I felt the edge of tears under my eyelids and I hiccuped over them in my throat. “You—you don’t look like a dork.”
“Then I failed,” he said with a sigh, “because I’m supposed to look like the jerk no one notices around the office until he comes in one day with a clanking duffel bag and a long memory.”
“Why?”
“Because I owed the FBI a favor.”
I sat up so fast and far that I almost burned my back on the stove. “What?”
Quinton shook his head. “I knew you wouldn’t like it.”
“Like is not a factor. I just . . . Just tell me what you did and why you had to do it for the feds.”
He looked up sideways with an anticipatory wince. “You’re going to hate me.”
I gaped at him for a moment. Then I leaned forward and kissed him. “I will never hate you. I love you. So talk.”
He sighed as I settled back on the seat next to him and stole part of the blanket back for myself.
“I love you, too, you know. And that’s why I gave myself up.”
TWENTY-SIX
I wanted to question him, shake him until he told me what the hell he was talking about, but I knew Quinton wasn’t having an easy time telling me his story, so I sat still and held my peace.
“Back . . . back when you were trying to find Edward, you remember I unearthed the video files and I took them to the police.”
“Yes.”
He didn’t look at me but stared at the stove. “Well . . . you didn’t want me to go because of the trouble I’d had with the NSA and the cops, and I argued that I was the only person who could convince them the videos were legit and important. But that wasn’t entirely why I went. I thought . . . that I could save you. That I could convince them to pick up Goodall and the whole plan would fall apart without him. Then you’d be safe and we could find another way to deal with Wygan that didn’t require you to walk into a trap and”—he swallowed hard—“and die.”
I wanted to reach out and hold on to him, but his posture told me not to. I bit my lip and waited for him to continue.
“I knew I couldn’t just walk in and not have to take the consequences. The paperwork said I was dead, but . . . you know there are only half as many dead spies in the world as there are papers to prove it. The only thing I wanted was to make sure you were safe, and the Feebs just wanted to argue with me about who I was and how I’d slipped off their chain. It was taking too long and I was running out of time. So I called my father.”
“The spy? The jerk who ‘loaned’ you to the NSA in the first place?”
He nodded, but he still didn’t look at me. “Yeah. James the First. The big spook himself. I made them call him, actually. If you drop the right code words, they’ll check it. I wasn’t sure Dad would go along. I mean . . . we’re not exactly buddies these days, and the way I dropped out made him look bad. But I didn’t care. I . . . just wanted to help you.
“Dad, was . . . well, he was a prick about it, but he came through and put the word in for them to take me seriously and start moving.” He began babbling a little, talking very fast. “I had to agree to do some work for the FBI and they’d keep me off the books and not let the NSA know I wasn’t dead. But they just weren’t doing enough and it wasn’t fast enough and they wanted to plan an assault and get everything in place and do it all right and I just wanted to get to you! So I ditched them—Solis and Carol helped me get out—and then I went after you. I didn’t care what it took to get to you, and I didn’t care if I screwed up the plans they were making—all I could think of was you.”
His face went pale and slack as if he were seeing something terrible hanging in the air. “And it was too late. I got there and I got in. I went looking for you, down the stairs. There was so much noise and light and . . . it was like walking through hell. These sounds . . . these feelings came up like the tide and I—I almost couldn’t go. It was as if every nightmare I’d ever had as a kid was pouring up the staircase, every monster that lived under the bed, every bad dream where I could see the horrors happening but couldn’t move, couldn’t do a damned thing to stop them, where the voices kept whispering in my head what a useless, loveless failure I was.... But I could see you and I went forward.
“And it all stopped. You stopped it. The noise, the light, the horror; it all just . . . went away. And you were there and you were fine and I ran toward you. And that bastard shot you!” He clenched his fists and ground his teeth. “I wanted to kill him. I wanted to rip him apart, but you were there, bleeding, and I wanted you alive more than I wanted him dead, so . . . I left him to Carlos.
“I don’t know what happened after that. I don’t remember anything but holding on to you, and there was nothing I could do but watch you—watch you die. They said you were all right, but I saw it: I saw the lights go out and I hadn’t helped you. I hadn’t saved you at all.” There was something familiar and terrible about those words.
He turned toward me suddenly and he seemed to burn from the inside. “I never want to do that again. I never want to see you die again.” His body was strung tight and he quivered as if he couldn’t move either forward or back from the tension pulling on his bones.
I didn’t know if he was going to reach for me or push me away; if he wanted me more than he was afraid of me, so I reached for him instead, praying he wouldn’t pull away. I touched his face and he squeezed his eyes closed. I stroked his cheek and his neck, his shoulder, his arm. I took hold of both his arms and stared into his face, waiting for him to open his eyes.
“I’m not going to leave you,” I whispered. “I’m sorry I hurt you and let you think you’d failed to save me. You’ve never failed me. Without you, I would have given up and fallen away forever. But I love you—”
He didn’t let me finish, pulling me into his embrace so fast and hard that we were tangled instantly, limbs curling around each other and pressing tight as his mouth closed on mine. Gasping and kissing, we rolled against the edge of the old couch behind us. A rush of hot tears swept down my face and I cried a moment, feeling his own breath catch and shake as he let out a single hard sob of pent-up pain and sudden relief against my neck. Then we melted together and kissed each other breathless, tasting salt and forgiveness.
We would have gone a lot further if something hadn’t thudded against the lakeside wall. Then the something groaned and scrabbled at the door, sending skittering shivers through the Grey.
I bolted up to a crouch and reached to the sofa for my pistol while Quinton rolled aside and crawled across the floor toward the shotgun Steven Leung had left behind the kitchen door. I snuffed out the nearest candles. I inched toward the exterior door and Quinton caught up to me on near-silent feet, breaking open the double-barreled shotgun to check it.
“No shells,” he whispered.
“Kitchen cabinet with the canned goods,” I murmured back. I’d seen the box when we’d unloaded our purchases on arrival.
“What’s out there?”
We couldn’t see anything except slices of moving shadows from the other side of the shutters, but we couldn’t open them from inside. I peered out through the Grey, looking for the shape of the thing outside.
Things—and not human, either. There was only one on the deck so far, but I could see other shapes moving in the water and around the edge of the shore. The energy shapes, shrouded in something dull and inanimate, were pathetic tangles not complex or strong enough to be living humans, but there were at least a dozen of them.
“Not sure,” I whispered, “but not people. Twelve lakeside.” I turned and looked up, through the gleaming lines of the house, deeper into the Grey toward the hill on the back side of the house and the short wooden walkway that led to the upstairs door. “Nothing landside.”
“Upstairs, then—more options.”