Each step was a struggle.Even the slight hill up to the section housing her father’s simple white marker stole breath from her lungs and strength from her legs.She fought her way up the slight rise, glad nobody was among the headstones to hear her wheeze.
Justin had given her the photos and map of her father’s gravesite, trying in his own way to help her deal with the shattering grief.
For some reason the headache got worse when she thought of him.No amount of pain medication or quiet meditation would make it go away.Her head was a large glass pumpkin balanced on a wobbling neck.It invaded her sleep, the harsh sucking pain, until she could barely think straight.
She checked the markers.No.No.No.
Oh, God.God help me.There it was.
Major Henry Price, US Marine Corps.His rank, his dates of birth and death.The carved letters rough under her fingers as she knelt, tracing her father’s name.
“Oh, Dad,” she whispered.“I miss you.God, how I miss you.”
He’d liked Justin almost immediately.Of course, Justin had chased off that Sig in the parking lot—at the time, neither she nor her father had any idea that a government agency would be trying to kidnap or kill her.Now Rowan wondered how much of Dad’s liking Justin had been a smallpush, nothing harmful, just enough to insert this seemingly innocent stranger into their lives.
Her head gave another sharp pain-twist.It hurt to think of Justin.But what else could she think of?What else—andwhoelse—did she have left?
Nobody, that’s who.Sigma had robbed her of everything.
“I’m going to make them pay.”Her voice shook as her fingertips brushed the P, the R, the I.Dad believed in honor and truthfulness.It would have hurt him to think that the government and country he’d fought for was responsible for things Rowan had seen Sigma do.Broken bodies, battered minds, psions screaming as they suffered through Zed withdrawal—a whole parade of horror.If she hadn’tseenit with her own eyes, been shot at, lived with the suffocating fear, she might not have believed it herself.
It defied belief.
“Anton.”That was the name of her enemy.Colonel Anton.
But if you want to know who’s in charge of the program, it’s Anton… Sig Zero-Fifteen… the worst Sig installation in the country.
Where’s that?
New Mexico.
Henderson had cautioned her never to go near White Sands in New Mexico, or Mount Shasta in California.Big Sig installations, like Langley.Just isn’t worth the risk.The General’s face had been so grim she hadn’t asked more.She should have, though; maybe she could have done something sooner, stopped this endless parade of trauma and death.
The sight of her father’s headstone blurred, tears welling hot and acid from the deepest part of her grief.Oh, Daddy.I’m going to do what I can.I’m so sorry.
This was entirely her fault as well, the bare white stone with the bloodless carving—nothing to tell how her father was one of the greatest cooks alive, how he could turn scraps into a feast, how he loved books on hauntings, the unexplained, psychic phenomena, all sorts of woo-woo, and how just the sound of his voice could make a little girl feel safe and special.There was nothing but this chunk of rock, carved with birth, death, name, and rank.No color, nolife, her father’s comfortable old age in the house he’d paid for with the daughter he loved all cut short by the goddamn fucking Sigs.
Because that daughter was, to put it kindly, a freak.
Rowan scanned the cemetery again.No sign of any activity save herself, the fog, and silent trees keeping watch over the brave dead.
“I love you, Daddy,” she whispered, and wished she had time to visit her mother’s grave too.It suddenly didn’t seem right that they were buried in separate cemeteries, her mother on Mount Hope with Grandma Parker, and Dad here.They should be together.
Yet another thing Sigma would pay for.
Rowan ghosted through the cemetery, found a handy spot, and muscled herself over the high stone wall.If there were security cameras, let them see her.She hadn’t been here before because it was too dangerous, the one place Sigma could be sure of kidnapping her; it was fucking anticlimactic to show up and have nothing happen.
Of course, Sigma couldn’t be watchingallthe time, and they probably were busy with the teams Henderson had sent to cause havoc all over the map, covering the retreat to Headquarters.
She found the car—the faithful blue Subaru, this time with Missouri plates instead of Georgia—undisturbed and got in, resting her aching head against the steering wheel.Justin.
Thinking of him paradoxically made the pain easier to bear.She was used to missing him, true, but the brief period of seeing him again drove home just howmuch.It would have been just as true to call her Delgado’s shadow.
He was the only stability in her fragmented world.
Her fault, again, that he’d been taken and tortured, suffered God-knew-what that he didn’t want to talk about, not even to her.Self-loathing crawled over Rowan’s skin, just like the soft maggot fingers squirming inside her brain.
When she surfaced, staring at the world outside the car, the fog had thickened.She twisted the key and was rewarded with a softly purring engine.She switched on the headlights, spent a few minutes wending aimlessly down the hills.When she found herself on the very north end of Smyrna Avenue, she knew miserably what she was about to do, and couldn’t stop herself.
