Blood Trust - Eric van Lustbader [41]
Alli found she was weeping. All around her the rain dripped and slithered. She tasted it on her lips, felt it sliding down the back of her neck. Both the rain and her tears tasted of blood. She knew she should move, but she could not. Like the guns, she lay on the bed of needles, without will or volition, resting, heart pounding in her chest, waiting.…
That was how Jack found her.
She looked at him as he knelt down to scoop her up. “My hero,” she whispered. And, then, in a louder voice, “You look like crap.”
Jack laughed, and at that moment cop cars, sirens blaring, started to converge on Henry Holt Carson’s house from both east and west.
TEN
DENNIS PAULL was at Claire’s apartment in Foggy Bottom when he heard about the debacle at Carson’s country residence. The news came via a text message. He stared at it a moment in disbelief, long enough for his daughter to ask what was wrong.
“Nothing,” he said, sliding his PDA back into a breast pocket.
“Business, Dad. Always business.” Her voice was mocking rather than admonitory.
“The government never sleeps.”
She laughed. “No, Dad. It’s you who never sleeps.”
She put a delicate-fingered hand over his. They were sitting on a sofa in her living room, companionably, even lovingly, side by side, in a manner he’d never have believed possible up until about a year ago. That’s when he and Claire had reconciled, when he had met his grandson, Aaron, for the first time. For him, it was love at first sight; he was certain Aaron felt the same way. At seven, he’d been in desperate need of a father figure, and Paull had striven to be just that, rather than the indulgent grandfather that might be the norm. Claire’s strong suit wasn’t discipline, something every child required, in his opinion. Clearly, Claire agreed, because she allowed him his head with Aaron. On the other hand, he was careful not to criticize her parenting skills, which were exemplary in all other aspects.
In some respects, he still felt as if he were walking on eggshells around her. He was dismayed that he no longer knew her. When she came back to him, she was, to all practical purposes, a stranger. She didn’t even look the way he remembered her. She had left him when she was still a girl. Seven years later, she had returned a woman. While a certain disconnect should not have come as a surprise to him, it nevertheless did. She was his flesh and blood. He and his wife had raised her, and now it seemed to him as if she were someone else’s daughter. His heart fractured at the thought, though he never for a moment allowed her to see his pain. Besides, the break was essentially his fault. Recognizing that was his first giant step toward reconciliation, both with Claire and inside himself.
“How long will you be gone, Dad?” Claire stirred half-and-half into her coffee. She liked it light, no sugar, but strong, he had learned. When she had left, she hadn’t been drinking coffee at all. So many differences!
He sighed. “I wish I could say.”
“Even if you knew, you wouldn’t tell me, would you?” She smiled to show him there was no need to answer.
He glanced around the room. It astonished him how quickly and easily a woman could make a home cozy, warm, and bright, right down to the photos and little knickknacks and souvenirs. All he required was a laptop, a comfortable lounge chair, and a well-stocked bar. Oh, and his stack of history books—the history of warfare, the fall of the Roman Empire, the history of medicine, of philosophy, of the struggle between Catholics and Protestants, between Christianity and Islam. The depressing fact was that they all came down to one thing: