Catherine Coulter - Backfire

“Not a good idea,” he said, and took a step back from her.

Harry, Eve, and Griffin had been treated by the EMTs at the Fairmont, had been pronounced good to go, had been debriefed at the Federal Building, and had showered and cleaned up at Harry’s house before he’d brought her back to her condo.

Eve felt punch-drunk, both hyped and exhausted. The weird thing was, this potent mix had her seeing Special Agent Harry Christoff with new eyes. The new eyes really liked what they saw.

Harry knuckled his own eyes. “I keep seeing Xu coming into the suite, and then I hear Griffin yell for him to get his hands in the air. Then everything happens so fast, all at the same time-the explosion of bright light and that god-awful noise, and fire everywhere.

“I still can’t believe Xu was carrying a flash-bang. And he knew exactly what to do with it.”

Eve said, “I want to learn how to use one. Talk about effective; my ears didn’t stop ringing for an hour. It was as if that light slapped right into my brain and I was as good as blind for five minutes.”

Harry said, “Xu certainly came prepared, you have to give him that.”

Eve said, “I don’t have to give him a damned thing. However, I wouldn’t mind shooting him in both knees. I guess you’d have to be in the military to learn how to use a flash-bang.”

Harry said, “No Flash-bang Escape Weekends for civilians?”

“Not that I’ve heard of. You want a beer?”

He shook his head.

Eve waved him into her living room, eased herself down onto the sofa.

Harry sat in the chair opposite her and gave her a brooding look over his steepled fingers. “I’m wondering if the State Department can get the Chinese government to tell us anything about Xu now that he’s blowing up hotel suites and killing people.”

“I doubt they’d even own up to knowing who Xu is. If we pursued it, accused Xu of being a Chinese spy, they’d claim he was probably an innocent bystander the FBI was trying to nail as a scapegoat. I’ll bet the State Department will back off, without more proof, and even then-”

Harry tapped his fingertips together. “I keep asking myself-is there anything we could have done to stop him?”

“If we hadn’t been blinded and mule-kicked, we could have put a dozen bullets in his chest. That would have ended things nicely. At least one of us got him in the arm. I wonder which of us it was. I don’t suppose the medical examiner will want to examine our weapons?”

“If it got out that the M.E. was going to check our SIGs, there’d be a pool started up to see which of us had popped Xu.”

She got up, went into the kitchen. She called out, “You want some Fritos and queso dip?”

Harry laughed. “Sure, why not? I can’t remember the last time we ate.”

Eve brought in a tray with a huge bag of Fritos and a bowl with the queso dip, steaming from the microwave, and set the tray on the coffee table. “Well, come on over and sit next to me unless you want to drag that chair over.”

Harry dragged over the chair opposite the coffee table.

Eve gave him a long look. “I usually like it when a guy is scared of me, but you? You won’t sit next to me on the sofa, you won’t even give me a mother’s kiss on my neck to make my owie better again.”

“Mama didn’t raise me to be stupid.”

She scooped up dip onto a big Frito. “Do you know I overheard Cheney saying you weren’t a nasty git any longer, only nasty.”

“When did you hear that?”

“At the hospital last Friday morning. I was standing in the corridor outside the ICU when you and Cheney came waltzing in.”

“What I really am is a mild-mannered agent, only no one will believe me. Okay, maybe it’s true I haven’t been too much fun for the past year and a half.”

“Amazing, we only met last Friday.”

“We’ve seen each other on the elevators, in the Federal Building garage.”

“Yeah, well, you pretended you were this tough guy who shaved himself with a hunting knife. Hard to reconcile that image with what all of us deputy marshals know to our guts, namely, that FBI agents are all wimpy clones made in the FBI factory.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“It’s common knowledge.”

“You want to know what FBI agents think about the fricking Marshal Service?”

She grinned at him. “Nope.”

When he opened his mouth, she raised her hand. “You asked and I answered, so keep quiet.”

He said, “The few times I’ve seen you, I always thought you were too pretty to be a marshal, since nearly all of them are ex-military buzz-cut hardnoses. And look at you-you wear that black-and-red getup with your butt-kicker boots so you can be one of the boys. Have you found they take you more seriously?”

He was spot-on about that, she thought.

“It’s the boots that win the day,” she said. “No one messes with the boots.”

“The fact is, though,” he continued after eating a Frito, “the unmarried FBI agents keep trying to figure out how to get your attention. Word is, you never give any of us the time of day.”

“Nope, you’re all pantywaists. Who wants to hang around a pantywaist with wingtips on his big feet?”

“Yeah, yeah, blah, blah. You know what it is about you-it’s that blond ponytail and those big blue eyes, makes all the guys want to take you home to Mama.”

“The blond ponytail wouldn’t have anything to do with it. Nope, Mama would admire my black boots.”

He laughed. “Maybe.”

She studied his face a moment and liked what she saw-the hard planes, the sharp cheekbones, and his eyes, green-as-the-Irish-hills eyes. There was an inbred toughness in him. She said, “You know, the past five days have made me understand a little why there were so many wartime marriages. Men and women thrown together in extraordinary circumstances-I guess to survive they needed to reaffirm they were alive by making connections, by making another human being matter to them so they were able to ignore death, if only for a little while.”

Harry said, “Nah, it doesn’t work like that.”

“What? Hey, that was all sorts of philosophical and you say ‘nah’? Haven’t you heard of the bazillion wartime marriages?”

“I think regardless of how people meet, they’re either meant to be together or they’re not.” He ate his Frito, then quickly dipped another into the dip. “I’m starving and I hadn’t even realized it.” He toasted her with it. “Thanks for the best Frito I’ve had in a week.”

“Nothing beats a Frito. So you weren’t such a nasty git before your divorce a year and a half ago? It was the breakup that made you into one?”

“I’ve always been nasty. The git thing, that’s all Cheney.”

“That’s why your wife left you?”

He paused with a Frito an inch from his mouth. “No.”

She cocked her head at him, said slowly, “No, that isn’t what happened, is it?”

“Why do you think that isn’t what happened?”

She said, “I’ve known you only a short time and one thing I see very clearly is that you’re not nasty. You’re an honest man, Harry. You say you’ll do something and you do it. You don’t make excuses when things don’t go right, and you don’t expect to hear any. That’s clearheaded, and it’s tough, but it’s not nasty.

“Well, maybe when I first met you I wanted to punch your lights out because you were posturing like a rooster. I think you enjoyed getting my reaction, you liked rubbing my nose in it, liked reminding me I was only the protection detail, not a member of the investigation team.” She ate another chip, never looking away from his face. “Not that I really mind posturing for the fun of it, mind you. You know one of the things I like best about you? You’re funny, you make me laugh. You have a good outlook, Harry.”