Reckoning

“It’s all yours,” he said.

“I won’t be long.”

He nodded, then turned away as she walked naked to the bathroom. It would have been a whole hell of a lot easier if he didn’t like her so much. After it was all over, he’d have to see about this. See if what he felt for her was the real deal, or just a matter of circumstance.

For now, he had only one thing he could focus on. Exposing Omicron. Nothing else mattered.

While Tam showered, he passed the time cleaning his gun, and thinking about what came next.

THE SHOWER FELT WONDERFUL, and so did the big fluffy towel as Tam dried off, but putting on her only clothes nearly made her weep.

They smelled of smoke and fear. It was just a T-shirt and jeans, and they would be fine after a wash, but she wanted more than anything to throw them away. She didn’t even have clean underwear. She had ditched those, choosing to go commando, and she’d turned her socks inside out, but it all felt wrong.

Was there money to get her new things? Probably not after they paid for the hotel room. Why had he brought her here? This place had to cost at least a hundred a night.

She wiped a clear spot on the mirror, and sighed as she got a load of her hair. She had no brush. No toothbrush. Nothing except the clothes on her back and a flash drive.

Using her fingers, she tried to make her hair obey, but it was no use. Then she rinsed her mouth out with water, and scrubbed her teeth with her finger, and that was even less successful than her finger comb.

She left the bathroom, and there was Nate standing by the door. He seemed impatient, and she felt the heat rise in her cheeks. She wasn’t sure why she was embarrassed. It wasn’t because of what they’d done. No, that had been the best thing she’d done in ages. Something else was going on, but she couldn’t pinpoint it. Not yet.

“You ready?”

She nodded. “I’d really appreciate it if we could stop at a gas station with a mini-mart. I need a toothbrush and a few other things.”

“You got it.”

She looked at him again, at his businesslike tone and she had to know. “Are you sorry?”

His shoulders sagged and he walked right up to her. He lifted her chin so he could look her straight in the eyes. “No. Don’t ever think that. I haven’t felt that wonderful in so long, I can’t even tell you. But I should have called the team. They were worried.”

“I understand.”

He hesitated, then he leaned down and kissed her lightly on the lips. “I’ll never forget this.”

She smiled, but his words didn’t comfort. She would have pressed, but they needed to go. And she needed to think.

What did she want from him? She’d asked him to help her forget, and he’d done just that. She’d figured since it had been so great that they’d do it again. But that was an assumption she needed to examine.

He opened the door and she knew the moment she stepped into the hallway that she had to give up her little fantasy. She wasn’t at all sure what would come next, just that what had prompted her to proposition him in the first place was still true. She didn’t want to die alone.

Now she had to wonder if she’d meant she needed someone, or if she’d meant she’d needed Nate.

5

IT HAD BEEN A BRUTAL SHIFT at the truck stop where it felt to Harper as if every employee and soldier from Nellis had come by not to eat, but to complain. She wasn’t used to the relentlessness of being a waitress. As a doctor, she rarely had to do terribly physical labor, and she never had to kiss anyone’s ass for a tip. No matter how tempting it was to get angry, she didn’t. It simply wouldn’t have done any good.

Since the night she’d realized she had to face up to her situation, she’d had revelation after revelation, most of them good. She’d accepted that through no fault of her own she was part of this. She was being hunted by Omicron, and if she didn’t do something about it, she would be killed. There was no use pretending she hadn’t seen an entire village in Serbia wiped out by the lethal gas. That she didn’t know exactly who was responsible for those deaths.

She’d also come to accept that even though it wasn’t easy for her, she needed to trust the people around her. Seth was her biggest breakthrough. She’d never believed that someone could love her, that she could love someone in return, but then he’d come into her life. Who would have guessed that while he was healing from having his hand blown off, he’d be the one to heal her heart? She wasn’t a sappy person, not by a long shot, but even she couldn’t deny that something miraculous had taken place during the worst of situations.

Going to work each day at the truck stop wasn’t that bad. The money was ludicrously low, but it helped. It was a damn shame, however, that she couldn’t use her medical degree. They could have all used the money.

Christie, who’d gotten her the job, had been anxious all afternoon. Boone had called her, filling her in about Nate and Tam not showing up. But, like Harper, Christie couldn’t afford to miss even an hour of work, so she’d soldiered on. Harper had tried to tell her that her brother was fine, that he was too smart to get caught, but Christie wouldn’t be satisfied until she saw Nate.

It would have been great if they’d walked into Christie’s room at the motel and found that Nate and Tam had arrived, but no. It was still good to see Kate and Vince. And here was Cade, whom she’d heard about but never met.

He was quite large. Conan large. But he had a shy smile and his sandy brown hair had a cowlick in the back, reminiscent of Dennis the Menace. She wondered if the guys in his unit had given him hell for it, but then he’d probably had a crew cut back then.

“I’m Harper,” she said, extending her hand.

He shook it almost too gently, as if he knew he could easily hurt her. “Ma’am.”

“How was your trip?”

He shrugged. “Okay, I suppose. It was tricky getting the boxes on board. Security is tighter now, even at the bus stations.”

“Boxes?”

“Weapons,” he said. “We’ve collected quite a few, and we couldn’t afford to leave them behind.”

“Of course,” she said. She’d been told he was a sniper. An excellent one. She shivered, still not used to the nearness of death.

Even being together in one room like this was incredibly dangerous. But, then so was everything else. They would either come up with a way to defeat Omicron, or they wouldn’t. Right now all she could do was spend as much time as possible with Seth.

“Nate and Tam are on their way,” Boone said. “He called.”

Harper hadn’t even realized how on edge she’d been about them until her shoulders relaxed.

“Thank God,” Christie said. “Let me get something to drink, then catch us up, okay?”

Harper went with her, wishing she could have showered before this meeting.

“Actually,” Boone continued, “there’s good news for you and Harper. Vince here has generously decided to bankroll us, at least for now. So you two won’t have to go back to that truck stop.”

Harper looked at Christie and they both grinned like idiots. “Gee, what a shame,” Harper said. “I’ll so miss coming home smelling like burgers and onion rings.”

“I’m assuming we won’t be laying about eating bonbons,” Christie added.

Boone shook his head. “I wish you could, but no. There’s work to be done.”

Harper poured herself a cold soda and Christie went for iced tea. Boone didn’t wait until they returned. He filled them in on their discovery of the chamber, and the biometric hand scanner that stood in their way.