She was so violently twisting her scarf in her gloved hands it was in danger of ripping. Best he kept talking, kept her mind off what they were doing and who was hunting them. He could take the hit to his pride.
“I miss some things,” he conceded. “I liked the uneasy energy of the ambulance shift, knowing that every time a job came in you could be thrown into anything from a stroke to a chain-saw accident. I liked the way that sparked up my brain and I liked the adrenaline. I could literally feel it in my heart and my veins. That’s why I gravitated to emergency medicine, before going into neurology. Every time those automatic doors open you can be thrown into a challenge with life-or-death consequences.”
She shuddered. “My idea of hell. I can’t eventhinkon my feet, let alone operate on someone.”
“Oh, I loved it. That’s what I miss—the mental challenge, the speed.”Jesus, don’t say “speed.”“You’re cycling through ailments and procedures in your head, trying to remember the textbooks, the practicals, that one time you assisted on a procedure kind of like the one you’re wrist-deep in, while the consultants are yelling at you, trying to catch you out, and the monitors are beeping, and there’s this patient in front of you who could well die if you make the wrong decision.” Just the thought made his stomach flip.
“You’re really not selling it to me.” She shuffled in her seat. “You must get adrenaline from your current job.”
“Yeah, but the buzzes don’t come very often. I’m a grunt who follows orders, and mostly it’s exercises and uneventful patrols. It’s not often you can do anything really impressive.”
“Impressive,” she repeated, as if she’d never heard the word and was trying it out. “Interesting choice of word.”
“How so?”
“You didn’t sayrewarding, orsatisfying. You saidimpressive. Like you’re doing it to get approval.”
Shite, she might claim not to think quickly but she sure thought deeply. “Maybe that’s it,” he said.
Approval, huh?You’re such a fuckin’ show-off, his sister had said nearly every day of their childhood. Luckily, these days he had less to show off about and nobody to show off to. Knowing cool stuff about weapons when you hung out with commandos didn’t get as much attention as wearing scrubs and answering to “Doctor.” Especially female attention.
“You must get to impress your colleagues, with your medical experience.”
“I’m mostly just dishing out diarrhea pills and hangover remedies. And if somebody catches a bullet there’s often not a lot you can do. Last year, right before I met you, I lost a teammate. All those years as a paramedic, in the hospital, in the field, and there was nothing I could do but hold on to him and tell him everything was fine while...” He rubbed a hand over his face. “How about you?” he said, quickly. “Do you miss your job?”
“Do I miss my job?” she said, rolling the thought around. “I miss living a normal, inconsequential life. I miss not being scared. I miss being free to be who I am and do what I want, though I’m not even sure who that person is anymore or what I want to do. But I’d like to find out.” She pursed her lips. “Take a right here. All this will be over very soon.”
Her tone kicked him in the chest. She was clinging to hope. It’d better be waiting for them.
They did a circuit of the neighborhood and parked a block away. It consisted mainly of renovated terraced houses with little rectangular gardens out back. An elderly man strode past, hands in pockets, tinny music squeaking from his earphones, and a few cars drove by but few others were about—nobody sitting in parked cars, no suspicious vans.
Charlotte’s address was on the ground floor of a brick Victorian mansion that’d been carved up into flats, and none too sympathetically, with mismatched doors and window frames and cheap wall panels. They crossed a rain-slicked concrete courtyard and Jamie lifted a knocker beside an opaque glass door. The dull thud reverberated through his cold hand. Nothing. Samira retied her scarf. Through the bubbled glass, he could make out a pile of mail on the floor below the letter slot. He knocked again, tried the doorknob. Deadlocked.
“Does she live alone?” he said.
“Awo.”
“Think she’d mind if we waited inside?”
“How are we supposed to—?”
He pulled a little leather case from his pocket and unzipped it.
“You’re breaking us in with a manicure set?”
“Not your average manicure set.” He slid out one of the lock-picking tools disguised among the scissors and tweezers and clippers. “A birthday gift from Holly. A joke present. I think.”
“You know how to use it?”
“I watched a video online.”
A few minutes later they stood in an impeccable living room that doubled as a kitchen and laundry, so small that a modest television filled almost an entire wall. Jamie sneaked up a wrought iron staircase to a bedroom with a closet-sized bathroom and a tiny barred window overlooking the road. In the neighboring flat a man and woman were talking. If they’d been speaking English, Jamie could have joined the conversation without raising his voice. The mansion had evidently been broken up before laws about soundproofing—and fire exits.
Back downstairs, Samira was studying an envelope on the kitchen counter, a few words written on it in blue ink.
“What’s that?” he said, joining her.
“‘To whom it may concern,’” she read.
