“They took her,” she choked out. “He looked at me. I didn’t move. I couldn’t move.”
“Not your fault,” I said.
“It is. I should have done something.”
“If you had stepped in, you would be in that elevator too.”
“I should have done something,” she said again, like it was a fact, not an argument.
Cap’s voice crackled in my ear. “Status.”
“I’ve got her,” I said. “She’s done. We are pulling her out.”
Amanda’s head snapped toward me again. “No,” she said. “No, I can still work. I can get back on my station. I can access the internal server, you still need me in there, you know I am the only one who?—”
“You are done,” I cut in. “Op is burned.”
“It isn’t. He doesn’t know who I am. I can still move. I froze like an idiot, but I can still fix it, I can still?—”
She tried to stand and her legs buckled. I caught her before she hit the ground.
“Let me go,” she said. “I can walk. I am not a liability. I know my shit, Wrecker, I am not some girl you have to haul out of the fire.”
Her voice was shaking, but the words had an edge to them. That was the thing about her. Even with fear chewing through her, she still tried to fight me on the way out.
“Tell her she’s pulled,” Cap said in my ear. “Non-negotiable. We are not losing her over this.”
“You heard the man,” I told her.
Her eyes flashed. She hated that. Hated being told she was done. Hated that her body had locked up on her more than anything the Watcher had done.
I picked her up anyway. She swore at me the whole way to the exit in between sharp, broken breaths.
Four days later, she was in my bed at the compound, looking like she hadn’t slept in years.
Her cup rattled as she set it back on the nightstand. “You’re staring,” she said.
“You look like shit,” I answered.
“Flattering.”
“Have you eaten today?” I asked.
“Bossy.”
“That a yes?”
She rolled her eyes, which was a good sign. “If Doc brings me more toast and bananas, I’m going to hack his medical records and list him as clinically annoying.”
“There she is,” I murmured.
“Who?”
“The pain in my ass I recognize.”
That got me the ghost of a smile. It was gone almost as fast as it came.
Her gaze dropped to the doorway. The hall beyond it was quiet, but I saw the way her shoulders tensed when someone walked by. Just footsteps. Normal morning traffic.
