Steal the Lightning Read online

I had to pass the evening somehow.

  The last thing that I wanted was to have to think.

  Chapter 14

  Reunion

  She was due to meet me at the airport. New York to Detroit: one hour, twenty minutes, clean out of my life.

  After so many air miles, I should have found a better way to pass the time. I used to read—the heavy stuff, Tolstoy, Dickens, Sartre—but this time, all I did was flick through a magazine, doze a while, and watch a sitcom with the sound turned off.

  One day, I thought, I want that dead time back. Every flight, every bus ride, every train journey. Put in an expenses claim: five years in transit. Please recompense.

  We landed. Disembarked. I scooped my luggage off the carousel and stumbled back into the real world.

  Angel was there, leaning on a wall outside Arrivals, wearing an old black hoodie, faded jeans, and a Red Wings cap. She was watching something on her phone, her hip stuck out, her body in a graceful, athlete’s curve, and I wanted just to hang back in the crowd a moment, amazed that I even had a link to this extraordinary woman. I wanted—almost—just to slink away, to leave the scene as perfect as it was, before I’d had the chance to say the wrong thing and to ruin it.

  I’d said the wrong thing lots of times before.

  And done the wrong thing, too.

  I’d walked out on her once—a long time back, but not too long for either of us to forget.

  I had an awful sense of the fragility of life, how quickly and easily the good parts can slip between your fingers, gone before you’ve even noticed, and I teetered there, trapped in my own unease.

  Then she looked up, and she saw me.

  And she gave a big, big grin.

  “Hey!”

  I ran over. I dropped my bag. I threw my arms around her, felt the muscles moving in her back, and she hugged me like she was trying to squeeze the life out of me.

  “I missed you. Riff missed you too.”

  Riff was her pet pit bull, a grown dog with delusions of puppyhood.

  “He gave me a message for you,” and she pulled back, just a moment, and I could see the mischief in her eye.

  Then she stuck her tongue out and she licked me on the nose.

  “Is it as bad as everybody says?”

  “Detroit? Depends.” She pulled the car out of the parking lot. She wore shades and the cap and little gold studs shone in her ears. I had the coolest-looking chauffeur in America. “Depends on where you are. Who you are. Some’s worse, some’s better.” She spun the wheel. “Years since I was last there.”

  “Didn’t inspire you musically?”

  “Ha.” She hit a rhythm on the wheel with her hand. “Baby lo-ove, my baby love . . .”

  She was very precise, very classical. I said, “You need to make it breathy. And, like, slur your notes more. Yeah?”

  “Listen to you!”

  “I’d have been a great music producer. I’ve got loads of hidden talents.”

  “Like what, then, Mr. Music Producer?”

  “Oh—I dunno. I bet I could play the piano. Or guitar, or something. I just never tried, that’s all.”

  “Yeah. I bet you could, too.”

  “Ooh. Sarcasm.” But then I said, “I’m glad I’m here.”

  “Well, me too.” She gave me a sideways look. “You OK?”

  “No. Don’t think I am.”

  It happens, every now and then. Just when you think you’ve seen it all, and nothing will ever get to you again: something does. It’s that kind of a job.

  Mostly you skate over the top of it. Things go the way they go, you deal with them, you move on. Then you see or do something, and it just gets inside your head and messes up your brain and nothing in the world can shake it loose.

  I left the job once, for a few years. Found out I wasn’t all that good at anything else, and that I liked the independence and the perks of Field Ops much too much to quit.

  But I never saw somebody kill themselves in front of me. Or had anyone embroil me in the run-up to it like that, either.

  We drove in a sort of cloudy silence for a while. Then we broke for coffee and I started telling her about what happened, and once I’d started, I just couldn’t stop. She listened. She was good at that. She didn’t comment or try being helpful, just nodded, said, “Uh-huh.” Stopped me when I said something she didn’t understand, but that was all.

  It took another hour to get to Angel’s parents’ place. A neat lawn sloped down to the street and a row of various ceramic owls guarded the porch. The house looked big to me, a great, wood-fronted, yellow and white mansion, but then, I’m English, and the scale of things is different here. As we headed in, she warned me, “Watch out for the canine cannonball.”

  She got the screen door open, slid the key into the lock, and right away, I heard the barking start. “He knows it’s you,” she said. “Don’t ask me how.” The door opened. The dog raced out, yipping like a lunatic—first excited to see her, then seeing me, taking a few steps my way, swinging his head and racing back to her, then looking round at me again. “Guy’s so happy,” she said, “there needs to be two of him.”

  The little, high-pitched squeaks were a bit at odds with the pit bull’s fearsome reputation. Still, when I bent to pet him, he jumped at me and almost knocked me down.

  Thirty seconds later I was shaking hands with Angel’s mum and dad. We’d never met before. I felt like I was sixteen all over again, dragged inside to meet the girlfriend’s parents. I just about remembered I was in the States and called them “Sir” and “Ma’am.” “It’s Charles,” said Sir. “Evelyn,” said Ma’am. Evelyn made coffee. They all sat down like adults. But for me. I sat there like a gawky teenager, wondering how, after all these years, I still hadn’t grown up.

  Chapter 15

  Man to Man

  Charles Farthing was a big guy—tall the way Angel was tall, and with a broad, high-cheekboned face that seemed to mirror hers. I’d guess he’d been an athlete in in his youth—football, basketball—but the years had piled the weight around his waist and these days when he sat he looked as if he’d stuffed a beach ball up his shirt. His belly made a perfect dome. His hair was thinning, and the light caught flecks of white in his goatee. Evelyn, by contrast, was small and rapid, constantly darting back and forth into the kitchen, to make coffee, or check on dinner.

  I liked them both immediately. And I wanted them to like me, too.

  Charles asked about my journey, and my business in New York. I bluffed and told him it had gone about as well as I’d expected, thanks very much. He told me he had been there for the US Open, and I pretended to be interested in that. He named the players, and I nodded.

  Angel said, “Chris isn’t a sports fan.”

  I protested. “I watch the odd match. You know—the big ones. But I travel a lot—”

  I wanted to keep things light, and ordinary. Soon, though, Angel and her mum went off into the kitchen, and Charles said, “Time for a real drink,” and I was pretty sure that I was going to get the man-to-man stuff, the what-are-your-intentions-for-my-daughter speech. But it didn’t go like that. We drank JD and ice. He asked about the Registry. He asked about Field Ops. And I fell back on the easy answers, the company-approved line. He listened. Then he put his glass down, steepled his fingers.

  “I want you,” he said, “to tell me the risks.”

  The light in the room was dying. The sun was going down. Deep shadows filled his face, and his eyes were steady, gleaming with the last of the day’s sun.

  “You understand me?”

  “I . . . understand.”

  His gaze didn’t let up. I took a drink. I shifted in my seat.

  “I won’t deny—there’s been moments . . .”

  But I told him there were protocols, procedures, safety checks. I told him there was less danger than being a cop, or a soldier, or—

  “You were in hospital, she said.”

  “That was a while ago. And it was more . . . peripheral factors.
You know?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “People.” I took a sip. “I tell you—nine times out of ten, something goes wrong, it’s not the job, it’s the people.”

  “Well. I can relate to that.” He smiled, and I felt myself relax. “Teaching profession—well, everybody reckons it’s the kids that give you trouble. Ain’t the case, though, nine times out of ten. Turns out, the kids are fine, most of ’em. It’s the guys you work with, or the parents, or the state, or—” He waved a hand, as if to brush it all away.

  “That’s it,” I said.

  But he kept looking at me.

  He’d mentioned hospital. I hadn’t answered him, and he was waiting.

  “Chicago,” I said, presently. “I got pretty badly beaten up. It was Angel pulled me out of that one, actually.”

  “That so?”

  “She—yeah. She saved my life, I’d say. She’s good. I’ve got confidence in her.”

  “She didn’t tell the story that way. But she saved you?”

  I nodded.

  He took a drink. I took a drink.

  “She’s determined on this,” he said.

  I wasn’t sure it was a question, but I said, “She is.”

  “Girl sets her mind to something, no point trying to stop her. She’s—” He brought his hand down sharply. “She’s like her mom in that. That’s where she gets it from, not me.”

  “That’s her.”

  “She could have been a lawyer. Doctor. Just about anything she set her mind to. But no, she wants to study music, and that’s what she does. Doesn’t want to make a record, be a star, like most kids. No. Just wants to study, wants to understand. And when her mom and me don’t have the money to support her, she says, fine, I’ll get a job. And she does that.”

  “More than one,” I said.

  He opened the bottle, refilled my glass and then his own. “You want more ice?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Me, too, I guess.” He rattled the few small cubes left in his glass. “Don’t get me wrong,” he said. “I love Angel. More, I respect her. I would walk through fire for that girl and never think twice about it. I am as proud of her as any father could be. She’s smart, she’s beautiful, and she has a sense of right and wrong. She’s kind. She would never willingly hurt someone, someone close to her. But she’s—ah. She’s focused. And, you got to be aware of that.”

  “Um . . .”

  “I’m saying, she goes for what she wants. Doesn’t always pay a whole lot of attention to what else is happening. What, or who. She’s kind of blinkered that way. Know what I’m saying?”

  I had thought he wanted reassurances, but he didn’t. He was warning me. Gently, kindly: but a warning, nonetheless.

  “Let’s say, she doesn’t always see how it affects the people close to her. Not unless you point it out. And sometimes—yeah. Not even then.”

  Chapter 16

  Dealing with Death

  The mood was lighter over dinner, helped by a glass of Merlot that sat nicely on the JD. Charles grew talkative, as teachers do. Evelyn was quick-witted and funny, and took delight in quietly harpooning him each time he started to pontificate. (“Someone’s gotta knock you off your high horse.”) Oddly enough, he seemed to like her little barbs, even waiting for her to chime in, and the pair of them would banter back and forth like some old comedy duo. The jokes weren’t new, but that was fine: familiarity was half the fun.

  It was very pleasant, very charming, and not the least bit like my own marriage, so many years ago. I was starting to enjoy the feeling of normality. I was even starting to relax.

  And then I thought of Frugs and Melody.

  The gloss went off it after that.

  I said to Angel, “They’re nice. I like them.”

  “Oh, they’re real nice. And right now, I’m about niced out.”

  Riff slept in our room—Angel’s room. He started in an old dog bed on the floor. I woke to find him snuffling up between us, shouldering us aside. When I put my hand out, he gave me a big, sloppy lick.

  It was sometime in the small hours, and I lay there, on the far edge of the bed, thinking about Melody Duchess and the last hours of her life, the hours that I’d reluctantly shared.

  They say there are stages for dealing with death—the prospect of your own death, anyway. Denial. Anger. Negotiation. All of that. Maybe it could happen when you’re faced with someone else’s death, as well.

  I’d passed denial pretty quickly. Couldn’t really do much else.

  But I was stuck on anger.

  I hadn’t even liked the woman. Oh, I’d sympathized, maybe. Felt sorry for her. But if she’d dropped dead of a heart attack, I’d probably have shrugged and told myself, “Must have been time.”

  Only she hadn’t had a heart attack.

  Maybe I should have had retrieval gear, though God knows, it’s not something you’d carry round, just on the off chance. Or not been so pushy with her. Or not poured her that last drink . . .

  I was angry with her. I was angry with myself. And more than that, I was angry with the guy who’d given her the means to do the deed. Johnny fucking Appleseed. He might not actually have put it in her mouth. He might not even have known the thing was dangerous—though that just made him an idiot, on top of everything else. He might even have thought she’d benefit from it. Though if she’d really paid him three grand, like she’d said, then it was pretty obvious who really benefitted. I argued it out every way I could, chasing it around my head, and what it all came down to, in the end, was this. Suppose you’ve got a kid who shoots someone, or shoots himself. The kid’s responsible. It’s no one else’s doing. It’s just his. But even so—you want to know who handed him the gun, don’t you?

  Angel and Riff slept really, really well. I know, because I lay there half the night, and listened to them snore.

  Chapter 17

  The Road

  Next day we had our car delivered. It was a big black SUV, built like a bus. I had to sign a stack of paperwork, plus the online log-in. Then I had to check the flask and cables that came with it and sign for those, too. I couldn’t check the generator in the back, not without running it, but there was a little sticker that said someone else had checked it for me, so I had to sign to say I’d seen that, too.

  After which, the thing was mine.

  It was tricky, trying to leave the house.

  We had to sneak our luggage out the back door so the dog wouldn’t see. He didn’t understand a lot in life, but he knew what luggage meant, and he knew he wasn’t coming.

  Evelyn put her arms around me.

  “Angel’s got good taste,” she said. “Look after her.”

  Angel said, “Mom. I look after myself.”

  Evelyn, to me, again: “Look after her.”

  “She’ll be safe,” I said. “She’ll be totally safe.”

  But I saw Melody’s strained face, her skin pulled tight over a skull that shook with pain.

  “I promise,” I said, though softer now. “I will look after her.”

  “Come on!” said Angel, and she grabbed my arm, and dragged me off towards the car.

  I hadn’t planned on spending so long in the States. I had a place in London costing me an arm and a leg in rent, but Angel didn’t live in London. I had called in favors to be with her now, to finish off her training.

  I’d taught her basics, way back, but that had been formality; she’d worked in admin and PR, and wasn’t exactly coming face-to-face with the divine on any frequent basis.

  Then, in Chicago last year, things had turned a bit more serious. She’d already proved herself more than able. I even thought she had some talent for the job. And she wanted Field Ops: she wanted to travel, to get to hear the music that fascinated her, and hear it live, this time. I reckoned for the next few weeks I’d be no more than the fallback guy, if things went wrong. Which I was not expecting.

  We drove south. Everything was fine. We checked a shopping mall that had been fla
gged—“poltergeist-type episodes”—and we got nothing. Then there was a church in southern Michigan, where we sat in with some techs and a US Field Op, and I told them all, “In Europe, I’d do this on my own,” and they took the teasing in good part. “That’s ’cause you’re cheap,” said one of them.

  The job itself was routine stuff. Or as near as it gets.

  Angel did well. I’d told them she was training and they let her lay the cables and she hesitated once or twice, asked for advice from time to time. She wasn’t short of confidence but she knew her limitations. That was good. Nothing worse than somebody who thinks they’ve got it nailed. They’re the ones who make mistakes.

  We got together for a few beers afterwards. There was time for talk and debate and a little storytelling, and I was glad of that. I wanted her to hear the stories. Half the time, that’s how you learn: not from the manual, not from the classes, but from what the old hands tell you, when they’re fooling around, or trying to boast, or warn, or entertain. That’s when you get the truth.

  We spent our nights in motels. Each evening, she’d phone her mom and ask her how the dog was. Sometimes she’d get quiet after that and tell me that she missed him, but it never lasted long. We’d eat in local bars and restaurants, trying to pick the healthy options, and usually ending up with beer and burgers, just because it was closest, easiest, and tasted good.

  I didn’t phone a soul. I got my orders via e-mail and I didn’t want to talk to anybody anyway.

  Then we got a new job. The town was called Big Hollow, and I thought that sounded spooky and funny and romantic all at once, and it was going to be her first real solo run, and I was sort of looking forward to it—the tension of the job, even the fear, and then the huge release when it was done, the celebration, and the fact we’d share it.

  She called the place “Sleepy Hollow.” I called it “Big Hello,” until we practically forgot its real name. And we laughed our way towards it with some weird Moroccan music on her iPod, and she sang along to that the same way other people sing along to Taylor Swift.