Run Among Thorns (19 page)

“Budweiser.”

“Bud.”

“Huh. Good point. But a helluva lot easier to say when you’re three sheets to the wind.”

“Well, if you don’t like that, I can do you a Cross Buttock.”

He frowned. “You people drink anything that doesn’t question your sexuality?”

“Yes. Sneck Lifter.”

“I don’t want to know.”

“Good. Look,” said Alan, waving his almost empty glass at him, “just because we’re exchanging alcohol related chitchat doesn’t mean we’re best friends now. It doesn’t even mean I’ll concede your right to protect her—”

Kier interrupted. “It just means that conflict upsets Jenny? So we don’t?” Or, more likely,
if I get on Jenny’s guy’s right side, I might get more information
. Jenny’s guy. Now the feelings that accompanied that thought were a real revelation. His half-forgotten protective instincts were getting a real workout.

He badly wanted Alan gone and some time to talk Jenny out of her bad mood. He badly needed a night’s rest. He seriously wanted Jenny to be a part of it.

Jenny’s brother flashed him a look of keen-eyed surprise. “Hmmmm.” He shrugged. “There’s really no reason to be standing around in the hall.” He waved at a door halfway along the passage. “Living room. Be my guest.”

Kier nodded at him and went through the door, noting that Alan snagged a couple more bottles of beer from the cabinet before he followed him.

The living room was neat and simple. Just the one door in, but the room passed the length of the house and had a bow window at one end and French doors at the other. Alan reached to turn on the light, but Kier moved quickly to those glass doors and snapped the curtains closed. Alan was a quick learner, he had to admit, because he stayed there, one hand on the light switch, while Kier crossed the room to draw the curtains at the other end. Only then did the other man snap on the light.

“I see,” was all he said, but Kier got the impression he really did, and found himself wondering exactly what Jenny’s brother did abroad.

“I thought you were supposed to be in Norway.”

Alan shrugged. “I came home early. Look, McAllister. What
is
going on? You said Jenny was in danger?”

Kier sat himself down on the comfortable sofa opposite the fireplace and waited for Alan to settle himself into an armchair before answering. And not answering.

“There’s nothing I can tell you that will do you any good. Baldly, Jenny got into a situation in the US and killed three men who were shooting hostages at her office.”

Alan went very still in his chair. Carefully, he put his empty glass down on the floor beside him.

“Bloody hellfire.”

“Yeah.”

He glanced up at the ceiling for a moment, and then looked back at Kier. Visibly he swallowed.

“I’d be interested to know what you can tell me about that, Alan.”

“What
I
can tell you about that? What the hell do you mean?” Incredulity, anger, concern … it was all there. And as far as Kier could tell, it was all real.

“I mean would you have thought her capable of it? Does she have the skills?”

Alan sat back in his chair, staring into the middle distance. Kier thought he must have a thousand questions, and admitted a little glimmer of respect that he was not asking them just yet.

“Just explain to me why I should discuss my sister with you, McAllister.”

Because I’m her only chance
. There it was again, that tinge of possessiveness. A little warmth at the thought of being tied to the woman upstairs, probably stomping, stiff backed around the room. Undressing for bed. He took another swig of Waggledance and shifted in his seat.

“Because,” he said, “I am the person best placed to make sure she comes out of this intact. Because the best way you can help her is to talk to me.”

He could see her brother didn’t like that one: his mouth pinched and his fingers tapped on the arm of his chair.

“Because I am committed to her welfare.” He met Alan’s sceptical gaze squarely. “I’m her best bet, Waring, and I truly care that she gets out of this in one piece.” And that she gets out of this still frustratingly, beautifully, indubitably Jenny.

“What are you to her? What is she to you?”

And there were questions Kier did not, did
not want
to answer. Or know how to answer, either. “Jenny’s safety is my responsibility. She’s chosen to accept that.”

Alan took a breath, nodded, but he was still clearly unhappy about it when he started to speak. “Jenny was always the sort of person who would do what had to be done because it had to be done. However messy, however … painful. How did she ki … how did she do it?”

Yes. He found it difficult to think of her as a killer, too. “With their own weapons. A pistol.”

Alan gave a mirthless laugh. “Yes, she has the Waring aim. She could always shoot.” He turned and met McAllister’s gaze again. “So is she being hunted by the authorities? Do they want to arrest her for murder or something?”

No, they want to train her to be a killer
. “Not exactly. People were disturbed at her apparent abilities and engaged … they questioned her. It became apparent that she was innocent of those things they suspected her of—”

“What abilities? What people? What things?”

Ah. So the question truce was off. He raised a hand. “If you let me finish, this will become a lot clearer much sooner. I can’t tell you everything. If I leave something out I’m not trying to be mysterious, I’m protecting Jenny.” He took another swallow of the golden, slightly sweet beer.

“But they wanted to make use of those abilities they had perceived. Her ability to kill. Her apparent natural aptitude with firearms. I’ve offered to help her avoid their attention. Which, more or less, brings us here.”

Alan frowned at him. “So you’re running from those … people? Who are?”

“They are a national security agency.”

“Not
the
National Security Agency?”

“No.”

“I see. I think.”

Alan reached down to turn on the little gas fireplace, and flames quickly leapt up through fake coal. Kier could feel the warmth almost immediately. Without it, the house was cold, and almost a little damp. Even with three people in it, it had an air of being empty.

“So this agency was questioning her, and now she’s with you?” Alan had turned to look up at him from where he reached down to the fire. His face was back-lit and almost impossible to read, but Kier didn’t need to read his face to know he wasn’t a happy man. “Would you like to explain that little leap?”

McAllister took another couple of swallows of beer. “Not really. I have my reasons.” They just didn’t make a lot of sense in the cold light of day. Without Jenny in front of him. “I can only assure you again that I intend to keep your sister safe. And that I am without doubt the best person to do that. Think of me as her friend.”

Alan opened another bottle of beer, and tossed a bottle to him. Well, at him. The opener followed. This label said La’al Cockle Warmer. He raised an eyebrow at Alan.

“It’s from Cumbria. Jenny brings them down for me when she visits. There’s an old brewery under the castle in a town called Cockermouth. They’re doing pretty well these days.”

There was a pause. The fire hissed and overhead a floorboard creaked. He wondered what the sleeping arrangements were.
Stupid oaf
.

“So what now?” Alan eventually asked.

“We need a couple of days’ grace. I need to think about what our next steps are, and then we’ll move on.”

“So, in other words, you haven’t a clue.”

McAllister met his eyes. “We are evaluating our options.”

“In my house.”

“You going to kick your sister out?”

“No. But I’m still trying to work out why I’m not kicking
you
out.”

“She might have something to say about that.”

“She might.”

Another pause.

“What can I do?” Alan asked.

Kier raised his brows. “What are you prepared to do?”

Alan sent him a sour look. “She’s my sister, McAllister. I’ll do anything I can.”

“Then give us house room, keep off Jenny’s back, and keep your mouth shut.”

He didn’t like that. Kier didn’t much blame him, but he was less than appreciative of Alan’s highlighting just how much they didn’t know about the situation. And just how few plans they had.

Alan finally opened the bottle he held, and poured it with a steady hand. The bubbles in the tea-coloured liquid sparkled in the light from the flickering gas fire, then hissed to the surface and disappeared. “I can’t exactly give you a CV,” he said, eventually, watching that fading fire in the glass. “But you’re going to have to take my word that I can, and will, help Jenny in this.”

“You have other commitments,” he said.

Alan tipped his head sideways, looking at him. “And you don’t?”

Kier thought of the contracts he never signed, of the houses in four countries, none of which were home. Of his parents whom he hadn’t seen in years. Of the last woman, nameless and almost faceless in memory. “No,” he said. “In fact, I don’t.”

“I’m sorry,” Alan said, then immediately looked embarrassed.

Kier shook his head, discarding the sympathy he had not expected, never even suspected he might provoke. He tried to focus on the job at hand. On Jenny upstairs. On the enemy, whose actions they didn’t understand.

None of it made any sense, so far from the norm he couldn’t even begin to evaluate their options. He needed facts.

“McAllister, is she okay?” Alan interrupted his train of thought. “I mean, she must have been badly shocked and … she must have been terrified.”

“She was. I think she still is. But she’s doing better. She needs sleep.”

Alan glanced up at the ceiling again and heaved a sigh. “I know.”

Kier could tell he wanted to go upstairs and offer some sort of comfort to his sister. It was hard not to be able to wrap his arms about her himself and tell her it was going to be okay.

Well, Alan would have to get used to it. Kier had.

Chapter
        TEN

T
he third time he called up the number on his phone, Alan actually pressed the call button.

He’d sent Kier upstairs to the second floor, to the spare bedroom under the eaves. The first time he’d pulled his mobile out of his pocket, he could still hear Kier moving about. So he’d pressed cancel, dropped the phone back into his pocket, and headed for the kitchen.

A glass of water and half an hour later, the top floors of the house were silent. He’d stood at the bottom of the stairs, listening, then passed silently into the living room and almost dialed again.

It was ethics, that time, hanging desperately onto that last thread of integrity, that stopped him. He’d sworn silently, put the phone on the coffee table, and paced.

But this time he’d actually pressed call. And the line was ringing in his ear.

It connected. “Identify yourself, please.”

“Waring.”

He went through the identification procedure by rote, barely thinking about the numbers, words, information the operator retrieved from him. He flexed the fingers of his right hand and tweaked the collar of his casual shirt straight.

This was exactly the second time he’d ever abused his position like this. The rules said something about “using departmental resources for personal gain, or for purposes not directly connected to an official assignment.”

Last time had been in the wake of the death of his and Jenny’s parents.

He hadn’t felt much better about it then, either.

“Thank you, Mr. Waring. That appears to be in order. How may I help you?”

“I need a background check on a US national,” he said.

He ran through McAllister’s name and description and listened to the operator repeating the details back to him.

“Preliminary results should be to you within the hour, Mr. Waring. A more detailed report will be made available within twenty-four hours.”

“That’s fine. Thank you.”

“Good night, sir.”

“Good night.”

He switched the phone to silent, set it back down on the coffee table, sat down in front of it, and waited.

In the end, he waited precisely forty-eight minutes. He took the call, then rang off, and replaced the phone in his pocket.

For a while, he sat in the dark, the house dead still around him. He could hear the faint hum of the TV on standby, the intermittent ping of the cooling radiator on the first landing.

He closed his eyes and let his head fall back against the back of the sofa.

The screen blinked in search mode. Outside John’s office, the hum of a floor buffer passed slowly down the corridor.

He sat back in the chair and loosened his tie. His jacket had been thrown over the back of the seat sometime after half past five. As far as he knew, everyone else had gone home. He’d seen Groven and Davids leave with his own eyes.

The cleaners and security shouldn’t bother him.

But he looked up when footsteps approached his door.

They carried on, not hesitating, and he breathed again. He dare not lock the door; that would be too suspicious. Working late wouldn’t raise any eyebrows, since he often did. Better achieving something here than going home to an empty house and doing … well, anything, really.

Glancing at his watch, he frowned. Approaching seven fifteen. He reached for the phone, then hesitated, hand over the receiver. Even though Alice was supposed to be home, it wasn’t as if his presence or absence would make any difference to her plans. He grimaced and picked up a pen instead, roughing out a work plan for next week in his notebook. Although most of that was for show, too. Groven and Davids would expect him to be free to respond to the needs of the current assignment, never mind the other profiles he was working on.

He threw a glance at the screen, but the system was still searching. The thirst for knowledge had become dangerously strong. Since his superiors had decided to go for cryptic in their communications with him, since they’d first asked him to abandon procedure, work outside the rules, without a safety net…

No. It wasn’t since they’d asked him that he’d felt uncomfortable. It was since he’d complied with their requests.

It was like being in a play. The other actors knew their lines, and delivered them, although the words seemed to be out of character. Groven being Groven and yet… not. But no one had given him a script. He wasn’t even sure if it was a tragedy or a comedy.

His lips twitched. He was searching for a script.

All Groven’s files were thoroughly encrypted, well out of reach. Even Davids kept his confidential material in a protected folder. But Davids was sloppy. John had been asked enough times to reorganise his network folders to know he rarely saved files in their proper place. There was a chance he might find a “script” in one of his temporary folders, or some correspondence that would shed some light, or—

“Damn.” The first search came up negative. Nothing in Davids’s network files with “McAllister” in them.

“That was too much to hope for,” he muttered, trying “Jenny Waring” instead.

He sat back again, linking his hands on top of his head while the search ran. Jenny Waring. He’d put her profile together. Or rather, taken it apart.

John sighed, reached for a paper cup, found it empty of water, crumpled it, and lobbed it at the wastepaper basket. It bounced off the rim and he rolled his eyes. He really, sincerely wished her out of this. Especially when he had no idea why McAllister had absconded with her.

The most likely explanation was that McAllister was using Jenny as some sort of insurance—collateral. Keeping what he thought the Agency wanted until the Agency gave McAllister what
he
wanted.

Only, of course, the Agency didn’t want Jenny. And no one had any idea what McAllister wanted out of the situation.

He was mad, irate, that was obvious. They’d succeeded in provoking him beyond anyone’s wildest expectations. Just how irrational did anger make him? And what state was Jenny in, in the midst of all this?

John sighed a percussive breath and tried another search string.

An hour later, John dialed Alice’s mobile. Looked like she was working late, too.

“Alice Villiers.” Alice had kept her maiden name for work. Aspiring to be a fair, modern man, he’d never let on how much it bugged him.

“Hi. It’s John.”

There was a pause. “John? Are you okay?”

“Yeah.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Not really.”

“John?” And now she didn’t sound distracted anymore. Her voice softened and slowed, the way it had done for a thousand stressed moments, minor ailments and moments of sadness. He loved her softer voice.

“How much did you earn last year, Alice?”

“We never got round to doing the joint account thing, did we?”

“No.”

She named a figure. There was a small emphatic sound, and the background noise died suddenly. Presumably she’d just stepped into a private room.

It didn’t seem enough to him, but what did he know? Alice organised the bills.

“If …” he looked up, but there was no shadow at the door. “If I had to leave my job suddenly, if we had to move, go away, could we manage?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Alice, please.”

“You want me to answer that question,” her voice was tight, sharp, “but you’re not going to tell me why you’re asking it.”

“I can’t.”

There was a long silence. “When you’re ready to talk, John, we can talk. But I’m not standing around here while you put me through some kind of test.”

“Alice—”

“Good-bye.”

Alan stood, and went slowly up the stairs. Jenny’s door wasn’t locked—he turned the handle without making a sound, and passed into the room, closing it equally silently behind him. He waited, listening to the deep, even breathing of sleep, until she suddenly gave two short, sharp breaths, and he knew she’d woken.

In the darkness, he heard her sit up.

“Kier?”

Alan closed his eyes. That one word almost told him all he needed to know. He swallowed. “No.”

“Alan? What is it?”

Questions marched through his brain. “Do you want to go?”

“What?”

“We could leave. Right now. He doesn’t have to know we’ve gone, or where we’re going.”

“What?” she said. “What could you do, Alan? We’re just ordinary people. He … he says the authorities aren’t safe, that we can’t trust them. What can we do?”

He couldn’t see her face in the darkness. But then, he didn’t want to turn on the light and risk her seeing his. “If I …” he hesitated, choosing his words carefully. “If I said I knew some people who might be able to help, would you trust me?”

“You’re my brother, Alan, of course I trust you. But I don’t understand, who do you know?”

He sighed. “It depends. And I can’t really ask you to tell me everything, either, can I?”

“I’m sorry. I … I don’t understand all of it myself, so if I started to tell you about it, I could do more harm than good. Do you see?”

“Yeah,” he gave a brittle, derisive laugh. “I see. But you haven’t answered my question. Ignore the hows and whys. Just tell me—do you want to go, right now, and leave him here?”

Usually, when Jenny visited, she brought her alarm clock, a old-fashioned, silver thing with big bells on top. Usually, he could hear it ticking even on the landing with the door closed. But he didn’t need that sound to know that long seconds passed before she spoke, and in the silence he could hear the shortness of her breath, the way it trembled. His heart ached for his sister, who was in way over her head. And she was his sister. If not by blood, then by affection and by familial ties that had nothing to do with genes. And by responsibility, too, if it came to that.

“No,” she said, her voice low and rough.

He bowed his head, suddenly weary. It had been a long day, after all.

“Sleep well, Jen,” he said, and slipped from the room.

On the landing, he checked his mobile again, checked that it was on, and set it on silent mode. There was still the more detailed report to follow, after all. But he didn’t really need it. However irregularly he’d come by the knowledge, he already knew enough.

Last time he’d abused his privileges, he’d found out he wasn’t really Jenny’s brother. This time, it appeared McAllister wasn’t really her friend.