Carver pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes, stretching out his neck as he did so. “I’m sorry I disturbed you with my nightmare.” He met her eyes, and she had to look away.
“No problem.” He was right, obviously. They had to stay professional. She couldn’t take care of him, no matter how much she wanted to.
She collected all of her paperwork and brought it down to sit next to him, slipping the note back into her journal before he saw it. “We should create a game plan. We’ll be here for one more full day, then two more stops. A stop tonight and a stop tomorrow afternoon before they drop us off. Then we’ll spend the two days walking. It will be easier to plan now, here, than when we’re walking across the wilderness.”
“Good idea.” Carver reached behind her for his pack, and she held her breath rather than risk catching a hint of his musk.
“I looked at the map earlier, and I think the main gate will be our best bet for getting in,” Carver began. “It will be heavily guarded, but more people will be passing through so they won’t check everything as thoroughly.”
Clara nodded, “Agreed. How tall are the walls? Will we be able to leave over them?”
Carver shook his head, “No. They’re over 20 feet tall, and each section of the wall is guarded. They also have snipers on all of these points,” he pointed to sections just above the gates, “So that anyone who tries to escape can be easily shot down.”
“Then we’ll have to leave the same way we enter–with a group of people and pray they don’t look at us too hard.” She didn’t explain she wouldn’t be leaving with him. There was a reason Command hadn’t told him she would stay.
“Pretty much,” Carver admitted. “Unless our contact knows a way that isn’t detailed on this map. Maybe there’s a smaller gate.”
“I don’t like how much power one person has in this mission.” Clara twisted the bracelet around her wrist until she noticed Carver staring. She clenched her hands into fists and put them in her lap.
He shrugged, gaze shifting from her hands back onto the maps. “It was her intel that sent us on this trip anyway.”
“And we trust her?”
“Do you trust anyone?”
She could tell he meant the question genuinely, but she hated him for asking it. How could she trust anyone after him?
She spun her bracelet around her wrist again as they continued to pour over the map. There were so many details they had absolutely no control over. She couldn’t control this assignment. All the plotting in the world wouldn’t guarantee they came out alive.
10CARVER
Carver wished he could have stopped the nightmare before Clara saw it. Not because of his pride, no, he couldn’t care less if she thought he was weak. He didn’t need to earn her affection. From the way she looked at him, he already had too much of it to be a good thing.
He didn’t want her to see an episode because she couldn’t help but care. Even now, after everything she had been through, her instinct was to care for him. And that terrified him. It terrified him to wake up from a dream where he watched someone torture her and see her standing over him, eyes wide, trying to help him. She needed to keep her distance. Heneededher to keep her distance.
He couldn’t explain that to her. He couldn’t explain the reasoning behind all of the his choices. Not without breaking the rules. It was his duty, his highest purpose, to keep her alive. She was never supposed to end up here: the highest ranked assassin, stuck on a train with him for the riskiest mission he’d ever encountered.
He’d made a deal. They’d assigned her to assassins because she was weak and would be weeded out. Then she’d be safe. Outside of the war. Back with her mom who had begged him todo something. But that’s not what happened. Clara proved them all wrong. He hated her for it, everything he did to keep her safe rendered worthless. Butdamn. He also loved her for it.
He didn’t miss the note she slipped into her journal. Though curiosity plagued him, he ignored its throb, focusing instead on what she had asked of him.
Carver kept his back straight as they ran through potential plans, careful not to lean into her. He kept his own contingency in the back of his mind. He was fully willing to sacrifice himself if it meant getting her out alive. “I think only one of us should go into the labs. The other one should wait here,” he pointed to a spot between the city and where the labs should be, “To keep guard and be ready for the escape.”
He felt Clara stiffen beside him, “You’re trying to protect me.” It wasn’t a question, and any defense he gave would only make him seem guiltier.
“There’s no need for both of us to go into the lab.” A logical response, but even he could feel its frailty. She weighed this, her blue eyes stormy in the darkening train car.
“No, I think we should both go in. We’ll need each other to get the weapon out. They didn’t tell us how big it is, or how we can conceal it.” He was sure the details he was missing were on his note, but through his insane bout of stubbornness, he was still refusing to view it.
His mind scrambled to think of a rebuttal, butscrew it, she was right. “You know I’m right,” she prodded. Carver inhaled sharply. “You can just admit it.” Admitting she was right wasn’t the problem. The problem was he didn’t want to put her in more danger than she had to be in. And she seemed all too willing to dive into the thick of it. Was that another thing he had created? Was her reckless impulsivity a product of the hurt he had inflicted?
“We agreed,” her voice was softer now, as if sensing his inner struggle. “The assignment comes first. For the sake of the assignment, we both need to go in. You can’t protect me. Rules of engagement.”
Carver wanted to shake off his frustration, to make a joke about how he was trying to be efficient, or that he would be the one to stay outside. But every idea he had seemed illogical and revealed too much. She couldn’t know how much he cared. So instead, he patted the folded set of rules, “It’s a rule for a reason,” was the only response he could generate.
Clara fell silent for a while, and Carver attempted to collect his thoughts and figure out how to keep her safe. “Is this harder than you expected?” Her words came out as a whisper. He couldn’t help but feel it was a question asked against her better judgment. That was a sentiment he understood too well.
“Yeah,”if only you knew how brutally hard this is for me. If only you knew that I want to throw you off this train to keep you safe. I would damn myself to death if I could keep you out of the lab. This was never supposed to happen.
