Perfect Gravity (Wanted and Wired #2)(38)
Ours. Our Yoink.
Kellen had stumbled over her previous name—Ghufran—and after a while had taken to calling her Yoink. She’d been their responsibility. Their girl. The three of them, for that bright slice of time, had been a family. Angela’s very first.
“Yeah. She is,” he said.
His gaze was a weight on her skin, and Angela met his eyes. Something warm and dear washed through her, half convincing her he wasn’t talking about the cat at all.
But then he looked away and went on, “She’s also my general. You mentioned the DARPA spy cat, but truth is, I have tech-altered critters all over the world, all successfully reintegrated into their habitats, all transmitting data to Yoink here. Heron noticed a data hole over Guadalajara just before you left the area, so I dispatched some spies there to check things out. Got a data cache in just a few minutes ago.”
Her hand paused its petting. “What’s in the cache?”
“Mostly pics, some air quality assessment, possibly ambient bio markers. I haven’t had a lot of time to analyze it, but once it’s done decompressing and decoding, I can copy you on the whole batch. You can take a look, too.”
Angela drew her thumb over one of the tiny metal horns. Yoink pushed nose-first into her hand, directing the rub more to her liking. “Is it the kind of information that can tell me who bombed my hotel?”
“I sure as shit hope so.”
“Well, let’s decode this data cache,” she said.
“Can we wait till after supper? ’Cause Fan will have my ass if I’m late to one of her family sit-downs.”
Angela shot him a quizzical look. “Family? Did your mom…”
“Fan and Adele and Garrett and Heron and Chloe and even that scamp Mari…they’re my family now. Like I said: lots of things have changed. Not just for me, either. You changed, too.”
He held an expectant look on his face. Or maybe disappointed? Angry? Angela wished she could hook him up to a psych-emitter right now and sort out his feelings. He clearly wasn’t thrilled she was here, which made no sense.
And it hurt besides. Hurt a lot. She had missed him so damned much.
“I sacrificed a lot,” she said carefully.
He made a sound that was really close to a snort. “Yeah, you sure’ve been leading the life of sacrifice, international superstar, hitched to…” He batted air with the back of his hand and then pinched his nose at the bridge. Closed his eyes. Like he’d just confessed a dirty secret.
And he kind of had.
Had Kellen been jealous of Daniel all these years? That realization should feel so much worse than it did. Instead, a silly, self-satisfied grin tugged on her face, but she suppressed it, tucked the delight away so she could roll it around in her mind later.
“I told you my marriage wasn’t really a marriage. It was more of a business arrangement,” she said.
He opened his eyes and glared at her, but not with the understanding she sought. His gaze sparked with fury. “That makes it so much worse, princess.”
Deep inside her chest, she flinched, though probably no one would be able to tell. She was so very good at hiding visceral reactions, at smoothing over them and pretending a peace she’d never felt.
“What, it would be easier to believe I was madly in love with Daniel and living in perpetual bliss all those years? Come on.” She pushed a lighter note into her voice, trying to nudge the conversation away from dangerous territory.
Kellen’s forehead creased, and she couldn’t read the look in his eyes. It wasn’t light, though. Kind of the opposite. “To believe you were happy?” he said. “Yeah, that would make a lot of things worth it for me. Once upon a time, I put a lot of effort into seeing you happy. It’d be a damn shame if all that work went to shit the minute you sent me away.”
Not right then. Not that minute. Though maybe the one just after.
“Look,” he said, “do we really have to work through all this right now? We’ve grown into different people, and it’s going to take some time before you and I know each other again, if we even decide we want to.”
Not really as long as you think. He’d gone to extraordinary lengths to save Yoink, and he’d kept their cat, their family, right here at his side for all these years. So he was still the caretaker. Still her hero.
Still her Kellen, whether he ultimately decided he wanted to be or not.
She stood and clicked her tongue against the back of her teeth. Yoink perked her ears and shot Angela a feed-me-or-else glare. When Angela turned and followed Kellen back down the skywalk and into the finished-out south spire, Yoink padded along at her heels expectantly.
Good kitty. Best.
? ? ?
Angela enjoyed physical solitude. Life was best endured from the outside looking in, watching the patterns of states and individuals resolve, tweaking the flow of events but staying far, far away from the filth of human connection. Alone is safe had been her personal mantra for several years now, ever since she’d left her husband behind in LA. As it turned out, Kellen and his happy band of killers lived in the inverse of solitude, as un-alone as it was possible for a human to be. Which made what happened when she stepped off the elevator at the mezzanine level so…whoa.
Apparently Adele, the chain-smoking, muumuu-wearing wife of Fanaida, did not, as a matter of course, gallivant all over the globe with her partner. Instead she spent most of her time right here, organizing work parties on the hydroponics levels and dance parties after dark, watching way too many game shows, and cooking for small armies.