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Ice flashed a grin as they walked arm-in-arm away from the swishy sliding doors and towards a long line of black-and-yellow taxicabs. He shook his head vigorously at the welcoming taxi-drivers who were standing beside their boxy little cars like grinning footmen ready to hoist their valued passengers into waiting chariots.
It was like they’d snapped into a totally different reality again. The hotel room and its darkness suddenly seemed so far away that Ice would have sworn under oath that it had never happened, didn’t exist, wasn’t just a different life but a different reality, had happened to someone else.
One look at Indy’s grinning mug and Ice knew she was along for the ride. The morning sun had pulled them out of that dark place, a place that now seemed too ridiculous to be real.
“You all right?” Ice’s grin settled to a steady smile as his mind snapped into vivid focus, his acid-enhanced brain rearranging itself to open up all those pathways created from years of Delta training designed to handle overwhelming stress.
Indy nodded furiously, the sunglasses clearly giving her a sense of security, taking the edge off the paranoia that anyone looking into her eyes would immediately tell she was on something.
“Yes, even though I shouldn’t be all right.” Indy touched her mouth, gasping as if she’d only just realized she was grinning like an idiot. “Oh, my God. I can’t believe just a few minutes ago we were in that hotel room and . . . and . . .”
“Don’t,” Ice said urgently, slipping his arm around her waist again. “This drug will take you wherever you point it. It’s a psychological weapon, and like any weapon it can save you or destroy you.”
Indy huffed out a breath, nodding earnestly like one of those lobby-standing staffers. “TheTimesdid a feature last month about how some of these psychedelic drugs are being used to treat PTSD, cure addictions, help victims of physical and emotional violence overcome their trauma.”
“Yeah, but only in small doses.” Ice shrugged uncomfortably. His parents had said the same thing a decade ago after that traumatically trippy Thanksgiving which seemed to have an eerily clear connecting line to the here and now, perhaps linking every event in Ice’s life that led up to the here and now—the cancer, quitting the Army to move back home, going back to West Point to teach, meeting John Benson. “This wasnota small dose.”
Indy gulped back a giggle. “Well, it’s probably half the dose Scarlet intended for me alone.”
Ice frowned. “Scarlet?”
Indy gulped again. This time it wasn’t a giggle. “You must not have heard everything the woman said before dying. She said her codename was Scarlet. She said Benson gave her that name when he put her into the NOC program.”
Ice’s frown cut deeper. He stopped abruptly in the middle of the sidewalk, cocked his head in her direction, tried to get a read on whether Indy was close to tumbling back down to that dark place, whether she was pointing this weaponized drug in the wrong direction.
She looked back at him through her big sunglasses, shrugging with controlled calmness. “I’m all right,” she said, the words tumbling out rapidly. “I mean, my mind is flying like a pig with wings, my vision is a swirling mass of laser beams and surrealist paintings, my tongue feels like a rubber snake in my mouth, and you look like the abominable snowman melting in the sun.” She snorted out a giggle. “But now that I know what’s happening to me, I can handle it. There’s nothing to do but ride it out, right? There’s no antidote, no quick fix, no stopping this, yeah?”
“Yeah.” Ice cracked a relieved—if slightly psychotic—smile. “Can’t just drink a cup of coffee and sober up. We’re on this train until the last stop.”
“Got it.” Indy scrunched up her face. “So what’s the next stop on the crazy train?”
Ice rubbed his stubble, which felt stiff like straw beneath his squishy fingerpads. “We need to get out of the country ASAP. Didn’t have time to wipe down the room, so eventually our fingerprints will get picked up. They’ll get a hit on my alias from when I entered the country yesterday. I assume you got fingerprinted by the Indian authorities to get diplomatic clearance to be stationed at the Embassy?”
Indy nodded, rubbed her chin with the back of her hand, rolled her tongue over her lips like she was fascinated by how she tasted.
Ice gulped back a sudden urge to taste her too. He reminded himself that this drug was like a guided missile, so he better be careful where he pointed that thing.
“Point the way.” Indy was chewing her lips like they were gummy worms. “Airport? Bus station? Seaport? Flying saucer launchpad? Wheeeoow!”
Ice chuckled. “Simmer down, Spacegirl.” He patted his cargo flaps, then groaned. “Oh, right. I smashed my Darkwater phone.”
Indy smacked his chest with the back of her hand. “I noticed that back at the room. Why?”
Ice rubbed the back of his neck. “Decided I couldn’t trust Benson. Didn’t want him listening. Didn’t want him tracking us.” He shrugged, then nodded firmly. “Which was probably wise—if what that woman said about him is true.”
“Scarlet.”
Ice blinked behind his shades. The name triggered another name. One that Benson had mentioned on the phone before everything got turned upside down and inside out.
“Rhett Rodgers.” Ice gulped back a rush of something he hoped was just the drug making random connections that wouldn’t hold up under the clear light of sobriety. “ScarletandRhett? Coincidence, you think?” He tried to grin, but that rush of random realization choked the smile off his lips. “Wait, not just that. It’s Scarlet, Rhett, and . . . andIndia.”
Indy let out a puzzled laugh. “What are you going on about? Didn’t peg you for aGone with the Windfanatic.”
“I’m not.” Ice shook his head, hoping something had rattled loose and would fall back into place. It didn’t. In fact more things came loose and rattled around in the squirming coils of his brain-folds. “But Benson is a fan. Or was, thirty years ago. Rhett Rodgers. You know that name?”
Indy shrugged. “Sounds vaguely familiar, yeah. He’s one of the assistant director types at Langley, I think. Fairly high up in the Agency, if I remember right.” She cocked her head now. “Why?”
“Benson mentioned him earlier. Rhett Rodgers might be the guy who set you up.” He took a breath, let it out as calmly as he could even as the drug burned in his brain, the randomness ripped through his reasoning mind, making connections that he wished to hell would turn out to be nonsense. “Which means Rhett sent Scarlet after us.”