Code Name: Aries by Janie Crouch

6

Ian

Wavy fell asleep in the middle of a sentence.

It was like nothing I’d ever seen. She’d talked to me for hours inside that hellish little cave once she found out that I liked it. And I did like it.

It wasn’t so much her stories, although those were pretty interesting—tales of growing up in Oak Creek sandwiched between two brothers, the younger who’d thought his name was actually Baby until he was well into elementary school.

It was the sound of her voice. It gave me something to focus on, to steady my breathing around. It gave me a reason not to give in to the panic clawing to get out, trying to convince me I was once again trapped. I was once again going to die.

If it had just been me out here in this wilderness, I would’ve gladly sat out in the storm. But it wasn’t just me.

At one point, she’d stopped midstory, something about the time that, as kids, she and her friends had started a cookie baking company and decided it was a good idea to call it the Chocolate Spit Cookie Company. A little bit of spit would be the “secret ingredient.”

“This must all sound so stupid to you,” she’d said. “I’ll stop.”

“No,” I’d responded, probably too quickly, but she hadn’t seemed to notice. “Please keep going.”

There wasn’t actually much more to the story. Not surprisingly, the Chocolate Spit Cookie Company had not been as big a success as the kids had hoped it would be.

But she’d kept on talking. Kept giving me her voice to focus on. It was amazing that someone could talk so much after having been so heroically silent for miles while we had run.

Her blisters were no joke. I was glad she couldn’t see them. They had to have hurt like hell, and it wasn’t going to get any better once we started going again. But at least they wouldn’t rupture and make walking almost impossible. Not that I was sure she would tell me even if the pain got that bad.

Wavy Bollinger, patron saint of restaurant trays, was pretty fucking amazing.

She’d traveled miles without complaint, not losing her cool, keeping focused on getting us closer to Oak Creek. Given that she’d been one second away from having her brains splattered all over her car’s interior, it was amazing she’d kept it together so well.

And then she’d talked to me for hours in this overhang. I wasn’t sure if that was for my benefit—that on some level she’d recognized I needed it—or hers. Or both.

At some point, her hand had reached out to rest on my arm. It had stayed there after she’d fallen asleep midsentence. I covered it now with my own. I could feel the calluses on her fingertips, maybe from waitressing, but undoubtedly some of it was from her painting.

Interesting that in all her talking, she hadn’t told a single story about that. She had a rainbow of paint on her wrist at any given time, but it didn’t warrant any stories. What she wasn’t saying said something pretty damned important.

And I wanted to know what. Almost as much as I wanted to touch the smooth skin of her back again like I had when I’d gotten that safety pin. Concentrating on her feet and not the fact her undergarment was completely unhooked had taken all my focus.

I needed to shut this down. Whatever it was that had me fascinated with this woman couldn’t sway me from my primary objective: eliminating Mosaic. I couldn’t allow any distraction, no matter how fucking tempting, to shake me from that goal.

I forced myself to take her hand, still resting on my arm, and move it so she was no longer touching me. I focused on keeping my breathing steady, which was infinitely more difficult without her voice and touch to calm me.

There was plenty of air in here. This was a cavern I could crawl out of at any time. Not something I could slam my hands against until they were bloody without any help coming.

I concentrated on the storm outside. If I could hear that, then I had air. I could breathe. I was alive. When the rain stopped, it became harder once again, so I focused on my breathing.

I knew the second she woke up.

“Hey,” she whispered. “I fell asleep. I’m sorry.”

“Why are you sorry? You traveled miles with people trying to kill you on your heels. I think you deserved some rest.”

“But I was talking to you.”

“Was talking to me making you feel better?” I had to know.

She was quiet for a long minute.

“What?” I finally asked.

“I don’t know. I somehow thought that me talking was helping you for some reason, but that seems stupid now that I say it out loud.”

She’d been comforting me. She’d recognized I’d needed it, despite the fact I prided myself on not letting my weaknesses near the surface. There were people I worked with every single day—men and women trained to observe and take in data—who didn’t recognize that I got clammy in closed spaces, that I never talked while I was on the elevator, that sometimes being inside a car was difficult for me.

Yet this woman had been attuned to it when she’d had no reason to be. And she’d done what she could to help, probably continuing to talk long after she would have liked to have gone to sleep.

“Thank you,” I whispered.

“Is it the Mosaic stuff? Is that what has you so strung tight?”

“Yes.” That wasn’t the complete answer, but it wasn’t a lie either. “Do you think you’re up to getting started again soon? We don’t have any food or water. So the longer it takes us to get back to Oak Creek, the more difficult it’s going to be on our bodies.” I didn’t want to bring up her blisters again, but those were going to get worse too.

“Yeah. We’re at least a little drier now.”

Still, she wasn’t complaining. Anybody in their right mind would bitch about these circumstances, but she was soldiering on without complaint. Again, damned impressive.

A few minutes later, we eased out of the cave. I couldn’t deny that being out in the fresh air was a relief. I must have done something that gave me away.

“Better?” she asked.

“Yeah, I’m glad to get moving toward town and do what I can to stop these fuckers.” That was true too. Although again, not the whole truth.

We moved as quietly as we could through the wilderness, much slower since there was nobody on our tail and it was still dark. It was much more dangerous to try to move fast than it was to take our time. Plus, now that I was aware of those blisters, I wasn’t going to make this any harder on Wavy than I had to.

She did know this wilderness well. She was able to pinpoint almost to the minute when my cell phone would get coverage back.

As soon as it did, Landon was the first person I called. “I’m alive.”

“Thank fucking God,” he responded. “Where the hell have you been? I got your message about Wavy and then nothing.”

I kept my voice low. “Wavy and I had to take an unexpected detour through the wilderness when her windshield was shot out.”

“Are you guys okay? That was quite a storm we had.”

“Yeah, we’re all right. We found shelter inside a cave.”

Landon let out a deep breath. “The Linear guys told me there were parts of Reddington City that didn’t get good cell phone coverage. So I was giving you guys the benefit of the doubt, hoping maybe you were taking advantage of the whole . . . smiling situation.”

I shot a look at Wavy, glad she couldn’t hear what Landon was saying. “Let’s just say I’m thankful that Wavy decided to come to Reddington City to ask me to dinner or else I would probably not be here right now. Please tell me you’ve been working on what we need for the Hemingway building.”

“Yes. First thing was to use a Zodiac contact to get a warrant in the works.”

That was why he was my right-hand man. He knew what to do without me having to spoon-feed him.

“Good. We need official access to that building immediately. I lost the tablet in my escape, so whatever I was able to record on my phone is all we’ll have for intel until we get a warrant and get in there.”

“We’ll have it in the next six hours.”

I grimaced. Six hours was a long time, but having to work inside the law meant a slower process. “Roger that. If I’m not mistaken, we’ll be coming in from the southwest side of town. Can you have a car ready? Wavy’s going to need a doctor.”

“Is she all right?”

“I’m not going to need a doctor,” Wavy called out from in front of me. “I just have some blisters, but I’ll definitely take a ride.”

I smiled before I could stop myself.

Goddammit, that really was becoming a habit. Time to shut it down.

“Track my phone,” I told Landon. “Meet us wherever you can get closest. I’ll see you then.”

Time to stop messing around and get to work.