The Chaos Kind (John Rain #11)(58)

They’d cut Hamilton loose at the Motel 6. Nobody wanted to babysit her, and being around the five of them was obviously causing the woman freak-out levels of cognitive dissonance. They’d told her she needed to take a vacation—Don’t go home, don’t go to the office, don’t use your cellphone or credit cards—until they’d figured out how to put the proverbial toothpaste back in the tube. She seemed to get it. But Larison thought there was at least a fifty percent chance that once she was away from them, it would all start to seem unreal, and she would rationalize what had happened at the hotel, rewrite the rest of it, and go back to her life and the normality most people clung to. He didn’t particularly care one way or the other. The one thing he knew she wouldn’t forget was what he’d told her before he and Manus headed out.

“I want you to know something,” he’d said, looking at her so she could see it in his eyes. “From my standpoint, you have no more benefit to offer us. Meaning you’re pure liability. So if it were up to me, I’d leave you here with a bullet in your head. The only reason I’m not doing it is because some of these people have qualms I don’t, and I respect them enough to go along with their wishes. Sometimes. But if you ever say a word about any of us, next time it’ll be purely up to me. And I promise, I’ve killed people a lot harder to find than you, Sharon Hamilton.”

He’d held her gaze for a moment after saying it—just long enough to see the color drain from her face.

On the way back from the airport, he’d picked up takeout from a place called Indo Asian Street Eatery—dumplings, rolls, satay, rice bowls. He’d dropped off half for Dox and Livia. Now he and Diaz were sitting on the floor in their room, eating their half. Well, Larison was eating. Diaz was devouring.

“I’m glad you like it,” he said. “I didn’t know what you’d want, but it’s better to stay off the phone.”

She swallowed what she’d been chewing. “Sorry. Yeah, I was starving. This is great.”

He liked that she was hungry. Some civilians, when they found themselves suddenly in the shit, broke down. Stopped eating, stopped sleeping, got withdrawn. Set themselves up for a vicious cycle. Others were more adaptable. Larison had no patience for the former variety. He wasn’t like Dox, who had weird scripts running through his head about the importance of protecting the weak. For Larison, if you couldn’t carry your own weight, it wasn’t up to him to carry it for you.

“So you know Livia?” she said, around a mouthful of Thai basil chicken.

Larison nodded. “Mostly through Dox. You?”

“Through work. And I take her classes. Women’s self-defense.”

Larison nodded again. He didn’t think much of most self-defense classes he’d ever come across. But if Livia was teaching, it would be all right.

“What’s up with her and Dox?” Diaz said.

“What do you mean?”

“You know. She never mentioned him to me. I mean, her private life is pretty mysterious, and I’m beginning to understand why.”

“I don’t know. They’ve got some kind of on-again, off-again thing.”

“There’s some kind of connection there. I can see it when she’s looking at him.”

Probably the topic was harmless, but Larison wasn’t comfortable discussing Dox’s love life. Maybe because of the danger it would lead to questions about his own. And while he’d gotten used to what Rain and Dox and company knew about him, that didn’t extend to the rest of the world. At least not yet.

“She’s complicated,” he said. “What about you? How’d you get into this line of work?”

She shrugged. “I hate bullies,” she said. “People who take advantage of other people just because they can.”

It felt like a PR statement, probably one she’d trotted out in every job interview she’d ever had. People claimed all sorts of high-minded motives for the shit they did. The truth was usually something else.

Still, there was a coldness in her eyes that made him wonder if there was something more to it. Just because she might deploy it as some kind of résumé mission statement didn’t mean it was only that. And maybe it was such an obvious bromide, so appealing an explanation for someone in her line of work, that she used the glittering public-relations aspect to distract from some darker foundation of truth.

“That ever happen to you?” he said.

She looked at him, and he could see she was put off by the question.

He smiled. “I don’t mean to pry. But hey, you brought it up.”

She looked away. A beat passed. Then she said quietly, “My stepfather. When my brother and I were small.”

It was obviously something she wouldn’t ordinarily share. He wondered why she was trusting him with it now. Probably the feeling of the everyday world in abeyance, the four of them, and now just the two, at sea together, adrift, detached. When Larison had been a soldier, he had hitchhiked a lot. And was frequently astonished at the personal stories people would share after picking him up. One guy, who had been having an affair with his own sister-in-law, had said to Larison, “I don’t know why I’m telling you this. Well, I guess, who are you going to tell, right?” The truth was, most people had a deep-seated need to unburden themselves. It was just a question of the right timing, and circumstances, and confessor.