“Sienna …” Eilish said, breaking a lovely silence in which I was cursing myself, cursing that I was ever born, and cursing lots of other things, too.
“What?” I asked, trying not to let too much of my anxiety loose on her. She hadn’t asked for it, and odds were good that, as another of my associates, she was now under threat.
“I was going to say, ‘I hope you’re not blaming yourself,’ but I think we all know that’d be wishing for a unicorn,” Eilish said, leaning forward a little tentatively. “Guilt isn’t going to make you feel any better.”
“Oh, who cares if I feel better?” I asked.
“Not I,” Cassidy said, still browsing the web. When I gave her a frown, she shrugged. “What? I just want you to kill this guy. Whether you feel great or terrible in the process is immaterial to me. Unless feeling good helps you kill him more efficiently, in which case … would you like me to get you some sort of mood elevator from a local pharmacy?”
“I wouldn’t mind one,” Harry said. “Things are getting a little down around here.”
“All I want is some scotch,” I said, watching another sign for Nashville pass me by. “Is that too much to ask?”
“At this hour on a Sunday in Nashville? Yeah, probably,” Harry said.
“Oh, I always wanted to see Music City,” Eilish said, bouncing a little in her seat.
“We’re working, we’re not here to do touristy shit,” I said, gloom and doom settling over me. “I need a drink, you know, to keep functioning, that’s all. Maybe in Kentucky—” I soured and stopped talking when I caught Harry subtly shaking his head. “Well, shit.”
“Pretty sure this is the actual definition of alcoholism,” Eilish said, but she didn’t sound too judgmental about it.
“While you’re doing definitions, you should look up ‘nosey,’” I said.
“As in, sticking in your nose in the business of others?” she asked.
“As in, ‘You’re about to get popped in the,’” I said.
“Oh.” She sat back, conveniently out of my reach. “Irritability is another sign of alcoholism.”
“Leave the diagnoses to the properly trained clinicians, will you?” I sat facing forward, watching the green hills roll up and down in front of me. So these were the hills of Tennessee? Not bad. Even I could see that in my somewhat aggravated state. That pissiness thing, though, it was like an itch under my skin I just couldn’t wait to scratch. “I miss flying,” I said, trying to make it sound innocuous so someone—Eilish—wouldn’t see the rake I’d set up until she stepped on it.
“I bet,” Eilish said, right on cue. “The wind in your hair, on your cheeks—all that. I bet it was grand.”
“Yeah, that was great, too,” I said. “But I mostly miss not having to be stuck in a car with a bunch of yahoos who are either wittingly or unwittingly trying to get me killed.”
That shut them all up, which was kind of the point. I was on a simmer, heading toward a hard boil. I didn’t need this shit; my team was being attacked on the West Coast, my known associates had been attacked in New York City and—technically—Virginia, though I didn’t much want to be associated with Eric Simmons or his egghead-yet-idiotic girlfriend.
All I wanted was to sit on the damned beach in Florida and drink my effing drink. Was that too much to—?
Harry swerved hard, taking us off on a sudden exit next to a rest area sign he’d almost passed. Cassidy gasped, catching her laptop before it slid off her lap, and Eilish made a kind of merping noise you might normally associate with a too-cute CGI creature in a modern sci-fi movie.
For my part, I just hung on and looked daggers at Harry. “What the hell was that?”
“I apologize, ladies,” Harry said, guiding us into the rest area and pulling up in an isolated parking space toward the front of the lot. There was an old bathroom building to our rear and a sprawling scape of green space in front of us complete with picnic areas. The sun was starting to rise, and a few big semi trucks were pulling in, probably to bed down for the day. The parking lot was speckled with cars, people taking a few minutes to use the bathrooms and stretch their legs.
And here we sat, pulling in as Harry threw the car into park and then looked at me. “A word, please.” Then he got out and slammed his door behind him.
“I don’t think it’s just going to be one word,” Eilish said. “I’ve got to go to the loo again, though, how about you?”
“Yep,” Cassidy said, opening her own door. “Enjoy your ass chewing, Sienna.” And they were gone.
I was just sitting in the passenger seat, steaming. Harry Graves was going to chew my ass? After trying to feed me to the Terminator without a word of warning?
Cassidy had seriously misapprehended whose ass was going to get ripped a new one. I got out of the car and slammed my own door, causing the SUV to wobble. I took my sweet time and went around to the rear of the hatchback, opening it and fetching a Snickers bar. I opened it and took a bite, thinking to hell with Eilish and her failure to appreciate great chocolate.
I took my time, glancing between the seats and up ahead at Harry, who waited patiently on the grass in front of the SUV, like he had all day. He knew by probability when I was likely to be done making him wait, so he probably also knew his failure to react was driving me slightly nuts.
Or maybe he just knew my patience was bound to run out soon, because it did. So I slammed the hatchback and headed off down the slope at the edge of the parking lot and down the rolling green park space to where he waited.
“What the hell do you want?” I asked, figuring niceties were unnecessary. He’d seen that coming a mile away, I was sure, since my skin was crawling and I was so irritable I would have gladly battered his head around just to relieve some of my building stress.
“Peace on earth and good will toward men and women,” Harry said with a lazy sigh, slight smile on his face. “But since I am unlikely to receive that gift anytime soon short of some sort of apocalypse that leaves everyone dead, I’ll settle for extracting that chip from your shoulder.”
“It’s a mighty big chip, Harry,” I said, pausing to trash my candy wrapper in a conveniently placed garbage can by one of the picnic tables. “I’m not sure you have the strength to lift it.”
“Oh, it’s huge,” Harry said. “Why, I’d say it’s the approximate weight of the world—or it used to be. Now it’s just a big piece of rock with the words ‘Sienna Nealon’s Emotional Baggage’ written all over it. Same weight, less responsibility.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Can you read your own survival percentages? Because I calculate they’re dropping with every word you speak.”
“Nope,” he said cheerfully. “That’s the thing about being a Cassandra; I can’t read my own future.”