“No,” he said, deadpan. “It boggles the mind.”
Deliberately, she took a baby carrot out of his salad, crunching hard to bite it in half, and then pointed the remainder at him. “Your turn.”
Yeah. It was.
But he thought it would be nice to have just a few more moments of this. Normal meal, normal diner, even though he ate around a gash inside his mouth and she mooched entirely off his vastly overloaded plate.
“That’s better,” she said—softly now, and he realized he’d smiled. “For being the inscrutable hero type, you’re awfully easy to read.”
He snorted. “The what?”
“You heard me.” She sat back, cocked her head. “Of course you wouldn’t know it. That’s just all the more perfect.”
He only stared at her, just a little narrow-eyed, just a little thoughtful.
She asked, abruptly, “Do you have family?”
It startled him. “Do I—”
She acknowledged the suddenness of the question with a lift of one shoulder. “For some reason, I’m thinking of my father. It’s where my mind went. I wonder what my father would have thought of me—of how I turned out, thanks to what he did. Of what’s happening here today. And I wonder what makes a man like you.”
He smiled, shook his head. “Nothing exciting there. Two parents, an older brother and younger sister, all in the family printing business. All back in Washington state, still wondering why I ever left it to work my way around the country.” At the question in her eyes, he added, “For the sake of seeing it.”
She briefly pursed her lips. “I don’t actually get the impression that’s what you’re doing now. Seems to me the emphasis isn’t quite right.”
“Seems to me,” he said, brow raised, “that you see too much.” But he was still looking at her mouth as she said it, drawn by the curve of the lower lip and the full, wide nature of the upper.
“And know far too little.” She said it with her own pointed look and went for one of his steak fries.
“Actually,” he told her, “I think you know a lot.” But of course that only made her frown. He tipped his head at the door...a question. Because this wasn’t something he intended to talk about here.
“Oh, look,” she said brightly. “Here comes someone with a big take-out box. I can’t imagine how she anticipated you would need it.”
He looked at the pile of food before him, more than half of it ordered with the intent of takeout and an evening snack—for he was still fueling up in the wake of the healing, and in the more recent wake of the day’s events.
“I intend to be hungry this evening,” he told her—leaving her pondering, narrow-eyed, if she’d just been handed a warning or a promise, or if he was talking about food after all.
But when they walked back out into the late afternoon heat, she with the food and one hand wrapped lightly around the inside of his arm, he with the sense of equilibrium restored, everything changed. As if a shadow had dropped out of the sky to encompass them, with the blade crying warning, Gwen stiffening in alarm, every nerve and muscle shouting for him to act while every instinct called out for him to wait until he knew—
There.
Behind them. The corner of the diner.
It’s a video game. A never-ending round of hate and violence. And he and Gwen had become so tangled in it—
Her grip on his arm tightened. The knife sliced through his thoughts—a snarl of displeasure and warning, letting him know that these men weren’t angry, weren’t despairing, weren’t any of the things it loved to drink.
These men were doing a job.
“He said you’d find us.” A faint cockney accent behind those words, the voice itself without concern. “And that you’d know we’re ready for you.”
Gwen’s grip squeezed even more tightly, if only for an instant. Confirming it. They had weapons, and no doubt the weapons were discreetly already trained on them.
“No guns, he said,” the man continued. “But mate, I’m telling you—these Tazers pack a hell of a punch.”
Mac didn’t have to turn around to know it. They were out of range. He could throw—deadly accuracy, that throw—but he wouldn’t get the blade back in time for number two.
And number two might yet be silent, but he was there.
“Look, now, he only wants a chat.” So reasonable.
The blade spat its sour resentment at their calm—at the way they gave it nothing to work with. No fear, no hatred, no resentment, no frenzied high. It floundered, unable to muster its deadly song.
He could still use it—would, if he got the chance—but not at peak. Not with the avaricious hunger that made it so very deadly.
“Mac,” Gwen whispered, close enough to read every line of his body—including his hesitation.
“Come on, then,” the second man said, joining the conversation with a deep and lazy voice. Even less invested than his partner, and well chosen for this chore.
By someone who knew what the blade needed? How the hell—
Only one way to find out.
“She’s not part of this,” Mac said with little hope, but determined all the same. “She stays.”
They laughed.
Big empty plots of land and dirty industry followed the Rio Grande, isolated from the bosque by the levee, open community land, and their own back lots. Alfalfa fields interspersed with industry right through the southern half of the city. Warehouses clustered by the railroad track spur off the north-south Rail Runner line.
Mac got only a glimpse of it all as the men opened the back doors of the closed van in which they’d crammed him after they’d cuffed him. The warehouse beside them was smaller than most and had an abandoned air; it gave him no clues. The men pulled Gwen out ahead of him—a clear hostage for his good behavior—released his cuffs, and hauled him out for a rude escort to the warehouse.
But they didn’t try to take the blade. And they didn’t touch Gwen so much as they herded her, leaving the threat an implied one. Giving him no reason. Giving the blade no reason, no excitement. Nor did they say anything else—simply put them through a door into the dimly cavernous space of that building, with only dim light from a dirty window set high.
The first thing he did was find Gwen. He put his arms around her and drew her close. To outside eyes he might have been murmuring words of comfort, but what he really said was, “I can see in the dark. Trust me if it comes to that.”
“You can what?” She didn’t keep her voice down at all. But she didn’t give anything away, either, and he thought that both were deliberate. A show of mettle, tempered by discretion.
“See,” he said, “In. The. Dark.” And then went sardonic. “Secrets. Told you we’d get around to them.”
She wasn’t impressed, apparently. “Nice timing.” But she took a deep breath and added, her voice just as low, “There’s something lurking here. But I don’t get the sense that we’re in direct danger.”
He wasn’t betting on it. He just wasn’t sure if the danger would come from an obvious direction.
A voice came from the catwalk on the far side of the space, high against the wall opposite them. Even Mac’s eyes couldn’t penetrate that corner of darkness. “I’d say I’m glad you could come, but of course you didn’t have any choice.”
Their bad guy. Their own personal kidnapper. The man who had ordered them dragged off in broad daylight in a city under siege.
Under his siege? And if so, to what purpose?