He was looking at the sideview. “Yeah,” he said again.
Okay. Either he was being deliberately obtuse, or he was focused, as he needed to be. Or both.
Probably she should drop it. Or at least, bring it up later. After they’d picked up the other two and were done caring for all these strays that had been thrust upon them.
chapter
forty-three
LARISON
After dropping off Manus at the airport, Larison had driven to the Silver Cloud Inn—a hotel overlooking Commencement Bay in Tacoma. Dox had suggested it as a random place to regroup and spend the night. Larison knew the randomness had something to do with it, but figured if it overlooked a body of water, Dox was hoping for a little ambiance, too. The man was so head-over-heels about Livia it almost pained Larison to give him a hard time about it. Not that a little pain was a sufficient impediment, of course.
They’d cut Hamilton loose at the Motel 6. Nobody wanted to babysit her, and being around the five of them was obviously causing the woman freak-out levels of cognitive dissonance. They’d told her she needed to take a vacation—Don’t go home, don’t go to the office, don’t use your cellphone or credit cards—until they’d figured out how to put the proverbial toothpaste back in the tube. She seemed to get it. But Larison thought there was at least a fifty percent chance that once she was away from them, it would all start to seem unreal, and she would rationalize what had happened at the hotel, rewrite the rest of it, and go back to her life and the normality most people clung to. He didn’t particularly care one way or the other. The one thing he knew she wouldn’t forget was what he’d told her before he and Manus headed out.
“I want you to know something,” he’d said, looking at her so she could see it in his eyes. “From my standpoint, you have no more benefit to offer us. Meaning you’re pure liability. So if it were up to me, I’d leave you here with a bullet in your head. The only reason I’m not doing it is because some of these people have qualms I don’t, and I respect them enough to go along with their wishes. Sometimes. But if you ever say a word about any of us, next time it’ll be purely up to me. And I promise, I’ve killed people a lot harder to find than you, Sharon Hamilton.”
He’d held her gaze for a moment after saying it—just long enough to see the color drain from her face.
On the way back from the airport, he’d picked up takeout from a place called Indo Asian Street Eatery—dumplings, rolls, satay, rice bowls. He’d dropped off half for Dox and Livia. Now he and Diaz were sitting on the floor in their room, eating their half. Well, Larison was eating. Diaz was devouring.
“I’m glad you like it,” he said. “I didn’t know what you’d want, but it’s better to stay off the phone.”
She swallowed what she’d been chewing. “Sorry. Yeah, I was starving. This is great.”
He liked that she was hungry. Some civilians, when they found themselves suddenly in the shit, broke down. Stopped eating, stopped sleeping, got withdrawn. Set themselves up for a vicious cycle. Others were more adaptable. Larison had no patience for the former variety. He wasn’t like Dox, who had weird scripts running through his head about the importance of protecting the weak. For Larison, if you couldn’t carry your own weight, it wasn’t up to him to carry it for you.
“So you know Livia?” she said, around a mouthful of Thai basil chicken.
Larison nodded. “Mostly through Dox. You?”
“Through work. And I take her classes. Women’s self-defense.”
Larison nodded again. He didn’t think much of most self-defense classes he’d ever come across. But if Livia was teaching, it would be all right.
“What’s up with her and Dox?” Diaz said.
“What do you mean?”