Page 11 of V-Day
3.
CRISTIÁN’S GET-AWAY PLACE WASa fallen tree beneath a pine. The pine tree had shed most of the lower branches. It was on the ridge above the camp. A mash of sharp dead branches behind the fallen trunk worked as both a screen and a deterrent to anyone who tried to approach. It was possible to move around the mass only by edging close to the soft lip at the edge of the gully.
It was typical of Cristián to have a place to escape to, away from everyone. Even in this most temporary of camping locations, he’d found the equivalent of a room with a door he could shut in the face of the rest of the world.
Cristián didn’t sit on the log. Instead, he put his back to the wide trunk of the pine and looked at her.
Chloe considered sitting on the log. Her weariness was dragging at her limbs, making her want to lie down and sleep. The novelty of standing before Cristián, though, kept her on her feet.
They had spent hours talking to each other in the last ten days, yet in all that time, she’d only seen his face and sometimes his shoulders and occasionally a little more.
She had never beheld Cristián from head to toe in one glance until now. In person, he was different from his screen appearance. Oh, his face was exactly the same. The high cheekbones with the sharp plane of his cheeks beneath. The equally square jaw and strong chin. The thick locks of his hair that, if he was frustrated or caught up in his work, would get ruffled into disorder.
He had a prominent Adam’s apple and often, the tendons on his throat would flex as he considered and weighed. Yet it was his eyes Chloe always came back to. Now she could see them for herself without the filtering of a screen, she could see they really were gray. Not a washed out blue, but a faded black which could be either stormy or calm, revealing or not.
He was taller than she had anticipated, which was stupid of her, for every Vistarian man she had met so far was tall and either rangy or well-muscled, and always with shoulders in proportion to their height. Cristián was no different in that regard.
She cleared her throat, aware that she was staring steadily and not speaking.
Although neither was Cristián speaking. His gaze moved over her. “You’re taller than I thought.”
Chloe smiled. “So are you. Your skin…it isn’t as dark olive as it appears on the screen.”
“Yours isn’t, either.” He frowned. “There’s really no Caucasians in your family? You’re black coffee, not black.”
She looked down at her forearm. “Too dark to ever be mistaken as a native Vistarian,” she said.
“No one will shoot you by mistake, then,” Cristián replied.
She shivered.
Silence fell again.
Chloe wrapped her arms around her body, feeling the chill of dawn in her bones. It was colder at this elevation than she thought it should be, given the latitude. She grimaced. “This is…strange.”
His gaze met hers. He wore an expression she had seen before. He was waiting for her to explain herself. The familiarity of the expression let her speak frankly. “I never once felt awkward, talking to you. God, I knoweverythingabout you. Only now it feels different. Why? Just because there isn’t a screen between us?”
“Two screens,” he corrected automatically. “I don’t know why, only itisodd, seeing you right here, within touching distance.”
Her heart gave a little flutter. Her uneasiness killed the warmth instantly, though. “Maybe time will sort it out. So let’s be almost strangers for now. Why did you leave Pascuallita? Did the Insurrectos come for you?”
Cristián shook his head, a furrow settling between his brows. “I got an anonymous tip off that the Insurrectos were rounding up civilians and taking them somewhere and they were coming for my town next.”
“Anonymous?” she asked.
“Not under the Cloak, so not anyone I knew or could trust,” Cristián said. “It was the damnedest thing—it came in on my old AOL account and the routing was masked in the header. Whoever it was, they know enough to hide their electronic trail.”
“You took the message at face value anyway?” Chloe asked, astonished.
“One of my regulars missed his schedule, twenty minutes later. He lives…livedin Pueblo Bien.”
Pueblo Bien was just south of Pascuallita, the next town on the train ride to the city.
“When I got the message, I didn’t wait,” Cristián added. “Better to be a live fool than a dead cynic.”
He didn’t have to explain further. It was a variation on a principal he had expounded in the Group, more than once. It was always,always, better to act as quickly as possible. Even if that action gave a skewed or wrong result, it provided information which would steer the next attempt…or demonstrate that a second attempt wasn’t worth it.Ready, fire, aim, he often advised the others.
Chloe had used the same principle herself. As soon as Cristián had gone off the air, two weeks ago, she cleared out her money stashes, packed her laptop and headed for Acapulco. She would learn eventually if her choice and every other choice she had made since were massively bad…or not.
