Page 9 of Agent Zero
There were better things to think about.If he got out of here before 1600 he could get offbase and get in position for the walk home.It would be good practice.
Sure.Just keep telling yourself that.
“Yessir.”Reese caught the tomboy nurse’s frown.She didn’t think much of Heming either, and deliberately moved away from him every time he stepped close.
Smart girl.
He’d slipped up.Told Holly his name.Not a cover, not even a fiction.Hisname.What was he going to do about that?Make a confession?As if they’d put him in the stockade.
Maybe they would.Maybe they had a super-durable one especially for agents.
Your head’s not a comfortable place these days, Reese.Besides, he shouldn’t be thinking about Holly.He should be paying attention to the here-and-now, giving them what they wanted so he could get offbase and see her again.
Heming coughed a little.The sweatsmell intensified, a sourness of bad laundry and nervousness, the very antithesis of Holly’s clean, beautiful scent.Maybe the doc knew more about the program’s other side than was comfortable.Either way, not Reese’s problem.“All right.Marty here will be back with the doses in a few minutes.Pleasure seeing you again.”
“Yessir,” Reese murmured.He watched Heming try to pinch the girl’s bottom as he crowded her out the door, and his jaw tightened.Officious little prick.
* * *
He made it offbase just in time, and when quitting hour rolled around he was in position.The employee door gave out onto an alley; his vantage point provided a good clear field of vision.When she stepped out, laughing over her shoulder at something said inside, his throat went dry.He had to wait for the breeze to shift before he could get a whiff of her, and the jolt went through him high and hard.His arms itched from whatever they’d injected.He was due back for another blood draw in forty-eight, to see if the invaders had eaten whatever it was.Heming had ordered more than the usual vampire bites.
Holly hitched her bag higher on her shoulder, walked quickly with her head down against the fine misting rain.The crowd swallowed her; she hurried upstreet for the Mierkele Boulevard station.
The subway was all glare and noise; he got the car behind hers and watched through the glass, hanging on to a pole as she settled into a seat and opened a battered paperback with a red cover.It took a little while before he could figure out what it was.Raymond Chandler, a collection.
Interesting.The cars weren’t packed, and every once in a while a man would glance her way.Those glances bounced off her obliviousness.She didn’t make eye contact, didn’t look up, and thedon’t come near mevibrated off her in waves.
It was a good thing.What would he do if one of them approached her?
Almost a half hour later, he watched her step into a small bodega on Perelman.This was a rough neighborhood, but she moved with easy familiarity, ignoring everything because it was the usual, the expected.
She emerged just as the street lamps were flickering on, with a small net bag.Oranges, something green, and a bottle of cheap red wine.A small bit of cheese.No wonder she was so thin, she ate rabbit food all the time.Looked like a night alone for her.
At least, he was pretty sure.He didn’t smell anyone else on her, not even a cat.
Four years ago he wouldn’t have known, just a regular soldier with dim connectors in his brain, a happy-go-lucky idiot.How the hell had he ever managed to get through basic training without the invaders?How had he survived the state home, the tours of duty, or anything else?
At least the virus gave him achance.You got used to the perks pretty damn quickly.You went through a phase of thinking you were invincible.Then came something like Tangiers.
Reese shook his head, dropping back as she sped up.She nipped aside into a run-down four-story building; he gave her a good head start.Most of the time he just made sure she got to the door all right, just like a gentleman should.Tonight, however...he’d been a good boy.He could use a little reward, right?
Inside the foyer, there was a wall of brass-door mailboxes.The place had seen much better days before being chopped up into studios and one-bedrooms.She’d definitely passed this way, heading for the stairs.Cheap food, desperation, the close fug of people living all piled together.Four big black trash bags jammed against the opposite side of the foyer, someone’s bicycle chained to the newel post of a Gilded Age staircase.Wood flooring peeked out from under scarred linoleum.
It was child’s play to find her mailbox.It all but reeked of her, and he put a fingertip against its chilly metal door.CANDLESS, the tag said.Could be a previous tenant.Top floor, 4D.
Not even a buzzer on the front door.Security nightmare.Did she have real locks?He glanced around to make sure he had exit routes, then climbed the stairs and peered down the hall.She was down at the end.There was an emergency exit, but it was chained shut.A fire would trap everyone in here, rats in a cage.
The building breathed around him, roaches in the cracked walls, someone on the bottom floor cooking enchiladas, and that door at the end of the hall, reeling him in like a fishing line—4D, little brass letter-numeral pair glinting.What would the space behind it look like?Pink and frilly?She was girly, but maybe not in that way.A woman, living alone—he’d bet she didn’t even have a goldfish.She didn’t go anywhere after work, except occasionally the bodega.No parties, unless she sneaked out past midnight.
He’d stayed a long while, once or twice, just to see.
Reese had his hand raised to knock on her door before he realized what the hell he was doing and backed away.
She was a civilian, for God’s sake.He was just making sure she was safe.
It took him the entire way home to make his hands stop shaking.Now he knew precisely where she lived, not just the building.So what if he’d been tempted to knock?What the hell would he have said?Hi, I followed you home, but don’t call the police?Christ.
It didn’t help that when he got back to residence, he had his first respectable hard-on since Tangiers.He took an icy shower—his bathroom was probably as big as her entire apartment—and told himself to calm and never, ever go near that diner again.The needle pricks in his arms ached deeply, relentlessly.
