The mirror greeted her with a vision of a rumpled, very pale Rowan, hands visibly shaking, taking a few moments to rinse the taste of fear from her mouth, splash her face with cold water.She decided to keep her tank top on and slide the other shirt over it.
The chill worked its way all the way down to her bones.It wasn’t a physical coldness, and the extra layer of clothing didn’t seem to do much good.
She emerged to find the lights off again and Justin by the window, peering into the parking lot.A ground-level room had too many possible avenues of approach.The only trouble was, higher up, the avenues of escape were just as few as the avenues of approach.
The portable dampers were still running; he would leave them here and live just in case.“You ready?”
“Ready enough,” she managed.
A thin, tight smile hovered around the corners of his mouth, and her heart thumped.“Don’t worry, angel.”
“I’m not worried.”Her voice shook.Embarrassment warred with honesty, and a compromise was reached.“You’re here.”She tried not to sound childish.
His eyes warmed for a brief moment.“That’s right.Got your kitbag?”
She nodded.Her throat was dry and her head began to hurt, throbbing in time to her racing heart.“Del…”
“For Christ’s sake, angel,” he said, peering out into the parking lot again, “it’sJustin.Now come on.”
The hall was quiet, carpeted in brown, and thick with the smell of danger.Rowan clenched her jaw to keep her teeth from chattering, Justin’s hand closed around her arm just above her elbow, and she had the sudden feeling that the past was curving on itself, snakelike, doubling like a movie reel.He’d hustled her out of hotel rooms before, in the long dim days of their first escape from Sigma.She had never asked how he’d managed to keep a sedated psion out of the hands of several Sig search teams, bringing them both safely to Headquarters with only two nasty knife wounds and a severe case of exhaustion.
He made a low sound of strained amusement as they reached the end of the hall, under the glowing-green exit sign.“Feels just like old times, huh?Down the stairs, and we’ll take the door to the back parking lot.”He pushed the door open.
Rowan stopped dead.The stairwell should have been lit with fluorescents.Instead, it was a black pit.Danger exhaled, and Rowan heard a soft sliding sound.A footstep?
Justin yanked her back.
“No other stairs,” Justin muttered.“All right.”
“No elevator,” she said as he stepped back, sweeping the door closed.A quick glance—nothing he could use to bar the door, which would have been her first thought too.He’d already instinctively put himself between her and the stairwell; she could feel sudden determination.
“Too dangerous.”That was the first rule:neveruse the elevator if you could help it.It was too easy to snip a wire, catching prey between floors like a rat in a cage.
She could sense his brain clicking through alternatives.He dug in his pocket, fishing the room key out.Why didn’t he leave that?
“I thought they might have moved in on the stairs,” he said.God knew they had been close enough before for him to hear what she was thinking.At least once they’d started sharing a bed.“Back inside, Ro.Quick.”
The naked, fizzing feeling of dampers slid over her again as they ducked back into the room.The hall was empty, but for how long?And the stairwell… so dark.She’d never felt that kind of icy malice before.
“Get the top sheet,” he said, pointing, and did a strange thing.He backed up to the end of the short entryway the door gave onto, a gun suddenly in his hand.He crouched down and lifted the gun carefully.“It’s cotton, nice and strong.”
Oh, God, you have got to be kidding.She didn’t argue, yanking the bedspread away and tearing the sheet loose.“We could make a movie out of this,” she managed, in a thready, unsteady whisper.Her head throbbed—not with the glassy needling-and-nausea of Sigma, but a different pain, this one rising and falling like a roller coaster, making her stomach flutter.What is that?
“Not a very good one,” he replied calmly.“Find something to brace that with, angel.We’re taking the short way down.”
If he was prepared to risk that, it must be more serious than evenshethought.“If they have snipers?—”
“This isn’t an appropriations or a sweep team.It’s Carson and his fucking psychopath.Hurry.”He sounded calm, but his mind knotted inside hers, dark intent and strange exhilaration making a lethal cocktail.His pulse sped up, and hers wasn’t far behind.“Seems like every time I get an hour alone with you something comes up.”
“Curse of living in interesting times, I guess.”I sound calm.Good for me.She dragged the table to the window, turning it over and slip-knotting the end of the sheet.“Justin?—”
He waved at her to be quiet; Rowan swallowed the words.
Everything slowed down.She finished threading the remainder of the sheet through the slipknot.Her heart hammered, her palms slipping wetly against cotton.She had just half-turned to glance out the window at the parking lot when a sharp spike of agony slammed through her head andtwisted.
I have you now,an old, lipless voice whispered, pulling, sinking in, and burning.I have you now.You’ve run a pretty course, my fine girl, but it’s over.Give in.
She was vaguely aware of cursing—Justin’s voice, a rough sound of effort, a sharp popping roar of gunfire and the sudden whistling as a knife clove air.She was barely aware of her head hitting the floor with stunning force as the old voice burrowed past every defense Henderson and Miss Kate had taught her to painstakingly erect.The slicing fishhooktouched, speared through, and pulled her, shrieking, out of her own head.
