But it made sense. Of course she wouldn’t be staying. How could she? Why would she even want to, assuming they’d let her?
Ariane regarded me with a faint wrinkle of confusion in her forehead. Then her expression cleared, and she raised herself up on her toes, pressing her cold lips against mine.
Hell if that was going to be our last kiss. I bent down and looped my arms around her waist, lifting her up.
Her mouth was as impatient as mine, and her fingers curled into my coat collar, pulling me closer. And suddenly I forgot about the cold, the snow, everything except her body pressed against mine.
After a long moment, Ariane pulled back, her rapid breath appearing between us in little white puffs, and I set her down reluctantly.
But she kept her hand on my chest. “I’m going to the apartment they set up for me,” she said to me slowly, as if she was afraid I would misunderstand. “Here in town, in that new complex.”
“Over on Forest and Lombardi?” I asked, confused, my brains kind of scrambled from the kiss.
She nodded.
“But…that’s where my mom’s new place is.” Which meant Ariane would be close to where I already spent a lot of time.
Ariane just smiled.
It clicked. “You knew that already.”
She grinned. “I might have heard something to that effect. But we’re in Building B, across the courtyard from her apartment.” She pulled gloves—knitted in bright pink and purple stripes—from her pockets and put them on.
“We?” I asked.
She wrinkled her nose. “The agent assigned to me. Not sure who it’s going to be yet. I was hoping maybe…”
I didn’t have to have my former (limited) mind-reading thoughts to know she’d been hoping Mark Tucker would reappear. I considered mentioning what Rachel had told me about her/their mother, but decided it could wait.
Ariane shook her head, dismissing Mark as a possibility even though neither of us had said his name. “It’s okay. I think it’s going to be Marta, one of the DHS agents assigned to me when I was with them. And she’s fine. Kind of dry, not much of a sense of humor, and she doesn’t believe in watching movies—”
“Obviously she’s an alien,” I said.
“Clearly,” Ariane said, her eyes bright with amusement.
I stared at her in disbelief. “How did you manage all of this?”
“I can be very persuasive,” she said.
“I’m aware,” I said dryly. “But they’re just letting you go?”
“Not exactly. They need me.” She shrugged. “And when you’re the only one on the entire planet who can make all their recovered alien tech light up and send out incomprehensible streams of data that will take them years to decode, they’re pretty motivated to keep you…cooperative.”
“Dr. Jacobs needed you,” I pointed out, stomping my feet in place to keep warm. Ariane, in her boots and brightly colored cold weather gear, didn’t seem bothered.
“No,” she said. “Dr. Jacobs wanted to control me. There’s a difference. He was willing to break me, wanted to, even. Justine…she knows better.” Her voice took on an ominous tone, and I wondered what, exactly, Ariane had had to do to convince her of that point. “I’m no good to them if they push too hard.” Her mouth curved in a tight bitter smile. “Not to mention all the tales I could tell if someone does show up here from another planet, wanting to know if you all are worth keeping around.”
Leverage. That’s what she’d been talking about when we’d first met with Justine. And now, with Ford and the others dead, I guess she had it, though I was betting she would have rather it not happen quite in this way. “So you could have gone anywhere,” I said. “You didn’t have to come back here for…I mean, I’m not…”
“I didn’t come back just for you,” she said. “Dr. Jacobs is…currently out of commission. But he’s not the only one who knew what was going on at GTX.” Her expression darkened. “He’s not the only one who could start it up again. I want to make sure that doesn’t happen. Here or anywhere else. I promised Ford.” Her gaze dropped to the ground.
I nodded, even as my brain chewed on the fact that she’d said that she hadn’t come back “just” for me. Which meant that she had considered my presence in Wingate and it had been a factor in her decision. And that made a ridiculous grin spread across my face.
The sound of tires crunching on snow came from behind me. I turned and saw our battered SUV slowly making its way into the parking lot. Quinn braked as soon as he saw me, unwilling to go farther into the unplowed parking lot, and honked the horn in a short, impatient burst.
I waved at him so he’d know I saw him. “That’s Quinn. He’s living here now and hogging the car. I have to go,” I said to Ariane. “Come with me,” I added on impulse.