Written in Fire

CHAPTER 48

“One second,” her voice said through the wall. Then, “Stupid freaking lousy pieces of—” The door jerked open.

The device around Shannon’s right thigh was clear plastic filled with glowing green gel, stretching from two inches above her knee to two inches below her groin and bound with weird centipede-looking straps that twitched and burrowed as she moved. No doubt it was the best the Holdfast could offer—he’d never seen anything like it—but the overall effect was a cross between steampunk jewelry and medieval torture device. She saw his expression, said, “What?”

Cooper tried not to laugh. He really did. But that only made it worse. What started as a muffled snort quickly threw off the reins. It was the exasperated, you gotta be kidding me look on her face, that and the notion of the Girl Who Walks Through Walls using crutches, her lissome grace reduced to bumps and lurches.

“Yeah, go ahead and laugh, asshole.”

He made an effort to stop, found that he just couldn’t.

“Enjoy yourself,” she said. “Don’t mind me.”

“Sorry.” He finally managed to lock it down. “Sorry. You look great.”

“Ha-ha.”

“No, really. Where can I get one of those?”

“Keep on like that, you’re gonna find out.”

He stepped in, took her head in his hands, and kissed her. They took their time, a dance of tongues and lips. When they finally broke it, he said, “Hi.”

“Hi.”

He glanced down. “Does it hurt?”

“Not with the pain pills. And according to Epstein’s doc, two weeks wearing the monstrosity, two weeks of physio, I’m good as new. Not bad for a snapped femur.”

“Yaa. Hearing ‘snapped’ and ‘femur’ in the same sentence sends shivers down my spine.”

“Pretty heroic, huh?” She gestured him in. “You know, I survived a spectacular midair collision to save the world.”

“Well, officially, I saved it. It says so on all the channels.”

“Jesus.” Shannon hobbled to the couch and lowered herself down. “You were already cocky. Now you’re going to be insufferable. Beer?”

“Sure.”

She winked. “In the fridge. Grab me one too.”

The kitchen was tiny. There was nothing in the refrigerator but hot sauce, mustard, and beer. It looked a lot like his own. “Should you have this with the pain pills?”

“Definitely.” She accepted it, took a long swallow. Cooper glanced around the apartment, cataloging the gun cleaning kit on the counter, the muted tri-d, the books propped facedown—she’d once told him that when she liked a book she snapped the spine so it could lie flat while she ate—the Murphy bed folded into the wall, the desk in the corner, stacks of junk spread out beneath the leaves of a plastic plant. A place for an un-life, a half-life. A way station for a life lived elsewhere. He smiled. “Remember when we were driving here? Before everything. Our fake passports had us married.”

“Tom and Allison Cappello.”

“Right. We were making up the backstory, how we’d worked together at some desk job. I asked if you’d ever actually had a desk, being a smartass, and you hit it back, said something like, ‘Yeah, it does a good job holding my fake plant.’”

“True story,” she said. “That desk is a team player.”

“You didn’t mention all the random crap on it.”

“It’s not random. I know where everything is. How’d your call with the prez go?”

“Kind of amazingly.” He filled her in.

“Wow,” she said. “Are you going to take the job?”

“I don’t know yet. I told her I needed a vacation first.”

“Oh? Where are you going?”

“We. Where are we going.” Cooper sat beside her on the couch. “We never got that date. How about we do it somewhere warm? I’m thinking rum drinks and coconut oil and palm trees. No guns. No plots.”

“No one trying to kill us?”

“For a week or two. Of course—” He glanced down at her cast, said, “I was also picturing you in a bikini.”

She laughed, that good deep one he’d always liked. “As soon as I can move my leg, I’m going to kick your ass.”

“I look forward to it, gimpy. In the meantime, there’s something else we should do.”

“Yeah? What?”

“Fold that bed out of the wall and carry you to it.”

“Is that right? Got a thing for the handicapped, Cooper?” Her smile was slow and wicked. “I don’t even know how we’d manage it.”

“Nick,” he said. “You call me Nick. And I bet we can figure it out.”

They did.