Blood Loss. Alex Barclay

      Ren,

      I’ve set this up:

      Monday, November 16, 1 p.m. Dr Leonard Lone.

      Recommendation from a friend …

       This Monday.

      Ren sat back in her chair, and stared up at the ceiling.

       I’m fucking fine, people.

      Gary Dettling was the only one in the office who knew Ren was bipolar. Before he had hired her for Safe Streets, he had trained her as an undercover agent, and then became her case agent on one of the most well-known undercover assignments in the Bureau – it had proved Ren’s talents, and almost destroyed her. Not long afterwards, she had been diagnosed. The arrangement with Gary was that she always had to be under a psychiatrist’s care, but he allowed her to use an outside psychiatrist, because she had never clicked with an Agency one.

      She read the reply she had sent him.

      Thanks so much, Gary. I’ll be there.

       In the meantime, please, someone, give me a plausible reason not to be.

      Gary walked into the bullpen as Ren was closing his mail. He was hard to miss – tall, dark and athletic, he was the perfect front man for Safe Streets, and a boss that no-one could or would argue with.

      ‘Guys, this is SA Ben Rader,’ said Gary.

      A short guy stepped forward from behind Gary and gave a small nod. He was five foot eight, with tanned skin and black hair. He had green, smiling eyes. He was dressed in black jeans, with a military shirt hanging open over a black t-shirt. He had a wide silver band on the middle finger of his right hand. He was shifting from one foot to the other, and had jammed his hands into his pockets. He looked about eighteen.

       The Young and the Restless.

      ‘Ben is one of our finest UC graduates,’ said Gary.

      ‘Yup,’ said Ben. ‘Strictly deep cover in retirement homes …’

      Ren laughed. He flashed a big smile her way.

      ‘I’m just passing through,’ said Ben. ‘I thought I’d catch up with Gary, say hi.’

      ‘Please, excuse me,’ said Ren, standing up, and moving around her desk. She pointed out the door. ‘I was on my way to the ladies room.’ She moved to walk past Ben and Gary.

      ‘This is SA Ren Bryce,’ said Gary.

      Ren shook Ben’s hand. ‘Nice to meet you,’ she said.

      Ben beamed. ‘You too,’ he said, keeping her hand in his grip.

       Oh my God. Stop.

      Ren glanced, panicked, toward Gary, but he had turned toward the hallway. Ren pulled Ben a little closer, and as she moved by his left ear, whispered. ‘I found your skull ring … it was in the shower tray.’ She slid her hand out of his. She walked to the ladies room.

      Ben texted, All that soap …

      She texted back:

      Slippery …

      He texted back:

      When Wet …

      6

      Ren stood in the ladies room, sliding her belt out of her work pants. She stepped out of them and pulled on her jeans, tight and low-riding, cutting into the hip bones that had newly resurfaced.

      She was aware that her brother, Matt, had fired something at her, and that it was trying to pierce some part of her. But she was too far away.

       Go away, Matt. Go away.

      She pulled off her white work shirt and skin-toned bra, and pushed them onto the pile in her locker. She grabbed the pink bra that matched her low-cut boy shorts, hooked it at the front, adjusted the contents, adjusted the straps. She pulled on a scoop-necked gray tank with black leather strips and small silver buckles on each shoulder. Her arms were leaner, the long muscles defined again. She could see veins. She applied more makeup: light base on sallow skin, extra liner, extra mascara, tan blush on cheeks that had hollowed under the bone.

      Bones and veins, coming through. The surface.

      Ren thought of the men who had gotten to know more. Paul Louderback, her former physical training instructor at Quantico. Her only unfinished business. It had been seventeen years since he first got inside her head. She was twenty years old, standing in boxing gloves in the gym at the Academy, knees bent, punching the focus pads he was holding up. His eyes were extraordinarily blue, sharp, intense. She missed a beat. He struck her hard on the side of the head.

      ‘Focus pads!’ he roared, ‘are for guess what?’

      ‘For focusing on,’ Ren had shouted back.

      ‘Then focus!’

      ‘Yes, sir.’ She punched. One, two.

      ‘And when you punch, you need to follow through! Punch like you’re aiming to go through the focus pads, or through the punchbag, or through the dirtbag!’

       His eyes.

      ‘Follow through,’ he had roared. ‘You need to follow through!’

      ‘Yes, sir.’ One, two.

       His eyes. Shit.

      ‘Focus pads!’ he roared again, ‘are for guess what?’

      ‘For focusing on,’ Ren had shouted back.

      ‘Then focus!’

      ‘Hard to do,’ Ren had told him months later. ‘When the instructor looks like—’

      ‘He wants to kiss you?’ said Paul.

      But she had found out that Paul Louderback was married, and she wanted to grab those boxing gloves and use them on him again for not wearing a wedding band. So she had treated the ‘wants to kiss you’ like it had never been said. It was the first time, in words, he had made his feelings clear. For the seventeen years since it was hinted at in emails, and gifts, and rare phone calls that she knew were a secret from his wife. This simple contact meant that no matter who Ren was with, at times she would imagine what it would be like to walk down a beach or an aisle with Paul Louderback. But he had already done both with someone else, and Ren was no homewrecker, and no-one’s second best.

      Just once they had dared to say more about what might have been, eighteen months earlier, in the shadow of Quandary Peak outside Breckenridge, in the aftermath of a murder investigation. Since then, there had been no contact. Paul Louderback had a life in D.C. with his wife and two daughters, and she had a life in Denver.

      Then there were the men Ren had been with in the past ten years, since her mind was stamped with crazy: Vincent, everloving until she broke under the weight of his knowledge of her; Billy Waites, confidential informant, bright and brave, deep and tattooed, quietly concerned, secret. Then from the sawdust of the National Stock Show, came the extreme rider, riding fast toward her manic high, and roping her. Then a few more, scattered and grim, drawn to the same empty flame. Come to crazy: when Ren, fresh from sorrow, could feel her eyes dancing like fire, and her chest bursting with roving love, her glass and her wallet overflowing, her flesh showing, her smiles killing her jaw. Come to crazy. I’ll keep you up all night.

      It would last for days, or weeks, or longer. If she was lucky – she thought – it would last for months. Her trickster mind would tell her that the high would never end: this time I promise, this time I promise. And then came the certain, slow, quicksand low: the knockdown, turnaround