Page 71 of Agent Zero
You run, I’ll hold them...the only time I feel human is when I look at you...it’s okay, baby, it’s all right.
The fractured pieces inside her head weren’t helping.They swirled, refusing to coalesce into a reasonable picture.Or maybe she just didn’t like the painting she was seeing?
It took her a while to get dressed.She kept stopping, staring into space, while different bits of memory and guesswork fell together.But finally, in jeans and a blue sweater that both reeked of newness, Holly had to leave the warm, humid little room with its indifferent, colorless linoleum and ancient fittings.
The guys were at the dinette, and there was a pile of paper between them on the newly cleared, rickety little table.Familiar-looking file folders, and her stomach fluttered uneasily.
Whose are those?Other agents?Other “collateral”?The abduction was still a mess of jumbled pieces inside her head, refusing to settle as well.
Cal pushed his sandy hair back from his forehead.With his broad back to her, he looked just like any other guy on a chair, and if she was still waiting tables she would have thought them businessmen doing an informal meeting.
A sudden realization shook her.
I’m not ever going home again.And I’m not going to die.
Holly stood, a damp towel drooping from her left hand, and afterward she would wonder what she would have said or done if both men hadn’t suddenly tilted their heads, as if hearing something.
She strained and heard it as well—a low mechanical buzz, very faint, but out of place in the snowbound quiet.
“Damn,” Reese said, softly.“We’ve got incoming.”
FORTY-FIVE
“Weather eyes?”Falling snow whirled down in heavy wet clumps, dotting Cal’s hair.Branches creaked, pieces of meltpock-pocking through ice and into snow underneath.
“Dunno.”Reese shook his head, cupping his hands behind his ears to focus the sound.
“Where can we go?”Holly, standing under the minuscule porch roof, hugged herself.The blue of the sweater brought out her eyes, and her hair, even wet, now looked far more vital.She was still too heartbreakingly thin, but that would fix itself if Reese could get enough food in her.“We’re trapped up here.”
“Not necessarily.”Reese took a deep breath.“It’s cold.Go back inside.”
“Stare at the walls and wait?No thanks.”She shivered, hugging herself even harder.“What are we going todo?”
At least it was stillwe.“Right now you’re going to go inside.It’s freezing out here, Holly.”
“I’m not going to catch cold and die.Right?”Her chin set.
Cal scanned what he could see of the sky, blue eyes narrowed.“I don’t like this.”
You’re not the only one.Inside the cabin, the AM radio had weather reports ticking by, the storm’s last spasm moving westward to crash against the mountains.The warming in its wake would make every road sloppy and dangerous.The sound could be anything—airlift for lost hikers, weather copter, even just normal air traffic.
Sure, right.None of that would feel like this.A rasping tingle against his nerves—the same sensation that had warned him about Cal.
Couldstillbe warning him about Cal.
“It feels hinky,” the other agent said, his breath pluming in the cold.“Makes me itch.”
Afterward, Reese was never sure if there had been a pause after the words.One moment he was turning over alternatives, the next he had tackled Holly back through the open door.They landed in a heap, her soft shocked cry mixing with the zinging of another bullet, and Cal swearing viciously behind him was a slow groan because Reese was moving so fast.Cal kicked the door shut, glass shattering, another popping zing.
Sniper.Probably gone by the time we get out the door.It was the follow-up that was meant to dust them.Which made it possible carelessness—if you were going to take two agents, warning them like this was a bad idea.
There was no time to think.Holly struggled against his hold, thrashing on the floor.Had he hurt her?Was she hit?He didn’t smell blood, but?—
“—offme!”she yelled, and he had a bare moment to be relieved before she heaved, almost tossing him sideways.
Look at that.Sheisstronger.Rolling, staying low in case more lead came flying through, Cal was already heading for his backpack, settled against the chair he’d slept in.Reese dove for his and Holly’s packs as well as her parka, and by the time Holly had struggled to her feet—civilian, she doesn’t know—he was already barking “Get down!”and yanking at her arm, planning the next few moves.
The copper scent of blood hit him, and he froze.God.Oh, God?—
