Page 4 of Gates of Tartarus

Damn my expressive face! Why can’t I program it to give off a “don’t mess with me vibe” – or at least to be impassive?

Seef tosses a bottle of water at me and lets me take a few gulps, before moving towards the door. “Come on.”

Turns out there’s a running track around the outside of the main gym, which I hadn’t noticed. The main gym room is pretty big, the size of, well, a high-school gym. The weight-lifting equipment, rowing machines, and exercise bikes are in the center.

Seef gives me a once-over when we get to the track. “Twenty laps, I think.”

Twenty! Is he mental?I nod coolly. “Right, well, I don’t need help running, so why don’t you come back in a little while. I’m sure you’ve got other things to be getting on with.”

He gives a short laugh. “Oh no, princess. I’ll be doing the laps with you.”

Feck. Feckity, feckity feck! “What – you don’t trust me?”

That gets me a condescending look: “As I’ve said, you have a very expressive face.”

Just to show him, I take off then and there without waiting. I keep up a pretty good pace for the first few laps but start to slow after the fifth. Seef’s having none of it. “Come on, princess. Keep up.” Grrr. I put my head down and keep going. After ten laps, I’m sweating, and I can feel my face flushing a nice hot pink. Seef, on the other hand, looks like he’s out for a Sunday stroll in the park. He’s not even breathing hard. I try to distract myself by shooting surreptitious glances at his muscles, watching them extend and flex as he runs smoothly beside me. It works until lap fifteen, when my will and my dignity fail. “Think… need to… stop now.”

“Five more laps, Driscoll. Don’t be so wet.”

“Go… feck… yourself.”

“I’ll pencil that in. Keep going.”

Ugh. I scramble after him. My eyes linger on the tattoo. It sounds mean to say after he’s clearly suffered a horrific injury bad enough to require amputating his forearm, but I really hope getting inked hurt. Itisan impressive tattoo, though. Finally, I make it through the twenty laps and can bend over, wheezing. Seef looks at me impassively. “Right, walk it off, and then we need to shower and change and meet up with Emlyn.”

“Can’t… move. Just ran… five miles.”

Seef stares at me, then cracks up. He really does – just throws his head back and laughs. “Princess, that was about a mile and a half.” He grins, which annoyingly makes him seem vaguely human, then shakes his head.

A mile and a half? I’ve been walking for weeks on end and doing yoga, and I’m winded bythat? But it was at a fast pace, I console myself. And, if I’m honest, the walks I took around the East End were more like ambles.

“Maths isn’t your strong suit, is it?”

“It’smath, you aggravating pillock.”

“Temper, temper. Come on, time to get changed.” He walks off towards the men’s changing rooms, still shaking his head and chuckling. All I can do is glare after him, my fists balled. I’d like to practice my heel strikes now. Grrr.

Back in the office, I do manage to catch Emlyn’s eye, darting my own at Seef and scowling. Emlyn’s lips twitch, but he smooths out his expression. “How’d it go?”

Seef shrugs. “The raw material’s there. Her distance and depth perception are poor, but we can work on that.”

I open my mouth to say... I don’t know what, but Emlyn forestalls me by asking, “Cup of tea, Maela?” I pause.Good thinking, partner. I can throw the hot tea in Seef’s face and show him just how much my depth perception is improving by the minute, simply by being in his presence. I nod, and Emlyn pours me some tea from a thermos on his desk. As he hands me the saucer, he shakes his head ever so slightly. I narrow my eyes at him but sink intomychair. I’m somewhat mollified to see that Emlyn’s put two shortbread biscuits on the side of the saucer. Aww.

Seef and Emlyn talk as I sip the tea. The American team is shadowing James Tennireef, and Emlyn’s been going over the dossier on the senator’s time at Danvers Academy and as a Rhodes Scholar, but Tennireef’s the original Teflon man. Everything slides off him. Nothing new on Magda either. She’s clearly kept a very low profile. I nibble absently on a biscuit, comparing the two men as they lean over the desk side by side. Emlyn, as ever, is looking coolly aristocratic, oak-brown hair set off against his midnight-blue suit. For a moment, I think about how delectable he’d look in a tux, and I feel a little faint. Seef’s dressed again in his dark-gray suit, left sleeve neatly pinned up, but he’d be equally at home in khaki, with a rifle in hand to ward off poachers on the Maasai Mara. His hair’s lighter than Emlyn’s, more of a – tawny brown? I cant my head. No, too orange. Sandy brown. Hmm. Or maybe wheat brown.

“Ready, Maela?” Emlyn’s voice breaks into my train of thought, and I startle.

“Err?”

Seef sighs: “If you’ve finished wool-gathering, Driscoll, we’d like you to try to see James Tennireef.”

I shove the last bite of biscuit in my mouth, chewing slowly, swallow, and then, and only then, nod. “Fine.” Emlyn’s lips twitch again, but he only slides a photo of Tennireef across the desk towards me. “Just in case it helps, here’s a recent shot of him, taken at a press conference.”

I look down at the photo and gag. The last time I’d seen him, he’d been reliving the rape and torture of, the Americans think, a young woman named Riley Beckett, whose body had been found on the Seattle docks. I take a couple of deep, cleansing breaths, then clutch the crystal in my hand and close my eyes. Knowing that Emlyn and Seef are both looking at me, I feel awkward, a bit like a performing cockatoo; but I try to remember Kavi’s lessons. I chantOng Namo Guru Dev Namounder my breath, willing myself to be calm, to find the right frequency. Twenty minutes later, I open my eyes. “Nothing,” I say with frustration. “I can’t get there.”

“Try again,” Seef barks. “It’s important.”

I almost roll my eyes at him.Durr! Master of the bleedin’ obvious, this one.“Have it your way,” I shrug and close my eyes. I try, I really do, because it would be helpful toEmlyn, but all I can see is the static image of the photo. “Not working. All I can see is the photo.”

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