Perfect Gravity (Wanted and Wired #2)(92)

Buck the fuck up. You did it. You did all of it. Can’t just skid to the edge of a confession and then wimp out at the last minute. All the way in, right now.

“Okay, that was distracting,” she told him. “And you are distracting, in the most amazing way, but I need to tell you one more thing.”

“You really don’t.”

“I do. Please listen.”

He went silent. His hand stopped stroking.

She continued. “Two years ago, when I left Daniel…”

“Yes.”

“I left him because I went to Tamil Nadu, after the flood water receded. I hadn’t been there in a long time, but that’s where my father was from, and it’s where I went, back when I was nineteen and stupid and things got bleak. Anyhow, because I was there after the flood and it was a place I thought about a lot, I went to the cryobank where…where I left it. Her. The place was gone.”

“In the flood?”

“No. Years before. They closed doors, went out of business after the Black November financial crisis in ’52. Apparently they sent out notices to everyone who had stored material there and gave them a time window for retrieval, but I never got my notice. Daniel kept it back, because my past, my sins, my…daughter were all things he held against me, held over me, to make me do what he wanted.”

“So since he didn’t have that whip anymore, you left him.”

“Oh, worse than that. I killed him.”

Kellen didn’t say anything. He was tomb-silent as she told him the rest. How she’d funded the contract. How she’d given Heron the green light to go ahead with the job, knowing that mech-Daniel was with her in Guadalajara the whole time and safe. How she’d written the contract in such a way that it would point to Vallejo, even mentioned him specifically in supersecret subcontract riders. How she’d thought that setting up Vallejo, starting a war with Texas, and using that war to spur Zeke’s reelection would all bundle together to save her from the consortium’s wrath.

How, basically, she was a worse villain than Vallejo ever could be. Surprise, you just fucked a murderer and might even love her a little. As a bonus, she’s the mother of your might-have-been child. Tell me, how does that make you feel?

“Were you specifically trying to get Mari to take that contract?” he asked in a voice much tighter than usual. A voice that scared her, but she didn’t want to analyze it right now.

He was probably asking how far down the evil-machinator hole she’d gone. And she couldn’t really give him a depth estimate. She was still falling.

“I didn’t know she was trying to find her father,” she said. “So no. When you mentioned her name, I was surprised.” Surprised enough to accept Kellen’s bargain. To agree to get Mari off the hook for murder. Which, incidentally, had covered Angela’s own tracks nicely.

Except for Zeke. He must have figured it out. He must have realized what she’d done. And he knew why, too. He’d gone with her to Tamil Nadu. Both times.

So, fine, she killed his friend, he needed payback. That might explain his attempts to kill her—she knew a thing or two about revenge and respected the clean justice of it—but it didn’t excuse all the attacks he’d made on mass populations. It didn’t excuse his warmongering or willingness to be the consortium’s goddamn sword of awfulness. She still had plenty of issues with Zeke’s behavior.

And her own.

“I didn’t set Mari up specifically, but, Kellen, somebody was going to take that contract. I didn’t know who, but I was leading someone right into capital murder. Right into a life sentence. When you told me that the feds would chase her down and kill her ugly and put it all in disaster-porn vids, I almost threw up. Because you’re right, that would have happened. And it would have been because of me.”

The horror of it washed over her again. The cold slink of blood circulating right after she made a tough decision, a wrong decision, but did it anyway. She’d known there was no forgiveness for her. But also, there was no going back to Daniel. And he’d never accepted that.

The pain was good now, though. The guilt was good. She had done terrible things, and her motivations and reasons didn’t excuse them. Justice might be blind, but it wasn’t eye-for-an-eye, not in practice. The things Daniel had done to her didn’t confer a right to kill him. She was bad. She could spend the whole rest of her life trying to right all wrongs in this world, and none of it would wipe her ledger clean.

They might have lain for hours in the bed, wrapped around each other, Kellen and her. His heart beat steady beneath her ear. He didn’t stroke her back again.

After a while, he moved, shifted their tangled limbs until she rolled to her side, and he faced her. He looked at her, at her chin, her mouth, her nose, her eyes, like he was memorizing her features. He kissed her between the brows.

“I love you,” he said. “I gotta go walk off some thoughts.”

In almost looking-down-the-barrel-of-winter Colorado, with a foot of new snow on the ground? Right.

She watched him get up and pull his clothes on. God, he was beautiful. And he was leaving. And he needed to. And she deserved it.

She didn’t beg him to stay. She let him go. And she cried. And she slept.

? ? ?

Kellen wasn’t in bed when Angela woke. He wasn’t there when she breakfasted. He wasn’t there to calm her nerves about today. Yoink had gone, too, sometime in the night. None of this stark aloneness was unexpected, but it did hurt fresh every goddamned second, the constant shriek of a wild violin when all she wanted was silence.