Run Among Thorns

by Anna Louise Lucia

“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

  The 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.

  “John?”

  He heard the door slam shut and sighed, setting tin three of six down by the sofa. “In here.”

  Alice breezed in, slipping out of her coat and dropping it over one of the straw-coloured armchairs. She collapsed back onto the sofa beside him, and he shuffled sideways, sliding a little farther down as he did. He enjoyed being comfortably slouched—it held a touch of rebellion, knowing how bad it was for his back to be bent like a banana.

  He reached for his beer again.

  “Hmmm,” said his wife. “Are there any more of those?” Wordlessly he twisted another tin free and passed it to her. She was looking at him sidelong, but if she wanted to pretend their earlier phone call had never happened, he was up for that.

  “I drove all the way home craving coffee,” she said. “But this is better.”

  He grunted, staring ahead, thinking about the results of his search. The little things he’d found, not important by themselves, only rendered significant by being so utterly out of place. The splash of vermilion in the charcoal sketch. The razor blade in the ice cream.

  And, damn it, he wanted out. He closed his eyes, aware of Alice tucking her feet up unde
r her. Her knee bumped his thigh. He wondered where Jenny was, how she was feeling. She was like some sort of catalyst in his life, making changes, making him think. His suspicion of his superiors, his discomfort with rules and procedures being bypassed. Even the dissatisfaction with his marriage. All crystalised, made into action, by one whispered, accented word in an interview room.

  Please.

  Suddenly he felt brittle, antsy and edgy. He knew, with a kind of held-breath dread, that Alice was going to put a hand on his thigh sometime in the next five minutes and that normally he’d turn to her and smile, and kiss her, and either they’d head upstairs, or she’d skip across and draw the curtains.

  Most guys would be ecstatic to have a wife who always wanted them. He had been ecstatic, for years after they were married. But lately he’d wondered if her desire was less for him and more for any active penis.

  And he didn’t want to.

  He set his teeth and waited.

  Oh, he’d not wanted to before. He’d not wanted to for months, actually. But he’d been going through the motions, playing the dutiful husband in the adequate marriage.

  Alice slipped a hand onto his thigh.

  She was beautiful. She was fun, and together, and confident.

  And he didn’t want to sleep with her tonight.

  Lifting her hand slightly, she drew circles with her fingertips. Out of the corner of his eye he saw her lips curve.

  Alice had a lovely smile. She was beaming in all their wedding photos, bright and happy. So was he, come to think of it. He worked his jaw free to take another swig of beer, concentrating on the coldness that almost hurt his throat.

  Alice stroked down to his knee with her index finger and began to slowly, slowly stroke back up.

  He blinked rapidly. “Alice …”

  “Hmmm?”

  “Not tonight.” It came out harsher than he’d intended. Her fingers stilled on his leg and he sat rigid in silence.

  “Pardon?”

  It wasn’t outrage, exactly, in her voice. Just a kind of breathless incredulity. “Are you okay?” Her hand curled on his thigh again, warm and gentle.

  “I’m fine.” It was actually difficult not to shout. That brittle tension was winding tighter in him, till he thought he’d shatter with it.