Chapter 41
FORTY-ONE
He had another forty-eight hours before he started getting tired, but the lump in his throat just wouldn’t go away. He was hoarse, too, from talking to her while she thrashed. The worst part was when she screamed, or when she made that low hurt noise, as if she was expecting to get hit.
Cal brought a bottle of water; Reese cracked it one-handed and took a sip. The other agent squatted, easily, still consciously keeping out of anything approximating fight range or threat perimeter. “Fever’s going down.”
I know. Reese didn’t say it. This guy liked to talk, might as well let him.
“So,” Cal continued, “I knew you were gone over this girl. I said to myself, what’s the last thing anyone would expect this guy to do?
Which made it easy—all I had to do was look at your domestic jobs and choose the route that gave me the most options on my way south, figuring you’d have hidey-holes as a matter of course.
Then it was just following my nose. I wandered around a bit before finding this place, had a couple cold camps. ”
Is he gauging me? Waiting to see if I’m distracted? It could also be that Cal hadn’t had anyone to really talk to in a long, long time. Keeping secrets produced psychological pressure.
Even for an agent.
“What about your friend?” Reese watched the rise and fall of Holly’s chest. “The one they killed.”
A long silence. Maybe that would shut the man up.
“Tracy,” Cal said, softly. “Nice, easy. Uncomplicated. No questions. Heming tried to off me, too. I got out and went to pick her up. I... They knew about her, they came for me. She didn’t deserve that. I didn’t keep her quiet enough, I guess.”
Things really could have gone either way. If they had, would it be Reese talking about how he hadn’t done enough to keep Holly hidden? Lots of uncomfortable questions, soldier. “I’m sorry.” It sounded strange, and he realized why.
He actually meant it. A kindness, something Holly might say. That empathy of hers—what was it like to swim in the emotional noise all the time, to feel it the way she did?
“Yeah.” A drift of changed scent, Cal shifting physical weight as well. The blue tinge to him shaded into what seemed like actual sadness. “Me, too.”
Thankfully, he shut up. Holly dozed, her eyelids fluttering every once in a while. She didn’t seem to be sweating quite so badly now. Her pulse was slowing, too.
Just let her live. Bargaining, a human response. Who was he asking, though? A god cruel enough to let all this happen? Cruel enough to make Holly suffer?
God didn’t do that, Reese. You did.
He flipped through yet another file, his eyelids full of sand. Tox screens, tolerance tests, psych notes. What Cal had grabbed was almost as interesting as what he hadn’t managed to get.
Three files on women: two were just autopsy results.
One, a Tracy Moritz, had caught a spray of AK-47 lead.
Cal’s temporary escape from that engagement was noted as a failure-to-capture, and he’d left a great deal of his own blood at the scene—Moritz’s nice little farmhouse, the mortgage paid up out of foreclosure recently.
Sloppy. But he’d have done the same for Holly, wouldn’t he?
Another agent had apparently gotten sticky with a girl; they were both listed as failure-to-capture as well, with ‘possibly dead’ notation.
The third file on a female was so heavily redacted it was almost useless, but it looked as though the program had found a girl candidate for the little swarmers about the same time they’d found Reese.
There were further notes about some other kind of process.
Induction, it said once, escaping the black bars of redaction.
Intriguing.
Reese’s own dual files, mauve and red, were thought provoking. Try as he might, he couldn’t find a hole in any of Cal’s story. The man could be exactly what he said he was. In fact, it was looking like he had to be. Just enough suspicion attached to be normal.
“So.” Reese took another swallow of water. His neck ached, and the floor was cold. He was going to stiffen up if he crouched next to the couch much longer, but he didn’t want to move. “What’s your plan?”
“Ah.” Cal nodded, as if he’d said something profound. “Um. Well, you know, I was hoping you had one. I’m geared for on-the-fly tactics, you’re more of a long-range guy. You’re, um, more strategic. I was hoping you had some ideas.”
Maybe I was hoping you did. Reese couldn’t help it. The laugh burst out of him, swallowed halfway so he didn’t disturb Holly, and the momentary flash of rueful surprise crossing the other agent’s features convinced Reese that he was, indeed, legit.
The funny side of it clearly hit Cal, too, and their shared, strained laughter brushed tension out of the tiny cabin. Holly stirred, mumbling softly, and subsided when they both shut up.
“Maybe I do,” Reese said, very quietly. Time to come up with something like a plan, at least. “But I’m not going to tell you.”
“Fair enough.” Cal shrugged. “I’m going to get some sleep.
” He stood, carefully, backed up until his calves hit the sagging brown velour recliner, dropped down into the chair’s embrace, and was gone inside seconds.
His pulse dropped, breathing evened out, and the smell of glands opening as autonomic control eased into unconsciousness was just right as well.
A hint of nervousness, true, but Reese supposed in the other man’s shoes he’d be the same.
Dealing with a hair-trigger agent who had every reason to doubt you would make anyone a little jumpy.
How long had Cal been running, to pass out like that?
Reese settled himself against the couch, paging through the files more slowly now. Holly’s breathing deepened as well, and he started to think maybe she might survive.
If she doesn’t, we’re going to see how fast two agents can dismantle an entire goddamn government.
It didn’t even bother him to think like that.
Reese turned another page, and settled himself to studying.