She half-smiled. “To make a rumour go away?”
“It will make Diana Taverner look desperate. Desperation and First Desk don’t mix. Once that’s minuted, she’s history. And given that it’s Limitations decides her successor, and I’ve enough pull to determine who appears on the shortlist, yes, I can make the rumour go away. Because I’ll be dictating the outcome of the inquiry.”
“If you’ve got that much pull, why do you need me at all?”
“We both know there are processes to be gone through.”
She nodded, thoughtfully. “Tell me more about this job.”
And there was the deal, done and dusted.
It wasn’t altogether that shaky, either, and might even work, with a following wind. But why take the risk? A car pulled up outside, and a man got out.
Sparrow said, “There are several options. We’ll go through them. Meanwhile, I’d feel happier if you were somewhere secure. And to that end, I’ve enlisted help.”
Sometimes, the timing just works.
The bell above the door jangled again, and Benito walked in.
It was a small but wicked knife. Any longer, and he’d have cut her by now.
She must have the magics tonight, or he’d have reached out and cut her anyway. But the Daft Punk look wasn’t doing him any favours, limiting his peripheral vision, blurring his colour control, and as long as she kept dancing he wouldn’t see that her own blade was a plastic toy. Besides, he knew what she was capable of. He was probably worried there was a window he hadn’t noticed yet, that he’d be going through if she got too close.
All the same, he didn’t seem to be tiring, whereas the evening’s adrenalin had scorched Shirley’s system, and the blow to her head—that sucker-thump with the dumbbell—had knocked some fight out of her. True, she had more fight in her to start with than the average ice hockey team, but it had been a long week. And this guy was psyched up.
It struck her again what a strangely amateur attack that mess at the San had been.
He made a lunge and she jumped back, but scored a kick to the knee before he’d regained balance. She might have had him then, but caution held her back: he had a helmet, his knife was sharp. Three inches was laughable in most situations, but on this particular date, anywhere he stuck it was going to cause grief. That thought made her snarl, which had been known to inspire consternation, but all she was getting from him, safe in his helmet, was her own reflection, and she was still looking at that when he lunged again, and she almost slipped. Recovering, she moved sideways, putting the pumps between them. And there was an idea: soak him with petrol, apply a match. Give him a movie-style ending.
Shit: the trouble she’d be in if that happened.
When he moved left, she mirrored with a shuffle to her right. This wasn’t something she wanted to play for long, because if he got the idea she was scared, that was the fight lost then and there . . . His crew at the San, they’d had no tactics. Or at best, a three-word plan: Smash it up. They’d not been expecting fightback, so what the fuck had they been doing, attacking a Service facility?
Unless they hadn’t known it was a Service facility.
So how come they’d been looking for her?
Before she could disentangle herself from that thought, he jumped through the gap between pumps and was almost on her, an arm’s reach away, and she leaped backwards, landing on her heels, ready to lunge left or right depending on which way he flickered—she could read him like a script—though he seemed focused now, staring at her hand, and the little plastic orange threat it wielded.
Idiot move.
Shirley turned and ran into the dark and silent car wash.
“On the other hand,” said Lamb, and paused to scratch his chest, a sandpaper moment. When his hand reappeared, it was, to Diana’s surprise, not holding a cigarette. “De Greer, it turns out, is like you. She might be a backstabbing spider-minded vampire, but she’s not stupid enough to piss on her own sausages.”
“Is there a compliment in there?”
“Christ, I hope not.” Still on his back, he raised both knees, like a man preparing to perform an abdominal crunch. This, it turned out, was not what he was preparing to perform. Diana took a step backwards. “De Greer knows Sparrow’ll promise her anything not to go public with who she really is. But she also knows he tells the truth about as often as he gets his eyes tested, and she’s not about to hand her future to a man who’d sell your medical records to a tree surgeon.”