The encounter seemed to have affected them in a similar way: Their faces were flushed, their cheeks glowing, their eyes alight with excitement. Billie felt acutely alive as she walked over to her walnut Art Deco bar cabinet and cast a look back at her assistant’s haloed form. Her breath caught in her throat. Sam had been very impressive in that alley. Very bloody impressive. He’d suggested that he should be the one to get the drinks for them, as seemed to be his way, but he was a guest and she couldn’t have that. This wasn’t the office. Sam had done quite enough already in the service of their professional work, and his day was not yet over. It was quite possible the worst was yet to come. The state of Con Zervos’s remains would not have improved over the last few hours.
A day of bad luck.
“What would you like?” she asked her assistant and bent to open the cabinet’s lower set of doors, one of which was sticking slightly. Yes, her ribs were going to bruise; she could feel it. Masking a wince,she saw that she still had some port, a good scotch whisky, her mother’s favorite sherry, and a couple of bottles of wine.
“Whatever you’re having,” Sam said cautiously, still at the window. “Perhaps just one drink...”
“Yes, you have a big night ahead. This will ease the way. Scotch on the rocks? I have a good Dewar’s White Label.”
“On the rocks? Certainly.” Sam thanked her, seeming impressed. He waited uncomfortably, looking at the glowing treetops, his large, scarred hands clasped behind his back. How bad was his left hand beneath that glove? Billie wondered. Even with prosthetic fingers, he’d managed those two men exceedingly well. She hoped the effort hadn’t damaged his hand further.
“Are you injured?” she inquired. He might have been masking discomfort even more than she was. “That kidney punch looked ugly. And your hand...”
He shook his head. “I’m fine.”
“Good. We’re both fine, then,” she declared, pulling the bottle of scotch up onto the bar. “My stocking was the only real casualty,” she added with a lighthearted smile, but when she looked down at her legs she frowned. She hadn’t the energy to take them off yet, nor her torn dress, and being thrust into this close proximity with Sam in her own place suddenly struck her as more intimate than intended. There was something in the air, some lack of ease that was not a usual mark of their time together. Maybe they shouldn’t have danced. And now this reminded her of how long it had been since she’d last entertained, and how long it had been since she’d had a man in her flat—well, one who was alive at the time. That last male visitor would likely have been her father, in fact. Yes. It had been him, before she’d left for Europe, before he’d fallen ill. Having herstrapping young assistant here threw him into a different light, and perhaps he felt that unexpected shift, too, as he seemed uncharacteristically stiff. No, she reflected, now was not the time to announce that she was going to slip into something more comfortable. She wanted to get out of her torn things, but that could wait until after his departure. A drink was what was needed. A good, medicinal drink to get the taste of adrenaline out of her mouth and work the smell of death out of her nostrils.
“Please take a seat and relax,” Billie urged, grabbing a couple of her nicer crystal glasses from the cabinet and moving off to fetch some ice chips from the kitchen. “I know you have a date tonight. I promise I won’t keep you,” she called back, and when he turned toward her she thought she caught a slight blush on his cheeks.
She took her sharp ice pick from a drawer and chipped off enough ice to comfortably fill the two crystal glasses.
“Can I help?” Sam called from the next room, and she assured him she was fine. She returned to the living room and saw that he was sitting as instructed. The whisky poured beautifully over the fresh, clear ice and crackled as it settled into the glasses. She handed one to Sam and sat down, careful to leave distance between them.
“Thank you. I wouldn’t have liked to have come home alone after that,” Billie said. She held up her glass. “Here’s to getting through this day. May it end soon and never be repeated.”
“Here’s to getting through today,” Sam returned, locking eyes with her. They clinked glasses, looked away, and sipped. “And last night,” he added.
“Indeed.”
The whisky burned satisfyingly, with a hint of sweetness and peat smoke behind the fire. She had fancied she could taste herattackers’ sweat and smell it in her nostrils, and in one strong swig the sensation was blissfully obliterated. The burn settled all the way down into her stomach. She took a deep breath and her shoulders seemed to drop a full two inches.
“You looked good out there, Sam,” Billie said. “I’m impressed. Hell, I think those thugs were impressed, too.” He seemed to blush again, cradling his drink. “Well done, good man,” she said, raising her glass and taking another sip. She didn’t need to ask him where he’d learned to fight like that. He’d probably had plenty of opportunities to learn in New South Wales, and then in Tobruk. He was a man you wanted on your side in the trenches; that much was certain.
“It was nothing,” he said dismissively. “You were pretty impressive yourself.” He raised his glass to his lips and widened his eyes as if to punctuate his point.
“It wasn’t my first rodeo,” she explained a bit blithely, and her guest choked a little on his whisky. “Though I must say, Sydney has changed a lot since before I went away.”
When she was in Europe for all those years she’d fondly recalled Australia as peaceful and safe, and she supposed it was, relative to occupied territories and front lines. But then it might also have been the effect of the rose-colored glasses one classically dons when pining for a missed home. What had Johannes Hofer called it?Nostalgia,or “severe homesickness considered as a disease,” from the Greekálgos—pain, grief—andnóstos—homecoming. Nostalgia was thought to be a disease of soldiers fighting away from home, but it had proved a disease of young women war reporters, too, she’d found—if “disease” was really the right way to view it. She’d missed Australia terribly in the end. After all her father had shown her of Sydney’s underworldwhen she was younger, she hadn’t been so naïve, and she wasn’t easily shocked, exactly, but some fundamental things seemed to have worsened with the war. There seemed to be a dangerous desperation about.
“I didn’t know about your Colt,” Sam remarked.
“I rarely leave the house without it these days,” Billie confided. “Can’t remember when I started doing that.”
It wasn’t right after she returned from Europe, where she’d seen enough of guns and their deadly effects to last several lifetimes, but as the business had become more intense she’d started keeping her sidearm with her with some frequency, and she didn’t feel the need to defend that decision, particularly after the day’s events. Her instincts had been right, after all. That gun, unfired, had helped them in the alley. They were outnumbered four to two. If Sam asked for an explanation about why a “lady” packed heat, as some men tended to, she’d not like it. She doubted the male PIs were asked about such choices. Thankfully Sam seemed to accept her wisdom when it came to her own personal security. He didn’t say a word.
She sipped her drink and gazed toward the window. “You have a piece?” she asked him after a stretch of silence.
“I do,” he said to her. “It’s a .38. Has a long barrel, though. I’ve not been wearing it to work as a habit.”
“I think you might want to get into the habit of wearing it for the next little while, Sam, just until we find out what’s going on,” she said. “It’s licensed and in good working order?”
He nodded.
“A revolver. Good,” she added. If you happened to be wounded in the hand or arm, it would be a bugger to load a pistol. A revolver, like Sam had, was safer to carry around loaded, and easier to loadand fire with one good hand. A good choice for him, all things considered. “How long is the barrel?”
“Six inches,” he said.
A farm gun, not really for concealment, Billie thought. Guns like that were not usually aimed at humans, but at ill-fated animals. It would not be subtle under a jacket, but Sam was clearly comfortable with it and it was unwise to introduce new weapons just before battle. Four men had brought a knife fight to them in that alley, and you didn’t want to get caught bringing a knife to a gunfight, if that was where they took things next.
