is this your way of telling me that I’m selfish and childish?”

He had smiled at that. “Or that I love you.”

She glanced around the bar. She cherished this place—the exposed stone-and-brick walls, the eclectic upholstered seating, the subdued lighting. The feeling of being here with this man she loved. This thing they had, which he had once called a nation of two.

He looked at her. “What are you thinking?”

She took a sip of her drink—an Art Deco, another of the bar’s specialties—and smiled. “I was thinking I like that it’s whisky in Kamakura, and cocktails in Paris.”

“Is that really what you were thinking?”

There were several ways she might have answered. But the most eloquent was also the one she most wanted. She kissed him. She knew he liked when she did that, liked how physical she was with him, even in public. It had taken a while for him to become comfortable with it, to trust how much she enjoyed touching him. Once upon a time, her specialty for Mossad was honeytrap operations, and some aspect of John’s survival instincts, or maybe just his cynicism, had clung to the suspicion that she might be playing him long after she no longer was.

She felt her phone buzz. It was another compromise between his distrust of cellphones and her insistence on real-time accessibility. She took it from her purse and glanced at the caller ID. “Blocked,” she said. She didn’t get many calls, and she could feel his instant unease.

It buzzed again. “Go ahead,” he said. “Otherwise, we’ll just be in suspense.”

She answered. “Allo?”

“Delilah. Am I catching you at a good time?”

She recognized the voice instantly—gravelly, like the shake of a rattlesnake’s tail.

“Daniel. It’s good to hear your voice. Is everything all right?”

She could feel John’s unease increase at her mention of Larison’s name. He was probably worried it was something about Dox. For that matter, so was she.

“Everyone’s fine,” he said. “I’m not calling too late?”

“No, it’s evening where we are. You’re sure everything is all right?”

She saw John do a quick sweep of the room—the entrance, the hotspots, the other patrons with backs to the wall. Stimulus, response.

“All right enough. Dox and I took on a little job that turned out to be not as little as expected.”

“I see.”

“He didn’t want to bug you guys. But I think we could use backup.”

Alongside her worry, she felt a surge of irritation. “Daniel. What is wrong with you two? You don’t need the money. You have a good life, a person who loves you.”

“Stop. I already feel guilty.”

“Not guilty enough.”

“Can we talk about my feelings another time?”

“I wish we had talked about them sooner.”

“I wrote up the details on the secure site. I don’t know when you’ll be able to check it, but in the meantime, read the news out of Seattle. That was Dox and me. And the gist of it is, we think there’s more where that came from.”

The irritation escalated to an adrenaline rush surreal in its familiarity. “What’s the plan?”

“I’m not sure yet. Other than my sense that we’re not going to resolve this playing whack-a-mole. We need to figure out where the problem is coming from and take it out.”

John was looking at her. She knew he wanted the phone. But he was the one who refused to carry one. And besides, she wasn’t done. “What about Tom?” she said. “Can he help?”

“He’s the guy who hired us. He’s finding out what he can.”

“Is Livia involved with this?”

“No. Well, not yet. Dox is going to see her.”