Page 88 of Agency

And then she was gone, leaving me with my own thoughts and questions about whether I could follow through on my plan.

Montana?

Or bust?

Chapter Twenty-Five

Andrew

“Well?” I asked as Alice came out of the makeshift operating theater at the back of the clinic. Still wearing surgical goggles, and with her mask pushed down around her neck, she held up a glass vial and its contents like she was an exterminator showing off a particularly nasty pest she’d gotten rid of for us.

“Don’t worry,” she said, passing the tracker and its glass encasement off to Jericho. “She’s fine. Maybe a little uncomfortable, and definitely in some pain, but there weren’t any complications or major blood loss.”

“You’re certain?”

“Positive.” She nodded to the device in Jericho’s hand. “What are you going to do with that?”

“Undecided,” he said. “Maybe just want to smash it with my boot heel. Well, scratch that. I definitely want to. But I don’t think it’ll help us any.”

“Do you think they’ll follow it here?” Alice finally asked.

“Maybe. But I don’t think they can mobilize that fast. Morgan’s on watch outside in the parking lot, and he’s been keeping an eye on the device we’ve got. Far as he we can tell, there’s not been any movement or convergence on this location.”

“Too soon for them to follow up,” I said to Alice. “They might not send anyone for a good bit.”

“And Thomas?”

“He’s fine,” I replied, trying to reassure her. “In fact, we’re pretty sure they think Ambyr finished her contract on the client, and so we’re the only loose ends to clean up. If any more operators are coming, it’s after us, and not him. Besides, our client only needs to stay hidden for two more days. After that, there’s no percentage in going after her.”

She let out a visible sigh of relief, and I could practically hear her shoulders release the tension.

“But,” Jericho said, “it might still be good to lay low for a few days. Maybe take Vincent and David off to convalesce in another state.”

She nodded. “I have some emergency leave I can take. And they’ll know better what to do, and where we can go.”

“Good.”

We stayed there for a moment longer, and I could have sworn there was something else going on with Ambyr’s condition that Alice wasn’t telling us. Because Alice really did seem like she wanted to say something else.

Before we could find out if there was anything for her to add, Ambyr came out of the operating room. She didn’t look groggy, necessarily, but was certainly a little glassy-eyed from her time spent under the knife. I met her halfway as she approached and, without thinking things through, went to embrace her.

She stiffened at first, and I began to pull away, saying, “Shit. I’m sorry, Ambyr. I just—”

Her arms were circling around me before I could finish speaking, though, and she was holding me tight enough that I’d have to use some jujitsu moves to break free. “No,” she whispered back. “You’re fine. This is exactly what I need.”

I kissed her on the cheek, and tried to not squeeze the ever living shit out of her, and her lips were like a hot iron on my jaw as she went up on tip-toes and returned the gesture.

We pulled back from each other, and I smiled down at her with my hands on her shoulders. She returned my exuberant grin with a more wan one, and I had to fight the urge to wrap her up in my arms all over again.

“Well? How you feelin’?”

“Like I just had a piece of prototype microelectronics surgically removed from my neck. How do you think I feel?” As she spoke, she gingerly probed the area around her neck and ended up wincing at the end. But, still, she smiled after that wince, and her smile made me feel like the sun had come out in my cloudy chest.

How pathetic was I?

Tricked twice by this woman, then saved again after she’d already saved me once before?

What the fuck was I even thinking? Or feeling?