Lopez looked up at Ethan as a bright smile spread across her features, and she glanced over her shoulder at Jarvis as she spun to walk away down the corridor.
‘It’s been fun,’ she said, without an ounce of emotion. ‘Goodbye, Mr. Jarvis.’
Ethan watched her go and then turned back to his mentor.
‘What are you going to do instead?’ Jarvis asked Ethan with a wince. ‘Spend your days plucking losers out of the gutter for a couple hundred bucks a shot?’
Ethan shrugged. ‘I guess. We’ve got a lot of catching up to do, but it’s what we want, Doug. We’re damned lucky to still be alive after what the DIA’s put us through. Right now, a few simple bail-runners seems like a great deal. We’re going home.’
Jarvis stared at him for a long moment, before replying: ‘I can’t believe you’re walking away from this.’
Ethan stuck his hand out and Jarvis shook it reluctantly.
‘Good luck, Doug.’
Ethan turned away, but Jarvis’s hand on his arm restrained him. Jarvis reached into his pocket and retrieved a small roll of 8mm film. He pushed it into Ethan’s hand.
‘More use to Joanna than it is to me,’ he said. ‘It’s Major Greene’s footage of the CIA agents splicing Harrison Defoe’s water supply with LSD. Just in case.’
Ethan looked down at the film in his hand and managed a grin. Then he turned and walked away from Jarvis without looking back.
59
The surface of Lake Michigan churned up white crested rollers that were whipped away by the gusting wind as Ethan jogged near the shore along an old beaten track that led to Rocky Ledge Park.
It had taken a couple of weeks to settle back into things. Lopez had managed to get back in contact with her family in Mexico and send them some much-needed cash after her long absence. Ethan had visited his parents and sister, and had been able to inform Natalie that she no longer needed to worry about CIA assassins knocking at, or indeed kicking down, her door.
Ethan didn’t know what had happened to Mr. Wilson, but, this time, he felt sure that the remorseless agent would no longer be a CIA-supported asset. It was a fact that, despite his relentless nature, Wilson was a loyal servant of the CIA, and if he had been called off and retired then he would not have resisted. It wasn’t a personal thing for people like him, merely duty. Although Ethan despised the man with all of his heart, he knew that he did not have to worry about the agent becoming embittered and hunting him down.
He turned onto Rocky Ledge Park, maintaining an easy stride, going for distance rather than speed. It was a measure of his cautious nature that, since working for the Defense Intelligence Agency, he still wore earphones when he ran but he did not play any music. Just in case.
It was that caution that allowed him to hear the footfalls rapidly approaching from behind. A sprinter, moving fast, closing on him.
Ethan let his left foot hit the sandy earth as normal, but, as his right struck, he turned it sideways and let his leg fold at the knee like a giant coiled spring, ready to hurl himself back at his attacker and catch them unawares.
The jogger jerked left and a hand skimmed the top of his head as it flew past, a bright smile and a plume of blonde ponytailed hair flashing by.
‘Not bad.’
Joanna Defoe kept moving as Ethan started running again and moved alongside her.
‘Nice of you to show up,’ he said between breaths. ‘But you could have just waited for me out here. I thought for a moment that you’d high-tailed it out of all of this for good.’
Joanna didn’t reply. Ethan looked at her for a few moments before speaking.
‘Nothing to say for yourself?’
Joanna shook her head.
They ran north onto Lake Shore Drive, maintaining the same steady pace in perfect formation until Ethan’s legs started to ache and his breathing started to rasp in his throat. Joanna accelerated ahead slightly and turned, running up a shallow hill that ended overlooking the shore.
Ethan ran up behind her and stopped, pressing his hands onto his knees and recovering his breath. He looked up at her and saw a faint smile on her lips.
‘Just pretending that the last five years hadn’t happened,’ she said finally.
Ethan stood upright and looked out over the lake. ‘Yeah, me too I guess. But it did happen.’
Joanna nodded but said nothing more, drinking from a water bottle she carried in one hand.
‘You know that you’re in the clear, don’t you?’ Ethan said. ‘You don’t have to run anymore.’
‘I know,’ she replied. ‘Just haven’t got used to the idea yet, is all.’
Ethan watched her for a few long seconds, wondering if they would still have been together if she hadn’t been abducted in the middle of one of the most dangerous cities on earth. If they’d finally have got married, had kids, settled down. Somehow, he knew that whatever they had once shared was long gone, that too much had happened since for either of them ever to revisit the past, because it would never be the same again.
‘Where will you go?’ he asked her.
Joanna finally turned to face him. He could see in her expression that she was surprised by his directness, but that she was also as resigned to the situation as he was.
‘Not Chicago,’ she replied, ‘too many memories.’
‘That’s why I came back here.’
‘I didn’t mean it like that,’ she said. ‘I need to leave it all behind, start again. It’s just too painful right now to think about everything those bastards took from me, all those years that we could have been…’ She cut herself off and swiped a strand of blonde hair away from her face and forced a smile onto her features. ‘And you’ve got Nicola now, anyway. I have the suspicion she’d be a bit of a handful, if I got in her way.’
Ethan smiled, nodded. ‘She has a way with people.’
Joanna looked briefly out across the lake, and then back at Ethan. ‘It was good to see you again. I’m glad you found your way, despite everything.’
‘You, too.’ Ethan nodded. ‘And don’t go hungry or anything, okay? You know where we all are if things get tough.’
Joanna smirked. ‘Tougher than four years in a Gazan prison cell?’
‘You know what I mean.’
Ethan reached into his pocket. He pulled out the roll of 8mm film that Jarvis had given him and held it out to her.
‘What’s this?’ she asked.
‘Footage,’ Ethan replied, ‘shot by a team from the 24th Special Tactics Squadron attached to the CIA. It shows them tampering with the water supply to your father’s apartment, injecting LSD into it. Proof enough for a trial and insurance against any kind of hit. My guess is that the Director of the CIA, William Steel, will be made aware that this evidence exists. I saw on the television a few nights ago that he had decided to retire from his role. I think that we both know what that means.’
Joanna stared down at the roll in her hand, speechless. She looked at Ethan in wonderment.
‘How the hell did you get hold of this?’ she asked.
‘Honestly?’ Ethan replied airily. ‘You know, it must be my age, but I just can’t recall who gave it to me.’
Joanna smiled and looked again at the roll of film, before she tucked it into a pocket and turned to face Ethan.
‘Take care of yourself, okay?’ she said.
‘What I’m best at,’ Ethan replied. ‘You, too.’
Joanna leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek. Then she turned and, without another word, she jogged away. Within a few minutes, she had vanished ghost-like into the city, as though she had never existed, still a distant memory in Ethan’s mind.