“You’re right. I’d say you had a choice,” Kitt said stomach twisting with anger and fright, “but he’d have you put in prison just to prove a sodding point.”
Mae looked at him over a shoulder. “He never threatened to me put in prison.”
Kitt’s eye narrowed. “How exactly did Llewelyn threaten you?
Her mouth opened and closed as she squinted back at him. “He didn’t threaten me at all.” She shook her head. “At first, he threatened you, he said he’d have you incarcerated, but tha—”
Kitt let out a hard, dry bark of a laugh. “That’s what you meant by the only thing you could. I would have been fine in prison, Mae.”
“Yes, having had the experience of being imprisoned earlier this year, you would be fine, but Sean would not.”
“Sean?”
“Llewelyn implied something unseemly happened during Sean’s time in Bosnia with the UN forces, besides his kidnapping, and he made a mention of treating my brother’s PTSD—in an institution.”
Kitt stood very still, maddeningly calm, irritatingly inexpressive. “I’m sorry,” he said.
Mae wanted to shout at him, yet her exasperation lay compressed by confusion and desensitising shock. The day had been one different shock after another, nothing lasting long enough to settle into a single comprehensible emotion except for the infuriating scratch of Kitt’s composure. With a huff, she went back to looking out the window. “Why does Llewelyn want me to do this?”
“Because it has something to do with freeports and what happened earlier this year. It’s tricky to sanction, but it fits, and it’s a functional way to get you to The Netherlands. The paperwork’s nice and tidy, easy to authorise—since you volunteered—and he can justify it by saying ‘she had the experience last January, and the man Charteris was set to meet has a connection to theft from the freeport in Luxembourg’, or something along that line.”
She’d tipped her head, one eye slightly squinted. “Llewelyn’s voice is deeper, more Brian Blessed than Patrick Stewart. Freeports as in Julius Taittinger, Ruby Bleuville, Milton Foley stealing artefacts, counterfeiting them, funding terrorism, and you faking your death last Christmas freeports?”
“I did not fake my own death.”
She glanced back at him, mouth compressing contritely before she turned and faced the dirty windows. “Forgive me,” she said. “I meant freeports as in Julius Taittinger, Ruby Bleuville, Milton Foley stealing artefacts, counterfeiting them, funding terrorism, and you almost dying in a shipping container last Christmas freeports?
“Possibly. I think it’s related to auction houses, Hedison’s, Smythe & Dexter, Ruby Bleuville, maybe Taittinger and the theft of cultural artefacts, but how I don’t know. I’m still trying to formulate a theory. I’m hoping to get a better idea once I speak to this man in Amsterdam tomorrow.” He fell silent for a moment, watching her watch birds.
She made a sniffing sound. “I’m roped in to this because you died and I volunteered for that mess in New Mexico with Julius Taittinger and Ruby Bleuville last Christmas.”
He went on watching her. “There is a way out of this, you know.”
Mae spun about. “Are you about to suggest I fake my death like you did, or that I walk away?”
“I did not fake my death.” He cocked his head. “Head injuries can be sneaky. It’s known to happen sometimes, a concussion thought minor turns into a brain bleed. I know someone, a doctor who’d cooperate with the examination. It’s not so much fake your death as simulate a debilitating brain injury.”
“And then what?”
“You walk away. Far away. You use the passport I got you, the accounts I showed you, and you go to Belize, Tasmania, New Mexico.”
“I’m not walking away and you’re not letting me go. We settled this, remember? That’s why we…” Mae exhaled, not trusting his assertion that there was no bug in the room. “So, there it is then. I’m going to Amsterdam with you.” A twisting itchiness skittered beneath her skin, the ghastliness of the morning coating her with inexplicable filth that had become thick and heavy and need to be scoured away like the muck on the windows. “Who is Professor Boothroyd?”
“A name, a cover, a backstory for your presence.”
She rubbed her arms, her laugh derisive and sibilant. “It’s like that Cary Grant film, the one with Mount Rushmore and the non-existent secret agent. All we need is a statue full of microfilm and a plane to terrorise us in a cornfield.”
“This is not a film.”
“It certainly feels like one.” Mae mumbled and huffed.
“Cover is established as a precaution.”
“A safeguard, just like in a film. Was this morning a terror attack or did some poor sod have a medical episode?”
“We don’t know yet.”
She rubbed her arms harder. “I feel so feckin’ dirty.” She began trying to unknot the side strings of the hospital gown, the tips of suddenly shaking fingers digging into the cloth.
“Here, let me help.” He reached for the gown.
“I don’t need your help. I’ve got it.” Mae pulled away and headed for the bathroom.
Kitt crossed the room and locked the door. Miserable and wallowing in it self-indulgently, he plopped into a chair. “What have you done,” he muttered between his teeth, watching her push into the ensuite.
Frustrated by the knots, Mae pulled the gown overhead. An array of various sized fluffy, hotel-quality towels hung on hooks beside a thick dressing gown outside the shower. Like a hotel, the lavender and verbena toiletries on offer were from Crabtree & Evelyn, right beside the antibacterial hospital-grade handwash, box of rubber gloves, and yellow sharps container. With a twist of a handle, hot water flowed from a massage shower head above. Although as opulent as the bedroom, the bathroom had also been designed to accommodate a wheelchair, the shower an open space, a curtain in place of a screen or panel.
Perfumed shampoo in hand, Mae pulled the curtain aide, stepped into hot spray, turned, tipped back her head, and let water rain down on her sticky hair. Pain shot deeply across her scalp, water stinging the burns on her neck and slice across her ear, jerking her clear of the last few hours, and the luxury shampoo fell from her grip, her hands smacked wet walls. “Oh, sweet blessed Jaysus!” she hollered, water hammering at her feet.
The shower curtain slid aside. “Mae,” Kitt said.
Hair wet, rivulets of pinkish water tricked over her face, her eyes brimming with tears of pain as she looked up at him. “Jaysus.”
Kitt toed off his shoes, yanked off his clothes, and got into the shower still wearing socks. He ran a gentle hand down her arm and pulled her from the tiles, pressing his chest to her back. “The water is too hot.” Socks sodden, he twisted the mixer to a cooler setting.
She drew his arms around her, one palm flat on her waist, her hand over the top, fingers clawing into his skin, muttering curses.
Kitt held her for a long moment, bending his cheek to hers. “The burns on your neck won’t scar, neither will the cut on your ear.” He reached above her, to a small wire shelf, pulling out a pale-yellow bottle with a lid he flipped open. “I know the shampoo smells nice, but there’s a better way to do this.” He showed her the bottle of baby wash. “It’s an old spy trick, and the advertising doesn’t lie: no more tears. Another thing, you don’t want the water to hit so hard that it’s like needles on your wounds, you want it to run down, that way it won’t sting as much.” He guided her forward. “Lean over a little and cover your face. I’ll wash your hair.”
This time, she didn’t pull away when he offered his help. Mae did as she was told, and bent into the edge of the shower spray, flinching and sucking air through her teeth. Then she began to sputter and cry, angrily.
Kitt waited for her tears of pain and anger to explode into tears of fear and the realisation she had survived what had been a lethal morning for others, but her mouth remained fixed with teeth-clenching determination. Carefully, as gently as possible, Kitt began shampoo
ing her hair, the thin baby wash barely foaming as he worked his way from forehead to crown to the base of her skull and nape of her neck, washing away dirt and bloodstains. She sobbed and snorted and swore as he massaged her neck and shoulders, his thumbs sliding over the lumpy scar tissue left behind from the small calibre bullet that had struck her earlier in the year. He kneaded out the tension and her noisy tears of rage began to wane. “There now. There,” he said, pushing back wet hair, and, as gently as possible, he moved on to wash the rest of her, his hands soft on her warm, wet skin. “Lift your arms.”
Arms raised, she murmured, voice clogged and wavering. “I know this is processing what happened, but I can’t stand here in the shower all day and cry.”
“Why not?” Kitt soaped beneath one arm and side of her breast. “Crying is a natural release. Women are lucky they can access that release better than men.”
“You cry all the time.”
“Yes, I’ve become quite the cry-baby since realising I loved you. I think it’s made me a better man.”
“And a worse spy.”
He gave a soft chuckle and Mae watched his hands move over her left breast. “There’s no outcome to crying more. It just gives me a headache different to the one I already have.”
“I’m sorry you can’t iron.”
“I don’t want to iron; I want to scrub those filthy pigeon shit-covered windows in the other room.”
“I’m sorry you can’t do that either.”
“What can I do then?”
“Breathe.”
“Breathe. Jaysus, that’s your answer for everything.”
“It works. Focusing on your breathing, on each breath, works.”
She looked at his soapy hands swirling around and under her right breast. “Why don’t you shag me, Hamish? Turn me about, press me to the tiles, lift my legs around you, and shag me.”
“I don’t want to shag you.”
She nudged her arse into his erection. “Liar.”
“There’s nothing sexual happening. It’s a rudimentary physiological response that happens on its own, nothing more.”
“Nothing more?”
He brought his hand to her shoulders. “You don’t want to have sex now, Mae.”
She spun about, glaring, her wet, clumped eyelashes giving hazel eyes a Kewpie doll look. “Don’t fucking tell me what I want and don’t want.”
“You’re right. I apologise. I was out of line, and you’re trying to pick a fight.”
The flash of her anger snuffed out as she wrapped her arms around herself. “I’m sorry. I am. I made this all about me, not you, not us. I’m angry, but it’s misdirected at you.”
“I’m angry too.”
“Are you angry with me?”
Kitt shut off the water and dragged towels from the hook outside the shower. “Yes. With you. With Llewelyn. With myself. Especially with myself. What have I done to you, to your life? What right did I have to drag you into my wretched, vicious world?” He folded a small towel around her head like a turban and began to pat her dry with a larger one.
“You didn’t drag me. There’s no need for your sense of guilt. I made a choice. I came into your life willingly. I love you. So here I am.”
He stopped drying her for a second. “It’s a strange thing, this back and forth between us. One moment you’re comforting me as I cry like a little boy, then I’m comforting you as you cry like a little girl, then you’re angry with me, and I’m angry with you, angry with myself, and the next thing you’re telling me my guilt is rubbish.”
“That’s love.” She pulled the bath towel from him and blotted his skin, the towel dabbing over scars left behind by buckshot, knife fights, beer bottles, wire that had sliced into his skin and she laughed suddenly. “Are you wearing socks?”
Kitt glanced down at his feet. “I was in a hurry to help you, even if you didn’t want my help.”
She watched him peel off limp, dripping cotton. “I know I can be very obstinate.”
“Your tenacity is one of your endearing qualities, but I let you look after me, so sometimes let me look after you.” He draped the socks over one shoulder, wrapped the towel around his hips, pulled the dressing gown from the hook outside the shower, and enveloped her with it. “It’s what married couples do, look after each other, what a wife does for her husband and a husband does for his wife. And you are my wife.”
She took the socks from him, wringing water from the soggy cloth. “I never realised how possessive you are. It’s bordering on Heathcliff territory.”
“After you brushing the edge of death several times in the last year, I’ve come to understand Heathcliff’s obsession for Cathy a little better, despite his sociopathic tendencies, and then there’s Rochester’s desperate passion for Jane, which now seems utterly sensible.”
“How is it we keep coming around to discussing works of the Brontës and comparing their gothic, Romantic stories to us?”
“At the moment, one of us is moody and brooding.”
“Exactly what did you study at university, Kitt? That’s something I’ve never asked.”
“I took a first in Asian Languages at Cambridge.”
“Asian languages? My hole.”
The left corner of his mouth rose as he reclaimed his socks, tossed them into the wash basin, and gave her a gentle little push toward the room. “Right then. Off you go, comb your hair, into pyjamas and bed.”
“And after that?”
“We try to look at this logically.”
She crossed the tiles, tightening the sash of the dressing gown. “There’s no bloody logic to the work you do.” Mae paused and turned in the doorway. “I think that’s why you like it, the lack of logic, the messiness of it, finding the structure. It is exciting work. I see that. Maybe we’re not so different after all, you’re not so different from Caspar. I never realised it, but you both find order in chaos. He did with landscaping, you do with…” She looked down at her bare feet for a moment, then back at him, a rather sheepish look on her face. “Caspar’s a point of fact you’ve always known. I was rather tenacious with his being part of my life. I’ve always spoken of him to you, but you’re my husband and I don’t want to be insensitive in making a comparison when you are two vastly different men. I grew so accustomed to your listening that I have taken it for granted, without consideration for your feelings, and I sometimes overlook that you are my husband, not simply my dearest friend. I’m sorry for that. I never thought I’d have a second husband.”
Kitt began dressing, pulling on boxer briefs and trousers that were still nested together. “I never thought I’d have a wife, or a dog, or an in-law to dislike, and I expect that you would think and talk about Caspar. He’s part of who you are.”
“Now you are too. Moody and brooding, yes, I am. It seems we’ve switched places. I’m Rochester and you’re Jane Eyre. I’m riddled with undulating waves of shifting moods and you’re the one with the steady soul. Bearing in mind the past year, there’s part of me that thinks I ought to have habituated to experiencing trauma, that I’d be better prepared for the lack of emotional control, the sudden slide from tears to anger, the overreacting.”
“Perhaps we’re both overreacting. It’s a weekend. You’re there to listen and make arrangements for a man who isn’t there. That’s all there is.”
“You don’t believe that for a second, do you?”
“No, but I was hoping maybe you would.” He buttoned his shirt.
Mae went into the room wrapped in the dressing gown, and found the pyjamas Gibson mentioned. They were a fine cotton, a Liberty floral print that smelled of lavender, and they were a size too large. She sat on the edge of the bed, the nightclothes on her lap. Right. One of the women who had expired right before her eyes had a name: Had it been Jill Charteris’ face—what was left of it—that had become the perpetual camera flash afterburn behind her eyes? What had the woman looked like before her face had smashed? Had she a husband or a family or a brother she wante
d to protect? And if she had a husband, a family, a brother, how long would the government keep Jill’s name—or her name—from being revealed as a victim of a terrorist attack? All that aside, what the hell kind of sense was she supposed to make of that little thrill she felt, that rush that came from taking a risk, that sense of being alive that cam—
“Stop thinking,” Kitt said from the ensuite doorway, jacket over his shoulder. “Put on your pyjamas and I’ll tell you how this is going to work.”
“Take me home and tell me. Please. I want to sleep in our bed. Or you stay here.”
“As much as I want to…”
“One must keep up appearances?”
“Yes.”
Swearing, Mae pulled the turban from her hair, disrobed, and slipped the pyjama top over her head. “Why is it some things, regardless of how utterly hare-brained, make sense at a particular moment in time? There’s a weird excitement to accompanying you, perhaps a kind of logic behind it, but at the same time it is utterly ridiculous.”
“There’s a certain level of ridiculousness to this work.”
She stood, the top skimming her upper thighs, and she turned, flashing the little Southern Cross constellation of freckles on the inside of one thigh. “It absolutely is the sort of ridiculous thing you’d find in a bad spy novel.” She pulled on the bottoms. “People make fun of romance novels for being cheesy, but spy novels are where the cheese is; the car chases, the false identities, the gun fights, the gadgets, the villains with scars or weird birthmarks, the dry wisecracking, the expensive car, the wine, the women, the coming back from the dead.” She paused and looked at him for a beat. “You’ve hit every cheesy mark, haven’t you?”
“I don’t recall ever having a car chase.”
“There’s still time.” She began folding up too-long sleeves.
Kitt slid a hand into his pocket, fingers finding his wedding band. “You know you’re going to be fine, don’t you? You may have nightmares for a while, but you’ll be fine. You’re quite resilient.”
True to Your Service Page 6