CHAPTER1
Kick.Another kick.Knee.Solid contact.Move in.Get going, do it faster, faster, precise, put your weight behind it, sweetheart!Do it.Punch.Ouch, don’t flex your wrist, throw an elbow, keep going, stitch in side.Move.Move.
MOVE!
Rowan Price, Society operative and psion, stood shaking and sweating, head hanging.Her hair swayed to either side, curtaining off the outside world.The punching bag swayed, chain creaking.
Her hands burned.The CD player on the chair by the door gave out a throbbing bass beat.She threw another punch, unwinding all the way from the hip, then moved in.Her fists almost blurred.Good solid strikes thudding into the bag, hands numb, arms on fire, shoulders jolting with pain.
He’d be proud.
“Ro?”Cath half-yelled over the music.
Rowan dropped her head even further, hunched her shoulders, and drove another punch into the bag.Another.Another.Low and dirty, the way Justin had taught her.
Don’t.Don’t think about it.
Another flurry of punches.Elbows smacking the bag as if it had personally offended her.
“Jumpoff in thirty,” Cath finally called.“Henderson needs you in fifteen.”
Rowan turned.Her cheeks were wet, shoulders dotted with beads of sweat.The sports bra was damn near soaked through, and the waistband of her shorts chafed a thin line into her back and belly.
“Ro?”Catherine, her hair cut short in an inky black pixie instead of a punked-out blue mohawk, turned the CD player off.The silence was instant, and shocking.
Cath was plump-cheeked and pretty, or would have been if not for the sheer amount of metal on her face.Nose rings, earrings marching up the curve of each ear, multiple-pierced lip, and pierced eyebrows—Rowan didn’t want toknowabout any of the other piercings.
Of course, the girl also wore a shoulder holster, the butt of a Glock snug under her left arm.Cath also usually wore a bootknife and a stiletto up her sleeve.For a Society operative, that was damn close to lightly armed.
Especially considering current events.
Rowan’s ribs heaved.A thin trickle of sweat slid chill and tickling down her back.She swiped a few damp tendrils of hair back from her forehead.“I’ll be there.Thanks, Cath.”It was an effort to be polite, to keep her voice toneless.
“You’re being a real bitch lately,” Cath informed her, crossing arms as if in self-defense.Sometimes she really did appear very young, despite the shell of prickly confidence.
Pot calling the kettle black, anyone?Rowan sighed, blew the tension out between pursed lips.“Sorry.”I don’t sound sorry at all.“Really, Cath.I am.”
The girl shrugged, the chain at her belt jingling.Her violet eyes turned cool.“You’re worrying about him again.”
Well, you get the grand prize for stating the obvious.Guilt pricked; Cath didn’t deserve her ire.
“Shouldn’t I?It’s been five whole months.”Rowan stripped her gloves, tossed them down next to the CD player.“He’s trapped somewhere, Cath.Sigma’s got him.”
“He’ll come back for you.”The girl sounded certain.“I mean, he said he would, didn’t he?”
Don’t remind me.Rowan set her jaw.“I’d better get cleaned up if Henderson wants me.Thanks for the message.”
“There, that’s the Ro I know.”Cath grinned.The change was startling, a flash of how she would look without all the metal.“I’ll meet you for jumpoff.Cool?”
I’m not cool at all, Cath.I’m about two steps away from very, very uncool.“Chilly.”
The girl bounced from the small room.Rowan glanced at the futon folded in the corner.No books and no plants, because they had to move every few weeks.Nothing but her kitbag, clothes, the never-ending tension.And Sigma always yapping at their heels.
Rowan sighed.Her hands hurt, her shoulders twinged, her legs and lungs burned both from the side-kicks she’d been practicing and her morning bout on the treadmill.The place where Justin should be inside her head was empty and aching, and her mind kept circling it like a tongue poking at a toothache.
A phantom limb, phantom pain.If he was able to come back, he would have by now.
She worked the ponytail holder free of wet, clinging hair; it hadn’t held up too well.
