Someone had reached off their own horse on the merry-go-round and steadied him.
She broke away, gently enough, but he tried to keep her, kissing the corner of her mouth, her cheek, her chin. Finally, her forehead rested against his, her breathing quick and light. Her pulse was galloping; he could hear it as clearly as his own, and even though he’d probably lost more blood than a man should, some parts of him had somehow found a little extra.
Her hair curtained his face. Her shoulders sagged a little. She leaned into him. For just those few moments, there was something soft in the dark, before she pulled away and began digging in the bags again. He could smell the flush in her cheeks, too, her blood rushing hard and hot.
“Trinity,” he breathed.
She didn’t say a word.
* * *
It was an abandoned gas station on the outskirts of El Paso, a chilly dawn breeze mouthing its corners and the concrete pad out front full of trash, broken glass and rusted hulks stripped of anything even faintly valuable. Any copper fittings had been taken, too. Cal stood aside, wishing he could help as Trinity pushed the rolling door aside a little—it had been chained shut, but the chain was rusty enough she’d pried it open, leaving an antique padlock still intact.
He hobbled through, leaning on her. The truck was too hot now to take through any checkpoint, and he wouldn’t be able to run for another day or so.
Trinity pulled the door shut, carefully hung the chain to make it still seem locked and slipped into her backpack. It was cold at the moment, but the predawn hush already held a promise of a day’s scorch. “We have a 70 percent chance of crossing without incident.”
That high? “Let me guess, it goes down the longer that other agent’s alive and working our backtrail.”
“Yes.” She paused, tilting her head. “I should tell you...”
“Go ahead.” He tested his leg again, gingerly. He could hobble. It would get easier as he moved, blood flow working into the muscles and bringing the little swarmies of the virus in to heal and repair. His throat tasted like smashed kale and the grit of jicama, but she was right—it was what his body needed to get back on track. If he was normal, he’d have bled out in the dark even as he broke the other agent with a lucky knee strike that sent him tumbling and bonecracking down the concrete stairs.
Should have put one in his head to be sure.
“The other agent. He smelled...”
For one lunatic moment he was sure she was going to say he smelled really good, and everything inside him turned red.
She took a deep breath. Nice of her to nurse him back to health. Cal stiffened, pushing away from the wall.
“He smelled like induction.” She caught his elbow, slid her arm around him and draped his over her shoulders. “Here, lean on me. They have perfected the process.”
Cal almost staggered. The relief was just as red as the sudden flare of rage. “Huh.”
Oblivious, she righted him. “There’s a bus stop. It’s not far.”
“So. That’s what it smells like.” Cal stood up a little straighter, tested his leg again and decided he could fight if he had to. He was probably reeking of relief, but she appeared not to notice, leaning into his side. “They did that to you?”
She shrugged. “I woke up on the table after the procedure.” She glanced ahead, steering him down a mild, sandy slope. “We’ll have to cross an arroyo.” She paused. “It’s a beautiful word. Very precise.”
“Huh?”
“Never mind.” She looked down. He was too absorbed in where his feet needed to go, but he wished he could see her expression.
“You like words?”
“The right ones.”
“What are the right words?”
She didn’t answer. He’d probably said something wrong.
“So, uh. The other agent.”
“He had to have been the one in Felicitas.” She nodded and hopped slightly, shortening her stride to match his. “I thought he was you.”
Well, that wasn’t very promising. Was he after them because... Well, who wouldn’t want her? She was beautiful, smart, and if she smelled half as good to that black-haired bastard as she did to Cal, there was going to be trouble. “Did he smell like me?”
“What? No.” She steadied him, and the arroyo opened up, a yawning crack in the earth. “Here, there’s a better way down.” Dawn painted the east in streaks, and the faraway hum of traffic was the buzz of a sleepy insect. Gravel crunched underfoot.
“You sure? Maybe he’s, ah, looking for you like I...was.”
“He must be Project Beta. Increased mission fidelity, low to nil emotional noise. Whether or not he calculates remains to be seen. There are several subsidiary activations he could have instead. The research is inconclusive. Or it was—”
His head was spinning, and it wasn’t even from lack of blood. “Project Beta?”
“Gibraltar was only the first stage. There were several outcome proposals. Gemini was a temporary speed bump, nothing more. Induction may halt the mutation. The research is, as I’ve said, inconclusive, and I can only surmise—”
“Jesus.” He almost tripped, but his leg firmed. He straightened, taking his weight off her slim frame. “Who’s doing all this?”
“Do you even need to ask? There have been programs ever since the fifties to build a better soldier.”
“Yeah, but for what?”
“Bronson took his orders from Control. Who was, as far as I could ascertain, not a congressman or senator. But very close to several of them, perhaps? Some sort of government functionary. The Department of Defense was involved. Private companies, too.”
“And we’re the ones dying on the ground.”
“Omelets and eggs. Control was fond of that aphorism.”
“What about you?”
She shook her honey-colored head, her pretty lips pursing. “It doesn’t matter.”
The hell it doesn’t. “Why not?”
“Deconstruction.” She paused, then added more. “Quite simply, I won’t survive long enough for it to matter.”
“We’ll see about that.”
“I’m not your gemina, Cal.”
“You say that like you’re sure. You smell really good.”
“That could be an induction side effect. And in any case...”
“What?”
She shook her head, pressing her lips together even more firmly.
He tried again. “You really have your heart set on dying?”
All he got was a shrug. He couldn’t help it, he had to try again. “Don’t you feel better? Less headache, you’re able to eat, you look a lot better. Your pulse, too. It’s just like Reese and Holly. You have to feel it.” You have to feel something. The emotional noise was all over her.
Even he could see it.
She helped him up the other side of the arroyo, still silent. Dust rose from their footsteps.
“Trinity?” Dammit. His leg ached. He needed another twelve hours or so before he could move quickly.
“I am not your gemina. The odds are simply too high.” Quiet, arch finality. “Concentrate on walking.”
“You don’t like me. Maybe it’s my cologne.” Maybe he could get her to crack a smile. Women, always stubborn. Her entire body all but screamed at him, his pulse and respiration following hers, that marvelous aroma of hers soaked all through him, and the heartbreaking fragility in the middle of her strength. She probably hadn’t even thought twice about diving in to help that boy at the service station, and she’d come back for him, too.
“Cal.” Firm and polite. “I am an anomaly, I am deconstructing, and you—and Six and Ms. Candless—are much better off without the danger I represent. Not to mention that I have... I am not entirely blameless, for your...troubles.”
&
nbsp; What the hell was that supposed to mean? “You did your job, just like we did. Holly’s about the only blameless one here, but—”
“Exactly. So you agree.”
What? “I don’t think you—”
“Shh.” Her hip bumped his. “There are civilians at the bus stop.”
The stop was a sorry shack that looked made out of driftwood, even though there wasn’t a sea around for miles. Wind whistled through the holes, and two old women with seamed, distrustful faces examined them both. He leaned on Trinity, who managed to make it look as if it was the other way round, and every obscenity he’d learned in the Army or anywhere else paraded through his head in a steady stream.
He couldn’t even tell where he’d messed up.
* * *
Bay was beginning to doubt his own effectiveness. Twice now he had pursued the most likely avenue to his goal and been balked. Chestnut-haired Miss Frasier had vanished, and his assumption that the secondary target—the blonde Three—would lead him in her direction was, he realized, a product of shock and fuzzy thinking. He had not been medically cleared before leaving Cuartova, but as far as he could tell he was in good physical condition, even if his bones throbbed and he had to chew palmfuls of calcium supplements to fuel remineralization.
It was his mental acuity that seemed to be suffering. A steadily building discomfort pervaded the day he spent holed up in a Motel Six near the eastern edge of El Paso, chewing the calcium tabs and staring at the ceiling when he wasn’t studying the laptop he’d stolen from the FBI agent who had brought Miss Frasier to Caldwell’s attention.
A beautiful piece of work, top-of-the-line and turbocharged, a solid-state drive and a magsealed power cord lovingly repaired with pink electrical tape. Password-protected and full of illegal software to break, decrypt, hack and infect with abandon, it was also, most chillingly, sporting a pink Hello Kitty sticker on the top of its case.
Miss Frasier was no fool. The process of scrambling occurring inside the laptop’s electronic depths could only be halted by keying in a carefully constructed series of numbers and random phrases at certain intervals. Most of the usability of the machine was gone, but before it had completely faded Bay had been able to gain access to a journal program.
He’d skimmed many of the entries and within them found clues. Three tries to guess each password, and he wasn’t doing too badly. In the process, he was learning quite a bit about Fray, as she preferred to be called. Extremely intelligent, highly driven, disdainful of authority and distrustful of strangers, she saw herself very much as a crusader for justice.
It was, in short, the picture of a woman ill-equipped to deal with the ramifications of coming to Major Noah Caldwell’s attention. Caldwell and Division were ruthless, and Bay himself was a finely tuned machine built for infiltrate-and-destroy. If Fray had any chance of surviving, it was with Bay’s help.
The question of just why her survival was a priority was a difficult one, and Bay needed his resources for other pressing matters. He’d missed his first check-in, and after a few more, Caldwell would begin to wonder.
He hunched over the keyboard, counting the few minutes he had until the next code needed to be input, and a green light flashed in the taskbar. Curious, he clicked it—and realized just what he was looking at.
A few more clicks brought up a map. The location, pinging rapidly, was on the other side of El Paso, and who knew how long she would stay there?
Agent Bay rocketed to his feet. A few minutes later, the motel room was empty.
* * *
Trinity had always considered borders, international or state, mental constructs more than anything else. Still, the relief of turning a few corners, getting out of sight of the guards and letting out a long soft exhale was not inconsiderable. Cal even moved differently, body language shifting by a crucial few millimeters to match the setting—a little more hipshot, chest out a little more, a gringo but one with some familiarity with the terrain, not a stiff norte tourist. Trinity rounded her own shoulders slightly, chin up but avoiding eye contact with any passerby, her backpack straps settling differently now.
“Hard part’s over,” Cal murmured, and she didn’t bother to correct him.
The difficult part would be choosing the right moment. Once his vulnerability factor had reduced somewhat but his speed was still impaired, she could be assured of his safety and free to pursue her own agenda. She could, she supposed, have left him on the other side of the border; the truck had been well-hidden and he’d have survived.
Yet she hadn’t. Why?
His presence halted deconstruction, but it also reduced her solitary effectiveness. Not only that, but he’d committed an almost fatal error, diving into the stairwell to keep the other agent away from her.
He thought she was a gemina, and therefore was obeying those strange emotional directives. It was going to get him killed.
That, she had decided, was an unacceptable outcome indeed.
Cal glanced around. “Okay. This way.”
“You know where you’re going?”
His easy grin almost managed to cover up the paleness of blood loss. “I do, pretty girl.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“But you are. We’ve got to get on the road. There’s a plane to catch, as soon as I can get some document time in and find us some transport. I know someone who’ll be happy to see you.” The grin stretched, becoming more natural.
“Oh?” For a terrifying moment, the calculation of betrayal filled her lungs with lead—but another occurred just as quickly. “Six? And Candless?”
“Yeah. Told them I’d bring you.”
“How did you—”
“Sometimes failure isn’t an option, Trin.”
Trin. Cal. Small words, impossibly short to carry the complexity of a human being. Yet they were said with a different shade each time, complex nuances she couldn’t decode.
Cal straightened a little more. “Leg’s a lot better. You were right about the greens.”
Of course I was. She was tempted to say it, didn’t. Held her peace as his stride lengthened a little; any onlooker would think they were a couple.
A hot flush went through her at the thought. He’d kissed her twice now, which didn’t precisely bother her.
No, what bothered her was that she...liked it. More than liked, but she couldn’t find the proper word for the sensation.
Which could be a sign of deconstruction all on its own, proceeding insidiously in the background. Cal—and Six and Candless—were morally questionable according to the authorities, but they were ethically correct, as far as Trinity could ascertain. Had Bronson or Control ever suffered any qualms? None that she could remember, and she had been forced into daily contact with Bronson for a significant period of time.
She almost shuddered at the memory. Control’s heavily distorted voice caused its own uneasiness, easily explained as the scrambling algorithms turning the sound waves into rasping jagged discomfort.
“Did you hear me? You were right. You know?”
“Yes.” No. Reminiscing would not help; neither would unburdening herself, except in one very specific way. “Cal...”
“Hmm? We’ll drive to Chihuahua. Hole up near the airport, I’ll work my magic and we’ll get an early flight to the capital. From there we’ll bounce even farther south.”
Her unease sharpened. “You shouldn’t tell me.”
“Come on.” He grinned down at her. Dawn, rising fast, lit the eastern horizon with gold; the rim of the sun was peering up over the covers and yawning. Street lamps began to flicker out. The light was kind to him, tinting his hair and bringing out the blue of his eyes. “Try to enjoy being free, honey. It’s a nice feeling, once you get used to it.”
Is this freedom? One was always constrained. She forced her face to the ex
pression of neutral acquiescence she’d worn all through dealing with Bronson and later, in service jobs, working for a few weeks and moving on. Gathering resources, learning societal norms, perfecting her camouflage, aware of pursuit. Practicing tradecraft, finding the shadow economy, cash only and no questions. If that was freedom, it left much to be desired.
And yet. The wind, still fresh, tugged at her hair. Cal inhaled, let out a long sigh, and the relief in his scent eased the tension in her neck and shoulders. He no longer reeked of pain or stress. How did he shake it off?
She decided not to ask. There were other things to think about, plans to make. As soon as she was certain he was safe, it was over.
The altogether unwelcome and sinking thought that she might find some irrational reason not to do what she knew was necessary rasped at her. “Let’s hurry, then.”
* * *
It didn’t take a genius to figure out trouble was brewing. She’d shut down again, that pretty face losing all expression when she thought he wasn’t looking, and if he hadn’t had to prep the fresh passport blanks, he would have dragged her south without waiting. A short hop to Chihuahua, another to Mexico City, a day or so in that smoggy whirl, then on to Buenos Aires, where maybe Holly could shake some sense into her. Girl talk, that sort of thing. Maybe even Reese would have an idea how to handle it, because sure as Shinola, Cal was failing in a big way.
He worked, his fingers sure and deft, glancing at her still, straight back at the window. The room was small and dusty, full of heavenly smells from the taqueria downstairs, and her hair lay across her shoulders in a shining wave. It was a shame she’d put any dye on it at all, the highlights were beautiful. Honey hair and that flawless skin of hers. The virus worked with what you had, so she must’ve been a stunner even before infection.
An ugly word. It reminded him of induction.
Cal frowned slightly, hitting the button a couple times. The flashes showed the pictures in high relief—according to these, they were Jane and Ed Rochester from Thorneville, Massachusetts. Even unsmiling in a cheap passport photo she was a beauty—a patrician nose, those cheekbones, her mouth relaxed just a little and making a man think about all sorts of delicious things. Maybe he could even get close enough to steal another kiss.