Noah edged back over in sight of the window, looking out cautiously. Nothing happened. He hoped that whoever it had been, was gone now. He slumped down onto the stairs, trying to stop his heart beating a million miles an hour, steady his shaking hands, catch his breath. He turned around just in time to catch Jacqui running back into his office.
He let her have her space for a minute. Everything had happened so fast, so unexpectedly. A voice in the back of his mind told Noah he had done right by the girl, that he’d done everything he had to do.
But his pulse pounded in his ears, and the adrenaline was pumping. He barely registered that he was clenching his hands tight, tighter than he had thought possible. It took a very real force of will to pry them open again. His nails had dug into his palms, leaving four round red indentations in the skin of his palm.
Finally he got back up. He could see the door was still slightly ajar. Jacqui must not have been paying close attention when she closed it, and who could blame her. The bodyguard pressed the door to his office open.
Jacqui Jones was sitting on the broken couch he hadn’t gotten around to replacing, sobbing and hyperventilating. He sat down at his desk again and reached into the drawer. He pulled out a cigarette with one shaking hand, trying to light it. He dropped it twice before he managed to hold it still long enough to get the light to catch.
He pressed it between his lips and dragged. The smoke burned his throat. It had been a long time since he’d needed a smoke so badly. He had been telling himself that the pack was just there for old time’s sake, and before now he’d believed it. Now it seemed like the only thing that could stop the sick feeling in his stomach and the shaking in his hands. His teeth chattered.
Jacqui finally looked up at him, wild-eyed. Her expression was hard to read, mixed as it was between so many different directions. There was the fear, and the ‘I told you so’ that would never quite come. She was too smart for that. There was no helping her case by pissing off the man she had come to for help. Yet there was more, still, behind it. Emotions that Noah couldn’t place.
“Mr. Walker, please. I… I can’t leave the house, I can’t leave my room. I don’t know what this is about, and this is the first time I’ve known to a certainty. Please.”
Noah took another long drag on the cigarette between his lips. He took the pen back out. He scribbled, drawing nothing in particular. It seemed to him that the right thing to do would come to him eventually. He let the breath out he hadn’t noticed holding.
“Alright, then, miss Jones.”
She looked up, her face as white as a sheet. Whatever she had expected, it seems it hadn’t been acceptance. She got up, opening her mouth to say something. But she didn’t speak. Finally Noah decided to wait no longer.
“I’m not going to recharge you, got it? If you want to retain someone else’s services then I won’t make a fuss about it. But if you need someone to deal with this problem of yours, someone to keep you company? Someone to deal with that?” Noah gestured toward the hall. “I can give you the same service I give normals.”
Jacqui’s face screwed up in disappointed confusion. Then her face dropped. She reached into her purse and pulled out a pad.
“Very well, if that’s the best you can do. What’s your day rate?”
Noah could feel the box of cigarettes in his pocket. The bulk of them had been gone long enough that it felt new again. He sighed and tried to think about something, anything else. It had to have been this roof, he knew. But if he was going to do a real job of this protection he needed to know what he was up against.
Sure, the girl had to have some money, but he couldn’t figure that for something like this. It had to be for some sort of personal reason. A reason he hadn’t figured out yet. The only thing he was sure of was that nobody went after girls with the gift for unrelated reasons. It’s never a coincidence, and that meant keeping the cops out of it.
The stress was eating him up. There was nothing here, he knew. But in the back of his mind he kept thinking that if he just stood there, looking at the balcony, he’d notice it: the thing that would make everything that much simpler, the clue that would tell him what he needed to know. The cigarettes called out to him, telling him that they’d calm him down.
Finally Noah’s determination broke and he pulled the pack out. It was so easy to pull one out, put it between his lips, and light it up. He leaned against the waist-high wall that surrounded the roof of the building across the street from his office. The sun was high in the sky and he looked down, examining his shadow.
The only answer, he supposed, was to try to work through everything in his mind. He’d looked, and nobody had been here, or anywhere else for that matter. That meant that the shooter had either ducked down, or he’d bolted as soon as he saw the shots missed.
That, Noah thought, was the hint. Could the shooter have taken the casing? Did he have time? Noah squatted down, checking cracks all around the wall, but there was nothing. He did find a fairly recent-looking ring from a cup that had been placed on the wall. He guessed that must have been where the shooter had been firing from.
With that on the table Noah tried to look closer. He found a half-smoked cigarette, smashed into the concrete. He picked up up and slipped it into his pocket. He tried not to think too hard about what sort of havoc it would wreak on the inside of his jacket.
Finally he stood back up. It was almost nothing to go on. That was when he saw it. Across the roof, a flash. He had his casing, after all. Noah guessed that the wind had caught it, but either way it was something. He smiled to himself. Things weren’t going well, he reasoned, but they could go a hell of a lot worse.
He looked it over briefly, but he knew that guns were not his area of expertise. It would take someone who knew a little more about this sort of things to get any useful information about any of this. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his cellular.
The number wasn’t speed-dial, but he punched a few numbers and picked a name from the list that his phone offered. The man on the other end answered after four rings.
“Yes?”
“Dave, I need a favor.”
Noah picked up on it right away: Dave was not happy to see him. He spied his onetime colleague from across the room, though the lighting wasn’t especially good. It gave him plenty of time to prepare himself for the frustration that he knew was going to come, that he’d brought on himself.
He decided to stop at the bar, and when he walked over with two bottles of beer Dave’s eyes narrowed just so. He had an unusual way about him, and Noah knew that he was pleased, in his way. And angry, at the same time; he’d been looking forward to reading Noah the riot act, and now that wouldn’t be happening.
Noah was beginning to calm down a little bit. It had been a few hours since he’d dropped her off at his house, the safest place he could think of on short notice. He might be back by dark, and with some good news to offer while he was at it. That would be the best way to handle things. Get her started solving her problems, out of his life as soon as he could. It wouldn’t be ideal for his paycheck, but it would be preferable to handling a live situation like an attractive young girl who was gifted and incompatible.
Noah set the beers down, and then the casing in the middle of the table. Dave picked it up, making a face. He put it back down and took a drink.
“You called me out of work for this?”
“I need to know everything I can. I don’t much about guns, really. I figured if anyone would know something, it’d be you, David.”
Dave’s lips tightened at the entire thing.
“Don’t call me that; you know I hate it when you call me that.”
Noah didn’t apologize. He wasn’t sure why he’d decided to turn the screw, but it was done, and it certainly was no accident. He sat there, letting Dave think things over, while he nursed his drink. He only had the one, after all, and buying another while a client waited would be anything but proper.
“Noah, this is useless,” Dave finally said at last. “This is a three-oh-eight casing, it looks like, but that’s a pretty typical hunting cartridge. You said you this was related to a client?”
“I didn’t say anything like that, Dave, and you know it.”
There was the grin, the almost perverse smile that Dave had when he got caught digging for information. Only, Noah knew, he didn’t need to dig far. He’d have seen the look on Noah’s face and it would have told him that he wasn’t half wrong. From there it wasn’t much of guesswork. Dave’s face got serious, though. Ruminative, almost.
“You know what I’m about to tell you, Noah.”
“And what’s that?”
“Don’t get involved with her; it’s only going to get ugly.”
“I’m only working in a civilian capacity, Dave.”
“Oh, of course.” His voice dripped with sarcasm and self-righteousness. “What was I thinking, Noah? You’ve never let a girl get out of control.”
Noah drank what was left of his beer and stood up.
“Thanks for the advice, Dave. I’ll let you get back to work now.”
Dave’s look soured further, and he looked at his drink.