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I wasn’t Mattie’s mother, either, but I sure as hell felt responsible for her. I wasn’t sure when that had started, but I couldn’t deny that the feeling was there. Mattie didn’t trust me still, and I didn’t blame her for it. But I wasn’t going to stand on the sidelines while she suffered in silence. I took the plate from Tabitha. “I’ll talk to her.” Tabitha angled away from me dramatically as she handed me the plate, so I added, “And I’ll shower, okay? Christ, you’re dramatic.”
“Your odor is dramatic.”
I shoved my chair against the desk more forcefully than necessary, and Tabitha scurried away with a cackle. Although, despite my scowl, a hint of amusement pricked at my thoughts. Tabitha was my most loyal operative, and she’d stuck around with me far longer than necessary. She didn’t currently have any assignments, but she’d insisted on staying by my side until I had things fully wrapped up and closed down. Using the word “friend” made me strangely uncomfortable, but I had to admit, Tabitha was as close as it got.
I crossed the distance between my office area and the stairs that led to my bedroom, my sneakers squeaking against the polished concrete. The workstations had been set up on the opposite sides of the industrial space, and I crossed through a living area before reaching the kitchen that my room had been built over, loft-style. Most components of this safe house had been chosen for functionality, so the stairs were made of a metal grate material that bonged like deep bells as I climbed them.
It must have alerted Mattie to my approach because she sat up straight in my bed as I opened the door. With the sun having set hours ago, and only the sparing light from the kitchen below illuminating the space, I just barely made out the rigid, disheveled shadow of Mattie as she watched me close the door. She barely moved, barely breathed, like frightened prey caught in the greedy gaze of a predator.
That should have made me happy—it was what I’d wanted, after all. But it didn’t. Instead, I felt… guilty. I hesitated on the threshold, not sure of the best way to approach the woman I’d chased and captured several times over the last sixteen months. That fact tethered us together like an invisible thread, stretched taut with tension. If I twanged it in the wrong way, she’d lose all trust in me all over again.
I held up the plate. “You weren’t hungry?”
Like my words had broken a spell, Mattie’s shadow shifted, and then she coughed, tight and rattling loudly through the quiet space. When she had finished coughing into her arm, she reached over to grab a tissue from the box on the floating shelf to her left. “No offense to your nuked delicacy, but no. Not really.”
I glanced at the pizza. Truth be told, no one could pay me enough to eat that shit, either. Tabitha ate like an urban raccoon and likely wouldn’t have cared if the pizza had come from an authentic pizzeria or a school lunchroom. Exhaling in defeat, I set it on the chest of drawers against the window wall before crossing my arms and coming to stand near her side of the bed. “What can you eat?”
I couldn’t see much of her features, but I heard the skepticism in her raspy voice as she asked, “Why do you care?”
Good question. Why do you care, Kael? An inner voice that came out of nowhere whispered back, Because she’s yours. I blinked that thought away and said, “Because you’re my… guest. And I don’t want you to wither away before you pay me.”
Mattie angled her face to me, and a glow of light from downstairs caught on her smile. “Haven’t changed your mind?”
“Idiotically, no.”
Mattie coughed again, and I swore I could feel that sound, that heavy, squeezing pain in my chest. When she finished, she groaned and slumped back against the pillows. “Just leave me behind. Go on without me,” she croaked.
“What the hell are you talking about?” I reached over to the side table and picked up the thermometer.
As I pointed it at her shadowed form, Mattie chuckled. “You’re not a movie fan? You know, the dying side character who—will you stop that? I still have a fever. I’ll save you the trouble.”
The thermometer beeped loudly, agreeing with her and bathing us both in a soft red glow. “You’re not dying. Why is everyone being so dramatic today?”
“Who’s everyone?”
“Never mind,” I muttered, setting the thermometer back on the table. “I need to shower. Think about what you can eat while I’m in there, and I’ll see if I can make it happen.”
“You do smell like a swamp,” Mattie said seriously.
Rolling my eyes, I left her and crossed to the other side of the bed and over to my en suite bathroom. These chicks had no idea what “bad” smelled like. “Bad” was eight days in Yemen with five other buddies, no showers, and more piss, blood, and sweat on our clothing than dust. And Yemen is fucking dusty.
I opened the door to my bathroom, glancing at Mattie over my shoulder before going in. She had gone motionless again, still in the same position she’d slumped back into and rasping out a steady tempo of labored breaths. I wondered briefly if I needed to take her somewhere for treatment, but surely with her training, Mattie would know if that was necessary—right?
I stripped off my athletic shirt as I closed the door softly, and then I flicked on the lights. Muted gold suffused the small space, bouncing off chrome fixtures and slate gray tile in the enclosed glass shower. To my left, the single, glass vessel sink had been perched on white marble counters, and muted earth tones added a minimalist feel to the rest of the three-piece bathroom.
I turned on the overhead vent, and then while the shower warmed up, I thought over my plan of action for Mattie’s hastily concocted scheme. There were two glaring issues with Mattie’s “plan.” One, she was lying to me. My intuition knew it, and her nightmares confirmed it; something else was at work in Mattie’s life, and without knowing what, I would have to go into this thing half blind. Unstable variables were a tactical recipe for disaster.
Two, she wasn’t afraid of me. At least, she didn’t appear to be on the outside. Not to others. When we were alone, her body language told me she was wary of me, but she was quick to hide that behind salient impudence.
I tried to imagine showing up at the Thornes’ house with Mattie in tow and telling them I had psychologically tortured her so thoroughly that she wouldn’t dare run from me. And I imagined just how abysmally Mattie would back that up by immediately clapping back with some kind of smartass comment. It would never work.
I stepped into the glass shower, and steamy water hit my skin with a satisfying pressure that soothed away some of the ache in my muscles. Turning idly in the shower stream, I splashed some water over my shoulders while I thought. It might be worth it, when Mattie was feeling better, to level with her and find out what she was hiding. It would also help if she was willing to practice looking cowed in my presence.
I snorted audibly at the thought. Bunnies would hunt wolves before that would happen. I finished my shower quickly, ending it with the handle turned to icy cold and letting myself stand in the freezing water for two minutes before briskly drying off. I looked around the bathroom and realized I hadn’t brought my clothing in with me. Normally, I never needed to do that. Growling out a sigh, I turned off the light and walked out in my towel.
Mattie’s shrouded gaze followed me as I crossed the hardwood and headed for my dresser which still had the plate of cold pizza sitting on top of it. I glanced at her, and even in the low light, I made out the intensity of her eyes fixed on me. A smile pulled at my lips. “See something you like, Bunny?”
“That’s a rhetorical question, and you know it,” she grated out. But then she sneezed twice and flopped back onto her side with a moan. “I’m too sick to be impressed. Put that away.”
