I pressed the talk button. “Sure do. Lay it on me.” I was ready for things three through a hundred.
“This one’s a little different. It’s something I’m just realizing, kind of a revelation, and it’s that … it’s that your eyes are my favorite.” Her voice had gone all gentle and soft, so I wasn’t sure I’d heard her right until she kept going. “They’re amazing. So blue and direct sometimes. Other times, when you’re not being sarcastic or contrary, when you’re listening or when you’re just driving, there’s such humor in them. Such humor and kindness. Then there are the times I catch you watching me, and what I see in them makes me forget everything. What I am, and what I do, and … I’m just a girl again. A girl who gets a million butterflies in her stomach over a boy with the prettiest blue eyes. It feels so normal. So normal and so good.”
I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t even know how to speak anymore. My heart was going ballistic in my chest. Finally I got it together enough to respond. “So what you’re telling me is that I make you feel average?”
She laughed. “Yes. You make me feel perfectly ordinary. It’s the best.”
“Daryn … Dare. Just come over here.” I didn’t say “please,” but it was all over my voice. I wanted her with me. I was losing my mind, I wanted that so badly.
But I knew it wasn’t going to happen. Every second that passed felt like she was putting mile after mile between us again. If this was her life—postcards from Croatia?—then I was beginning to understand the distance she needed. Not easy to get attached to people when you were always leaving. Coming from a military family, I knew about that.
“We should get some rest,” she said. “Special Agent Daryn Martin, signing off. Good night, Gideon.”
“Night, boss.”
I shut off my radio. But I didn’t fall sleep for a long while after.
CHAPTER 34
I woke up hungry, tired, and partially deaf, but ready to coordinate our ingress into Italy. Four stowaways climbing out of a cargo plane on the Fiumicino Airport tarmac were bound to attract some attention, so. Time to plan.
I stood, stretched, and put Lia back in her cage, giving her one of my granola bars. Sebastian and Marcus were both awake, but Daryn was still out cold, using my Giants sweatshirt as her pillow.
I thought about our conversation over the radios. I wanted to get smart about depression so I could talk with her about it without sounding like an idiot. The scar on her back? Definitely wanted to see that. She’d acted like it was ugly, but no way. It just couldn’t be. And the last thing she’d said? Mind-blowing.
I checked my watch and decided to let her sleep a little longer. We still had some time before we landed. We’d left Los Angeles at 11:55 p.m. Direct flights from LA to Rome took around twelve hours, and we’d gained nine hours in time-zone difference. That added up to it being night again in Rome when we’d land, somewhere around the 9:30 p.m. range, local time. Night was good. Darkness gave us more options. I set my watch. If I’d estimated everything correctly we had about thirty minutes until we touched down.
Moving to the rear of the plane, where there was more room, I presented the objective of deplaning without getting arrested to Marcus and Bastian.
“I’ll handle it,” Marcus said, before I’d finished. “I got an idea.”
I aimed my penlight on him. “No. Not unless you run your idea by me and I approve it.”
He scowled, squinting at the light. “I don’t answer to you. You think ’cause you were in the Army for a month, you know everything? You don’t know nothin’ about the real world.”
I didn’t know who’d told him I was in the Army—Bastian or Daryn. Either way I didn’t appreciate it.
“We find Contempt and I’m gone,” Marcus said.
“You mean Conquest,” Bas offered.
“You already found contempt, bro.”
“Who you calling bro?” He shoved me in the chest.
I escalated immediately by throwing a punch, but Sebastian shot between us and I couldn’t avoid him. I tagged the back of his head, sending him sprawling. Marcus came in and swung at me. I took a grazing hit to the forehead, but it still rocked me. My head went flying and I had to follow it. I collided with a steel pallet.
Lia was barking now. I knew Marcus was coming for more—but the sound of the landing gear whining stopped me.
Two things hit me then. Actually three. The first was Marcus, who took advantage of my momentary lapse of focus to punch me across the temple. The second was the fact that Bastian and Daryn stood nearby in a panicked discussion about how to handle us. Third was that my timeline calculations had been way off. We were beginning our descent now.
At Marcus’s punch, I saw brightness, the painful kind, mirrors under the sun, then red like bursting capillaries. When my vision came back, Daryn and Bastian had positioned themselves between me and Marcus. They were talking, but I couldn’t hear much. Just something-something-something shadow.