Chapter 13 CLEO
CLEO
I’M SO, SO STUPID.
Cleo, you might ask. Aren’t you being a little harsh? You’re operating under a lot of pressure here. What about a little self-forgiveness?
I wish the pressure was why I didn’t take him to my hideout, which would have been a lot safer than where we are now.
I led him all the way here, I got us shot at, and then I chickened out. I turned right, into the workshop, instead of left into the repair center.
All we had to do was head one room into the repair center, and we’d have been through an emergency supplies closet and into one of my favorite nests.
But I didn’t want him to know I had it. I didn’t want him to ask how I knew it was there.
I didn’t want to see the slowly dawning light in his eyes as he looked around at the blanket, the hoarded food, and realized that this was where I slept.
That the reason I didn’t want to go to my quarters to grab my stuff is that I don’t have any stuff. Or any official quarters.
I wasn’t ready for him to realize I’m a hitcher.
Now I yank Hunter into the chief engineer’s office and turn to lock the door behind us. Together we duck behind her desk and jam ourselves underneath it, hiding out under the overhang.
We’re pressed together, shoulder to shoulder, and I can feel how hard he’s breathing. But he’s grinning, with the freaked-out adrenaline of someone who’s just survived a chase.
‘Remind me not to piss you off,’ he whispers, shaking his head.
‘Congratulations on surviving your first time getting shot at,’ I murmur in reply.
‘Expanding foam? You just thought of that on the fly?’
I make myself shrug, though my heart’s still hammering too. ‘I can do better.’
Probably best not to admit it was inspired by the packing foam we used to smuggle me up here. I hope that guy gets even more claustrophobic than I did.
‘I don’t doubt you.’ He laughs softly. ‘You think they’re going to bill us for all this damage? So far we’ve flooded a classroom, and I don’t know how many tools they’ll break trying to get that stuff off him.’
‘A lot. The foam’s for emergency repairs. It’s pretty tough.’
Hunter just laughs again and buries his face in his hands, pulling himself together. He’s coping pretty well, considering how sheltered his life must usually be.
‘Anyway,’ I continue. ‘You can afford it. Probably hold off on calculating the total until we see what else we manage to pull off. Two down, five to go.’
‘Maybe fewer, if we can spread them out enough to isolate one. We only need one to use their handprint on a rover.’
‘Right. We shouldn’t stay here for too long. We have work to do.’
That’s enough to turn Hunter serious. ‘And now we have to work around their cameras. They wouldn’t have been using them before – why look at surveillance when there’s nothing to see? They thought the place had been evacuated.’
‘Mmhmm. Now I’m assuming they’ll be taking an interest. Can you—’ I wave a hand. ‘Hack them?’
Hunter tilts his head to one side, probably running through some mental list of things he knows about software systems and cameras.
Does he keep the entire Graves system architecture in his head?
I’m beginning to think so. And then he grimaces.
‘I don’t see how. There’s no single point of failure, it’s like a parallel circuit.
Take one down, and the others pick up the load. ’
‘Damn.’
‘Yeah, sorry, it’s well designed.’ His warm brown skin has gone a little paler. ‘Are we trapped in this office?’
‘Nah, don’t worry, they’re not everywhere. This place is on a budget, remember. We can get around the camera placements.’
What I don’t say is that I have plenty of experience at that. I don’t want my presence recorded any more than I can help it. For sure, I don’t want to be seen going into or out of any of my hideouts.
‘You,’ says Hunter, ‘are an incredibly useful person to have around.’
I fan myself. ‘Oh, stop. I bet you say that to all the girls.’
He snorts. ‘Yeah, women love to be told they’re useful. That one always works.’ Then, pausing to consider it: ‘Actually, I guess it’s better than the alternative.’
My own laugh bubbles up. ‘You have no experience complimenting girls, do you? I bet you don’t have to. You just stand there being you, and they try to climb you.’
Hunter bites his lip. ‘Well, I … uh …’
I rest my chin on my hand and inspect him. ‘Do go on.’
‘It doesn’t sound great when you put it like that,’ he admits. ‘Which nobody else ever does.’
He runs a hand through his hair, and I can’t help following the movement.
His borrowed T-shirt is smudged with reddish-gray Martian dust from the vent pipes.
His hair’s askew, his green eyes alive. He’s still breathing hard, and I can see the pulse at his throat as he tips his head back and closes his eyes for a moment, lashes lowering.
He’s so much more human now than when I first met him. I’m not sure that’s a good thing.
Then he opens his eyes and tilts his gaze sideways in the same moment and catches me staring at him.
My own gaze widens as I scramble for an excuse. I expect him to laugh, or tease me, or preen like a guy who’s used to the staring and has somehow pulled me into the same net that catches all the rest of them.
But he doesn’t. He just turns his head and studies me in return, his gaze shifting ever so slightly.
For a moment, the rest of it falls away, and I’m absorbed in the green of his eyes, the way the light catches them. In the fleck of dust that’s caught on one of his eyelashes. In the strands of dark brown hair that dip over his forehead, and in the strong lines of his brows.
Our breathing slows and syncs. I’m suddenly acutely aware of the places our bodies touch. And then slowly, so slowly, he lifts a hand, and gently brushes my hair back behind my ear. His touch is feather-light, and sparks zip through me, my skin tingling in the wake of his fingertips.
My mouth is dry and I can’t remember how to move away. I don’t think I want to. Whatever I was expecting from Hunter Graves, it wasn’t a moment like this.
His lips curve to a faint smile, a hint of a dimple showing in one cheek. ‘Hi,’ he murmurs, almost inaudible.
I reach deep inside myself for some sense of self-preservation. I cannot be enjoying this. My stomach is not fluttering. And no tingling is happening anywhere. Cleo, get it together!
There are a thousand reasons I can’t: who he is, who I am, where we are, the mercenaries hunting for us. We’re both riding high on adrenaline, and our judgment is terrible right now. Right?
‘We should concentrate,’ I whisper unwillingly. ‘People are trying to kill us.’
‘I can do more than one thing at once,’ he whispers in reply, and I can’t tear my gaze away from his mouth. But he’s waiting. He’s letting me choose. He could lean in so easily, close that last small distance between us, and find my lips with his. He could set us both on fire.
Instead, this boy who has everything holds himself back, restrained by nothing but his own willingness to let me be the one who decides. It’s a kind of power that sends a shiver through me.
The little Cleo in my head, who hasn’t been kissed in nearly a year, is doing backflips. Get in there, girl! she’s screaming. You know he knows how!
But I have to keep a cool head. I have to find a way out of this – I have to live. And that means that if it comes down to it, I have to be prepared to trade him for my freedom. Nobody else is here for me. I have to take care of myself.
I really hope I don’t have to hand him over, though.
There’s another option, a part of me whispers. With someone like Hunter, you could stop running, start living.
Sparks skitter along my skin, all the way from the back of my neck to my fingertips, as I imagine that future. But I’ve learned what happens when I put my fate in someone else’s hands.
I let out a slow breath and lean back a fraction.
That’s all it takes – he eases back too and he shoots me a quick, easy grin that tells me everything’s fine.
And I shove down my disappointment, biting the inside of my cheek to try to ground myself.
He might be many things – a capitalist billionaire who grinds the poor beneath his boots, for example – but he doesn’t pressure a girl, so I guess he’s got that going for him.
‘So,’ he says quietly. ‘I guess at some point we have to stop hiding under this desk.’
‘Sooner than later,’ I agree, amazed at how even my voice sounds. ‘We should keep going, while two of them are out of commission.’
But I don’t get any further than that, because that’s when the PA system crackles to life.