Page 69 of Agent Zero
Cal cleared his throat.“I, uh… Can I use the head before you go in there?Thanks.”He scrambled off his own chair with unseemly haste and vanished into the bathroom, slamming the door and turning both the sink faucets at once.
As an attempt to give them privacy, it only half worked.The place was so small he couldn’t help but hear whatever would happen next.
“Holly.”He wasn’t hurting her elbow, he was pretty sure.“Are you...are you okay?”
“Is he your friend?”She was very pale.Her pulse kept wanting to rise, and his, hitched to it, was difficult to keep down.
How did he even begin to explain?“He’s...another agent.”
“He found us?”
Yeah, I’m going to have to think about that.Predictable is dangerous.“They tried to kill him, too.”
“How do you know?Never mind.”She tried to pull away, he didn’t let her.“Reese, stop it.”
Not until I’m sure you’re okay.And not going anywhere.“I’m sorry.I should have told you.I just didn’t know what you’d do, and...”He ran out of words.Come on.Give her something reasonable.Something she can relate to.
His brain chased everything he could possibly say around on a hamster wheel and promptly vaporlocked.It didn’t help that he was practically drooling, because the musk of a healthy black-haired woman threatened to dial everything in him over into the red.With that goddamn yellow-metal component gone the fragrance was even more fascinating, and it was a damn good thing it hadn’t been this intense before.It could knock a man out.
Just like those big blue eyes of hers.
“You kept changing the subject.”Her lips were chapped, even though she’d been pouring down the fluids.With her hair mussed and her pajamas incredibly disarranged, it could have been the morning after a completely different set of events.
In a way, it was.“I had to,” Reese mumbled, numbly.
“Let go of me.”
He did.She rocked back on bare heels, as if she hadn’t expected that, and a flash of something—was it resignation?—crossed her face so swiftly he almost missed it.The water shut off in the bathroom, and they were running out of any approximation of privacy.
“It fixed the cancer,” she said, quietly, almost tonelessly.“I can feel it.”
“There wasn’t any?—”
She shook her head, so quickly her hair made a whispering sound.“I feel it,” she repeated, the glint in her eyes daring him to object again.
“Okay.That’s good enough for me.”His hands ached to touch her; he had to concentrate to keep them at his sides, nice and easy.She must have been pretty far gone by the time I caught wind of her.Why wasn’t she in treatment?Why wasn’t it in her medsheets?How thin and tired she was, too, and her hair, lusterless not because of stress but because her entire body was starved of nutrients.How had she been able towalk, for God’s sake?
Reese, you idiot.Maybe he really was degrading.That would be painfully ironic.
She still stared at him, as if he were a stranger.“Did you know it would do that?”
“If there was anything wrong with you the virus fixed it, Holly.You survived.”
“Guess that makes me lucky.Ninety percent casualty rate, right?”
He damn near winced.“That was for me.Not you.”
“Not...”Another quick shake of her head.“Reese, look.Did you know?That it would...infect me?”
He shook his head.Christ.Even if I did, I wouldn’t tell you now.
Did she look disappointed?He couldn’t think, not with her standing so close and the last few days crowding the inside of his skull.Digesting Cal’s lump of new information was going to take a little while, maybe because Reese had been so dumb to start out with.
She’s going to end up smarter than me.Maybe Cal is, and that’s how he found me.He can’t be thinking I’m going to save him, for God’s sake.
Except I have to, because it means saving her, too.
“Reese.”Hugging herself now, the movement showing even more interesting slices of soft pale skin through her tank top.“Did you know?”
