When he finished, the older man let out a breath that was almost a whistle. “You’ve been busy.”
“Not voluntarily,” Marshall said.
“That’s usually how it goes,” Ross replied wryly. The humor left as quickly as it had come. He was quiet for a beat. The lines at the corners of his eyes seemed deeper when he spoke again.
“She can’t go back to Summit,” he said simply.
The words weren’t a surprise. Marshall had known it the second Hale pointed a gun toward his head. Still, hearing them spoken out loud made something inside him settle and twist at the same time.
“She already knows,” he said. “Even if she hasn’t said it yet.”
“Knowing and accepting are different animals,” Ross said. “Summit was her world. Hale built a lot of that world for her. That’s a lot of ground to lose in one night.”
Marshall glanced toward the hall where the water still ran. He pictured her standing under it, braced palms against tile, trying to scrub the memory of blood and terror and betrayal off her skin.
“She’s tougher than she looks,” he said quietly.
“I don’t doubt it,” Ross said. He studied Marshall for a long moment, eyes sharp despite the fatigue. “Sounds like she’s one of us now, whether she meant to sign up or not.”
Something in Marshall eased at that. An acknowledgment, an inclusion. It meant she wouldn’t be cut loose. It meant she’d have backup that wasn’t just him.
“Bring her to the briefing when she’s ready,” Ross went on. “She’s seen enough that we can’t keep her on the outside. And she might see pieces we’re missing. She can be an analyst for us, or she can lay low. I don’t see any other option.”
Marshall nodded once. “She’ll come.”
“I know she will,” Ross said. “Especially if you ask.”
There it was. The glint again.
“Ross—”
“She matters to you,” Ross said, cutting him off gently. “I’m not blind. I watched you nearly chew through the phone when I told you she was in the middle of this. I watched you sit here between her and the door like you were waiting for someone to try again.” His gaze softened. “You don’t have to explain it. Just...be aware of it.”
Marshall looked down at his hands, at the faint scuff marks across his knuckles from the fight at the hotel.
“I am,” he said. The admission felt like stepping off a ledge and finding ground under his feet anyway. “More than I’d like to be.”
Ross’s mouth curved, sad and knowing. “That’s how you know it’s real.”
He pushed back his chair with a scrape. The conversation had clearly drained what reserves he’d had left.
“We brief in thirty,” he said as he stood. “Take five to breathe. Then bring her down.”
The kitchen went quiet again as Ross left.
Marshall scrubbed his hands over his face, dragging the heels into his eyes until pinpricks of light sparked behind his lids. Jackson alive. Framed. Geneva on fire. Norah’s life in shards at her feet.
The shower cut off down the hall. Pipes clanked, then quieted. A few seconds later, footsteps padded back toward the kitchen.
He dropped his hands and sat up straighter automatically.
Norah stepped into the doorway, bare feet silent on the hardwood. Her hair hung in silky waves around her shoulders, darkened and heavy, the ends leaving small wet spots on the borrowed T-shirt she’d changed into. The hoodie was gone. Thecotton clung to the delicate line of her collarbone where a bruise was already blooming from where Hale had grabbed her.
He’d seen her with wet hair earlier in the week, at her house after the break in. Somehow this felt different. More intimate. He’d tasted her now. Perhaps that was the difference.
She caught the look on his face and stopped just inside the room, fingers tightening around the towel she rubbed absently in the length of her hair.
“What?” she asked, self-consciousness flickering across her features. “Did I miss some bubbles?”
