“Hurts,” Rowan said in a colorless voice.And it did—four hours after she’d been shot the agony was enough to draw a gray curtain over her vision.She was sweating, cotton T-shirt sticking to her armpits and the small of her back.“Better soon.”
“I hope so.You look like hell.”Cath bit her lower lip, slid the car into “drive,” and began to roll through the rest stop.The air conditioning came on full-blast; Rowan managed to open her eyes.
The gray-green blurs were trees hung with Spanish moss.The small brick rest stop, housing two bathrooms and a map proclaiming Georgia to be aPeach of a State!,receded as Cath accelerated onto the long onramp.It had taken most of Rowan’s waning strength to simply stay conscious andboostYoshi as Henderson—with his trusty pendulum—found the Sigma check teams, and Yoshi used his talent for electronics to long-distance trigger their equipment.Both the General and the slim Japanese man were in bad shape as well, having stretched their talents to the limit.
Zeke would get them out; Boomer and Brew were well on their way with Lewis and several pieces of gear, heading for the Canadian border.Rowan, for now, was Cath’s responsibility—at least until the mind-numbing pain stopped and she could thinkagain.
She squeezed her eyes shut, tears trickling down her cheeks.“Justin,” she whispered.He was back there, in the city they’d just escaped.Why did she feel like she was abandoning him again?
“It’s okay, Rowan.If he’s back there, he’s probably got his hands full.He’ll find you.”Cath popped her chewing-gum, violet eyes focused on the road.
“It’s been months.”I sound like an idiot.Her mouth was dry.The pain in her shoulder gave one more excruciating twinge and, thankfully, began to recede.
“And you just got proof he was still alive, right?”Cath smashed the accelerator and the car leapt forward, merging with heavy afternoon traffic.“What do you want for dinner?We’ll stop for something—oh, like Mexican.Mexican sound good?”
“Fine.”Rowan forced her eyes open.“How are we for supplies?”
“Got plenty of everything, including ammo.There’s the real Rowan.Nice to have you back.”Cath popped her gum again.“Think of this like a vacation.We’ll be Thelma and Louise.”
“Christ, I suppose I’m Louise.”It was a pale joke, but Cath giggled anyway.
“You better believe it, sweetheart.Now, if you’re not still moaning, dig out that map and start naggervating me.”Cath hummed as she felt around in her purse—a khaki army-surplus map bag that also doubled as her kitbag—for a pack of cigarettes.“And push the lighter in, will you?”
“Give me a few minutes, Cath.I gotshot, for God’s sake.”The pain receded all at once, leaving Rowan sweat-soaked and chill in the blast of cold air.Four hours of hell, and her shoulder felt tender and dislocated.It would be better tomorrow, and in two or three days the scar would begin to shrink.Her old childhood wounds—a small scar on her right knee, the long one on the underside of her left arm from a bicycle mishap—had begun to shrink too; a consequence of her breaking whatever psionic barrier she’d smashed the night Headquarters was breached.
“Yeah, but look at you.Bet it’s all closed up by now.That’s some voodoo you got, baby.”
Rowan closed her hand tentatively over her wounded shoulder.It felt hot even through the corduroy jacket Yoshi had made her take.He’d packed her clothes and kitbag, too; the canvas messenger bag rested between her hip and the center console.She was armed and dangerous, as the old police shows would have said.
Funny.I wouldn’t have known what to do with a gun a year and a half ago.Now I feel naked if I don’t have one.And I understand so much more about Justin now.
Like what it might have cost him to drag a sedated Rowan across the country, eluding Sigma traps and nets to get her to safety.Like what it might have done to him, watching her sink further and further into grieving apathy.
Like how he must have felt when she’d insisted on becoming an operative.She’d thought he was being brutal, but he’d simply had to be twice as tough as the Sigs would be, preparing her to face an enemy with no conscience and few scruples.It must have tortured him to act so coldly toward her in the practice room.
Rowan sighed, hand tightening on her shoulder.A jolt of fading discomfort lanced across her chest.“I’ve got to get some sleep,” she said heavily.“Wake me up for dinner.”
“Sure thing.”Cath’s lighter clicked—she must’ve gotten tired of waiting for the dashboard one.She inhaled sharply, cracked a window to ventilate the smoke.The heavy smell of swamp and heat filtered into the car’s interior.
Rowan fell asleep thinking about juicy green vines and the life rioting wildly out of still, stagnant water and sodden ground.
CHAPTER8
He pickedwest because something too deep to be just-instinct stirred vaguely in him at the thought.Besides, it made no sense for her to go north; that would bring her closer to some of Sigma’s thickest-scanned areas.South would pin her against the Gulf with no escape routes after a major brush with them, and east would do the same with the Atlantic.
So west it was.
It had been absurdly anticlimactic to escape.All he had to do waspushone heavily armed guard at the bottom of the murderously unfinished stairwell.Apparently even Andrews thought only a suicidally insane person would brave the rickety, no balustrade, leap-over-gaps.
Maybe they were right.In any case, one bored guard smoking a cigarette was no match for Del.He wanted to take the man’s wallet and gear, not to mention weapons, but for maximum confusion he needed to simply vanish without a trace.
Negotiating the security net on the ground floor and the three-block radius outside the building was another matter.It took him two precious hours to traverse those three blocks.Keeping himself invisible from the psionics and their handlers—he had to avoid killing one of them and leaving a hole, too.The wet heat and slowly increasing need for a hit of Zed made it even more difficult to concentrate.He even crouched behind a dumpster for a full twenty minutes, less than six feet away from a precog and her handler, only escaping when the handler needed to take the thin bald girl in to a 7-11 bathroom because she had started to moan softly and sway with her knees pressed together.
I could have ended up like that.
Maybe this faceless Rowan Price could have, too.The thought of that deep, softly peaceful mind broken, maybe a brutal handler to add to the fun, made sheer red protective fury rise in him.
What the hell am I doing?
