“Yep.”Tamara grinned.“Thanks to you.If you and Cath hadn’t pulled out the stops in Vegas we’d still be eating beans and running around the country like headless chickens.”
“Well, Justin actually pulled that one off.I had very little to do with it.Got shot again.”Guilt pinched sharply under Rowan’s breastbone.She managed to pour coffee for both of them.
“Don’t listen to her.”Justin took his mug with a ghost of a lopsided smile, blew across the top to cool it.“It was her quick thinking that got us all out.”
“That’s usually the case.”Tamara examined him, as if trying to put her finger on something.“You look different, Delgado.”
“Getting beaten up and smashed on Zed will do that to you.”His hazel gaze returned to rest on Rowan.“We’d better hurry.Where’s a quiet corner?”
He does look different.It’s not the lost weight or the shadows under his eyes.She found herself searching his face, looking for the change.It wasn’t just that his eyes had lost their screen of indifference.
Her head gave another pounding burst, subsided.It felt like something buried in the exact center of her brain, flaring up again to briefly stain the inside of her skull.Rowan stopped, staring at the floor, trying to locate the source of the disturbance.
“Ro?”Bowl in one hand, coffee cup in the other, Justin looked quizzical.Tamara was grinning, a wide, sparkling, mischievous smile.She turned back to the stove; Rowan caught a muffled giggle.
What?What just happened?She didn’t know, but Tamara obviously thought she was acting like a hormonal teenager.I was staring at him, wasn’t I?No, I was looking at the floor.Why?“Hm?Oh, yes.I’ll go straight up to Henderson, and you can eat in the refectory if you?—”
“I’ll come with you.”The slight smile was gone, the words clipped.“Lead the way.”
“Fine.”Rowan’s stomach threatened to cramp.She longed to find a quiet corner, persuade her body to accept some nourishment, but duty called.Henderson needed her.“Anything you want the General to know, Tamara?”
“Just tell Cath she’s not getting out of kitchen duty again.I’ll sic Del on her.”The redhead also seemed to find that prospect extremely amusing, and Rowan frowned.
She trudged from the kitchen, still trying to think of what was so different about him now.
“Penny for your thoughts,” he said behind her, as they climbed the stairs to the second floor.
Great.Now what do I say?What on earthdidyou say when the man you loved came back after being tortured and wasn’t… the same?How couldanythingever be the same again?
“Not worth it,” she said lightly, bootheels clicking down the long hall windowed all along one side, thick golden sunlight falling in dusty rectangles on the wooden floor.Her wrist twinged faintly; the bruise was yellow-green and fading, looking weeks instead of days old.“You’d get change back.”
“Still, I’d like to know.Humor me.”
She could tell his gaze on her back.“Youaredifferent.”She took a scalding gulp of coffee immediately after.
“Better or worse?”There it was, that ironic amusement.At least, she was fairly sure that was the feeling, like warm sun against her shoulders.
“Just different.”
“Distant?”
Damn the man, he’s teasing me.She shot a glance over her shoulder, caught a glimpse of his expression, and stopped short.He almost ran into her, but gracefully avoided collision at the last second.
“Kind of.”He never used to grin like that.Maybe once or twice.He was just learning to loosen up a little when Headquarters… happened.“But there’s something else.I don’t know.I’ve been trying to figure it out.”
“Just relieved to be back, I guess.”
“What exactly did they do to you?”Torture?More electroshock?The track marks were healing, of course.Any wound in her proximity tended to close up a lot faster.He wasn’t sweating or shaking like a lot of Zed addicts, though she could feel the prickling running over his skin, a different sensation than the electric crackle of touching him.Hard to keep herself so carefully contained, to keep from soaking into the borders of his mind to find out what he was really thinking under that slight smile, behind those hungry eyes just as effective at keeping his feelings hidden as the former flat indifference.
“Nothing I couldn’t handle,” he repeated.“We’d better get up to Henderson before the food gets cold.”
Her head flared again, a brief twinge gone almost the moment it started.Rowan blinked, shook her head.“Oh.Right.”
Henderson was in the west-wing nerve center, leaning over Yoshi, whose slim brown fingers tapped at a keyboard.They’d apparently set up a full system of decks.Code flashed across monitors.
“Mark,” Yoshi said quietly into the comm.“Move to your right, there’s a dead spot in front of you.”
Sounds like an operation.Rowan took another hurried gulp of coffee, scalding her tongue again.
