Page 49 of Slow Burn

He sat straight up with a sharp gasp and saw Adrian Carling standing in the doorway. She walked in and picked up one of his handouts, flipped pages.

“How did it go?”

A laugh choked him.

“What did you tell them?” he asked. His voice sounded ragged, like his fingernails. “About me?”

She studied the handout as if she’d never seen it before. After a moment she looked up absently.

“I told them about Suzanne. About Sally.” She raised a finger to her temple and made a small telling circle. “They drew their own conclusions about your competency.”

The shocking thing was that he wasn’t even surprised, not really. He couldn’t remember what she’d felt like, last night; couldn’t remember anything about it except a haunting feeling of loss. She’d arranged that. Not even tornadoes happened by accident around her.

“Aren’t you going to call me a bitch?” she asked. He shook his head. “Why not? I am, you know.”

He bent and scooped up his overheads from the floor and began painstakingly ordering them. He was missing number six, the point at which everything had gone so fatally wrong. Maybe it had burned up in the heat of his disappointment.

She handed it to him. He took it and ordered the corners of the stack, slipped the plastic pages into a white folder.

“Martin,” she said. He was tempted to look up and conquered it by staring at a whorl of wood on the table. “I warned you.”

He nodded. His reflection, faint as a ghost, nodded back.

“I had to do it. You were too close to right, and just too far wrong. I have new information.” She shuffled papers and slid a photograph across the table to him. In it, a swarthy-looking man smiled genially. He was wearing a white sweater and white shorts, carrying a tennis racquet. “His name is Fathi el Haddiz. We think he’s here in the United States to make a deal for something involving your dichlorhyradine.”

“Why don’t you ask him?” Martin asked quietly. Carling’s hand formed into a fist and slammed down on top of el Haddiz’s picture.

“How stupid do you imagine I am? I’d love to, if we knew where the hell he was. We don’t have a lot of time, and we need to focus. I needed to derail your little train, because I’ve got an express coming down the tracks, and I need you on board.”

“Why me?”

She bent over. He sensed her warmth like a storm circling overhead. He met her teal green eyes, but couldn’t hold the stare. His gaze fell to the table.

Watch me, Daddy! Watch me!

“Because you were at least half-right, and youtried.Martin, I have reason to think you’re motivated to solve this problem. Am I wrong?”

“Go to hell,” he mumbled. He opened his briefcase and stuffed in folders; one bent, pooched open, and spilled papers out in his lap. He gathered up crushed handfuls and threw them in. “You and your bugs and your damn politics, you go to hell. You go right to hell.”

After a hesitation, her fingers picked up the photograph and he felt the weight of her shadow go away. He eased in a shaky breath.

From the doorway, Carling said, “I need you, Marty. I need people I can trust, and right now those people are few and far between. You call my office and let me know when you’re ready.”

She’d left a business card by his elbow. It had A. L. CARLING in raised black letters, and a phone number. Washington exchange.

He crumpled it up and threw it on the floor.

When he looked up, she was gone. He crossed his arms on the table and laid his head down, like a third-grader at quiet time.

Now, when he didn’t want to remember, he felt her skin on the palms of his hands, tasted her lips.

After a long time, he bent and picked up her business card, smoothed it out, and put it in his jacket pocket.

As she’d known he would, of course.

She picked up the phone herself. He plugged his left ear with a finger and pressed his right closer to the receiver.

“Carling?” he shouted.

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