Chapter 47
FORTY-SEVEN
Of course she’d start asking those sorts of questions now. He’d had all the grace a monster was allowed, and keeping her around wasn’t going to be so easy from here on out. She had every right to run, and what did it say about Reese that he wasn’t going to let her?
It was a long walk in the dark, judging their distance by counting his steps, and when Holly tried to pull away he clamped down on her wrist before he realized she was trying to hold his hand instead.
Why?
Still, he felt better with her gloved fingers laced into his. Especially when she squeezed. It could’ve simply been easier for her to keep her balance. Or that she didn’t want to be left in the darkness.
What it probably wasn’t was any other reason. Did you kill people? It was a question he’d been dreading. Was she regretting the other night with him now?
Of course she was. She was clean, and he was anything but. Still, if he kept her safe, that was a way to balance it out.
Wasn’t it?
Silence, except for her hurrying to keep up.
She was much quieter now, not moving smoothly as an agent, but a normal would think her eerily soundless.
The feedback from heightened senses gave you a new baseline for “careful”.
He’d have to teach her how to pass among normals, some of the basic lessons about controlling the autonomics, and other things.
Assuming she’d listen to him.
He slowed as he sensed the end of the steadily rising tunnel. “Almost there,” he murmured.
“We’ve been going up.” Did she sound tentative? Of course, he’d snapped at her.
Way to go, soldier. “Yeah. The climb up isn’t nearly as bad. You’re doing great.”
A half-choked laugh, soft and pretty as the rest of her. “Really?”
Didn’t sound like she believed him.
“I’m sorry, Holly. I’m on edge. And I didn’t think anyone would find us.”
“Maybe they didn’t, maybe they followed Cal.”
Could be. “Don’t know yet.”
“But you trust him?”
“Only provisionally.” And not with you.
Maybe the talking was helping her stay calm, or maybe she was processing. “Why would they just shoot to warn him?”
“Don’t know that they did.”
“What do you know?” A trace of irritation, wonderfully cheering to hear. At least she wasn’t numb, or screaming with terror.
“Where we’re going,” Reese said, and continued with the list. “What we’re going to do. And that I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”
She was silent. Probably didn’t believe him. He had time to change her mind, though. Didn’t he?
I hope so.
The end came a little sooner than he’d expected. Fortunately he didn’t walk into the goddamn ladder to top everything off. “Okay. We’ll climb a bit. There’s rest platforms. How are you feeling?”
“Like I just got shot at.” A little unsteady. “Like I lost all my clothes. Again.”
He squeezed her fingers, gently, before loosening his hand. “I’m sorry, Holly.” And I am. But not enough to let you go.
“I know.”
There was nothing to say to that, so he just pulled her forward, let her find the ladder rungs. “You go up first.”
“In case I fall?”
“Yeah.”
“You’ll catch me?”
“I’ll do my best. Or I’ll fall with you.”
“Oh.” Slight sounds—the tips of her boots scraping, hitching against a rung broader and better anchored than the ones at the other end. She said nothing else, and the tang of iron determination to her marvelous, still-intensifying scent reached in and yanked on something in his gut.
And a little lower, too. Holly was outright goddamn amazing.
Reese shook his head, waited for her to get a little farther up, and began climbing.
* * *
The rest platform at the top wasn’t big enough for both of them, but he braced one foot on the wall behind him across the tunnel and had a tricky few moments feeling around for the release switch, Holly trapped between him and sheer rock with her feet firmly planted on the iron strip.
The close quarters might even have added something if she hadn’t been trembling, her breath shorter and shorter and her pulse spiking.
The dark didn’t sit well with her. Either that, or reaction to the last few hours was setting in. Could be both. “It’s all right,” he breathed in her ear. “In a little while we’ll be safe and warmed up, and this will be just a memory.”
His fingers found the plastic cover; he flipped it up and keyed in the code by feel.
If that didn’t work there was the killswitch, but luck was with him and there was a low hum.
A creaking, and he braced himself a little more tightly before lifting his hands to the wheel overhead.
No ice, because the exit was just below ground level and incrementally warmed by the same geothermals as the cabin, so he only had to swear once to get the entire thing moving.
A thin crack of daylight appeared, and Holly’s sobbing breath of relief made something in him relax a bit.
“Upsy-daisy, sweetheart.”
He watched her scrambling up into the dim glow, and when she finally cleared the entrance he followed. It was, he thought, pretty goddamn symbolic. If there was any light to head for, she was the only one who knew where it resided.
All he could do was stagger after her.
Their exit looked like a manhole cover in the floor of a shack of a shed that was nevertheless nicely weatherproofed on the inside. A dusty window, one pane rubbed clean, let in pale tree-filtered sunlight through festoons of cobweb.
Wait, a clean pane? That was wrong.
He cleared the entrance and hopped sideways, but not fast enough. A pop, a spear of ice buried in his left glute.
Holly stood with her back to the wall—staring, dead white, hair mussed, and beautiful. He opened his mouth to tell her to run, but whatever was loaded in the tranquilizer dart was potent enough to knock out an agent, and he fell sideways into darkness still trying to say her name.