Chapter 54
FIFTY-FOUR
Getting off a high-security base smack-dab in the middle of the desert was made fractionally easier by the dual facts that it was the middle of the night and the alarms hadn’t started going off.
The key fob Cal had plucked from a casualty’s pocket matched a nice little sedan belonging to a ghost of drive-thru meals and the heavy smell of a man who wouldn’t ever be eating another one again.
Holly took the backseat and Cal drove sedately through the base, navigating by feel and instinct, until they found a gate.
Flashing Bronson’s badge got them through, and as the klieg lights faded behind them Reese could finally let himself sag in the seat, blowing out a long breath.
“She didn’t give another name?” Cal asked, again. He couldn’t let it go.
“Just Trinity. They called her Three, but she...” Holly’s voice broke.
Reese reached down to find the lever on the right side, hitting the seatbelt’s catch with his other hand.
All the way back, and he could squirm into the backseat as Holly scrambled to make room.
Cal let out a short, frustrated sound, but twenty seconds later the passenger seat was back up and Reese had Holly in his arms. Trembling, full of sharp fearsmell cutting through the rest of her glorious scent, she was still whole and alive. He buried his face in her hair.
“Christ.” Cal snapped the radio on, flipping it to AM and searching through the bands for any news or emergency chatter. “Get a room, you two.”
“God,” Reese said around a mouthful of Holly’s tangled hair. “God.” True to form, his body wanted to prove she was alive another way, but that could wait.
Everything could. She was here, alive, reasonably unharmed, and all else was just noise.
She shook like a leaf, but she wasn’t crying. She just clung to him, and after a little while Cal cleared his throat. “I, uh, should probably split off from you guys and go find her.”
What? Reese’s brain started working again. “You think she’s—”
“She smells good, Reese.” Cal tapped at the steering wheel, once. “We have a freeway. Looks like Utah, good deal. So, north or south?”
That was an easy one. “South.” Lost my damn backpack. Need liquid resources and fresh ID. Wonder if that place in Phoenix is still open? “How good does she smell, Cal?”
“Good enough.” The other agent sounded very certain. “Ma’am, when we’ve had some time to calm down a bit, I’ll ask you for everything she said that you can remember, all right?”
“She... she’s...” Holly shook her head, and the movement against Reese’s chest made his entire body ache in the most frustratingly pleasant way imaginable.
“Not now,” he said, low and easy. “Just breathe, honey. Everything’s okay. I’m here.” Lucky. So goddamn lucky.
“I th-thought you were d-dead.” Maybe she was going into shock. Her teeth were chattering; he hugged even harder.
“Not even close.” And if I was, I’d come back for you.
“I hate to interrupt, lovebirds, but we have things to do.” Cal peered at the signs flashing by. “They’ll be on us as soon as Bronson’s missed.”
He had to think; they were both depending on him. Fortunately, the answer was easy. “Just keep going south. We need to get urban and vanish.”
“Right.” Another tap at the steering wheel, probably a habitual motion. “Campgrounds around here, too.”
“Start of winter. Might be a cabin or two.”
“Want to risk it?”
“No.” But it was good to bounce ideas off another agent, Reese discovered. “Installation this size has to have a hub near it.”
“It’s Utah. The hub might be a survivalist compound full of polygamists.”
“Then we’ll deal. Does the glove box have a map?”
“I’m busy driving. Sir.”
And I’m busy. But he had a job to do. “Holly. Baby. Be easy, okay? It’s over. It’s all over.”
“N-no, it’s not.” But she wriggled away from him, his arms suddenly cold without her breathing weight.
“We still h-have to escape.” Her face was a pale smear in the darkness, her eyes just a glimmering suggestion, but he could see her chin lift a little, her shoulders pushed back.
It made his chest feel a funny—loose, and strange. “I’m all right.”
Oh, Christ. Reese lost every battle he’d ever thought of waging with himself, leaned forward, and kissed her.
She tasted like gunsmoke and citrus and adrenaline, like everything that was good and beautiful and maddening in the world.
Her hands cupped his face, soft and shaking; he fell into her for an eternity before she retreated, breaking free with a low inquiring noise that tightened every string in his body.
She rested her forehead against his, their breath mingled, and Reese realized she wasn’t the only one shaking.
He was, too.
I am never losing you again.
“Good God, you two.” Cal rolled his window down; the roar of the slipstream married to a burst of sage-scented, dusty desert chill filled the car’s interior. “Quit making out on the job.”
* * *
The next morning found them in a dusty, run-down desert back end of nowhere, a hotel that might have been flea-ridden if it wasn’t so goddamn cold.
For all that, the cash from dead soldiers’ wallets paid for a room, and the water was hot.
It was enough to keep them from freezing to death, and even though Reese and Cal should have shared watches, he realized they hadn’t when he woke on one of the double beds, his arms around Holly so tightly they ached.
She was still out like a light, and what had awakened him was Cal’s soft movements.
The door shut, almost silently, and Reese took care not to disturb her as he slid off the bed. They hadn’t even bothered with the bedspread, or taking their clothes off.
Sleep was the best thing for her right now.
Outside held a slowly ripening desert sunrise, the bitter cold turning his breath into a plume, little curls of steam rising from Cal’s forehead as the other man stood staring at the eastern horizon.
The parking lot, cracks in the concrete a map of contract and expand, hosted a sprinkling of older cars.
Their dusty Ford sedan fit in perfectly, but it needed new plates.
They should have taken care of that last night.
Oh, well. He got tired of waiting for Cal to start talking, for once. “Leaving so soon?”
“Got to find me that girl. Trinity.” Stubble rasped as Cal rubbed at his face. “And you’ve got to stash that one somewhere safe.”
Believe me, I will. “And then what?”
“I don’t know.”
Silence. The sun, just peeking over the horizon, was a smear of crimson, faint scattered clouds taking on a rosy blush. A red dawn.
Finally, Cal spoke again. “You were right not to trust me.”
There was a lot that statement could mean. Reese waited, his shoulders tightening fractionally.
“Heming tried to get me, then they nabbed me when they killed Tracy. Bronson sent me out to get you. Figured it took one to catch one, and he convinced himself I wanted to be back in the agency’s good graces.
Some of the files were doctored, but I managed to grab others, too.
I had agency support until the storm hit, then I dug the tracker out of my hip and I thought, well.
So they had leads on you up to Boulder. From there all they had to do was run a sweep with travel parameters, and they probably…
” The other agent sighed, a deep, maybe even involuntary breath. “I don’t know. I’m... sorry.”
The chill was all through Reese now, the unforgiving calculation of a mission where an untrustworthy element had now been exposed. There were predictable, trained responses he could give—including tying Cal off.
Then he’d have to hide the body and hustle Holly out of here.
For a moment he was back in the heat and the smoke, the knife clattering on the floor and the wide dark eyes of two children mixing with Holly’s clear, beautiful gaze.
You’re really real. To me.
What would a really real man do? He didn’t know.
So, then, what would Holly do? Something idiotic, like not killing this agent.
Something good.
“You had your reasons.” Reese’s voice surprised him. Thoughtful, and even. “Are you going back into the program?”
“Oh, hell no.” The tension of readiness drained out of the other man. Had he been expecting Reese to smoke him? “Division’s got all the data. They’ll make more. Maybe with less emotional noise. We’re going to be obsolete.”
And you say you’re not good at long-range planning. “Which makes us loose ends.”
“Yeah. You got a plan?”
Not even close. “It seems to me,” Reese said, slowly, giving each word particular weight, “that there’s a bigger chance of survival if we work together. And it’s better for them, too.”
“Them?”
“Holly. And... Trinity. You really think she’s—”
“She smells good. Damn near knocked me sideways.”
“I can relate.” Christ, could he ever.
“You’re going south?”
Reese nodded. “Come and visit when you’ve got that girl of yours. We’ll see if we can’t plan something.”
“I suppose if I ask where, you’ll just say figure it out. I’ll leave you the car—I’m sure there’s something else around here I can bounce with.”
“Good luck.”
“You, too.”
Another pause.
Finally, Reese turned, very deliberately presenting his back to Cal. By the time he stepped through the door into the dark cave of a small sad motel room with dingy blue-striped wallpaper, the other agent was gone.
He closed the door, locked it, and leaned against the inside, listening to Holly’s steady, slow breathing. Lifted his hand, staring at the angry red flushes where he’d ripped flesh off while escaping the restraints. They were fading, and his limb looked... solid.
Real.
He shut his eyes, escaping inward. In the darkness, with only her breathing and his own, it was easier to think.
Let me, then. Let me be as real as she thinks I am. Never too late, right?
He hoped so.
When he opened his eyes, he found Holly had awakened. She sat on the bed, her smoky blue eyes huge, her arms wrapped around her knees.
In two strides he was across the room. Another half step and he was on the bed, her mouth opening under his.
She tasted like night air, spice and softness, her breath tinged with pain and sleep and fear, the sudden spike of musk through her scent reassuring that even if she wasn’t happy to see him, even if she blamed him for getting her involved in this and shot at and almost killed, she wasn’t completely immune.
He could still get a response. Was it enough to make her stay with him? Was he going to have to find something else?
He kissed a trail down to her vulnerable throat where the pulse beat, frantic-strong. “Don’t leave me,” he whispered against that sweet throb. “Holly, please. I’m sorry. Don’t leave me.”
“Reese,” she whispered back. “Reese.”
It wasn’t an answer, but it was more than he’d hoped for. He forced himself to stop, to retreat. “We’ve got to get out of here. Are you okay? You’re hungry—we’ll get something to eat... God, Holly. God.”
She blinked up at him. Still wide-eyed, her lips full and a little parted, ripened by the pressure. Just begging to be kissed again. “I’m okay. Are you all right?”
“As long as you’re with me, I’m fine.”
Wonder of wonders, she smiled. It was a thin, wan expression, but better than nothing. “I’m with you. But, um, can I use the little girls’ before we leave? And for God’s sake, can I stop losing all my clothes?”