He drove like that for a little while, until she was able to uncurl a little. Then he took his hand away, but the heat of it remained.
“Put your seat belt on,” he said, and the cab was brimful of a new silence between them.
She couldn’t measure its dimensions, so she simply blew her nose and kept her mouth shut as the miles rolled by.
* * *
She wouldn’t talk. Just nodded when he finally decided the numb quiet had gone on long enough.
“We’re over the border early tomorrow.” He peered at the glittering of El Paso’s lights out the windshield, shimmering as they rose to engulf the pickup. From the south, those lights probably looked like the promised land, blurring from Juárez into the milk and honey of El Norte.
Or maybe not. Maybe from the south it looked like Las Vegas, glitter on top and dirt underneath, everyone grubbing for a worm. A poisonous, carnivorous carnival. The Chevy bounced as he cut the wheel, and the faux-adobe hotel rose up to block out the lights and all fun little imaginative thoughts.
His mouth just kept on going. “There’s a place I know, over the border. Killer food, a couple cervezas, we can celebrate getting away. I’ll bet you burn instead of tan, but we’ll hang out by the pool. You can even have those fruity drinks with umbrellas, if you want.” I’m babbling.
What else could he do, though? Realizing the black Camaro at the gas station door was still idling, his nape roughening instinctively and seeing her standing over the writhing would-be robber on the floor, the gun in her hands and that horrified, shell-shocked expression... Jesus.
Yet one more thing she shouldn’t have had to deal with. One more thing he should have been there to handle instead.
When he cut the engine, even the radio’s soft static died, and they were left with a ticking quiet full of sharp edges. He’d dealt with all sorts of responses to sudden violence—tears, shock, screaming. Trinity’s staring quiet was a new one, and he found out he didn’t like it. There wasn’t even the sense of her listening, of quiet attention, and now he realized he missed it.
You could get used to something like that pretty quickly, a woman’s soft listening. It was almost seductive.
Even slack and eye-glazed, she was beautiful. The elastic had come loose, and her ponytail was messy, a small detail, but it disproportionally bothered him. Her hands, folded together and white-knuckled, didn’t move. Her backpack slumped at her feet. It was like having a life-size, breathing doll in the passenger seat.
Or a ghost.
“Trinity.” He touched her shoulder, swallowing hard, and quelled the urge to shift uncomfortably. It was a hell of a time to have hormones distracting him. “Honey, you’re safe. Nothing’s going to hurt you.”
A tiny flicker of a shrug. Well, at least that was something. Her profile didn’t change.
“Hey.” He polished her shoulder with his palm, the heavy white cotton button-down well washed, living warmth underneath. “You saved that kid’s life, you know.”
She murmured something, her lips moving almost soundlessly.
“What, sweetheart?” The sun was going down, but it wasn’t getting any cooler out there. This place looked as if it had decent AC, at least. There was even a pool, shimmering blue and innocent behind a chain-link barricade, its white enamel sides probably still warm. The roof tiles, nice and red, would be baking still. He imagined again what she’d look like in a bikini, and that didn’t do a single thing to help him get his mind back to business.
As graceful as she was, she’d be a good swimmer.
That thought wasn’t guaranteed to lower his blood pressure, either.
A little louder now. Her lips were alarmingly pale. “Liquidate or leave?” The words were very soft; he had to strain even his virus-acute hearing. “I couldn’t calculate. Too much.”
“Yeah, well, I told the kid to wait for us to leave and hit the silent alarm. He gave me a look like I was stupid. Guess he had to call the cops the old-fashioned way.”
“The risk of—”
“Which is why we’re crossing with a crowd tomorrow. They’re too wary at night.”
“Surveillance footage—”
“Honey, the cameras were dummies. Kid might even say he stabbed the robber himself, and I gave him the gun. He won’t be able to remember what either of us looks like, he was pissing himself. Literally. So what if you were thinking about protocols and you almost pulled the trigger before you thought about it? You didn’t, and that’s what matters. It’s like they never sent you into the field.”
Her expression changed minutely.
“They didn’t?” He kept feeling as if he was getting socked in the gut around her. “Oh, man. Was that your first... It can’t be.”
“The escape...” A little stronger now. “The escape was my first real live-combat scenario. Since then, I’ve simply avoided capture.”
“Didn’t they train you?”
“I took modified agent training so I could predict and calculate. Too valuable for fieldwork.” A tiny shudder, a guitar string vibrating under aching tension. “They think a woman can’t kill.”
Huh. Each time he thought he’d found the limit of her bravery, she surprised him again.
“It just takes a lot more to get them there.” He scrubbed at his face, almost forgetting he had the key in his palm, rubbing the warm metal across his cheek. His stubble rasped. “Your first time...it’s normal. To feel this way.”
“I don’t feel,” she whispered, but she slumped back against the seat. “I assess, I plan, I calculate.”
She sounded so lost he wanted to unclick her seat belt, pull her across the center console and hold her in his lap. Stroke her hair, say something comforting and breathe her in until that fragile, tense expression faded. “Looks like you’re feeling it from out here, sugar pop.”
“Deconstruction.” She dropped her gaze, stared at her white-knuckled hands. “I can’t function. That’s dangerous.”
“You can, though.” Inspiration struck. “I’ll teach you. And if I can’t, Reese sure as hell can. He was their golden boy, right? Low emotional noise, high mission fidelity. Right? But he was feeling the noise all the time. We can help you.”
“I’m a danger to all—”
“Maybe. But I’m not exactly in this game to play safe, sweetheart. Come on. Let’s check in and find you something to eat.”
That managed to get a response. She made a small movement, as if she wanted to crumple, and he ached to catch her. Let me in. Let me help. But she pulled herself back into rigidity, and a quick flare of instinct told him not to attempt touching her. She was wound so goddamn tight she might shatter.
“I don’t think I can.” She lifted her chin a little, with that heartbreaking, transparent determination.
“Let’s try.” He reached into her lap, touched her knuckles. It took some doing to prize her hands apart, to stroke her delicate, capable fingers until they relaxed. When she glanced up at him, those huge dark eyes wide and her lashes matted with salt dampness, he almost leaned over and kissed her again. Cool down, boyo. Pressure from you is the very last thing she needs. “Okay? You can try, right?” He slid his fingers through hers, held her left hand. She squeezed, suddenly, with surprising strength.
“I’ll try.” A little color flushing back into those exquisite lips. Her ponytail was still loose, and fine strands of gold had worked free. A last flush of sunset filled the pickup’s cab, lighting her eyes and hair, and Cal lost all his breath.
She was goddamn beautiful. All the way through.
I didn’t expect that. God. “Good girl,” he managed with numb lips. “I, uh. Yeah. Let’s go check in. I would have stopped sooner, but—”
“We needed distance. Resting now increases our chances of success tomorrow. Yes.” Her shoulders squared, and she set her jaw.
Did she know how vulnerable she looked? Probably not.
Jesus. They have her convinced any emotion at all is going to kill her.
It made him wonder more and more about this “induction” process.
And why the other agents, all male, hadn’t survived it.
* * *
It took some coaxing, but she demolished a room-service club sandwich, and the fries, as well—which she seemed extremely pleased by. He risked the steak, and while it wasn’t great, it wasn’t bad, either, and satisfied the requirements for a protein load to keep him—and his viral load—functioning tip-top.
Her first taste of sweet tea was accompanied with such an expression of mystified shock he had to laugh, and her slight, tentative smile in return made something in his chest blow up like a balloon. He very carefully didn’t ask her any more questions, and when she eased down onto the bed, stretching out atop the duvet and not unlacing her boots, he didn’t say anything, just set the tray out in the hall.
She was asleep before he shut the door again. He’d coaxed her into washing her hands and face; tomorrow she’d want a shower.
Now, there was a thought. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the kind guaranteed to calm him down. It just wound him a little tighter, too.
A little? No. A lot. Cal leaned against the wall next to the closet, let out a long slow breath. So far, so good.
Except it’s not. She’s convinced she’s going to die. And you, you’re not a psych head-monkey. All you know how to do is interrogate and infiltrate. There was nothing in the training about how to deal with a fragile, traumatized woman who smelled like heaven and kept reaching for a gun he was very, very careful to leave nowhere near her. She didn’t look so thin and tired now.
The urge to sink down on the bed next to her was overwhelming. It was about to drive him out of his goddamn mind, especially since he’d got close enough to get a mouthful of her. Granted, it was full of blood, and she hadn’t said a word about it since...
Well, to be fair, neither had he. You could talk about threat ratios, induction, scenarios or the chemical composition of sweet tea, but asking a girl what she thought of you getting that close was another thing entirely. It wasn’t like with Tracy, or an infiltrate target, or the Army or whoever keeping their agents supplied with a head-clearing function, like psych evals or immunizations.
The trouble was, Cal wasn’t moving her smoothly through the maze, knowing when to push and when to let go, the little machine inside his head that never stopped assessing how easy other people were to affect going haywire. He didn’t want her affected, he wanted her...
Well, honestly. Except that was a handicap in this situation.
The trouble was, you couldn’t ever be sure if someone else really liked you or if you’d pushed them in just the right way. It was just so easy. Even before the virus, in those dim memories, seen through a filter of only-normal senses, it had been easy. It probably hadn’t been any physical talents that got him into the program. Just that machine, the cold hard how can I get what I want and the willingness to follow through.
And the rage.
Funny, though, the longer he breathed her in, the calmer he felt. Unless he thought about what they’d done to her. Or what that stupid, small-time meth-head might have done to her.
It was no use. He was stepping, softly and quietly, over harsh hotel carpet. Even in the swanky places it was the same easily cleaned nylon.
She deserves more.
Tracy had, too. The world was full of people who deserved more. Pretty goddamn arrogant to think he could do anything about that.
“I want to, though.” His own voice startled him. Trinity stirred slightly, turning over, crushing the pillow. She’d worked it out from under the duvet.
That felt like a small victory. Maybe next, he’d get her to sleep under the blankets. Cal took another deep, searching breath. He couldn’t smell anything wrong with her. A healthy blue haze, full of the clean, beautiful tinge of a pretty woman, stress and tension draining away.
Can’t save the world, Cal. You just focus on keeping her safe. Check the parking lot again.
He did. And kept telling himself, over and over again, that the right thing to do wasn’t lying down next to her, no matter how badly he wanted to.
Until he gave up and stretched himself on the edge of the bed, listening to her breathe.
* * *
Noah Caldwell let out a long, soft breath. Bay hadn’t made his last check-in, but that wasn’t uncommon on live missions. The agent had spent twelve hours in a high-security ward, machines beeping and booping in surprise over his vitals, and awakened ready to execute more orders. Caldwell had skipped the medical clearance—if the man was ambulatory, he was fine. At least, so the eggheads swore, with all their talk about vectors, mitochondrial uptake, enhanced healing and the benefits of the induction process.
Speaking of eggheads...
“I’m really not supposed to,” Robbie Kingswell said, blinking owlishly. “I mean, I could get in real trouble.”
The red button on the desk phone was flashing. It was Control calling, but the old man could wait. Caldwell kept his expression interested and calm. “Not if you hand it over to me right now, sir. I’ll take care of it.” Just give me the goddamn briefcase.
Kingswell, a virology control specialist, had access to the vials of raw viral serum. For a few hours, he and Control had both thought Bay would need another shot of the serum to jolt the healing factor even further into overdrive. So Kingswell had been scrambled out to the base and jolted in a Humvee to the county hospital, arriving just as Bay’s vitals smoothed out. The serum, in a small briefcase cuffed to his wrist, was unnecessary.
At least, as far as Control was concerned.
“But you don’t have the forms,” Kingswell repeated. “If I go back and I don’t have the forms, I could lose my security clearance. My job.”
“No, you won’t.” Sweat prickled under Caldwell’s arms, along his lower back, in every crevice. It made him long for the simplicity of just shooting someone. “It’s being requisitioned. I have the paperwork right here. You’re being relieved of it. We’ll send you on vacation to thank you for coming out here in such a hurry. Really, that showed amazing flexibility. You’re to be commended.”
The scientist actually clutched the black briefcase to his chest, his eyes swimming behind Coke-bottle glasses. He was handsome, in an unremarkable, weedy way, though Caldwell wouldn’t let a man under his command sport a soul patch under his bottom lip.
It just looked too damn fruity, especially when the rest of the egghead was marathon-runner lean.
“I don’t know.” Kingswell wavered.
Caldwell swallowed impatience. In the end, the forms had to be signed in triplicate, but when the scientist left, his wrist was naked and he was without the little black suitcase. Armed guards would take him to an airfield, and by the time the dumbass realized something was wrong he’d have already disappeared into the black hole of extraordinary rendition.
Control wouldn’t like it, but Noah Caldwell didn’t give much of a shit about that at the moment. The red light on the phone began blinking again, and Caldwell glanced around the stupid little office commandeered in this crappy little Southwestern fake-adobe town. Control was sitting pretty in Virginia, while Caldwell ran around and did the dirty work, cleaning up after Control’s cronies.
There was a time to let go, Noah Caldwell told himself.
It wasn’t quite yet, but it was fast approaching.
How many offices like this had he sat in, with Control calling from the cushioned nest? How many times had he smoothed over misunderstandings with local law enforcement, finagled resources and got nothing but a that could have been better, son in return?
One time too many, goddammit.
The briefcase went under the desk;
Caldwell put his wingtips on either side of it and picked up the phone. Before he punched the accept-call button, though, he dumped the forms he and Kingswell had wrangled over for the past few hours into an industrial-sized shredder crouching to his right. It chewed the paper into oblivion with a brief blurring buzz, and Noah braced himself.
“What the hell’s going on out there?” Control’s smoke-roughened rasp had become worse.
“Agent Bay is active, local resources are being minimally used, and all is proceeding as planned.” The lies rolled smoothly off his tongue. “There’s some heat from a chicken-fried Feeb agent, but he’s been sidelined.”
“Yeah, well, he had a friend in DC asking uncomfortable questions.”
Interesting. “How uncomfortable?”
“Nothing that couldn’t be handled, but I have to tell you, the investors are worried.”
Of course. The all-holy investors. “It’s only a matter of time before Bay brings in Three. Then the program has two stable, viable subjects. Right?”
“Let’s hope so,” Control said darkly. “Try not to throw any more wrenches into DC’s works, all right?”
“Yes, sir.” You sonofabitch. As if stonewalling a high-ranking FBI creep is anything close to the running around I’m doing here, to protect your goddamn investors.
He’d gotten into this whole thing to serve his country. Now Caldwell was thinking for the first time that maybe the whole heap deserved to sink beneath the waves of its own ignorance, not to mention laziness.
If you couldn’t serve the good old American way, though, what else was left?
His ankles caressed the briefcase while Control nattered on into his ear. Caldwell made all the right noises, soothed the old man and finally hung up. He sat there for a long while, in the windowless office, his socks and trouser hems brushing the briefcase sides. Cold-packed and insulated, the vial inside was just waiting to unload its cargo into a syringe. Noah had studied the injection protocols; he knew what to do.
The virus made them stronger, smarter, faster, better. Caldwell was owed some recompense for his services. And when Bay brought Three in alive and well, he’d have all sorts of leverage.
Agent Gemini Page 12
