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And all Indy could think was OK get it together, keep it together, don’t lose your shit, don’t come undone.
Yes, she damn well needed to keep it together, Indy ordered herself with an almost manic forcefulness. She couldn’t allow herself to unravel like she almost had up there.
Because up there was so far away now, so long ago now. She’d discarded something heavy up there in that hotel room, excised a cancer in the operating theater in the clouds, rescued an abandoned child, released a tortured mother.
And along with it had left behind any excuse to fall apart again.
No, she couldn’t fall apart now.
She needed to hold it together.
Not so much for herself anymore.
But for him.
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Do it for her, Ice told himself as the elevator door opened and let in the chaos of a bustling lobby in Mumbai’s finest hotel. Keep it together for Indy. She thinks she just killed her mother, and hell, from what that dead woman was saying, maybe shewasIndy’s mother.
No, you can’t trust a damn thing you see or hear, Ice told himself feverishly as he kept his arm firmly wrapped around Indy’s waist. Yes, that woman mumbled something about Benson, but that doesn’t mean she’s Indy’s mother. It only means Benson is a damn liar, a snake in the grass, a dog in the manger, a wolf in a suit, a coyote pretending to be a man.
“What are we going to do, Ice?” came her voice in a far-too-loud whisper, her mouth way too close to Ice’s neck, her scent breathtakingly intoxicating, her body exhilaratingly warm against his.
Ice gulped back what had bubbled up from the depths of his memory in that elevator. Indy had seemed close to losing her mind about the ridiculously impossible, definitely delusional scene in that hotel room, but she seemed better now. Good, because chances were pretty good that Indy didn’t kill her own mother in that room.
But the whole thing triggered something in Ice, something that had been sitting quietly in the shadows of his memory, waiting for a chance to pounce, waiting for a crack in his psychic armor, a crack wide enough to lob that guilt-grenade into his consciousness, remind him that maybe Ice had done what Indy only suspected she had:
Killed his own Mama.
Papa too.
Not with a gun or a knife.
Not with a bomb or bullets.
With words and choices.
With emotions and feelings.
He’d never taken any of that woo-woo crap seriously back then, neverreallybelieved that emotional cuts could manifest as physical wounds, that unresolved feelings could fester into flesh-and-blood symptoms, that traumas of the mind could someday become tumors of the body.
But right now Ice didn’t knowwhatto believe.
So he pulled Indy closer, tightening his grip around her waist with a desperation not just to protect her but to protect himself, not just to save her but to save himself, not just to help her keep it together but to stop himself from coming undone, unwinding like a spring coiled too tight for too fucking long, erupting from deep inside like a geyser blowing through bedrock, years of pressure creating cracks in the psychological crust that had protected Ice from his own guilt, his own rage, his own shame.
It was all coming out.
“We have to get out of the country,” Ice managed to say through gritted teeth as he flashed a tense smile at an earnest hotel staffer whose only job seemed to be to stand at attention and nod his grinning head like a toy clown at each guest walking through the ornate hotel lobby.
And there were a lot of guests. Too many. Any one of them could be another assassin. Fuck, you need to get out of here, Ice told himself as he felt the LSD rising to its fever-pitch peak, getherout of here, move, dammit, but not too fast, not too slow.
Hell, were they moving too fast or too slow, Ice wondered with a manic drug-fueled grin plastered on his face. He adjusted his sunglasses, guided Indy to the big glass sliding doors that swished back and forth, letting in slashes of red-gold morning sunlight that looked like laser beams of hellfire somehow coming from the heavens.
“Out of the country? Now? Like this?” Indy had that same manic grin plastered on her pretty face, her eyes bulging like marbles as they stepped out into the maddening morning sun. “Oh, it burns, Ice,” she giggled as she tried to squint but couldn’t because the muscles around her eyes were twitching like little dancing dolls.
Ice snatched off his shades and gave them to her. Then in a swift smooth motion he slung the glowing pulsing duffel off his shoulder, unzipped what he hoped to hell was the correct side-pocket, dug into it, then exhaled in exhilarated relief when his buzzing fingers closed around an identical pair of Wayfarer shades.
“OK, we totally look like two druggie American tourists,” Indy giggle-muttered as she adjusted the shades which were far too big for her face. “Which, of course, we are.”