"You look so well," Lorres sauntered around the table and rested a glass of sparkling water on a coaster. "Are you okay for water?"
"I'm good, thank you," I cleared my throat. Lorres was five minutes early, I'd arrived ten minutes before her.
"Okay," Lorres took her seat opposite me, opening a thin folder and flicking through several pages. "So really, there are two people I'm interested in finding and I wondered if any of this looks familiar to you."
She pushed a few documents towards me and tilted the screen of an iPad to show four grainy photographs. There were two blurry headshots and two blurry full profiles for each of the men of interest, but neither of them jerked anything in my mind. I scanned through the documents obligingly, glaringly obvious discrepancies leaping from the paper.
"You suspect they were in cohorts with al-Raheem?" I frowned as I re-scanned the information.
"Contacts of his, or the other way around potentially, yes. I'll talk plainly," Lorres sat straighter than she had been, which I hadn't realised was possible. She was always so poised and elegant. "The hard drive al-Raheem had, went to somebody. Whether it was sold, or it was a dead switch... we don't know. But we do believe these two men were in touch with al-Raheem, and the one on the left has a background in data and IT."
"It says here they're Wahhabis?"
"Identified as, yes. They believe in only the purest, most orthodox form of Islam."
"No I know what Wahhabism is, it doesn't say they're jihadi though. I don't recognise either of them, or the links on here. But..." I hesitated, wondering if I was overstepping the mark by picking Lorres' loose theory apart.
"Go on," Lorres encouraged impatiently.
"Al-Raheem didn't pray. There were times others in the room would leave for prayers, but he didn't. I think he would say to them he would do it in the basement, but he never did. And he used non-Muslims to smuggle us from Greece, the Bulgarians weren't Muslim. The Turks were when we crossed, but... I can't even confidently say al-Raheem was a jihadi. He didn't seem to care about the religious side of Islam all that much, he was just a militant without a cause. I can't see two devout Wahhabi Saudis entertaining his calls."
"Interesting analysis," Lorres said eventually after pulling the documents back and reading over them again. "We have a link between them but it's weak." She sighed suddenly, clearly frustrated with the lack of progress. "Do you miss using your skills?"
I swallowed hard in alarm. I'd been so careful even at work to not let my memory talents show.
"My skills?" Breathe.
"Well you were doing a masters in Psychology, weren't you?" Lorres took a dainty sip of her bubbling water.
"Oh, yes. Yes I do, I suppose."
"Are you good at it?" She questioned blankly, raising her pointed chin with a direct gaze.
"I was... I suppose. I enjoyed it, it came naturally to me," I did miss it. The natural knack of reading people hadn't entirely left me, but the depth of hidden knowledge I could grab from an unwitting person, sometimes just by watching them, had faded a great deal.
"What if I..." she drew a laptop from her bag and tapped on it furiously before standing and walking towards a printer, scores of pages falling onto the tray. "...Showed you these," she divided the documents into three thin piles, transcribed notes from an interview with a brief bio on three different people. I read through them deftly, absorbing the information and forming loose assessments.
"Can I write on these?" I glanced up to Lorres, who perched on the edge of the table watching me read.
"Sure," she rolled a pen across the surface. I reread each page, scrawling notes when thoughts emerged, pulling unwritten information from behind the words.
"I suspect one of these people was responsible for a data leak we recently experienced, but we've absolutely nothing tangible to go on. Who do you think it is?" She eyed me carefully with a gaze that said she was making her own assessment of me.
"I'd put my money on this one," I pushed the second thin pile of papers towards her. "I've written notes. It wouldn't fit the profile of the other two."
"Why not?" Lorres skimmed my tiny scrawls of writing across the pages.
"Person A more than likely has abandonment issues, it wouldn't be in their nature to be disloyal. Person C is unlikely with their financial issues... and Person B," I nodded to the papers I'd pushed towards her. "Seems the most dependable and obligingly helpful. They're too accommodating in the interview, they're saying too much, which is an automatic technique people use to distract the other person from focusing on their responses. The only time they seem nervous is at the start, which was probably fake. The answers they gave are rehearsed."
"How can you tell?" Lorres raised her brows in quiet interest.
"They're using longer words, unnecessary fillers or complicated jargon. I'll bet that person speaks like that whenever they have to plan what they're going to say, in a meeting or something. They do it to make themselves seem more impressive," I took a long gulp from my glass of water, surprised by how the knowledge returned to me as soon as my eyes locked on to the information.
"That's very interesting, thank you," Lorres gazed at me with a sparkle of intrigue. "I'll have to let you know how it turns out." A knock at the door interrupted the short silence that followed and Jase entered the room, not even addressing Lorres with a greeting.
"How are your fledglings doing?" Lorres smiled at Jase and packed the files away.
"Floundering," Jase grimaced. "I don't remember finding it that hard."
"Ah but even the young Jason Hill was determined above everything else. They'll find their feet, and one day I'll be cleaning up their messes instead of yours," Lorres continued smiling in familiarity. She was clearly fond of Jase, but whether their relationship held more than that it wasn't clear.
"Cleaning up my messes? I used to solve yours."
Another sharp tap rattled the already ajar door. Jack lurked in the doorway, apparently irked by something.
"I'm on my way to the Falcon briefing, do you want coffee?" He asked Lorres, ignoring the presence of the other two people in the room.
"I'm just leaving, no thank you to the coffee," Lorres dismissed him without so much as an upwards glance. "Oh Jack-" she called suddenly and he halted his exit. "Did you give Paige the details of the personal trainer?"
"No, I'll-"
"Oh that reminds me, Charles showed me this earlier," Lorres turned to Jase and led him out of the meeting room, opening the door directly across the hallway and leaving Jack and I alone.
He pulled a smirk of disbelief and yanked his phone from his pocket, clearly incensed by the casual spurn of attention he suffered from his superior.
"I can't find this guy's number, I'll give it to you when we meet next," Jack huffed and pushed his phone back into his pocket. "Shouldn't he be taking you home?" He glared at the door.
"I suppose-"
"Nothing else exists when Jason Hill is in the room," Jack shook his head with a sarcastic smile.
"Oh, are they..."
"Well... 'they go way back'," Jack motioned quotation marks in the air with two fingers as he mimicked the response. Everything about Jase and his presence obviously triggered some self esteem or insecurity issues in him, problems he'd probably never diagnosed. "Ah!" He murmured as Jase and Lorres emerged from the room opposite.
"You ready?" Jase asked whilst I gathered my bag. I nodded cordially to Jack with a pressed smile I didn't really mean.
The drive back was torturously slow with slugs of traffic clogging the roads. Jase didn't break the silence until we were coming off the freeway, revving the car forwards with relief.
"Ant and Rob are going to meet us at h- the apartment to watch a soccer match. Then we can go out for a jog or something if you want," he sounded the horn half-heartedly to a hesitant driver in front.
"Football," I replied absently.
"What?"
"It's football, not soccer."
"You sound like Anthony." I saw the corners of his mouth curl upwards in a smile.
"It wasn't anything serious," I said after another pregnant pause. "The meeting with Lorres," I explained.
"We'll talk about it later," Jase dismissed me without giving it a second thought. Ironic, the first time I extended the conversation beyond the realms of the absolutely necessary, he shut me down. He never talked much in the car, I realised. I'd always thought it somewhat strange that for all the small talk he attempted to make, he'd never speak about any of it on our commutes. It suited me, I'd long since become used to the awkward silences.
The apartment seemed stiflingly hot once I stepped inside, slipping my shoes off and leaving them by the door. I cranked the AC up, peeling off the cardigan I was wearing as the back of my neck prickled with heat.
The intercom rang just as I locked my bedroom door behind me, quickly sitting down to strip my jeans off. The breeze from the AC finally soothed my skin and I flopped back, laying still for a moment in my underwear to cool down. The prickly heat reared up uncomfortable memories; the godawful fever I nursed, desperately moving my palms to any cooler patch of concrete in a vain attempt to relieve the burn.
Hearing Rob's low voice and the sound of the front door closing spurred me back to reality. I threw on shorts and a floaty vest top, thinking about the rooftop pool and how good it must be on a day like today. There was no way Jase would let me go alone, and there was no way I wanted him to accompany me.
"Hey Paige, how are you," Ant greeted me warmly as I stepped into the hallway. He paced over from the kitchen and embraced me with a cheek to cheek kiss. His social tactility, though it made me slightly uncomfortable, was an important hurdle for me to overcome. Otherwise you might never let a man touch you again.
"Good, thanks. You?" I smiled breezily. "Hi Rob," I gave him a half wave as he approached from the kitchen, following in Ant's footsteps this time and greeting me in the same custom.
"Who's playing?" Familiar Premier League music echoed from the TV.
"Chelsea of course," Ant scoffed and took the beer Jase extended to him through the archway. "We had to show Jase what actual football looked like."
"And beat the word 'soccer' out of him," Rob smirked. "Are you going to watch?"
"I might leave you guys to it and work out or something," I smiled as I walked towards the kitchen. I enjoyed watching football if the game was good, but the idea of being sandwiched between the three of them on the couch was not my version of a relaxed afternoon.
"We can hit the gym later if you want," Jase emptied a box full of beers into the fridge.
"Can I get a can of coke, please?" I motioned to the cans neatly lined up inside the refrigerator.
"It's starting!" Ant hollered from the couch.
"So it went okay with Lorres?" Jase asked in a low voice.
"She asked about two men, I didn't recognise them."
"That was all? You were in there a while," Jase plucked a coke from the shelf and rested it on the island next to me.
"Well, their theories were off. I just explained why and how it didn't really make sense. She asked about my psychology masters, whether I missed putting it into practice... she asked me to take a look at some profiles and transcriptions of interviews of people she suspected were responsible for some kind of internal leak?" I made the comment questioningly. "She didn't tell me what it was, of course. Or who the people were. But I think she was just looking for an opinion, or a psychological assessment."
"And?" Jase stared at me.
"And I... gave her my judgement. Told her who I thought was most likely to be responsible. She said she would tell me how it turns out," I shrugged with ambiguity. Jase looked to the tiled floor for a moment, before sniffing and adjusting his position.
"You're going to invite trouble if you get too involved," he muttered in a low sort of growl.
"Why trouble?" I snapped defensively. "I wasn't getting involved, I was asked to do something... that sort of thing is what I hoped to make a career out of," I retorted, keeping my voice hushed so as not to attract attention from the couch. Jase shook his head with a contemptuous smile, his eyes beginning to glitter in the way they did when the detestable part of him reared its head.
"You weren't getting involved; you're now involved; she'll keep you updated... I told you not to trust anybody. They'll come to you now if they consider you an asset. You don't want their interest in any way, shape or form," Jase spoke with increasing impatience.
"Why do you not trust Lorres?" I squinted my eyes at him in scepticism. "I've heard you two go way back," I widened my eyes and looked to the side, saying something without actually saying it.
"What do you mean?" Jase leaned forwards, his abrasively handsome features completely unreadable except for those glittering green eyes.
"I've just heard you two are close, so it doesn't make any sense to me that you go out of your way to tell me not to trust her," I no longer bothered lowering my voice, aware Rob and Ant were cocking their heads towards us.
"Everything I tell you is for a reason. I don't need you to understand it, it doesn't need to make sense to you. And you should know better than to listen to whatever bullshit that squirrel Jack is spouting," Jase kept his eyes fixed to mine, speaking quietly and deliberately with just enough of a rumble to command fear and attention.
"Hey," Ant rose suddenly from the couch and placed a cool hand on my arm. "Why don't we get some air?"
"I didn-"
"Let's go, come on," Ant pressed his hand against me to nudge me towards the door. However badly I wanted to react and demand a full explanation from Jase, I felt unexpectedly exhausted and also wanted to be as far away from his domineering presence. 'I don't need you to understand it, it doesn't need to make sense to you'- when was my life going to be mine again?
Ant walked closely behind me down the corridor and hit the button for the rooftop deck in the mirrored elevator. We sped upwards and emerged to a cooler but blindingly sunny climate, the poolside crowded with more people than I'd ever come across in the building.
"We'll go out tomorrow," Ant strolled beside me and rested his arms on the rooftop wall, looking out to the staggered ends of the city and mainland base, and further to the vastness of the sea. I squinted in the glare of the sunlight and leaned on the edge too, wondering how long it would take to get to the bottom if you dropped over the edge. What would it look like when you hit the ground?
"What do you want to do?" Ant stared at me patiently. His crystal blue eyes were so clear they resembled aquamarines.
"Get out of the city," I murmured.
"Okay. Rob keeps going on about the zoo, or the safari," Ant suggested, both equally uninspiring to me.
"Can you ride? Horseback riding?" I decided suddenly.
"I've only done it a couple of times but yeah, I'd give it a go," Ant smiled and shrugged. "I'll call somewhere and book, I'll pick you up in the morning."
"I'm keeping you from the match, sorry," I realised with embarrassment. There was just something about Jase that made me want to argue like a teenager, the frustration at times was unbearable. Riding would help, it could make it all disappear for a moment.