Chapter 16
Delgado took the back seat with the kitbags. Cath drove, lighting yet another cigarette. Rowan hunched forlornly in the passenger seat, frowning at the map.
He was boiling with frustration. They shouldn’t have put him next to the guns and the gear, but evidently they trusted him.
For all they knew he could still be Sigma, especially since he was still hooked on Zed.
He’d lied, of course. He hadn’t been checking the parking lot. He’d been looking for a place to hunker down and slam the last hypo, but hadn’t been able to. The thought of her eyes, dark green and lit with that awful, forgiving clarity, had stopped him.
No, that wasn’t true, either. What had actually stopped him was no private place to shoot up. He ran the risk of having the cops called if he jacked in and zoned out for an hour in a motel parking lot. Self-loathing crawled along his skin, burrowing in.
No wonder she didn’t want to look at him. He could barely stand to look at himself.
Now his hands shook and the unsteady lightning-bursts of pain were getting closer together, his nervous system crying out for a jack and overstrained willpower digging its heels in, refusing.
He slumped in the back seat, letting wind play over his face.
It smelled of water and thick, rank growing things, hills rising green to blot out the empty sweep of sky he’d become used to in the desert or traveling through Wyoming.
We’ll have you fixed up in no time. A door had slammed behind those beautiful eyes; he’d fucked it up somehow.
She’d obviously been glad to see him at the casino, but now the distance was palpable, her lovely face closed, cool, professional. Cath didn’t help, either. Her normally abrasive manners had gotten worse, if that were possible.
Had he done something inappropriate? He didn’t think so, but his memory was a little spotty.
He’d forgotten how gorgeous Rowan was, how a few silken strands of pale hair could fall into her face and make a man think of brushing them back, which would lead naturally to touching the curve of her cheekbone, a curve begging to be kissed just like her flawless pretty mouth or the vulnerable inner hollow of her elbow, not scarred with hypo-marks like his.
He had forgotten just how it felt to look at her bowed head, see her nape because she’d pulled her hair up in a loose knot, and feel his entire body tighten.
He’d been trying to explain why he hadn’t been back earlier.
Why he had stayed so long instead of fighting tooth and nail to escape, to get back to her even if it killed him.
He had fouled up somewhere. He hadn’t known what to expect—tears, maybe.
She’d cried in his arms plenty of times before, grief at the loss of her father and best friend still raw and sharp.
He’d been trying to remember why she called him by his first name, then her face had closed with an almost audible snap, eyes going dark and distant.
Since that moment she treated him with a polite cheerfulness, making him want fifteen minutes with a heavy bag so he could let loose some of the rage.
Just a little.
They were heading back northeast to rendezvous with the rest of Henderson’s Brigade.
Cath’s description of the situation—punctuated with such colorful terms as absolute fucking disaster, Del—left him wondering if the Society was worse off than he’d thought.
It was a miracle they had managed to elude a government apparatus with damn near unlimited funding and highly trained support staff.
Then again, they had Rowan.
If she had felt like a thunderstorm before, her talent prickling along every exposed edge, she now felt like a smooth deep river of force, the surface deceptively placid, a riptide underneath.
She seemed even more powerful now—and more self-contained than ever, her former guilt and insecurity washed away.
He’d trained her well, and functioning under fire with the Society evidently taught her a few things.
And he’d missed it, dumb useless bastard that he was, cooped up by Sigma and forgetting—however temporarily—that she even existed.
They’d left Cheyenne early that morning and were now in the lower end of the Black Hills.
The scenery was grand, but Cath snorted when Rowan remarked wistfully that she’d always wanted to see Mount Rushmore.
Delgado pushed down the urge to strangle the girl, who had slid most of her metal jewelry back on—nose rings, tongue stud, the earrings marching up each ear, the hoop in her eyebrow—and correspondingly started acting the disdainful teenager instead of seasoned Society operative.
Late-summer wind poured through the open windows, and the windshield was peppered with murdered insects.
I’ve never liked South Dakota. Delgado returned to studying the curve of Rowan’s neck, the slope of her shoulder. Looking at her made the persistent burning need for Zed fade a bit.
Thinking about touching her made a different kind of pain worse.
The kind he hadn’t realized he was feeling for months, a gnawing emptiness inside his chest. He wanted to reach, cup his hand over her nape, and whisper something in her ear—anything to erase that solemn frown as she stared unseeing at the map.
Were those glitters in her eyes? Big, fat, shining tears?
Oh, Christ. He leaned forward, unable to help himself. “Rowan? You okay?”
She flinched, as if he’d tried to touch her. “Fine.” Then she turned to look out her window, so he could see nothing but the back of her head. He’d chosen the driver’s side in the back in order to stare at her profile, and was now denied even that. “It’s just dusty, that’s all.”
“Is your leg hurting?” Cath, now concerned. For all her brash impoliteness, she seemed to sometimes care how the other woman was feeling.
“No, it’s almost healed up. The worst is over.” Was there a telltale hitch in her voice? Did she sound a little choked? “Are we stopping in Pierre?”
“Maybe just outside, for a snack. You hungry?” Cath sounded hopeful.
Of course, she’d been stuffing herself with junk food the entire trip, if Del guessed right.
Nutrition did not seem to be a word in her vocabulary.
It was a wonder how she stayed rail-thin with all the calories and preservatives swallowed.
“A little. Jus—ah, Delgado? Are you hungry?” Rowan had to half-shout to be heard over the rush of wind.
The name hit him like a sucker punch to the gut.
Not Justin. Delgado. What the rest of them used.
She’s changed her mind. Doesn’t want anything to do with me. What am I anyway, but a junked-out Sig? She’s probably already dating someone else, if she has time. God knows there were plenty at Headquarters who would have jumped at the chance.
His heart burned. It felt like a goddamn cardiac arrest. The road slipped smoothly under the Subaru’s tires, pavement singing and engine purring.
Sunlight fell thick and liquid across the dash, tingled in Rowan’s hair, picked out the crisp whiteness of a button-down shirt, worn open over a tank top.
They were supposed to be tourists, just another car with Georgia plates.
A man traveling with two pretty women, maybe a wife and a niece.
Stop it. Goddammit, stop. If there was one thing he couldn’t afford right now, it was fantasy. She didn’t want anything to do with him.
“Not hungry,” he said. It was only half true—the withdrawal was killing any hunger pangs he might be feeling, and he wouldn’t want food anyway. The only thing he needed was to be near her. “Better stop anyway, to take a look at that wound.”
“I’m fine,” Rowan protested.
“It’ll slow us down,” he answered harshly, hating himself. “Another fifty miles or so, Cath. We’ll stop for a late lunch, early dinner.”
“You got it.” Cath had no problem with taking direction from him. Old habits die hard, he thought, and didn’t miss the flash of irritation, like a bright dart of sunshine, from Rowan.
Too bad, angel. The stubborn endurance that had carried him through the last few months of hell rose up now, bright and hot. Sigma hadn’t broken him. They’d just hooked him on Zed and beaten him a little. He could take that.
He’d broken a Zed habit once and could do it again—especially if this pale-haired angel let him stay nearby. He didn’t ask for much, just to watch over her while the Society rebuilt itself.
Del, you’re a fucking fool. Just look at her. And you can’t get rid of a Zed habit by yourself again. It nearly killed you last time.
Remembering almost made him shudder—beating his head against a wall until the skin broke and bled, hours spent at the heavy bag pounding away the furious frustrating weakness and agony, prowling the halls of Headquarters because he couldn’t sleep with his skin feeling like red-hot ants swarming—but she could cure him.
He remembered the first time she’d done it, cured a woman they’d rescued from a Sig installation already moaning and eye-rolling when found.
It had taken Rowan awhile, sure—but she’d somehow treated a Zed addiction without a system flush plus detox and the implied risk of cardiac arrest for the victim.
The thought of how close it had been intensified a wash of cold sweat.
If Jilssen had found out, if Del hadn’t pushed himself to forget, Sigma might have gone to even greater lengths to acquire her.
She was a high-priority target anyway, but if they found out what she could do, it was likely to become capture-or-kill, no price too high and no mandate too broad to bring her in.
Or neutralize her.
If that happened, she would need him. Need an operative who knew every dirty trick Sigma could pull, because he’d been one of them.
Del touched the small bag nestled against his hip. Inside, the last hypo was cupped in antishock foam, just waiting to detonate inside his head, wipe out the burning in all his nerve channels. It was only going to get worse. Withdrawal was no picnic.