Backfire

She took a sip of tea, looked up at him. “You’re going to read me a bedtime story?”

“I could, but I hadn’t planned to.”

“I wonder what you could possibly have in mind?”

He smiled at her. “You finish your tea and we’ll see. Molly called, said Ramsey misses you since you were a civilizing influence on all those males around him. She’ll be here with Emma soon to pick up Gage and Cal. Ah, if you like, I can remove Sean before Emma comes in.”

“I’ll watch Cal and Gage,” Evelyn Sherlock said. “I’ve got the power as long as I’ve got these chocolate-chip cookies.”

Sherlock said, “Maybe it’d be good to take Sean upstairs, otherwise he’ll be so excited about seeing Emma it’ll be difficult to get him to bed.”

Half an hour later, Sherlock was lying in bed, the pill Dillon fed her quashing the remnants of pain in her head.

Now, what else did her husband have in mind, as if she couldn’t guess? She heard him singing a country-western tune in the bathroom, a song James Quinlan, a fellow agent and musician, had written about a man who loved wild broncos, wilder women, and black gold. When he came into the bedroom a few minutes later, he was wearing only pajama bottoms, slung low on his hips.

Sherlock thought she’d swallow her tongue. “Don’t move, please.”

He obligingly stood still, arms at his sides, backlit in the bathroom doorway, smiling at her. “I missed you scrubbing me down.”

“Me, too.” It was true. As a shower mate, Dillon was a keeper.

“How’s your head?”

“What head?”

He was grinning when he came to stand over her. “Life’s been a tangle, hasn’t it? I say we take a small break from the madness. What do you think?”

It was amazing how good she felt in that moment. This was probably the best idea she’d heard in a very long time.

Eve’s condo, Russian Hill

Tuesday night

“You’ve got a burn just there.” Harry lightly touched his fingertip to a red spot on Eve’s neck.

She never looked away from him. “I could put some more burn cream on it, or maybe you could kiss it and make it well.”

“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?”