It was the way she was, always looking to pursue a challenge, maybe because it would have been so very easy for her to live a life with no challenges in it at all. She was beautiful, she was smart, and Elliot Trent was a wealthy man. He hadn't even wanted her to join Sentinel, and when she'd gone into business with me, he'd all but disowned her. As far as Elliot Trent was concerned, I was a danger not just to myself and others, but to the profession as well. If anyone had told him that my profession seemed to have changed recently, he would have taken it as proof confirming all of his worst suspicions.
"You don't have to go," Natalie said, finally. "You can stay."
"I'm not going to take the risk."
"You think maybe, just maybe, you're being paranoid?"
I nodded. "But that doesn't mean I'm wrong."
"Oxford's dead."
"But not whoever the hell it was who hired him in the first place. That threat is still out there, and I want it bearing down on me, not on her and not on you."
Her brow furrowed as she considered her possible counterarguments, and then she sighed sadly. "Any messages?"
I thought about it, then shook my head. My association with Alena had already cost me all of my friends but Natalie; what relationships remained wouldn't survive what would happen next. I'd disappeared once without a trace. Doing it again was going to be one time too many.
"You're sure?" Natalie asked.
"There's nothing I can say."
"Not even to her?" She indicated the floor above us with her head.
"There's nothing I can say."
"Maybe you should think of something. It was her idea to go back for you, Atticus, not mine."
I shook my head again, hoping Natalie would take that as my request to let the matter drop. I wasn't surprised when she didn't.
"She's in love with you, you know that, right? That's why she made me turn around, why we came back."
"It doesn't matter."
"Of course it matters, Atticus." She looked at me with honest incredulity. "It's the only thing that matters."
"Don't be a fucking idiot."
"What?"
"Give me a goddamn break, Nat," I said. "You don't really believe that. It's all that matters? It doesn't matter at all. Not at all, not one bit. Not to Oxford or Bowles or any of that lot, and sure as hell not to Scott. What matters is survival. That's all that fucking matters."
"Don't tell me what I do or don't believe." Her look reflected my sudden anger, turned it back on me, and it crept into her voice even though I knew she was fighting to keep it out. "Survival isn't just drawing another breath. It has to be more than that."
"Then I'm right," I said. "You are a fucking idiot."
She shook her head, hard, as if trying to knock the words I'd said free with the motion, and I know she would've said something more in response, but the door from the hallway opened again, and Dan returned.
"She's fine," Dan said. "Cranky, that's how I know."
"She's not the only one," Natalie said, looking at me. The anger she'd been reflecting was gone, replaced by confusion, and it made me feel guilty, but I wasn't about to explain.
Dan reached around his back, beneath the same thin black leather jacket he seemed to always wear no matter what the weather, and came out with a pistol. He held it out, offering me the butt end.
"Just in case," he said. "It's clean. You can dump it with the car."
It was a Glock 34, simple and straightforward and infinitely anonymous. The magazine was fully loaded, seventeen rounds. I tucked the pistol into my pants at the small of my back.
"We'll take good care of her for you," he told me.
"I know you will."
"She wants to see you before you go."
"Then I should see her," I said, and turned to head upstairs.
"Atticus," Natalie called after me. "Idiot or not, I'm right. It's the only thing that matters." They'd put her in a small room on the second floor, beside the bedroom where Tamryn was sleeping. The lights were off, and she was sitting on the edge of the bed, Miata with his head in her lap, petting him.
When she saw me, she said, "Why do they keep putting me on the second floor when I can barely climb the stairs alone?"
"Because it's easier to fall down than to climb up?" I suggested.
She snorted, then pushed Miata gently away and got to her feet, using the headboard as a support. Her cane was leaning against the wall nearby, but she didn't go for it, instead making her way slowly to where I was standing just inside the door. The progress looked painful, and when she reached me she put out her hands, resting them, palms flat, against my chest, and I thought she would give me her weight, but she didn't. There was enough light to see her face, just barely, but not enough to read what was painted there when she looked at me. I couldn't feel her hands through the vest, but I imagined that they were warm.
"I have to go, Alena," I said.
"I don't know how to do this, Atticus," she said, and the frustration in her voice sounded more pained than angry. "I have never had to do this. I have never had to say good-bye to someone I did not want to see go."
I didn't say anything.
She moved her left hand, raised it as if to rest it against my cheek, but then dropped it back to my chest, as if afraid that the touch would burn her. Even in the darkness, I could see her scowling.
"I want to kiss you," Alena said, suddenly. "May I do that?"
"You can do that," I told her.
She moved her hands up my chest once again, this time lighter, splaying her fingers, as if reading me in Braille. When they reached my shoulders, she began to lean in, then balked, pulling back. She tilted her head to her right, tried a second approach, pulled back once again. Her head tilted to the left, and that seemed to make her feel more confident, and she held my shoulders more firmly, and this time I knew she would go through with it.
I met her mouth with my own, felt her lips tentative against mine, and there was only a light brushing of skin, dry and softer than I had thought her capable of being. Then she did it again, this time with certainty. Her fingers moved to my neck, then into my hair, and she pulled herself into me. I put my arms around her, tasting her and holding her, and she made a sound into my mouth, almost mournful.
Then she let me go, reaching out for the dresser with one hand, using it to support herself as she made her way back to the bed. She sat slowly, in exactly the same place she had before.
"Good-bye, Atticus," Alena said.
I left her sitting there.
CHAPTER
It turned out I was right; they were coming after me.
I'd just thought they'd give me more time before they did it. Three minutes out from the safe house, following Foreman Road, the reserve light for the gas tank lit up on the Civic's console. There was no tone, no warning buzzer, but there didn't need to be. It was a hard light to miss.
My first thought was that, in his haste to acquire a car, Illya had forgotten to check how much gas was in the tank. Then I thought that there was no way in hell that Dan would have permitted that kind of mistake, no way in hell he would have supplied me with an escape vehicle that wouldn't be able to manage my escape.
So maybe it was a fault in the console someplace, a short in the warning light or a skewed sensor in the tank.
I was willing to believe that, until I saw the headlights in the rearview mirror.
They were distant, maybe a hundred feet back, but riding high enough to throw reflected glare into the Civic. As I watched, the lights came closer, then held steady. Maybe fifty feet off. A good covering distance. Not so far away as to lose the target; not so close as to risk unnecessary exposure if the target did something unexpected, hit the brakes, for instance, or threw a U-turn.