As he pulled his jacket off, Epps called out, "Your girlfriend came looking for you."
He knew who they were talking about, though "girlfriend" wouldn't be the term that he used for Diana. Diversion maybe, a lie definitely. He didn't know why he kept fucking her. She didn't care for him, and he didn't really care for her, but they spent their time together. He suspected Diana slept with him to prevent her from losing influence with her people. It was as simple as that. She was in charge and didn't want to share power with anyone. Allen offered no threat in that respect. He was a soldier, an outsider, and no one from the Nike side of things would ever allow him to be anything but, especially not now that they thought they could handle themselves.
Diana would be left for another day. His gear was too cold to enjoy the experience anyway. He nodded his head at Rudy and Amanda as he passed them in the hallway. He liked seeing them. They reminded him of the way things used to be, just a young boy and girl falling in love, not that he was much older than them.
Allen walked to his room and set his rifle down gingerly on his sleeping bag, hung his jacket on the wall, and untied his boots. When he was finished, he climbed under his blankets and shut his eyes, too tired to make himself some food. Sleep first, then food. He could still hear the skittering of bone on the wall's compound, though, in reality, it was dead quiet in his room.
The feeling was starting to come back to his feet when someone knocked on the door. He sunk deeper into his blankets and tried to pretend that he didn't hear it, but the knock came louder, followed by a command from the powerful, no-nonsense voice of Sergeant Tejada. "Open the fucking door."
Tejada had the type of voice that would have you reaching to pull your handgun before you realized that the man had just commanded you to kill yourself. Needless to say, Allen threw back his blankets and hopped across the floor in his bare feet. He pulled the door open, and Tejada's square head greeted him.
"Report," he said bluntly.
"Nothing to report, other than it's cold outside."
Tejada smiled and said, "That's it? Just cold? No fancy metaphor?"
"Sorry. It's fucking cold outside."
Tejada laughed then. "No fuck I ever had has been cold."
Thinking of Diana, Allen laughed, "Then you're lucky."
"Put your boots on. There's a meeting in the armory." Tejada turned to walk away then, even his hairline on the back of his neck was square.
Allen turned around and put on his boots, slipping his poor, tortured feet into damp, cold boots. The chill of the boots made it feel like he was slipping literal pain onto his feet. He bent over to tie the laces, and when he stood upright, Diana was standing there. Oh, shit.
"Who let you in?" he managed to say without sounding too surprised.
"I'm here for the meeting," she said, her eyes boring through him.
He didn't know what she wanted. She was like a book written in a different language. He knew she made sense, but he didn't have the skills to decode what she was all about. "The meeting?" he asked, feeling sluggish and slow. Diana was not the sort of person you wanted to feel sluggish and slow around. She could pounce like a jaguar at any moment.
"With Tejada."
There it was. She did it again. She had made him feel stupid. She had a way of doing that without even trying. It was her superpower, making him feel like an asshole. "Well, let's not keep the man waiting," he said. Whiteside and Gregg filed by him; Gregg's eyebrow arched. The other guys had tried to seek out relationships among the Nike people, but had found it slow going. They were constantly amused by his relationship with Diana, a relationship that he put no real energy into. He wouldn't mind if it died on the vine. The other men loved watching him squirm, though he knew any of them would be willing to trade positions with him in a heartbeat.
"You coming, Loverboy?" Gregg called in a singsong voice as he climbed the stairs to the top floor of the security building.
Diana smiled at him. She knew exactly what she was doing, which was one of the reasons he would be happy when he was away from her. Without warning, she swooped in and nibbled on his ear, her breath hot and warm. "Will I see you after the meeting?"
It was the warmth, more than anything else, that made him want to say yes. He was so damn sick of being cold. "Maybe," he responded.
She stepped back from him and gave him a death-ray regard with her eyes. Then the corner of her lip quirked in a small smile. "That's a yes." She said this with a quiet confidence that he couldn't argue with.
She turned and walked away from him, and even under winter clothing, the way her body moved was like… like… he was too tired to come up with anything poetic to say. It just looked good. He followed her up the stairwell to the top floor. At the top of the landing, bunkbeds sat abandoned and unused. A few of the mattresses were missing, dragged off to other rooms in the building. No one wanted anything to do with the place where the previous occupants had been slaughtered. They walked past half of the bunk beds and entered a doorway set right in the middle of the bunkhouse. The room inside was functional and nondescript. A plain, wooden counter sat empty in the middle of the room. Whiteside
