Running Hot

on that. Probably some kind of competitive thing. Maybe he and Eubanks were both going after the same promotion within Nightshade.”
    “Why the hell did he come after me?”
    “Because you’re guarding Grace,” Fallon said with his customary devastating logic.
    Luther suppressed the icy chill that slithered through his veins.
    “The only reason he would have been worried about Grace is because she can identify the singer,” he said quietly.
    “Right. Craigmore must have been convinced that if we found the singer, we would uncover a connection that would lead straight back to him.”
    Luther thought about that. “Wonder why he didn’t just take out the singer and cut the connection that way?”
    “I keep telling you, she’s a pro like Sweetwater. She wouldn’t be all that easy to find, let alone remove.”
    Fallon clicked off the way he usually did, without bothering to say good-bye. The way you knew a chat with him was over was when the phone went dead in your ear.

THIRTY-FOUR
    Grace watched Luther close the phone and sink down onto the sofa. Absently he rubbed his right leg, weariness in every line of his body. The aftermath of the confrontation with Craigmore was having its way with him, hitting him on every front. She remembered the sensation all too well.
    “Fallon says Sweetwater is still looking hard for the Siren,” Luther said. “He’s sure it won’t take long to find her.”
    “That’s good to know.”
    She got up, went into the kitchen and took the whiskey down from the cupboard. She poured a healthy shot into a glass, carried it back into the living room and gave it to him.
    He looked at the glass for a moment as if he didn’t recognize the contents. Then he drank some of the whiskey.
    “Thanks,” he said. “I needed that. Or something.”
    Grace sat beside him. Together they looked out at the night through the open lanai windows. She put her hand on his thigh and began a gentle massage. He hesitated, as though he didn’t know how to react. Then, without a word, he let her continue. After a while he drank some more whiskey.
    “Fallon sounded strange tonight,” he said.
    “In what way?”
    “I don’t know. Different. Tired. Worried. Depressed, maybe. Or maybe just a little overwhelmed. Hard to explain. Never heard him quite like he was tonight. He’s always been . . .”
    “Fallon?”
    “Yeah, that’s it. Long as I’ve known him, he’s always been Fallon. A force of nature, like a thunderstorm or a tsunami or a shark. But not tonight.”
    “J&J is all we’ve got to stop Nightshade, and Fallon Jones is in charge of J&J,” she said. “That means the outcome of this battle is on his shoulders. He needs someone.”
    “Who?”
    She thought about it. “Someone he can talk to. Someone he can trust. Most of all, someone who can take over a portion of the responsibility. An assistant, maybe.”
    Luther shook his head. “He’d never go for an assistant. He works alone. Like me.”
    “You didn’t work the Maui case alone. I was there, too, remember? And I’m still around.”
    “Because I won’t let you go off on your own as long as it looks like you need a bodyguard,” he said. He drank some more whiskey.
    “No,” she said quietly. “I’m still here because I want to be here.”
    He contemplated the darkness. “Living in the moment?”
    “That’s all any of us really has, isn’t it?”
    “No,” Luther said. “We’ve also got our pasts.”
    She sighed. “Yes, I suppose that’s true.”
    Luther swallowed some more whiskey.
    After a couple of minutes she tried again.
    “I know what it’s like,” she said.
    “Living in the moment?”
    “No, killing someone with your aura. I’ve done it, too, remember?”
    He looked at her over the rim of the glass. “For what it’s worth, Fallon says that, technically speaking, we didn’t actually kill anyone. We used our own energy to reflect the violent energy of our attackers. The process set up a dissonant wave pattern that shattered their auras. He said it was like they were killed by a ricochet from their own weapon.”
    She contemplated that for a long moment. “Interesting but I’m not sure it changes anything. The bottom line is that we are responsible for the deaths of those people, and no matter how bad they were or how much they deserved to die, you and I still have to live with it.”
    “Yes,” he said. “We do.”
    “He was trying to kill you, Luther. You were fighting for your life.”
    “His