Page 44

“I don’t know.” I sat up. “Well, we should find that Western Union. Rome’ll be calling any time now.”

She wasn’t having any of it. She pounded her fist on the floor and glared at me.

“I can’t see him letting them live,” I admitted. “Especially if they’ve hurt Gemma. I mean, I hope they haven’t, but if they have, he’ll—”

I slammed my mouth closed.

Not what she needs to hear right now.

But she only nodded and laid her head on her arm. Her hair was starting to look like a haystack again, so I slid my backpack off my shoulder and rooted around until I found a comb. When I held it up, she nodded again and closed her eyes.

I combed her hair at least once every day, and the process seemed to calm her. Her hair was thick, and I had to be extra-careful so I didn’t pull it or make the tangles worse. I didn’t know how to do anything fancy, but it looked shiny and smooth when I was done, and I figured that was good enough.

“There. You’re beautiful again, sugar.” I looked down and saw she’d fallen asleep.

With a sigh, I put the comb back in my pack.

She slows me down and is anything but efficient. A burden, like I said, although I’ll never make the mistake of telling her that again.

And yet I wanted her with me, where I could keep my promise to take care of her until she was able to take care of herself.

And what if that’s never? What if she’s never normal again?

My gaze roamed over her sleep-soft face.

Her bottom lip drooped a little, pulling her mouth into a heart shape, and her eyelashes were fans against the dark circles under her eyes.

A little worry line had made a crease between her eyebrows, making her seem older than the twenty years I knew her to be.

Then I’ll spend the next few centuries buying her soft pretzels and magazines and combing her hair. My chest swelled with fierce pain. Healed or not, normal or not, I want to be burdened by her.

“Sir?”

I swung my head to see two airport security people standing a few feet behind us. The woman was on the smallish side with a sympathetic face. The man had retired Marine stamped all over him, from his high-and-tight gray hair to his squared shoulders.

“Is she okay?” The woman’s eyes were fixed on Monkey. “Do you need medical assistance?” “She’s not okay, but we don’t need anything.” I got to my feet slowly to show the Marine I was no threat. “She had a panic attack. They always exhaust her.”

“Panic attack?” The woman moved closer. “Is she a crime victim?”

Some humans were quick to catch lies, so I tried to stick as close as possible to the truth when dealing with them. The Marine especially looked sharp, and I didn’t need him poking his nose too deep into our business.

“You may not believe it, but she’s a soldier.” I didn’t have to fake the pride in my voice. “Her unit was in an active combat zone and ran into an ambush. She survived three weeks in enemy hands before being rescued.”

The Marine took the story in stride, but the woman’s eyes went wide.

“Is there anything we can do to help?” she wanted to know.

“We’re fine, but thank you. After she rests for a few minutes, we’ll get moving again.”

That seemed to satisfy her, and she turned to leave.

The Marine fixed his gaze on me, and instinct made me stand at attention.

“You Recon?” His voice was two-packs-a-day gruff. “You look like Recon.”

“Sir, yes, sir.”

“As you were.” He waved one gnarled hand. “I’m retired.”

“Sir, once a Marine, always a Marine, sir!”

He narrowed his eyes for a second, then one corner of his mouth pulled up.

“Ooh-rah,” he murmured. “Good luck, son. Dismissed.”

“Sir, thank you, sir.”

He exhaled a chuckle out of his nose, then followed after the woman.

I felt a tug on my pant leg. Looking down, I saw Monkey was awake and her face full of questions.

“They were checking on us.” I was embarrassed that she’d caught me acting like that. “And it made the old man feel good to have someone treat him like a gunnery sergeant again.”

She nodded, then reached for the magazine I’d laid on the floor and started thumbing through it.

Is she dismissing me, too?

But she stopped after a few seconds, folded back a few pages, and handed it to me.

I took it to indulge her—and saw a picture of Reginald Hubler looking back at me.

I skimmed the article about his presidential bid, but it was a small inset photo that made me do a double-take.

Hubler wore casual summer clothes and stood next to an unsmiling woman with long dark hair and sunglasses.

Green fields edged with trees filled the background.

“South of Buffalo, NY, lies Reginald Hubler’s family estate,” I read the caption aloud, “where Emily Hubler makes her primary residence when not traveling with her husband.”

My round eyes darted to Monkey.

“Did you know?” I demanded. “When you picked this magazine, did you know this article was in it?”

She rolled her eyes and held out her hand, wanting me to pull her up. When she was on her feet, she flipped the magazine to the cover and pointed to the headline running across the top: “Reginald Hubler: The Man Who Would Be President.”

“Well, don’t I feel dumb?” I mumbled and flipped back to the article.

Monkey’s hand suddenly dipped into the front pocket of my jeans, and I nearly jumped out of my skin.

“Hey! What are you doing?” I asked, but it was obvious when she pulled my phone out and shook it at me. “Oh. You’re right. Better call Chance and Chessie. Maybe we should join up with them.”

#

Anne

“She could freeze at the wrong time and get them both killed.” The girl with the eyes of a lioness had spoken the truth as she saw it.

She didn’t know that I was already frozen.

I was nothing and no one, locked up in my mind and as lost as my voice.

Willing to follow Spin’s lead—anyone’s, really—so long as I was left alone to just be .

To draw in air and let it out again, to eat and sleep, to let others make decisions and solve problems and, above all, not think .

A void.

I didn’t understand why she thought this was a problem. Insulated from the world, I was secure from harm, content in my isolation, and useless to anyone. How would that get us killed?

She was wrong, I decided. Freezing wasn’t the trouble.

No, the trouble would come when I thawed.