Chapter 21
Breakfast was more like lunch, and a hurried meal besides.
The new Headquarters was familiar to Rowan, since she had visited several times while getting everything ready for the grand move-in.
As soon as they showed up to the half-gutted industrial-size kitchen, she and Justin were greeted by Tamara pushing bowls of sesame chicken with jasmine rice, chickpeas, and greens at them.
“Eat,” the tall redhead said briskly, “then go up and see Henderson. He’s in the west wing. There’s something heating up.”
“I told you.” Justin let out a sound halfway between a laugh and a derisive snort. “If it was an emergency, they would have battered the door down.”
“Not bloody likely.” Tamara pushed a lock of coppery hair back and grinned. “You two needed a little alone-time. Welcome back, Del.”
“Thanks.” He sounded genuinely surprised, and Rowan had to hide a smile. Being scattered around without the benefit of Headquarters had at least gotten rid of some of the fear. Nobody had realized just how much they depended on his cold professionalism until they were on their own.
The less they treated him like a pariah, the better.
“Good God, who’s doing the renovations in here?” Rowan examined the mess—exposed studs and a pile of lumber, cans of paint and drop cloths, stacks of tiles. She shook her hand; her wrist felt a little tender, but not bad. “Did Boomer get called away in the middle of everything again?”
“No, it’s actually pretty close to being done, just looks bad.
Eleanor brought a bunch of the newbies back from Calgary and six teams came in, so there’s no shortage of hands.
And Yoshi just accessed and drained the old resource net, we’re actually sitting pretty when it comes to supplies.
Good thing, too. I was getting tired of eating oatmeal and beans. ”
Rowan made a face, took a spoonful of chicken. Tamara was by far the best cook they had. “Is there coffee? Oh, good. So everyone’s coming in?”
“Yep.” Tamara grinned. “Thanks to you. If you and Cath hadn’t pulled out the stops in Vegas we’d still be eating beans and running around the country like headless chickens.”
“Well, Justin actually pulled that one off. I had very little to do with it. Got shot again.” Guilt pinched sharply under Rowan’s breastbone. She managed to pour coffee for both of them.
“Don’t listen to her.” Justin took his mug with a ghost of a lopsided smile, blew across the top to cool it. “It was her quick thinking that got us all out.”
“That’s usually the case.” Tamara examined him, as if trying to put her finger on something. “You look different, Delgado.”
“Getting beaten up and smashed on Zed will do that to you.” His hazel gaze returned to rest on Rowan. “We’d better hurry. Where’s a quiet corner?”
He does look different. It’s not the lost weight or the shadows under his eyes. She found herself searching his face, looking for the change. It wasn’t just that his eyes had lost their screen of indifference.
Her head gave another pounding burst, subsided. It felt like something buried in the exact center of her brain, flaring up again to briefly stain the inside of her skull. Rowan stopped, staring at the floor, trying to locate the source of the disturbance.
“Ro?” Bowl in one hand, coffee cup in the other, Justin looked quizzical. Tamara was grinning, a wide, sparkling, mischievous smile. She turned back to the stove; Rowan caught a muffled giggle.
What? What just happened? She didn’t know, but Tamara obviously thought she was acting like a hormonal teenager. I was staring at him, wasn’t I? No, I was looking at the floor. Why? “Hm? Oh, yes. I’ll go straight up to Henderson, and you can eat in the refectory if you—”
“I’ll come with you.” The slight smile was gone, the words clipped. “Lead the way.”
“Fine.” Rowan’s stomach threatened to cramp. She longed to find a quiet corner, persuade her body to accept some nourishment, but duty called. Henderson needed her. “Anything you want the General to know, Tamara?”
“Just tell Cath she’s not getting out of kitchen duty again. I’ll sic Del on her.” The redhead also seemed to find that prospect extremely amusing, and Rowan frowned.
She trudged from the kitchen, still trying to think of what was so different about him now.
“Penny for your thoughts,” he said behind her, as they climbed the stairs to the second floor.
Great. Now what do I say? What on earth did you say when the man you loved came back after being tortured and wasn’t… the same? How could anything ever be the same again?
“Not worth it,” she said lightly, bootheels clicking down the long hall windowed all along one side, thick golden sunlight falling in dusty rectangles on the wooden floor. Her wrist twinged faintly; the bruise was yellow-green and fading, looking weeks instead of days old. “You’d get change back.”
“Still, I’d like to know. Humor me.”
She could tell his gaze on her back. “You are different.” She took a scalding gulp of coffee immediately after.
“Better or worse?” There it was, that ironic amusement. At least, she was fairly sure that was the feeling, like warm sun against her shoulders.
“Just different.”
“Distant?”
Damn the man, he’s teasing me. She shot a glance over her shoulder, caught a glimpse of his expression, and stopped short. He almost ran into her, but gracefully avoided collision at the last second.
“Kind of.” He never used to grin like that. Maybe once or twice. He was just learning to loosen up a little when Headquarters… happened. “But there’s something else. I don’t know. I’ve been trying to figure it out.”
“Just relieved to be back, I guess.”
“What exactly did they do to you?” Torture?
More electroshock? The track marks were healing, of course.
Any wound in her proximity tended to close up a lot faster.
He wasn’t sweating or shaking like a lot of Zed addicts, though she could feel the prickling running over his skin, a different sensation than the electric crackle of touching him.
Hard to keep herself so carefully contained, to keep from soaking into the borders of his mind to find out what he was really thinking under that slight smile, behind those hungry eyes just as effective at keeping his feelings hidden as the former flat indifference.
“Nothing I couldn’t handle,” he repeated. “We’d better get up to Henderson before the food gets cold.”
Her head flared again, a brief twinge gone almost the moment it started. Rowan blinked, shook her head. “Oh. Right.”
Henderson was in the west-wing nerve center, leaning over Yoshi, whose slim brown fingers tapped at a keyboard. They’d apparently set up a full system of decks. Code flashed across monitors.
“Mark,” Yoshi said quietly into the comm. “Move to your right, there’s a dead spot in front of you.”
Sounds like an operation. Rowan took another hurried gulp of coffee, scalding her tongue again.
Henderson glanced over, nodded. Rowan found a table covered with topo maps, cleared a space for both of them. She settled down, watching intently.
“Heavy fire on your nine, watch out, on your nine.” Yoshi sounded calm, as always, but Rowan’s heart flipped. Who was out, and where were they? “Cassie, see if you can give him a little cover. Rick, stay down. Cassie’s coming in.”
Rick and Cassie. Deborah’s team. They must be coming in from California. Rowan caught a flare of complex feeling from Yoshi; he’d been hanging out a lot with Deborah, teaching her codestringing tricks.
Rowan was about to push her chair back and hover over him, seeking to help, but Justin’s hand covered her bruised wrist. “Eat first,” he said. “Won’t do anyone any good if you collapse.”
So she sat and listened through the mission gone critical, barely tasting the food as Deborah reported being pinned under heavy fire with Sigs everywhere and half her team wounded. She didn’t sound happy, but neither did she sound panicked.
“Just sit tight, Deb,” Yoshi murmured. “They’re on the way.” Then, he said, “Cath, you read me? They’re pinned.”
Cath’s out there? Oh, God. Rowan listened, mechanically eating and marking off the intervals as Yoshi spoke, only his almost-blurring fingers showing the strain. The tender places inside her head twinged a little as she fought the urge to help; there was nothing she could do.
Yosh was perfectly calm, Henderson didn’t need her. She could help best by staying out of the way. Cath. Be careful, honey. I hope Zeke’s with her. And Brew.
“Steady, steady… Here they come. Stay down. They’re coming in fast. There.” Yosh sounded relieved. “Get everyone aboard. Don’t worry about the Sigs, Deb, that’s Brew’s job. Yessir, I’m working on it.” His fingers danced. “Nasty little buggers, aren’t they.”
He spared a look at Henderson, nodded. The older man straightened, steel-rimmed glasses glinting.
“Thank God.” Henderson’s mouth shaped the words. He rubbed briefly at his nape, and glanced at Rowan and Justin.
Rowan found, much to her surprise, that she’d eaten three-quarters of her food. Her coffee had cooled, too. She finished it in two long swallows. Welcome caffeine was filtering into her bloodstream.
“Hey,” she said as Henderson approached, his boots clicking on the floor. “What can I do?”
“Not a damn thing.” Henderson stretched, rolled his shoulders.
The long-sleeved shirt clung, and his Glock rode in a shoulder holster.
He wore jeans, but was barefoot; his dark hair was rumpled and ruffled, white streak glinting.
“They’ll be fine. Cath and Brew will bring ‘em all home. Yoshi’ll be glad to see Deb again.
” For some reason Henderson glanced at Justin, who had finished his food, staring into his coffee cup.
“A Sig net in Cincinnati and some heavy fire. They just snatched a new telepath right from under Sigma’s nose. How you doing, Del?”
“Better than a while ago,” Justin replied. “Hear you’ve drained the resource net. Any complications?”