'You've made a contract with the town? You going to sue them as well if 1 don't leave?'
He stared at her with his unchanged level expression, but moments later he actually smiled, though briefly. His face was transformed when he smiled. She wondered what he would do if she asked to see his licence a second time; she
wanted to see his hands work that way again.
She said, 'Let me ask you something. 1 was up at the ExEx building the other day, and 1
asked if there were any Grove scenarios. It was like 1'd blundered into something. The technician said something about before or after. Then she clammed up.'
'That's right.' He was cold and incredible again.
'What do you mean, that's right?'
'That's right she wouldn't tell you. Who was she?'
'No way. You'll make trouble for her.'
'Sounds like you've already done it. 1 can work out who she was.'
'I'll bet you can. Look, just tell me what she meant. Before or after what?'
'She was asking you, do you want to see the scenario of Grove before he started shooting, or the one after he started shooting?'
'Why should there be two?'
'We're working on it right now. This technician was speaking out of turn.'
'Why should there be two?' Teresa said again.
'Because halfway through his outburst event Grove went to our facility and ran an ExEx scenario. It was aberrant behaviour, coherencewise, but we've got to patch that in to the new scenario. lt makes linearity fade like yesterday. lt has mega-potential for looping. For the first time ever we've got a scenario where someone runs a scenario. You think of the coding that win have to go into that!'
'Where was Grove before he started shooting, and after he left the ExEx building?'
'That was the original question, wasn't it?' said Mitchell. 'Before or after? You're carrying a lot of theories, and they're fastlane crossover. We don't want to hear them.'
Teresa waved her arm in exasperation.
'You never give up, do you?' she said.
'Not until I've got what 1 want.'
'Well, what 1 want, and what I'm going to do, is to go into my room,' she said.
Mitchell made no move; she was still barred from her room unless she pushed past him. Since he showed no sign of getting out of the way, she decided that pushing past him was what she would have to do.
She moved forward, stretching out her hand and turning .her wrist at an angle, to slip the card into the swipelock. Mitchell stayed put, leaning against the upright jamb of the door. His face was only inches away from hers; once again she smelt his lotion. lt summoned an image of him standing before a mirror, moving an aerosol spray across his torso, staring into a condensationblurred mirror.
lt stirred something in her.
His face moved closer.
'What do you do in this hotel, Mrs Simons, all on your own?' he said softly, almost directly into her ear.
Teresa felt the quiet words impacting on her, as if they had coned on to a patch of her skin, somewhere beneath her ear, across her neck, a gentle tactile intrusion with almost musical rhythm. The nerveends across her shoulders prickled, and she felt her face burning. She turned her head to look at him, and his face was right there. Nine inches away, twelve, staring steadily at her. He was so young; it was years since She concentrated again on the lock, not wanting him to judge her as someone who couldn't cope with modem electronic technology. She knew the card had to go in at exactly the right angle, otherwise it relocked the door and she had to start over.
Mitchell spoke again, this time barely breathing the words.
'What's the story, lady?' he said. 'How do you like it done to you?'
She gave up with the key, took a step back and faced Mitchell again.
'What did you say?' she said, flustered.
'Why are you here on your own, Agent Simons? You want it, you can have it with me.'
She said nothing.
A long silence followed, while he continued to stare at her and she had to look away. All she was aware of was his lean, masculine shape, his clean and wellfitting clothes, his neat hair, his firm body, his distracting smell of expensive lotion, his quiet voice, his grey eyes, his smoothly shaved chin, his precise hands, his youth, his slender height, his closeness and his total unwillingness to back down. He held up one hand, palm outwards, at the same level as her mouth.
'You know what I can do with this?' he whispered.
She replied, quietly, 'Will you come in for a while?'
At last he stepped aside to allow her to operate the lock, and she swiped the keycard efficiently, getting it right with the first try, glad not to have to redo it while he was watching, not to have to delay and give herself time to think about what she was doing.
The door opened to a room in semidarkness, light from the streetlamps coming in through the opened curtains, and she went inside with Mitchell. following close behind her. He kicked the door closed. She threw aside her bag, the paperback book, the keycard and its plastic case, heard them all scatter on the floor. Already she was turning towards him, yearning for him, eager for his body. In their haste their faces collided, cheekbones knocked, lips crushed against each other, teeth grated momentarily. She thrust her tongue greedily into his mouth: he tasted sweet, cool and clean, as if he had just eaten an apple. She tore open the front of her blouse, and pulled his hard young body against her breasts, grappling her hands possessively across his straight
back, his narrow waist, his small tight buttocks.
The fingers of one of his hands rested on the tiny valve in the back of her neck, teasing at it with a precise, dainty lightness of touch. The other hand settled on her breast, as gentle as the mist of an aerosol spray.
Mitchell left her an hour later. She remained on her bed with the scattered sheets, her clothes, the pillows and covers, heaped around her. She lay on her side, still naked, her hand stretched out and resting lazily where his body had lain just a few minutes before. She thought contentedly of what they had done together, how it had felt, what it had been, the shocking flood of relief it had brought her. She was wide awake, physically rested.
His maddening masculine fragrance lingered around her: on her skin, on the sheets, on her lips, under her nails, in her hair.
Later she began to feel cold, so she dragged on her robe and found her hairbrush where it had fallen on the carpet. She sat on the side of the bed pulling the brush idly through the tangles and curls, staring at the wall, dissatisfied with herself, thinking about Ken Mitchell, remembering Andy.
The two men existed with equal prominence in her consciousness, unfairly but undeniably.
For the first time since Andy's death, her feelings about him had been changed by meeting someone else.
Progress towards the rest of her life had begun.
But as she went back to bed, and lay down under the covers, she felt a terrible sense of misery, and a belated but real betrayal of the man she had loved innocently and truly for so many years.
'Sorry, Andy,' she muttered. 'But 1 needed that. Shit, 1 needed it.'
CHAPTER 24
They had parked their satellite van next to her car again, and it loomed massively over it.
Teresa paused at the hotel door, trying to see if the van was in use. She knew that although Ken Mitchell and his colleagues sometimes drove the van away, more often than not they used it as a mobile office where it stood. Today Teresa saw the satellite dish was in position, aligned on somewhere in the sky. At once she ducked back inside the building. Her efforts to extricate her car would inevitably draw her to their attention.