The Affair_ A Reacher Novel - Lee Child [73]
I rinsed my face and washed my hands and forearms and elbows with hot water and soap. I ran wet fingers through my hair. I breathed in and breathed out. Adrenaline is a bitch. It doesn’t know when to quit. I flapped my hands and rolled my shoulders. I took a look in the mirror. My hair was OK. My face was clean.
There was blood on my shirt.
On the pocket. And above. And below. Not much, but some. A definite comma-shaped curl of droplets. Like it had been flung at me. Or like I had walked into a mist. Which I had. The second guy. I had hit him on the bridge of his nose. His nose had bled like a flushing toilet.
I said, “Shit,” quietly, to myself.
My old shirts were in the trash in my room.
The stores were all closed.
I edged closer to the sink and took another look in the mirror. The droplets were already drying. Turning brown. Maybe they would end up looking deliberate. Like a logo. Or a pattern. Like a single element taken from a swirling fabric. I had seen similar things. I wasn’t sure what they were called. Paisley?
I breathed in, breathed out.
Nothing to be done.
I headed back to the dining room and got there just as Deveraux stepped in through the door.
She wasn’t in uniform. She had changed her clothes. She was wearing a silver silk shirt and a black knee-length skirt. High heeled shoes. A silver necklace. The shirt was thin and tight and tiny. It was open at the top. The skirt sat at her waist. I could have spanned her waist with my hands. Her legs were bare. And slim. And long. Her hair was wet from the shower. It was loose on her shoulders. It was spilling down her back. No ponytail. No elastic band. She was smiling, all the way up to her amazing eyes.
I showed her to our table and we sat down facing each other. She was small and neat, centered on her bench. She was wearing perfume. Something faint and subtle. I liked it.
She said, “I’m sorry I’m late.”
I said, “No problem.”
She said, “You have blood on your shirt.”
I said, “Is that what it is?”
“Where did you get it?”
“Across the street from the hotel. There’s a store.”
“Not the shirt,” she said. “The blood. You didn’t cut yourself shaving.”
“You told me not to.”
“I know,” she said. “I like you like that.”
“You look great too.”
“Thank you. I decided to quit early. I went home to change.”
“I see that.”
“I live in the hotel.”
“I know.”
“Room seventeen.”
“I know.”
“Which has a balcony overlooking the street.”
“You saw?”
“Everything,” she said.
“Then I’m surprised you didn’t break the date.”
“Is it a date?”
“It’s a dinner date.”
She said, “You didn’t let them hit you first.”
“I wouldn’t be here if I had.”
“True,” she said, and smiled. “You were pretty good.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“But you’re killing my budget. Pellegrino and Butler are getting overtime to haul them away. I wanted them gone before the hotel folks finish their dinner. Voters don’t like mayhem in the streets.”
The waitress came by. She brought no menus. Deveraux had been eating there three times a day for two years. She knew the menu. She asked for the cheeseburger. So did I, with coffee to drink. The waitress made a note and went away.
I said, “You had the cheeseburger yesterday.”
Deveraux said, “I have it every day.”
“Really?”
She nodded. “Every day I do the same things and eat the same things.”
“How do you stay thin?”
“Mental energy,” she said. “I worry a lot.”
“About what?”
“Right now about a guy from Oxford, Mississippi. That’s the guy who got shot in the thigh. The doctor brought his personal effects to my office. There was a wallet and a notebook. The guy was a journalist.”
“Big paper?”
“No, freelance. Struggling, probably. His last press pass was two years old. But Oxford has a couple of alternative papers. He was probably trying to sell something to one of them.”
“There’s a school in Oxford, right?”
Deveraux nodded again.
“Ole Miss,” she said. “About as radical as this state