Gwen touched the fine platinum rope chain that was always, always at her neck. Her fingers ran to the flat disk hanging beneath her shirt—the familiar shape of it a comfort, the habit of touching it so instilled that she rarely did it consciously.
Now, she found her fingers on it—through her shirt, closed her hand around it. Looking for...
She had no idea. But she thought maybe something had already found
Mac reached the parking lot on overdrive—made himself stop, feeling the aches of a beating and the burn of the unnatural healing pushed by the blade. Made himself breathe deeply—once, twice.
But they were.
At least, some of them were. The part of him that responded to an abundance of red-glinting hair and copper freckles and wide, pale blue eyes; the part of him that tightened into awareness at fit curves beneath travel-wrinkled clothing, undeterred by her stark reaction to his presence.
Those feelings...they came very much from within.
She’d stood him down without blinking.
To some extent, without breathing—he’d taken her by surprise, no doubt about it. But nerve...
Oh, yeah. She had it.
She also radiated trouble like a beacon. There’d been no denying the way her presence had slapped at him—
And simultaneously beguiled him.
The blade had absorbed her like a sponge. Her shock at the first sight of him, her frisson of stark, startled response—her feelings, filtered through living metal with more subtlety, more layering...
The blade, Mac would have said, had a crush.
If such a thing were possible. But a true crush...that meant giving.
And the blade only knew to
Mac rubbed his chest just to the left of center...just a little lower than his heart. There, where the tattoo had appeared overnight. The night he’d thought he’d died, only to find that he hadn’t quite.
The night he’d changed from casually footloose—catching up with family here, visiting friends there, working a vague path along the way—to grimly driven from one place to another, never quite comfortable where he was or who he was.
Beneath the thin ribbed shirt, the tattoo’s complex design ran raised beneath his touch. No ordinary tattoo at that. He ran his fingers over it, not sure what he was looking for. Never sure what he was looking for.
But he thought, this time, maybe something had found
Gwen should have gone right into that hotel and grabbed a room. Instead she found herself too shaken to handle the transaction. She stood at the double-door entry for a moment, and then turned on her heel, heading for the sidewalk.
Not the best part of town for a midnight stroll. But she’d spotted the all-night diner on the way in—a block away, well-lit—and her stomach had growled at the sight. At the moment it was still a little too clenched to countenance the thought of food, but that’s what the walk was for. A block of dark privacy to collect her thoughts.
Besides, she was safer than most in this darkness. She’d know if anyone around was considering mayhem, thanks to her strange unwelcome legacy.
Her father’s pendant shifted with her long strides; she rotated the chain, wondering that she noticed it at all. It had been so much a part of her for so many years...never aging, never wearing, shedding soap, shampoo and sweat as readily as it did the tarnishing air.
But tonight her skin tingled slightly beneath it, and she briefly cupped her hand over it. “Behave,” she murmured.
She couldn’t remember when she’d started talking to it. When she’d been a girl and her father had nearly killed her before he disappeared, leaving only this behind? Or somewhere along the way? She only knew that it gave her strange comfort.
She smiled, no matter how briefly. For here she was, a dark city block from where she’d started—breathing deeply of the night air and feeling calm again. With food waiting before her. Just as planned.
Her stomach growled again. Right on cue.
The place looked used but clean, and the food smelled wonderful. A young couple in the far booth played a constant game of touch-and-flirt, mutually afflicted with bad tattoos and poor personal hygiene. A ragged man pushed a coffee cup around his little table, giving her no more than a desultory glance. The midnight clientele.
Including her hungry, travel-worn self.
Gwen grabbed a seat at the counter, snagged a plastic-encased menu, and flipped it open to a picture of the best breakfast burrito she’d ever seen—here in the state that claimed to have invented them. As the waitress approached, she pushed the menu away with her finger on the picture. “And decaf.”
Nice to be decisive. In this, at least.
The man with the coffee made a juicy throat-clearing noise, threw change on the table and left. As the door closed, several young men slipped in; the flirting couple drew back from one another to greet them.
Gwen sighed, fingers straying to the pendant.
She knew. She always knew. It had taken time to learn the hard lesson of when to react, when to stay silent, when to run away.
It had taken too long, actually. An emergency room visit or two.
But once upon a time her father had tried to kill her. Once upon a time, he’d nearly succeeded. And when she’d healed, tender young muscle and bone knitting back together, she’d discovered that now, she always knew.
They had weapons. They had intent.
She must have tensed. The waitress, a Hispanic woman with wiry grey at her temples and a tired smile at her eyes, flipped over her coffee cup, filled it and said, so casually, “Whatever they’re up to, they won’t do it in here.” And then a half shrug. “Mostly that crew is just figuring out how to grow up.”
They looked plenty grown up to Gwen.
“Thanks,” she said, picking up the coffee cup...meaning the reassurance.
But when the door opened again, she fumbled the cup, nearly dropping it.
Not subtle at all.
And that mouth, made to carry a wry smile, proved once again its proficiency at just that. “Not,” he told her from just inside the door, “following you.” His gaze flicked briefly to the young men in the background, noticing them—the low but intense conversation between them, the young woman impatient and defiant.
In this light, she could see the blue in his grey eyes, the exact cast of his mouth, the confidence in his movement. Up went his eyebrows—a bit of a natural brood in them—and he asked, “Okay?”
Belatedly, she realized the courtesy he offered:
“Um, fine,” she said. “Eat, drink...whatever.”
The waitress appeared with her breakfast burrito, plunking down both ketchup and salsa, and slid the plate
