Page 17 of 72 Hours

His eyes kept flickering over my body. He looked like he’d swallowed a couple of lemons and then bitten into the peel. Like I disgusted him. It’s not that I hadn’t seen that look before, you know? Just not for a while.

And it still hurt.

“What do you do here all day, Tanner?” His voice was calm, but I knew that deception well. Why did you run away to a pit like this? he was really saying, I was sure. Why are you such a loser? Why am I trapped here with you when I’d rather be anywhere else?

Hell, it wasn’t like I didn’t agree with him. “That’s none of your business, man. Hasn’t been for a long time. That’s how we both wanted it, that’s how it is. You can spread the papers out on the couch, right? I’ll move off, and we can have a look at it.”

“We?”

I grunted with frustration. “Look, it’s not like all the Secret Spy stuff is your specialised subject, is it? I have more experience than you in the Nancy-Drew-invisible-ink business. It’ll take you a couple of hours to decode Brad’s handwriting, let alone the message underneath.” And you’ve been hurt. I nearly bit my tongue off to stop saying it aloud. It’d only irritate him. Someone tried to blow you up. Your brains are going to be like scrambled eggs for a while. The mix of emotions that thought raised in me was disturbing.

We both scrambled clumsily to clear a space. Niall flipped open a couple of boxes, sending dust and the waft of damp cardboard across the room, and I swept the cushions back and cleared the coffee mugs back out to the kitchen. He scowled; I scowled. But we got on with it.

When I came back into the room, he had the files he wanted, though he was clutching them to him like precious family heirlooms. I swore and tried to snatch at them—did he expect me to have X-ray vision? —and he growled and started to protest. A file got caught in the middle and its edges tore open with a loud complaint. With a fluttering sigh, a batch of papers tumbled out on to the floor.

Neither of us moved to pick anything up. We stood paralysed, facing each other, breath stilled, eyes wide with shock. We had both reached for the slipping file together, and both missed it. But our hands had caught at the nearest alternative.

Each other’s palm.

I COULDN’T MOVE FOR a few seconds. Every sense was elsewhere.

His skin was cool; rough on the pads under his fingers, smooth along the life lines. Skin against skin—it was something I’d not had for a while. And certainly not his. Memories slid cruelly under my defences. My eyesight blurred and my heart raced.

Then I thought I saw Niall suppress a shudder. I snatched my hand out of his grip, if only to save him his coronary and me my pride. We both stood there, at a loss for what to do next.

“Been a while, eh?” I was baiting him, I knew. I hadn’t had any communication with him for months now, let alone seen or touched him like this. The others had tried to keep in contact, to support me, despite my own desire for exile. But Niall and I hadn’t spoken since the day I left.

Baiting him and tormenting myself. Ridiculous. How long did I think I could joke about it?

He took a tight breath, and his hand fell back to his side. I liked to think his step back was because of uncertainty. “Don’t be facetious, Tanner. You made your choice. We both got the same suspension period. You just chose....” He paused. Bit at his lip. Christ, I knew he hated it when I provoked him to speak without planning it all out first.

“Yeah?”

“You chose to take your suspension away from the Team. You hid yourself here. You abandoned it all.” His eyes caught mine and he glared at me. Of course, he was totally loyal to the Department and the Team. He had no sympathy for my defection. I didn’t know why I thought I saw hurt in his eyes as well as fury.

He continued to move back until he was a decent distance away from me, trying to relax the tension in his body. I bent and picked up some of the fallen papers, then laid them on the couch. They may have been in the wrong order or completely upside down; I wasn’t focusing too well. “If that’s how you see it, that’s fine with me.” I sounded hoarse. “I don’t have to explain anything to you. You stayed, of course. Hanging around the Team, working out your after-class detention. Committed to the cause until the bitter end.” Guess you had other things to stay for, though. “So you’ve been back at work for a while?”

He didn’t answer directly. He leaned back against the wall, though there weren’t a hell of a lot of other places to rest while still keeping a safe distance from my contagion. “You’re the one acting like a kid, Tanner. I haven’t had any special treatment, if that’s what you mean. I’m still in the last stage of my suspension, same as you. But I’ve been in touch with Judith all along. In your words, I’ve been hanging around the Team, but in case I was needed. When the attacks started, she called me in.” He sighed, obviously annoyed that he had to justify his behaviour. “Everyone in the Team has a role to play, Tanner. We’re all needed, especially at this time. That’s more important than any internal disciplinary matters.”

“Yeah.” Maybe his dressing down hadn’t been as humiliating as mine; maybe his session with Judith hadn’t been so heated. Maybe, at that particular time, his mind hadn’t been white with fury the way mine was. “Guess when you told Judith just what a shit I’d been, the sympathy vote was with you, anyway—”

“I never told her anything,” he said sharply.

I raised an eyebrow, and the bitter words dried in my throat.

He was flushed. “She just saw our fight and disciplined us accordingly. I never told her anything about the reasons it started, nothing of what was said between us. It was private, not relevant to the mission. It wasn’t for her to know.”

It was private. His words echoed my own thoughts. Perhaps I’d misjudged him. Mind you, the mood I was in then, I’d have misjudged the Archangel himself. But that didn’t stop me feeling a little ashamed now. “Okay,” I said. Sorry kind of stuck in my throat.

“We were... dammit! We behaved appallingly, you must have realised that.” Niall’s expression was very grim. “We were unprofessional. We jeopardised the surveillance. They couldn’t let it go unpunished. But it’s all over now.”

I saw him grimace, even as that superbly pragmatic remark slipped out from his mouth, even as he realised how his words—all over now—could be taken on several levels. His eyes flashed with a depth of fury that I could have drowned in. He was angry with me, but angry with himself too.

“Sure is,” I said, smoothly. “All over. Wipe the slate clean of it all, right?”

“Don’t be such a brat, Tanner. Running off like a scolded child. Did you expect someone to come begging you back?”

“Fuck you.” I knew I deserved his anger but I wasn’t backing down. “I had to get away. You’d know that, if you had any idea about me at all!”