“Kinda hard to forget it, since it ended in the aforementioned episode of us running through the woods and almost getting killed by Century mercenaries.” I frowned in concentration as a thought occurred to me. “Where do they find this endless supply of gun thugs?”
“I was a pretty bad influence on you that trip.” He ignored my wry observation and gave me a twisted smile. “How much did you end up drinking?”
“A lot,” I admitted. “Enough to nearly land me in bed with that—actual, real—asshole Fries.”
“I could kind of understand that,” he said. “You and Zack had broken up,” I felt a twinge at the mention of Zack’s name, “you were ... tired of not being able to ...” he shrugged, “... do what ... couples do.”
“You know what really pushed it over the edge?” I asked, leaning back in my chair. “It was watching you and Kat all the time. It was like I got my first look at what a happy couple should be, outside of the television, and I wanted my life to look like that. I wanted to be able to sleep with my boyfriend without killing him.” I laughed, kind of rueful. “Stupid, huh?”
“I don’t think it’s stupid at all,” he said and shifted on the desk. “I think it’s pretty natural.”
“Yeah, well, it didn’t end so well.”
“What, like that was your fault?”
I sighed. “My skin killed him. My touch killed him. So, yeah, if you want to look at it at a literal level, yes, it was my fault. If you want to zoom out to the metaphorical level, if he hadn’t been my boyfriend, Winter wouldn’t have used him as leverage against me, so he’d still be alive.” I waved my hand at him. “I’ve made my peace with it long ago, but yes, I still think it’s my fault.”
“Hum.” He looked down, cupping his hands together. “Zack was one of my best friends, you know.”
“He thought of you the same way,” I said gently.
“I didn’t hear about you two breaking up right away,” he said. “Not on that trip.”
“Well, no,” I said, “because you were wasted.”
“Right,” he said and I caught the chagrin. “But when I did hear, it was the weirdest thing. Because Kat told me, and the first thing that came to mind—and I feel like such an ass for saying this—was that I was glad.”
“What?” Part of me wanted to ask him to clarify. Another part very much didn’t.
“I know, it’s terrible.” His jaw clenched between words, and I could see it stand out on his tanned face. “But I was, I was glad. And, uh ... it kind of took me a while to narrow down why, so I just sort of ignored it.” He glanced at me. “But, uh, after you came back here, and we started working together, I figured it out.”
Oh, God.
He must have seen it on my face, the look like the train was barreling toward me, and there I was standing on the tracks like I was paralyzed or something. “It kind of does make me an asshole, doesn’t it?” He looked away. “Like, really for real, subtext of your comments aside. But, uh ... seeing you work. How you work. How serious you are about it, how committed you are. I mean, you’re the real deal. You’ve thrown yourself into certain death over and over—”
“I don’t ... I mean, I wouldn’t say I’ve ever thrown myself into certain death—” I stammered, trying to interrupt him.
“You’re just so brave,” he said. “You’re the most gutsy, fearless person I’ve ever met. You take the hits and keep bouncing back. You’re like this epic badass everyone keeps underestimating until she completely wrecks them, and it’s so awesome to watch.” He was focused on me now. “I respect the hell out of you, I watch in constant amazement, and, uh ... even a meathead like me can finally get the message sooner or later.” He leaned in closer, and I was trapped. My chair could have tilted back a little farther, but I didn’t lean it back.
“I, um ... don’t remember sending any messages?” I said weakly. “Maybe you misread an email?”
“I know you don’t feel the same,” he said, and his face was just ... THIS close to me. Like inches. “And I’m totally okay with that. I will follow you into the jaws of death, whatever comes, because I believe in you, that you’re the one who can stop this. But I wanted you to know that ...” He started to incline his head, tilting it to the side. My eyes were so wide, I felt like my eyelids were going to break at any second. His were closed, shut tight, and I was pretty sure my jaw was open just as wide as my eyes.
Still he kissed me, because apparently my lips actually WERE closed, and my eyes followed, and for about a second and a half, which was as long as it lasted, it was really, really good. After that he broke off, and I just sat there, eyes still closed, my head back against the soft, leather padding of my chair.
“I just figured I ought to tell you before this all broke loose,” he said, and I opened my eyes to see him taking slow, small steps toward the door. I watched him go without uttering a word, just staring at him shell shocked, as he opened the door and smiled faintly at me. “When it’s all over, we can talk about this, if you want. Or just ... let it be. Up to you.” With that he closed the door, a soft click that sounded like a vault shutting in my mind, a cascade of emotions running over me, too many, too numerous to count.
I sat in that silence for a full minute after he left, just staring at the door, remembering the kiss, before I finally spoke. “He really does taste a little like the ocean,” I mused, and my fingers found my lips and the warmth and memory of the kiss that lingered there long after Scott left.
Chapter 38
Sierra Nealon
Minneapolis, Minnesota
March 18, 1993
She hadn’t felt the baby move yet, which the doctor had told her was unsurprising. She was only eight weeks along, after all, and they didn’t move until long after that. It was a little disconcerting, though, something she felt like she should be feeling, would hope to be feeling, especially now. It would be just a little bit reassuring.
Fires were blazing all around her, and she was catching lungfuls of the smoke, the dark, choking, chemical kind that came from the walls of the Agency’s office building being fully engulfed in flames. Sierra crawled on her hands and knees, trying to keep underneath the flames that swirled on the ceiling above her, trying to keep from breathing any more of it than she had to. This can’t be good for the baby. Her worried eyes shifted toward the stairwell door just ahead. She was on the fifth floor and needed to get down. She had yet to run across another person, not surprising given the time of night.
The fire had come in one massive burst, an explosion that rocked the Agency’s headquarters, flinging her out of her desk chair and causing her to black out for a moment. When she had come to, everything was burning and she knew she had to get out quickly. She could hear the fire alarms going off faintly in the distance but couldn’t decide if that meant that they’d gone out in this section of the building, or if she was just having trouble hearing. It was a loud explosion, she thought. So loud. I don’t hear ringing, though. Is that a good sign or a bad one?
She reached the door to the stairs and splintered it when it resisted her, breaking through it at the bottom, like she was carving a dog door out for herself. She paused when she punched through, expecting a backdraft to come shooting out at her. She braced to roll aside, but when it didn’t, she finished ripping it from its hinges and crawled inside the stairwell, the gritty concrete texture pushing into her palms as she crawled. Grit and debris dotted the ground, and she steered around the more obvious pieces, ignoring the little flecks of broken glass as they cut her hands.
The smoke billowed up the stairwell, smoking skyward and obscuring the floors above from her view. She got to her knees, then to a crouch, the tight neck of her blouse pulled over her nose. I have to find Jon. I have to protect our baby.
Her life was a succession of surprises of late: marrying Jon, the pregnancy, and now this. I’ve had enough surprises for one lifetime. She held the shirt tightly over her face, trying to let the cloth material filter out some of the acrid smok
e as she descended. He’s got to be on the first floor, if he’s still ... She felt a dryness in her mouth that had nothing to do with the heat or the smoke. He has to be. Has to be on the first floor.
She reached the next-to-last landing and hurried down to find the fire door open, the first floor ablaze. The pillars that held up the ceiling were already engulfed in flame, the desks and chairs that filled the bullpen-like space of the Agency’s lower floor a charred mess. It was black ground in the middle, cratered, like a bomb had gone off, and the ceiling was open ahead. Debris tumbled down from an upper floor, and she noticed that the crater opened to the basement.
How do I get out of here? Her mind raced, looking over the sea of flames. The heat was overwhelming, but the smoke was almost worse, overcoming her. One way out, one way only, and it’s right through the middle of it. She ducked and ran, felt the flames licking at her as she sped across the floor, dodging around the crater, only opening her eyes the barest amount here and there as needed. Almost there ...
She got close to the front windows which had shattered; all that remained was the lip of the wall and she jumped over it like a champion hurdler, bursting free into the cool air outside, the suffocating smoke clearing as she kept going, further from the fire. She stopped after a hundred or so feet, standing out from the corner of the square, oblong building. It was technically in Golden Valley Minnesota, but right on the edge of Minneapolis, which was what the postal codes all said. Was, she thought. Now it’s nothing but wreckage. So long, Agency. I guess they’ll have to build a new—
She heard a noise from behind her and turned to see Jon lying there, eyes open, staring up at the sky above. She took in the scene with a steady onrush of horror, and it occurred to her after a moment that there was someone else there as well, a man, impeccably dressed. It didn’t immediately occur to her to think of him as anyone other than someone who had been passing by when the explosion happened. She ran, still coughing and hacking from the smoke she’d breathed in, a thousand thoughts clouding her mind. Her shoes slapped loudly against the asphalt of the parking lot, and she cleared an island of grass with a tree planted in the middle of it with a leap, landing next to Jon.
His eyes were open, staring up at her lifelessly, his face placid and slack. She fell to her knees and shook him. Sometimes he sleeps with his eyes open. Creepiest damned thing I’ve ever seen. She grasped his burnt, pinstriped dress shirt and lifted his chest, jerking his upper body into motion. His neck lolled back, following its path of least resistance and his eyes didn’t react at all to the motion.
“He’s already dead,” the man said in a quiet voice, solemn. His hands were clasped in front of him, and Sierra had a sudden vision of him as a funeral home director, giving only the coldest comfort to the bereaved he was forced to deal with. “I’m sorry.”
“What ...” She let him settle back and ran her hands over him, but there was no sign of blood, no sign of trauma, of burns past some minor blackening of his dress shirt. She looked up into the face of the stranger, oddly stricken. “How?” The man didn’t say anything at first, and she read his hesitation. “How?” she asked, again, the harsh edge to her tone.
“He made a mistake,” the man said at last, not looking at her. “A long time ago.”
“Did you do this?” She held the back of Jon’s neck in her hand, felt the odd weight of it, the heaviness as his head lolled. There was no burning in her fingers, no swelling of her power from the touch as there should have been. The man did not answer her. “Did you?” She clutched Jon tighter. “Did you do this?”
The man did not speak, but his feet left the ground and he hovered, lightly, a few feet away from her. “This isn’t how I wanted us to meet. It isn’t how I would have planned to run into you, Sierra, not for the first time.”
“You wouldn’t have planned this?” She laughed through the first tears, the words were so absurd. “How would you have planned it? Something to make a better first impression, I take it? Something other than killing my husband? The father of my unborn child?” She stood, letting the body slump to the side. Her fists balled and she readied herself. She could feel the weight of the pistol at her side, the duty weapon she carried, and she drew it fast, firing five rounds perfectly, snapping off each shot with precision, her eye focused on putting the front sight of the gun just above his heart.
The man didn’t even move, didn’t shrug, just stood there and took the bullets, absorbing them into his body like they were nothing. He watched her with mournful eyes, dark eyes. “You can’t kill me.”
“Oh, really?” Sierra adjusted the aim higher and fired again, this time aiming for the hovering man’s skull. Every shot was flawless, but he just stood there, staring back at her, dully, with each subsequent shot.
Her gun clicked empty, the last round spent, and Sierra stared at him, the action slid open and smoked slightly in the cool night. Still, the man stood, hovering on air, arms folded, apparently undisturbed by the fifteen shots that had just been fired straight into him. Sierra screamed at him in fury and flung the gun at his head, charging at him and leaping. He disappeared before she could make contact, and she fell to the hard pavement of the parking lot, grunting at the pain of her landing, asphalt scraping across her elbow.
“You can’t hurt me, either,” the man said, and she turned to find him still hovering, watching her. “I’m sorry.”
“You don’t know what sorry means, yet,” she said, her voice a snarl. She leapt back to her feet and flung herself at him. It was rage, pure and simple, and the detached part of her mind knew it, but she did it anyway because that cold, rational part of her was long gone, buried under the howling grief for Jon. He was the one. The only one who ever—
Suddenly there was a hand around her neck, gripping her throat, squeezing hard, firm and choking the life’s breath out of her. Her feet were suspended off the ground, and she fought for a grip on the arms attached to the hands around her neck, hoping to get something—anything—out of them. Willing her power to work, mostly.
“I didn’t know you were married,” the man said quietly, and his hand stayed tight around her neck. “But your husband was mine. He defied me, he knew he had crossed me, and he had to know that on this day, the day I met him again, the penalty was going to be utter horror.” The man looked past her at the flaming wreckage of the Agency. “Combine that with your little shakedown operation here, and I had the perfect reason to destroy this whole place.” He adjusted his grip and Sierra took one breath and one only before he tightened his grip around her neck. “I understand you’re angry, but now you’re just being foolish. I could crush you with minimal effort. I could break you with less trouble than a normal person would have cracking a walnut shell. Just ask Erich Winter—he took one look at me and ran, and I haven’t seen him for over a hundred years.” He loosened his grip. “Cross me, and you’re just asking to die. Push me, and I’ll push you over the edge. Come at me for revenge, and you’ll die for no good reason. You can’t fight me, you can’t hurt me, and you damned sure can’t stop me from doing anything.”
Sierra felt his grip reverse, turning her head around. She hung in his arms, his hands holding her by the scruff of her neck, ten feet off the ground. “I’m sorry about your husband.” He shook her head, forcing her to look down at Jon’s body, empty-eyed and lifeless, staring up at her. “But you need to think clearly. You have a child to worry about, after all.” He spun her around, and she felt gravity shift, felt her feet touch the ground. “His child. Your child.” The man smoothed out her collar, and let her go. Sierra fell to the ground, felt the pavement hit her backside when she landed. “Maybe it’ll be a little girl like you.” He smiled faintly. “Maybe she and I will meet one day.”
He seemed to grow smaller in her sight. It took her a moment to realize he actually was drawing away, hovering out of her reach. “I’m going to leave now. I’m sorry for your loss.” His face grew hard. “But don’t make me take more from you. I’ll be watching.” With t
hat, he flew straight up, disappearing into the low-hanging clouds that covered the night sky. Sierra could see them burning with light from the fire.
I’ll be watching.
She felt a bitter taste of disgust in her mouth and leaned over again toward Jon’s body, felt it cold under her hands. The burning was gone, the fire he let her feel sometimes when they’d touch skin to skin for too long. She pulled her hands back, touching her own neck. She could feel the bruising from where the man had grabbed her. No one’s ever done that to me before. No one. Never. Not even Dad ...
“Sierra?” The voice was cold, the accent Germanic, and she looked up to see him coming toward her—Winter. Erich Winter. “I saw you talking to him. Was it you? Did you tell him where to find us?”
I’ll be watching.
She thought again about the hands on her neck, the tightness in her throat. She thought she felt a quiver in her belly. Maybe it’ll be a little girl like you. Sierra felt the cold chill run through her even as she looked past Erich at the fire raging in the remains of the Agency building.
Maybe she and I will meet one day.
With a loud, groaning crack the upper floors gave way and came crashing down, sending the building into a flaming destruction, a burning mess throwing clouds of smoke and debris across the parking lot. Winter disappeared in the dust and smoke, as did Jon as she staggered back. She thought about fighting her way back to him for one last touch, one last kiss, anything.
I’ll be watching.
Touch hadn’t been the thing that they’d built their relationship on. The smoke covered her, the dust concealed her, and she made her way, as quietly as possible, to the edge of the parking lot while everything was obscured. One thought pounded in her head with the blood, even as the pain from where he’d gripped her faded with every step. She crept off into the night, mind outracing her body by a factor of ten.
Legacy: The Girl in the Box #8 Page 24
