Seven

It was an odd feeling, being relieved and terrified at the same time, but that was the effect he had.

Finn switched on the hall light. Peter Moodley was standing in their kitchen.

“I’ve put the kettle on,” he said in a clipped South African accent. “Hollis, why don’t you get the cups? And Finn, perhaps we could all use a biscuit if you have any.”

Peter was someone used to being obeyed, and even though she objected to being ordered around in her own house, Hollis got out three tea cups, the good ones, and set them on the table. Finn had found some iced lemon cookies and was about to put them on the table in their package when Hollis stopped him, so he arranged them on a plate, shaking his head the whole time. He might have broken in, but Peter was still company and that required a little effort.

Peter stood by the kettle. Hollis was about to make a joke about watched kettles never boiling, but as soon as she opened her mouth the kettle whistled. Even water is afraid of defying him, she thought. Peter took out three tea bags from the box of Barry’s tea that was kept in the cupboard next to the stove. Hollis wanted to ask how he knew they were there, but she didn’t. She also didn’t ask how he’d gotten into their home and if this was the first time. She didn’t want to know. She did notice the gun holstered under his jacket, but she didn’t ask about that, either.

Instead, Hollis and Finn sat at the table while Peter made a pot of tea, brought it to them, and poured each a cup. “You look well,” he said.

“So do you,” Hollis told him. Finn glared at her, but she shrugged. What was the point in being impolite? Plus, he did look good, actually. His dark-brown skin looked great against the pale pink shirt he was wearing. His head was still bald, but she could see a slight five o’clock shadow on his scalp, making clear he hadn’t shaved his head because of a bald spot. Just some Peter-y control move, she guessed. His tall, muscular physique was still in peak shape. A gold watch, a Rolex maybe, on his wrist. A bit pricey for a government employee, but it suited him. And he looked rested. That part was odd. Spies don’t keep regular hours. At least she assumed they didn’t.

Still she was surprised that the nervousness she’d felt upstairs, the hot/cold certainty that something was wrong, had turned out to be Peter. It felt somehow worse than that. But, she reminded herself, she really had no idea what Peter was capable of. It could turn out to be very bad.

Finn got right to the point. “What do you want?”

Peter smiled, which sent a shiver down Hollis’s spine. Peter was at his most dangerous when he smiled.

“When were you going to tell me about the letter?”

“In the morning,” Hollis said.

“We were thinking about telling you in the morning,” Finn corrected her.

It was Hollis’s turn to glare. Finn had lobbied for turning the whole business over to Peter, and now he was talking tough. She tried to catch his eye, to see if this was part of a larger plan, but Finn was looking straight at Peter.

“We’re not interested in getting mixed up with this again,” Finn continued. “I was thinking it might be better to just toss the letter and the rest of it into the trash.”

“That’s not going to solve your problem.”

“That’s what I said,” Hollis blurted out.

“What does it say?”

Finn squinted at Peter. “You know about the letter but not what it says?”

“I have many talents, but x-ray vision isn’t one of them. We figured you were being watched, so we watched you …”

“Why are we being watched?”

Peter didn’t answer. He just smiled and looked at Hollis. “Finn just said it might be better to toss ‘the letter and the rest of it.’ What’s the rest of it?”

Hollis said nothing. She glanced toward Finn, who stared at her, then shrugged. Peter watched, his smile growing bigger.

“I miss this,” he said. “The three of us playing cat and mouse.” He moved his eyes from Hollis to Finn. “And other mouse. It reminds me of a tabby that roamed the neighborhood back home in Soweto. A big cat, always hungry. He would find himself a mouse and he would bat it between his paws.” Peter swatted an imaginary mouse between his hands to demonstrate. “I would watch him as a little boy. He would play with the mouse like a toy. Sometimes the little creature would almost get away, but just as it was nearly free, the cat would scoop it back up and bat it around some more.” He laughed. “I enjoyed watching that. I liked the way he took his time. But at some point, always, the terrified little mouse would finally realize that there was no escape and go limp. Then the cat would raise its paw high, and …” Peter raised his hand a couple of feet into the air. He paused, then he slammed his palm into the table. The teacups shook. So did Finn and Hollis. “He would break the mouse’s neck and make himself a meal of it.”

There was silence for a moment. In that silence, Peter took a bite from his lemon cookie.

“Can you just tell us what you want instead of scaring us half to death?” Hollis finally asked.

Peter laughed. “Where would the fun be in that?”

Finn got up from the table and went upstairs. Peter looked amused but said nothing. Hollis was not amused, but she also stayed silent. She was sure he wasn’t going back to bed, pretty sure anyway, but she couldn’t imagine what he was doing leaving her alone with Peter. She watched Peter brush crumbs off his shirt. As he moved she could see the handle of his gun. Peter’s previous job in British intelligence, they had discovered in Ireland, was as a fixer—a man who got rid of anything that might cause problems for the government—inconvenient information, or inconvenient people. As pleasant as Peter could be, Hollis knew that if it was deemed necessary, she and Finn would become an unsolvable missing persons case for the local police. She wondered if Finn was thinking that too and was looking for a way they could escape.

It took several long minutes to find out.

Finn came back, the envelope in his hand. He dropped it in front of Peter. “Here. Now take it and do whatever spy stuff you do. Just leave us out of it.”

Peter emptied the contents, going methodically through the letter and each passport before speaking. “I don’t think that’s possible, mate.”

Finn sat at the table and poured more tea into his cup. “Why not? And don’t give me some nonsense about how I’ll be in danger without your help, because I’m in danger with it.”

“I wasn’t.”

“And please don’t say my country needs me.”

“Better men than you have tried to take down TCT and failed.”

“So we’re off the hook.”

“I’m afraid not.” Peter put the letter in his pocket. “We might be able to find fingerprints,” he said. Then he stacked the passports, put them back into the envelope, and slid them toward Finn. “You’ll need these.”

“Why? You just said we don’t have the skills.”

Peter got up, his chair squeaking as he pushed it back. He walked out of the kitchen and toward the living room.

Hollis watched him disappear from view. She looked at Finn, who was doing the same. “Do we follow him?”

“I’m guessing that’s what he wants.”

Hollis got up, but Finn kept sitting. “You know he’s not just going to leave,” she said.

Finn grunted. “I hate that guy.” He took a giant swig of his tea and slammed the cup on its saucer making a pinging noise. As he watched the cup shake a little in the saucer, he blushed. “That move would have looked cooler with whiskey.”

“You don’t have to look cool for me.”

“It would be nice if I didn’t look like a complete idiot.”

“You look impressive as hell,” she said. “And much calmer than me.”

He took Hollis’s hand, kissed it, and they walked toward their living room.

“Okay, Peter,” he said as they caught sight of him. “Let’s get the ‘show and tell’ portion over with so I can go back to bed.”

Peter pointed toward a corner of the room where the hall light didn’t quite reach. “Not sure you’ll want to sleep.”

Finn took a few steps forward and gasped. Hollis couldn’t see anything above the shoulders of the two men, so she pushed between them. Then she gasped too.

Propped up in an overstuffed floral chair was a body, with a dark stain on the chair near his head. A stain that even in the dim light could only be one thing—blood.