Skin Dive (23 page)

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Authors: Ava Gray

Tags: #Romance

BOOK: Skin Dive
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The thin man got out a notepad and scrawled,
It would be better if I go back for her tomorrow.
Near as she could figure, people would call what he did teleportation, although it didn’t feel instantaneous.
“Can you keep them alive until then?” she asked.
Not that it mattered. She had nothing more to give.
Hawk lifted a big shoulder in a half shrug. “I’ll do my best.”
“Is . . . Crow doing okay?” She’d almost slipped up. Almost called him by his name.
“Just tired. He’s around here somewhere.”
Oh, God.
She ached for a glimpse of him. Just from a distance, just a smile, or a wave. It was pathetic, she knew. It hadn’t been that long.
“Could you send him in?” Gillie held her breath, wondering if he understood the significance of the request.
“Sure. I’ll go roust him.” He proved he did know when he signaled Heron to follow, so she’d have a few moments of privacy with Taye.
While she waited, she paced—or she tried to. On her second circuit of the small room, it tipped sideways and she had to resume her seat on the crate, waiting for the world to steady. He came in then, clad as usual in jeans and a white T-shirt. No leather jacket; they were indoors, and it was warm enough.
“Thanks for coming to help. The situation was messier than we expected.”
With such casual friendliness, he smiled like it hadn’t broken her heart to say good-bye to him, as if he’d never made love to her with his mouth, and she didn’t know what his face looked like when he came. Taye gave no sign he’d argued passionately against her working for Mockingbird, maybe because she had some chance of crossing his path, making a clean break more difficult. He didn’t speak her name.
In her head, Gillie heard slamming doors, breaking glass.
“This is the first time he’s used me. Wounds are easier than diseases.”
Easier but no less painful, no lessening of consequence.
She drank him in. Taye propped himself against the wall, not stepping far enough into the room to approach her, his manner distant. But she saw through his façade—his eyes burned with green fire, lambent with banked longing; his skin held a nacreous gleam, textured by the red gold bristles of his jaw, and he didn’t look quite human, more polished and finely drawn, as if his inner fire had burned away that part of him. As usual, he hadn’t shaved in several days, and his face fell somewhere between the stages of
I can’t be bothered
and
I’m growing a beard, really.
Shadows cradled his eyes as if he hadn’t been sleeping well. But then they both had nightmares. Probably always would.
“Settling into your new life all right?” he asked.
No. It’s empty, and I don’t know how to do this without you. I don’t want to.
But that was a weak, quiet part of her, and one whose words she would never give voice. She was stronger than that, stronger than fear, stronger than captivity and confinement. Through the long looks and mutual assessment, Taye didn’t reach for her. Other than his eyes, he gave no sign this was hard for him. Gillie took that as her cue.
“Yeah. I’m a good student.”
“Knew you would be.” Awkward pause. Long silence. And so many words she wanted to hear from him. They all died in that void. “Well, I’m glad you’re doing fine, but I have to—”
“Me, too,” she said softly.
Hurt, so much of it. It drowned her.
I can’t do this again
.
Say good-bye,
she told herself,
and mean it this time.
It was possible she would never change his mind; he meant for the separation to be permanent. The next time Heron brought her to tend the wounded, she wouldn’t ask about him. She would
not
. If they ever saw each other again, he could do all the running. And maybe some begging.
“Take care of yourself,” he said.
Impersonal wish.
Gillie lifted her chin and gave Taye the same careless wave she’d offered Brandon in the library. This time, she did watch him walk away. She wanted it emblazoned on her memory, so she’d remember the pain.
Hawk gave her five minutes to collect herself before sending Heron back. When the porter held out his slim, freckled hand, she was ready. The twist and pull didn’t take her by surprise, though the spin didn’t do her stomach any good. When they returned to her apartment, she dropped to hands and knees, breathing deep through her nose. He seemed unaffected, probably used to the movement.
In his notebook, he wrote,
You gonna be okay?
Somehow Gillie didn’t think he meant the trip. She nodded and held back the anger until after he ported away
. Stupid, stubborn bastard. He’ll be so lucky if it’s not too late by the time he realizes what he’s lost.
She didn’t weep; that was weakness. In her kitchen, she had a whole cupboard full of dishes to break, and it gave her tremendous satisfaction to smash that first plate, while imagining Taye’s face.
Later, once her rage subsided, she decided she would never be helpless again, never looking to a man for guidance and protection; it was time to take back some power. Steely with determination, she dialed a local shooting range.
“You have classes for women? When does the next one start?”
CHAPTER 17
Initial intel from
Hausen indicated T-89, born Tyler Golden, had grown up in Miami; that wasn’t strictly true. They were deep in the mangrove swamp. Heavy trees overhung the road, and Cale imagined the whir of insects beneath the roar of the engine. He had been raised on a council estate in Seven Sisters, so while he was used to fighting and scratching, he wasn’t used to nature. Even the army had sent him to cities and deserts in need of pacification. No swamps.
He wasn’t clear on whether this was part of the Everglades, but it was hot, murky green, and sticky as hell. Beside him, Kestrel was quiet, but tears slipped down her cheeks now and then. He didn’t know what to do in the face of so much pain and sorrow. Usually, there was something you could say or a solution to be had, but he didn’t know how to fix it when the problem was in her brain.
And he shouldn’t care whether she hurt constantly, but over the course of their journey, he’d offered caffeine, which sometimes helped with pain by dilating blood vessels. Coffee, chocolate, he offered them to her, feeling helpless and tentative. She drank the former and declined the latter. And at night, in their separate beds, he listened to her tossing and turning; he didn’t want to sympathize with her. That would make it difficult to do his job.
“Don’t you have something you can take?” he asked.
“Before I was betrayed, Mockingbird was working on finding medicine to help me. And in between tasks, he let me take sleeping pills, so I could rest. The Foundation doesn’t care. They’ll use me until I can’t take it anymore and I find a way to kill myself. Or until my brain fries from the constant stimulus.” She turned her head and eyed him with quiet resignation. “Just as you will, so don’t pretend you’re different. You only care about the money.”
That hit pretty close to home, so he went back to driving. In silence, he navigated the last of the turns and parked. There was no proper drive; he had to park on the shoulder of the road and walk up the track that led deeper into the swamp. According to the GPS, this was as far as the roads went. Kestrel followed him, stumbling with pain and weariness, because the constant movement in her head wouldn’t let her sleep. Wordlessly, he put a hand beneath her arm and guided her over the gnarled roots into what passed for the Goldens’ front yard. When she didn’t pull away, it warmed him; constant hatred and suspicion got old.
Before he could think better of it, he said, “I’ll get you something when we leave here, so you can sleep at night.”
She flashed him an incredulous look. “Why would you do that for me?”
“You’ll be no use to me if you burn out,” he muttered.
But that wasn’t the truth, and by some feminine intuition, she knew as much. Her smile said so. Cale ignored her, walking on.
The house was worse than he expected, even given their surroundings—an ancient tar-paper shack with debris littering the area outside, old tires, a rusted cookstove, piles of scrap tin. This place could easily double as a rubbish heap. An old man sat in a lawn chair wearing a ball cap, a pair of overalls, and little else; his long beard grew into his tufts of white chest hair. He raised a can of beer as Cale came closer, but he didn’t speak, nor did he get up. The old hound laying next to him raised his head and gave a halfhearted growl of warning, but it was too warm for even the dog to take it seriously.
“Are you Amos Golden?” he asked.
“Might be, unless you’re from the government. But with an accent like that, I don’t guess you are.”
“No, sir. I’ve come seeking information about your grandson.”
“Tyler? We ain’t see that bastard in ten years and good riddance, I say.” He spat into the weeds that grew around his ankles.
“Anything you can tell me about him would be helpful—his friends, his habits, his usual haunts. What do you recall?”
A greedy look dawned on Golden’s face, but before he could capitalize, the door to the shack opened up, and a woman with her brown hair caught up in a ponytail came out. She didn’t look old enough to have a grown son, except around the eyes.
“You’re here about Ty?”
“Yes, ma’am. Could we come in for a moment?”
Her eyes went to Kestrel, who couldn’t—under any circumstances—be considered a threat. It had been a stroke of genius to bring her along.
“Of course.” She extended a small hand, which he shook.
“I’m Dani Golden. I’ve got a pitcher of tea made. We’ll have a glass and talk.”
Inside, it was just as hot as it had been outdoors, and the small rooms didn’t help. He didn’t know how anyone could survive this place. Maybe Golden was a lucky bastard after all; he’d gotten out, at least, whatever had happened since then. Everything was worn and threadbare, cheap furniture years past its prime. On the walls, someone had hung dime-store art and yard-sale pictures of Jesus. He sank onto the sagging pink couch. That would slow his reaction time, should it come to a fight. Mentally, he reckoned how to compensate and waited for their hostess.
The woman brought three glasses of iced tea and then sat down in a rickety rocking chair. “Did you find him?”
Interesting.
“I’m afraid not. But that’s what I’m trying to do, so any information you can provide would be helpful.”
“Who’s your quiet friend?”
“This is Kestrel.” Best not to elaborate, or try to explain her silence. Let Dani make of her what she would.
“Is he in some kind of trouble?”
He’d worked out the cover story ahead of time, and she was the kind of person who would buy it—hook, line, and sinker. “No. But he participated in some drug trials a while back. There’s since been a class action against the pharmaceutical company, and I’ve been hired to track down the participants, so they have an opportunity to opt in and possibly receive benefits from the lawsuit.”
Someone who knew more about such things would ask who the hell would hire him to do that, but she merely nodded, trying to look worldly. “Is he gonna get sick?”
“He might be already, which is why it’s imperative I locate him.”
“Well, like Daddy said, we ain’t seen him in years. I had him young,” she confided, as if he hadn’t discerned that from her face. “I was fifteen, a kid myself. I tried to do right by him.”
It was clear she wanted to talk so Cale let her. Maybe he could learn something about his target from his mother’s memories.
“But I guess he was about nine or ten when he started showing signs he wasn’t right. I always thought maybe it was my fault... ’cause I drank and smoked before I knew I was pregnant with him. I did stop, soon as I figured it out, but—” Guilt shone from her like a beacon, creating sad lines beside her mouth.
“It’s not your fault,” Kestrel said softly, unexpectedly. “Tyler’s problems didn’t come from one cigarette or a couple of beers. There are indications now that schizophrenia is linked to genetic markers, zinc finger protein 804A and the chromosome six HLA. If there’s no history of mental illness in your family, it might have come from his father’s side.”
Cale glanced at Kestrel in shock, both at her knowledge and her kindness. Dani Golden smiled in a grateful haze, her hands trembling so the ice in her plastic tumbler of tea rattled. To cover his reaction, he took a sip of the tea: over-sweetened but cold. The atmosphere in here felt cloying, as if nothing ever moved. No fresh wind, no progress, just slow stagnation, echoed in the mossy-mold smell from the swamp. From the old man came the sound of another beer can cracking open.
“I guess you’re a scientist,” Dani said. “Somebody who worked for the drug company, but then you realized the product was bad, so you turned whistleblower?”
That was a surprising analysis from a woman he had taken to be completely credulous. He revised his list of queries accordingly. If he made her suspicious, she would throw them out before he learned anything.

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