14/11/07
7:00 PM
Safehouse, London
Jo shut the door behind herself and locked it. She leaned against the door, shut her eyes and took two deep breaths. She needed a drink. She'd known since it happened that it would hit her when she got home. Things like this always did.
She'd been two or three seconds from being blown up. Two or three seconds. Adam had only just got to her in time. She'd thought she was going to die. In a sense, that wasn't new, but she'd never been tied up and gagged next to a bomb before. She hung her coat up and walked in to the kitchen. She pulled a bottle of wine and a glass from the cupboard and sat down at the table.
And she'd been caught. She poured herself a glass of wine. If Adam had understood her 'Alpha three' message, he hadn't reacted fast enough to help her. And what had happened to Zaf had come up in her like bile. Adam hadn't let her see the photos of Zaf when he'd been found, but she'd heard from the doctors... Teeth and fingernails pulled out, hands and feet broken, electrical burns… She'd been scared of dying, but she'd also been scared of that. She took a long draft of wine.
If Adam had been as much as two or three seconds slower, she would have died. And he might have too.
This was when living with another spook was useful. One who'd been doing this for longer than her, had seen most of it before and survived it. She took another mouthful of wine. She wanted Zaf. She wanted him to sit with her, let her talk, tell her about the first time he'd nearly been blown up – it must have happened to him at least once – and talk about it completely calmly, to show her that in time, she would be able to look back on this and not be upset by it, to make sure she ate tonight and take the wine away and send her to bed ("because you do still have to go to work in the morning. You will thank me later.").
Actually, she didn't this time. Adam had said she could have tomorrow off. She refilled her glass.