The Administration Series (224 page)

Luckily, he didn't produce biscuits as well — the shock might've killed her.

Coffees poured, he sat behind his desk. To her disgust, he looked perfectly fit and well: suit neat, face no thinner than usual, not a ginger hair out of place.

"Sara," he began with an ingratiating smile. "How are you?"

"Um, fine." This was too weird.

"And your family?"

She nodded dumbly.

"You've got a place to stay, that sort of thing?"

"My old flat was burnt out, so I've been staying with my sister. I thought it would take months to get somewhere, but housing called on Tuesday." He watched her, nodding with apparent interest. "The new place is pretty good, actually — closer than Fee's, even closer than the old flat. I'm moving in at the weekend."

"Well, if you need to take any time off, I'm sure that —" Then the comm chimed. "Excuse me."

Ignoring the low conversation, Sara sipped her coffee and wondered what the hell was going on. Then she almost spilled her cup while resisting the urge to slap her forehead. Of course. It was Toreth.

When the call was over, he went straight to the point. "Where's Toreth?"

"Taking some leave." Mention forms, and I'll slap
you
.

Her face might have conveyed that message more clearly than she'd intended, because he coughed and looked away briefly.

"I understand," he continued after a moment, "that he was placed in the position of acting assistant director while . . . after the recent difficulties. Technically, his operational authority lapsed with the socioanalyst's departure. However, the appointment hasn't been officially rescinded."

He was getting good information from somewhere. "I don't think he'll expect you to salute him when he gets back."

Clearly he wasn't expecting that, because for a moment she saw something that frightened her with its unexpectedness — Tillotson with his mask down. Naked anger and ambition, with a steel behind it she wouldn't have suspected.

"Don't try to play games with me," he snapped.

"I wasn't! I — I'm sorry, sir."

He shook his head, perhaps dismissing the apology, perhaps trying to erase his hasty reply. "What I meant is that Toreth's position here is . . . somewhat ambiguous."

She weighed her answer. The very last thing Toreth needed now was Tillotson with a knife out because he thought Toreth was a threat.

"You're telling me. It's a nightmare." She watched him as she spoke, gauging the effect of her words. "People keep calling, wanting him to make decisions. It's only because it's taken so long for the senior people to get back. Everyone really just wants things to get back to how they were. I've been doing my best, but I can only do so much. I have to keep calling Toreth to ask him stuff, and he's really not interested."

That was true, as far as it went, and certainly the part about his lack of interest. She'd called Toreth at the hotel every day, in the late afternoon when he was more likely to be awake and sober, and passed everything along. He'd thanked her, relentlessly polite, made any necessary decisions, and closed the connection as soon as she had run out of things to say to carry the conversation.

However, Tillotson, who knew nothing about Warrick and Carnac, was looking more pleased with every word.

"He's trying to have a holiday," she added. "It's not fair, having to keep pestering him with problems."

"Management isn't as easy as people think." Now he looked positively smug.

"Oh, I know that. Really not Toreth's thing at
all
. It's great to see you back." That, she realised as she saw Tillotson frown, was overdoing it rather, so she went for a distraction. "It's all your fault, really."

He stared, taken aback. "Mine?"

"Carnac," the bastard, "only made him take the acting assistant directorship because Toreth did such a good job last time he was here, when you made him Carnac's personal liaison. And considering that when Toreth got back here after the revolt they were threatening to execute the staff, I think he did a pretty good job. Wouldn't have been much for you — for everyone to come back to, without him."

His nose twitched. "Really?"

"You can ask HoS Bevan about it all, if you want to know more, sir. He and Toreth worked pretty closely over the whole thing."

Let him know that Toreth wasn't without serious allies, even if Carnac had gone.

Tillotson clearly took the point. "I see that I have a lot of catching up to do. Well, you can tell Toreth that there's no hurry. He can take as long as he likes. And — " He paused significantly, and she wondered what was coming. "Tell him I'll make sure it doesn't come out of his annual leave."

Somehow, Sara managed to get a decent distance down the corridor before she started laughing.

Why the hell had he come here, Toreth wondered? On a chilly Saturday afternoon the zoo was virtually empty. Even the animals were staying out of the damp, biting wind, curled up under their bedding. Maybe he should have stayed in
his
bed and waited for it to get properly dark.

And then what? Go out and find another man he didn't want.

The afternoon was overcast enough that the flamingos were already roosting — standing one-legged in a tight flock in their shallow pool, headless in the grey light. Toreth sat down on the cold stone wall by the pool and jumped back up smartly, swearing loudly enough to cause a few heads to lift from under faded pink wings.

Christ, he was sore. Not surprising, considering how many strangers he'd had — or rather had had him — since . . . since he'd made his decision. Even more of them over the last three days, after Warrick had somehow fought his way through the blocks Toreth had put on his calls.

'Toreth, please. I just want to know —'

What? Why hadn't Toreth waited until the end of the sentence instead of interrupting? At least he'd been so wasted at the time that telling Warrick to fuck off had been almost painless. He'd thought then that it might be over, that it might start to get better. He'd been almost surprised when he'd woken up the next morning and nothing had changed.

Except that he had a slightly sharper memory of Warrick's voice.

Even now, the temptation to go out tonight and find someone tugged at him. He needed something to stop himself thinking and feeling, if only for a few minutes, and being fucked always did the trick. At least while it was happening. Not afterwards, though.

Enough, he told himself, walking away from the pool. He couldn't face another night of waking up in his hotel room long after his fuck had gone, with the sheets in a sweaty tangle and the pillow inexplicably damp. Lying in the dark, aching and empty, and still tasting Warrick's name.

Pathetic, that was what it was. He needed to regain some focus. He needed to stop this morbid obsession, get his life back together and get on with living in the present.

God, how many times had he said that over the last week?

Now, though, he had to find a way. He hurt too much to carry on, bruised and torn from saying, "Do it, I'm ready," when he wasn't, to men who didn't care or maybe thought he wanted that. Last night he'd been too high to feel how bad it was, although he'd known, distantly, that it hurt like hell. Was that how it felt for Warrick — there and not there, unimportant?

Afterwards, the man he was with had been worried enough to suggest calling a medic, until finally Toreth had told him that he worked at I&I, and he knew how much blood was too fucking much. The man had left abruptly, and Toreth couldn't remember what he'd looked like — not a single detail. So much for professional observational skills.

This morning, when he'd come down and with a filthy hangover on top of it, the pain had left him sick, and breathless, and angry — with Carnac, with Warrick, but mostly with himself.

He'd forced himself to eat a vast and unhealthy fried breakfast, because he couldn't remember eating since . . . well, he must have eaten something, at some point. It wasn't possible to live on bar snacks and amphetamines for a week. The breakfast had been a good idea: it had cured the unpleasant light-headedness, the tea had made a change from spirits, and for almost ten minutes he'd hardly thought about Warrick at all.

Afterwards, he'd had to get out of the hotel, at least for a few hours, and most of the bars he'd passed were shut. Still, why the hell had he come here?

Toreth stopped dead. Walking without noticing where he was going, he'd reached the place he'd been avoiding ever since arriving at the zoo.

The panther lay on the platform in the centre of the cage. Now it no longer paced continuously, grass had grown back over the path it had worn behind the glass.

A lion roared nearby, something between a cough and a grunt, and the panther lifted its head. It scanned the area slowly. Looking for danger, Toreth wondered, or looking for a way out? It found neither. After a minute it yawned — red tongue curling, ivory teeth revealed as the whiskers lifted, breath steaming — and then sprawled out again, secure in its cage.

Visitors were sparse, and Toreth had the viewing area to himself. He rested his forearms on the thick glass, his nose almost touching it, then slapped the glass with both hands. Probably set off an alarm, not that he gave a fuck. The panther didn't react.

Did the animal think it was safe here? Make an allusion, create a metaphor — that's what Warrick had done. He'd looked at the pacing panther and he'd seen Toreth. At the time, Toreth had been pissed off enough to try to scare Warrick properly, but he'd been flattered too. Sick or not, the panther was fabulous to look at — dangerous, beautiful, rippling with controlled power and self-absorbed strength. That wasn't enough, though. That couldn't be enough.

'You're not
that
good a fuck and, really, what else do you have?'

Nothing except a psych file with a diagnosis that Toreth had never cared about before.

Cages. You can't get out, and every bastard with a key can get in.

He slapped again, harder, stinging his palms. "Hey!"

The panther twitched its ears and opened its eyes halfway. Languorous, that was the word. Like Warrick after a really good fuck. Seconds passed, then the inhuman yellow eyes closed again. Apparently, Toreth didn't even rate a yawn.

He turned away from the cage. No answers here, not surprisingly, but he knew why he'd come. The zoo was Warrick's place, and there was a tiny, thin chance that Warrick might be here. So unlikely that if it happened Toreth could honestly say he hadn't expected it. He hadn't broken his resolution not to see Warrick again.

The slow walk back to the gate was an effort; he'd spent the whole day walking and he felt shockingly unfit. As he waited for a taxi, Toreth scrubbed his unshaven chin. Jesus, what a wreck. Keep this up much longer and he'd be sleeping on the streets and fucking for money. Much longer than that and he'd end up dead in an alley. He rubbed his chin again, without thinking.

Warrick had said that he'd liked the beard.

On Monday, when there had been no word all weekend and Sara had given up hope, Toreth came back.

Her first thought was that she should've told Warrick where he was, whatever the consequences to herself. Toreth looked terrible, his face puffy and his eyes black with exhaustion — a week and a half's worth of morning afters, piled one on top of the last. And he walked as if he'd been fucked by all the interested parties in the city.

"'Morning, Sara," he said flatly and then carried on straight past her into his office.

It took her ten minutes to get up the courage to follow him. She only went at all because of how much worse it would be if she waited until he called her in.

He stood by the window, leaning on the frame, and he didn't look round.

She managed to persuade her vocal cords to cooperate. "Toreth —"

"You're sorry."

"Yes. God, yes." So pathetically inadequate, for what she'd done to him.

He nodded. "Well, that makes all the difference, doesn't it?"

She went over to him, wanting to say
something
, but no words offered themselves. Besides, it was all she could manage to stay in the room — she trembled with the effort not to run. He frightened her when he was like this. He always had done, because she knew the kinds of things he was capable of.

Finally, he turned and looked at her, and she had the sense of him slowly focusing in from a long distance away. When he was looking directly at her instead of through her, he shook his head.

"Christ, you look petrified." He stroked her cheek gently, with the back of his fingers, watching her flinch away. "What do you think I'm going to do to you?" He sounded genuinely curious.

"I don't know."

He pulled her forwards, slowly, until she was right against him, then held her, resting his chin on the top of her head. "Sara, I'm not going to do anything. To start with, it would be incredibly stupid, wouldn't it, here in the office?"

She nodded against him, listening to his heart hammering nineteen to the dozen. He still sounded so calm.

"Besides, it doesn't matter. It's Carnac's job to know things like that. He could have got most of it from my psych file. I mean, I've never seen it. Warrick —" His grip on her tightened. "Warrick probably has. But I expect it's all in there. So forget about it. I have."