“I don’t want to stay long. It’s not good for you to have me here.”
“Oh, I don’t know.” She smiled knowingly. “I’m sure between the two of us we could fend off any attackers.” He eased back into the armchair, she lifted her bare feet under her on the sofa, and the two of them stared at each other for a while. It felt good to be sitting here with her, as if the problem was already fading.
She was wearing loose cotton cargo pants but a fitted T-shirt, an enticing relief map of her breasts and stomach, stirring his memory.
“You look great,” he said.
Esther returned the pointless compliment. “You’ve worn pretty well yourself.”
He nodded before gesturing upward with his eyes and saying, “What about him? Is it serious?”
“Not settling-down serious, if that’s what you mean. And you? Anyone on the go?”
He thought of Aurianne and thought better of mentioning her, but like she’d read his expression Esther’s face fell, showing she knew automatically what was hidden in his delayed response. “Oh God,” she said as if the realization made her sick. He smiled weakly in response because of how predictable it seemed now and the way he’d hoped against it being true the night before. It was what happened. Esther knew it, he knew it, they all did.
“I found her this morning, raped, interrogated, shot through the head. She didn’t even know what I did.” He felt torn up again suddenly, the slight distance already making him feel nauseated and bitter for having led her to that.
“Were you close?” Esther asked, avoiding the pat sympathy that anyone else might have offered.
“Not settling-down close,” he replied. “But she was a beautiful person. And if she hadn’t been involved with me she still would be.”
Esther nodded, not saying anything at first, and then, “How about that drink? I’ve got some Talisker.”
“In that case ...” He smiled, brushing off the air of melancholy, and she got up and left the room, returning a minute later with the bottle and two glasses. “Still like it neat?”
“Of course.”
“Good,” she said, pouring out two hefty measures. “Richard likes it with ice and water, the heathen.”
“The lightweight,” JJ added, guessing Richard was the boyfriend in the bath.
“Exactly.” She raised her glass. “To us.”
“Sounds good to me.” He took a swig of the whisky, the heat spreading down his gullet and settling into his stomach, a healing warmth, like its absence had been the only thing wrong with him. He looked at her then, curled up on the sofa again, nursing the tumbler in both hands, relaxed. “So tell me, how come you haven’t gone to ground?”
She shrugged in response and said, “I wasn’t aware I needed to. We were told the threat was to Viner and everyone connected with him. Philip knew he might be a target by association. You have heard about Philip?” JJ nodded, and she continued as if it didn’t really concern her that much. “They got him two days ago apparently.”
“Who?”
“The Russians,” she said like it was an unnecessary clarification.
“But who? It would have to be someone major,”
She shrugged again and said, “It’s not really my area of expertise.” She sipped at her whisky and added, “I’m sorry, J, I’m not being much use, am I?”
“It’s not your fault.” It had crossed his mind a moment before that she knew the truth about Berg, the way she was so casual about him being dead, but the more he thought about it, if she’d been lying she’d have laid it on thick. She simply didn’t know anything, which left him wondering what he’d hoped to get from her, other than to escape the sense of being isolated for a while, to spend some time with her, someone he had a real history with, someone in whose company there seemed to be other futures.
“What will you do?”
He shook his head, still lost in thought.
“Stay alive,” he offered finally. “I don’t know. Kill the people trying to kill me.”
“But you don’t know who it is.”
“Not yet, but it’s not the Russians.”
“Then who?”
“I don’t know.” He didn’t want to mention Berg, mainly because he was certain now she didn’t know anything. He wouldn’t have mentioned it anyway though, a professional veneer of suspicion and doubt that was common to everyone in the business, a corrective to set against his own intuition, just as, no matter what she felt about him, a part of her would still be treating him as a potential adversary.