The Chaos Kind (John Rain #11)(98)

Maya looked at the dog, then back to Larison. “Frodo.”

Larison raised his eyebrows. “Frodo, huh? Well, I think I get how you’re feeling, Maya. ‘I wish the Ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.’”

Maya’s face lit up in a surprised smile. “You’re a fan?”

“Of course. From way back.”

Her smile faltered. “It does feel a little that way. But . . . I want to help.”

There was a pause. Larison said, “I’m sorry about your friend.”

Maya nodded but didn’t otherwise respond.

A second passed. Larison said, “One thing I think Frodo got wrong.”

Maya looked at him. “What?”

“When he said, ‘It is useless to meet revenge with revenge: it will heal nothing.’ In my experience? It heals plenty.”

He patted her on the shoulder and moved off. A moment later, he was shaking hands with Manus, both of them smiling as though they were old comrades in arms, when in fact they had met only a few days earlier. Though in fairness, a lot had happened since then.

Delilah looked over and saw John talking to Livia. They were laughing about something, and for a moment, Delilah envied his ease with her. Not in the minor-key jealous way she’d felt about the flirtation with Yuki. This was different—more akin to, what, a teacher and a capable student? John had told her about a conversation with Livia, when they’d all been in Paris, and his sense that the questions she had asked him, about his ability to adopt different personas to blend or disarm or get close, had been the product of much more than general curiosity. That this woman had an interest in killing, an intimacy with it, and not just in the line of duty. Of course, a normal person would have been put off by that. But then again, Livia wouldn’t have been interested in John if he were normal.

It was strange. John had always approached Delilah as an equal. He was the better tactician, but he never talked down to her, and though he was always willing to answer her questions, sometimes in quite personal ways, he seemed to have no particular urge to teach her, either. She wondered whether Livia struck some different chord. Maybe John thought he had something to impart to Livia of which Delilah had no need. If so, she didn’t want to begrudge him that.

Dox walked over with Diaz. “Alondra, meet Delilah. Delilah, Alondra Diaz. Alondra set sail only a few days ago now, but my God, she got her sea legs quick. She’s a good driver, a good interrogator, and for a city girl I think she’s got a way with horses, too.”

Diaz laughed and she and Delilah shook hands. “I think I need you to introduce me more often, Dox. And Delilah, it’s good to meet you. He’s talked a lot about you.”

Delilah smiled and glanced at Dox. “He does talk a lot.”

Dox laughed. “Someone’s got to provide the entertainment around here. It’s not like John’s gonna do it.”

They all spent a while getting acquainted and reacquainted, drinking coffee, taking advantage of the well-stocked refrigerator. At all times, someone kept watch on the parking lot.

After a half hour, Kanezaki said, “We should get to it. The sun’s up, and if Rispel has somehow learned about Grimble, we don’t want to give her another chance to get ahead of us.”

“I doubt the plan would be to ambush us straightaway,” John said. “Rispel doesn’t know what we learned from Schrader. It might be something she needs. So the smart play would be to hang back until we’ve made contact with Grimble. At that point, if all goes well, we’d have the entire puzzle. Rispel could swoop in and collect it all at once.”

“Great,” Dox said. “Maybe she’ll capture and waterboard us, like she did Schrader.”

“We already sketched out an approach,” Larison said to John. “It tracks with your point. But Tom, you’re going to have to bring us up to speed on the transport. I mean, you did order the horse, right? The bicycles? The screaming yellow Porsche?”

“I did,” Kanezaki said. “I knew that by the time we were here, it would be too late to get ahold of anything I hadn’t thought of earlier. So I tried to be comprehensive—including fake license plates we’ll attach to the truck and the Porsche. But listen, Maya found a few interesting things about Grimble on the flight over. Maya, you want to tell them?”

“He’s into figurines,” Maya said. “I’d heard something about this before, but didn’t realize the extent. I mean, big-time. Obsessively.”

Once upon a time, Dox would have made a crack about that—about his own interest in figurines, or at least in figures, something like that. But he didn’t do that sort of thing anymore. Livia. He really was smitten. And even as the thought took shape, Delilah realized smitten was probably her own attempt to downplay the depth of his feeling, a reluctance that was an outgrowth of her distrust of Livia. She would have to be careful about that. If Dox was in love with this woman, Delilah would have to come to terms with it, lest she force Dox to make a choice that ultimately would be no choice at all.

“What kind of figurines?” Delilah asked, knowing that if no one else raised the question, Larison would, and probably less delicately.

“Japanese,” Maya said. “Samurai, feudal lords, that kind of thing. Something called the Battle of Sekigahara.”

“How is that relevant?” Larison said, and Delilah had to suppress a smile.