Page 90 of Silent Comrade
“Terrible idea.”
“Then you can drive.”
He scrubbed his face. Another unsecuredlocation. “Can you send a list of what you want?”
She shook her head. “I’ll know it when I seeit.”
What kind of answer was that? He ground hisback teeth.
“If I can’t find what I’m looking for there,then yes, we’re going back to the mall, and you’d better not killanyone this time,” she whispered.
“Shh.”
A rise of her chin and a shrug told him heropinion of this mission. She’d gone from scared to pissed and nowappeared to be heading straight for reckless. If he didn’t reel herin, she’d be in even more danger.
He walked over next to her and with thepretense of looking at a pattern, leaned down, listened to theraindrop sweet taps of her heartbeat—because he liked to torture himself—and said under his breath, “Lequire contacted youtoday.”
“What?” she nearly shouted.
Classmates looked up and stared.
She covered up the lapse. “Oh, I didn’t knowit was your birthday this weekend!” She pounded his denim-cladbiceps. “That’s great!” The other students went back to their work.Dropping her voice, she said. “What?” Her eyes locked onto him andwidened.
“At the coffee shop.”
A pause as her brows went up. “Oh my God,the man in a suit. That was him?” she whispered. “He was huge.Looked like a WWF fighter gone corporate. It was a very nice suit.Wool blend, I’m guessing.”
“That was him.”
“But in the pictures on the Internet, hewasn’t a big guy. Kind of thin and smarmy.”
How much could he tell her about theMorpheus Virus? That info was need-to-know. “He’s, uh, been workingout.”
“Or on something.”
Too close to the truth. Red rolled his owncorded shoulders. He had no room to judge. Well, other than thefact that unlike Red, Lequire lacked the training to handle thevirus, and the damned virus had turned Lequire into an unstableticking time bomb, wired backward. One wrong move andboom.
“What can I do?”
“About Lequire? Nothing. Leave that to Rodeoand me.”
She brushed bangs off her forehead with ashaking hand. “He got close.” The knuckles on her other hand turnedwhite as she gripped the scissors.
“Too close.” Red leaned over and tapped theback of her hand. “It won’t happen again. We’ll keep you safe.”
She released the stranglehold on theimplement. “Yeah.” The tough-woman act slipped. For a split-second,he saw through the cracks. Stark fear. The look of someone about towalk a tightrope for the very first time. Without a net.
A blink, and her steely-eyed determinedfaçade slammed back down in place. Good. He could work with toughand single-minded.
“Screw. That. Guy,” she said.
He nodded. It was her life. He got it.“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Let’s go shop for accessories.” He begantyping frantic messages to Rodeo to prep the site.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
