Running Hot

THIRTY-FOUR

Grace watched Luther close the phone and sink down onto the sofa. Absently he rubbed his right leg, weariness in every line of his body. The aftermath of the confrontation with Craigmore was having its way with him, hitting him on every front. She remembered the sensation all too well.

“Fallon says Sweetwater is still looking hard for the Siren,” Luther said. “He’s sure it won’t take long to find her.”

“That’s good to know.”

She got up, went into the kitchen and took the whiskey down from the cupboard. She poured a healthy shot into a glass, carried it back into the living room and gave it to him.

He looked at the glass for a moment as if he didn’t recognize the contents. Then he drank some of the whiskey.

“Thanks,” he said. “I needed that. Or something.”

Grace sat beside him. Together they looked out at the night through the open lanai windows. She put her hand on his thigh and began a gentle massage. He hesitated, as though he didn’t know how to react. Then, without a word, he let her continue. After a while he drank some more whiskey.

“Fallon sounded strange tonight,” he said.

“In what way?”

“I don’t know. Different. Tired. Worried. Depressed, maybe. Or maybe just a little overwhelmed. Hard to explain. Never heard him quite like he was tonight. He’s always been . . .”

“Fallon?”

“Yeah, that’s it. Long as I’ve known him, he’s always been Fallon. A force of nature, like a thunderstorm or a tsunami or a shark. But not tonight.”

“J&J is all we’ve got to stop Nightshade, and Fallon Jones is in charge of J&J,” she said. “That means the outcome of this battle is on his shoulders. He needs someone.”

“Who?”

She thought about it. “Someone he can talk to. Someone he can trust. Most of all, someone who can take over a portion of the responsibility. An assistant, maybe.”

Luther shook his head. “He’d never go for an assistant. He works alone. Like me.”

“You didn’t work the Maui case alone. I was there, too, remember? And I’m still around.”

“Because I won’t let you go off on your own as long as it looks like you need a bodyguard,” he said. He drank some more whiskey.

“No,” she said quietly. “I’m still here because I want to be here.”

He contemplated the darkness. “Living in the moment?”

“That’s all any of us really has, isn’t it?”

“No,” Luther said. “We’ve also got our pasts.”

She sighed. “Yes, I suppose that’s true.”

Luther swallowed some more whiskey.

After a couple of minutes she tried again.

“I know what it’s like,” she said.

“Living in the moment?”

“No, killing someone with your aura. I’ve done it, too, remember?”

He looked at her over the rim of the glass. “For what it’s worth, Fallon says that, technically speaking, we didn’t actually kill anyone. We used our own energy to reflect the violent energy of our attackers. The process set up a dissonant wave pattern that shattered their auras. He said it was like they were killed by a ricochet from their own weapon.”

She contemplated that for a long moment. “Interesting but I’m not sure it changes anything. The bottom line is that we are responsible for the deaths of those people, and no matter how bad they were or how much they deserved to die, you and I still have to live with it.”

“Yes,” he said. “We do.”

“He was trying to kill you, Luther. You were fighting for your life.”

“His aura winked out like that damn laser. Like someone had turned off a switch.”

“I know what it’s like to watch that happen, too. It’s terrifying to realize that you have it within you to take a life without even using a weapon.”

He gazed into what was left of the whiskey. “Makes you feel like there’s something inside you that’s not really human.”

“Oh, we’re human, all right,” she said. “Humans have always been very good at killing. But we pay a heavy price when we use that talent. I don’t think anyone is the same after they’ve gone down that path.”

“I know you and I and Petra and Wayne have paid a price. What about guys like Sweetwater?”

“I expect that, in their own way, the members of the Sweetwater family pay, too,” she said. “Maybe that’s why they’re such a tight-knit clan. They need each other to survive what they do for a living. One thing’s for sure, I’ll bet none of them has any real friends outside the family, not even when they were children. They can’t afford to trust outsiders.”

“Yeah, I guess you would have to keep the truth about what Daddy does for a living from your kids. Kids talk.”

“And then, later, you’d have to teach them to lie to everyone. Finding a wife or a husband must be tough if you’re a Sweetwater.”

“Running that kind of family business would tend to limit your life-style,” he said. “Hard to talk business with your golfing buddies, that’s for sure.”

“Nevertheless, I think it’s different for people like you and me. Knowing that we can kill and in such a very personal way, with our auras, makes us feel . . .” She broke off, unable to find the right word.

“Uncivilized,” Luther said.

“Yes, uncivilized,” she agreed. “We don’t like to think of ourselves that way. It violates our sense of who we are. But one of the things that defines us is that we are survivors. When push comes to shove, that’s what we do. We survive or we go down fighting. I think we need to accept that part of ourselves, too.”

He did not look away from the night but he put his hand over hers on his thigh. She threaded her fingers through his, stood and led him down the hall to the bedroom.

They made love first; hard, fast, a little violent, affirming what Grace had said earlier. They were both survivors.

His phone rang, bringing him awake with an unpleasant jolt of adrenaline. His eyes opened to the sunlight outside the window. Going on ten o’clock, he decided. He grabbed the phone.

“Package got picked up a few minutes ago,” Petra said. “We watched the plane take off for the mainland. Tell Grace the walk-in’s clean. No need to worry about the health inspector.”

“Thanks,” Luther said.

“No problem. Like old times. How are you doing?”

“Okay.”

“You did what you had to do. Get over it and have breakfast with Grace.”

Luther closed the phone and looked at Grace.

“Petra says I should get over it and have breakfast with you.”

She smiled. “Sounds like a plan.”