The Color of Courage (14 page)

He held me there, his eyes burning. Despair crushed my initial euphoria. He cared about me. More than the others. More than Rachel. Enough to take a chance. Enough to admit it.

Enough to take it back.

In the few seconds that he showed me everything, I knew that was all I’d get. Whatever his original intentions had been, I’d just blown it by reminding him of the risks of love. Maybe CASE had realized Tulie’s biggest vulnerability was his fiancée, and that was why she was the one who died at the zoo. Adam wasn’t going to let that happen to me.

Kirby honked from the curb. I looked back and saw a cop eyeing her. There was no more time. As I retrieved Adam’s crutches and we hurried to the car, I wished none of this had happened—not the building collapse that started it, not Adam’s decision to reveal his feelings, and especially not my readiness to hear them. I’d been much better off not knowing, assuming he saw me as a sister. No matter what I wanted now, he would never take this further. At least not until CASE was dealt with.

If it ever was.

Chapter 13

The next few days were hectic. We were all working our other jobs on different schedules, so while two of us were at HQ at any given time, we were never there all at once, and that made trying to coordinate and plan harder. Adam focused on the contracts, and Charles didn’t delay in getting them signed and put into action.

I didn’t want to burden Adam asking for his help, but I decided I needed to work on building my abilities, so between appointments and research and planning, I did so. Even with no one else in the room, forming bubbles and shields of emotion came far more easily than I’d anticipated. At least at first. Then my fear seemed to curtail it, keeping it small and completely unhelpful.

Thanks to the referrals from Josh’s psychologist, I had three new consults, plus contact from a psychiatrist who was interested in meeting with me. I also did two employment consults. While my bank account was happy, I didn’t see Adam the rest of the week. Nor was Evan anywhere in evidence. Since exploring anything with Adam was now pointless, I found myself pressing Evan’s number on my phone and listening to it ring. Then I’d remember what he’d said when he left my apartment, about what was happening at HQ. I swiped the phone off before he could answer. That was pointless, too.

Nothing seemed to be the same anymore. No calls came in to HQ for six days. Summer and I started training together daily. She had a surfeit of restless energy to drain off, and I needed to be stronger, faster, and more confident than ever, something that wasn’t going to happen by sitting around waiting.

“Maybe that’s what they’re going for,” I panted at the end of a three-way sparring session with Summer and Trace at the club.

“What?” Trace tossed me a towel and I mopped my face.

“Softening us up. Maybe that’s why CASE hasn’t done anything since M Street.”

“If M Street was even them.” Trace twisted the top off a bottle of water and downed half of it. “We’re assuming they’re after us. Maybe they’re not.”

Summer, who wasn’t sweating at all, dropped to the mat and started doing crunches. I pretended I didn’t see her. My abs ached from the previous day’s workout and I didn’t want her to know it.

“I guess we don’t know for sure it was them. But if it wasn’t, who sent that chunk of concrete into Kirby’s head?”

“Where is Kirby, anyway?” Summer asked. “I thought she was meeting us here.”

“She’s waiting for a delivery from Auberginois’ people. New electronics.”

I shoved Trace away from the drink machine so I could get my own water. “Too bad we don’t have a sensitive on staff. We’ll have to get
other
electronics to sweep for bugs on the new stuff.”

“You don’t trust Charles?” Summer asked.

“No,” Trace and I said together, and smiled at each other.

Summer made a sound of disgust and hauled herself to her feet. “Don’t let Kirby see you two like that.”

Trace looked confused. “Why not?”

She shook her head and stormed off toward the locker room. He glowered in her direction. “What was that all about?”

“No idea,” I lied. I tossed my towel into a small open hamper and drained my water. “How’s the studio?”

He was still frowning after Summer. “Huh? Oh, fine. Three more days, I’ll be outta your hair. I think something’s wrong with her and Frank.”

“Well, at least you’re not blaming PMS.” I walked toward the locker room.

Trace fell into step beside me. “No, I mean, she was talking to him in the lobby when I got here. They didn’t look happy, and he shoved the door open so hard on his way out the hinge cracked. Eugene was pissed.”

I hurried my steps, separating from Trace when we reached the locker rooms. The women’s was deserted, but I could hear the shower going. Since Summer showered as fast as she did everything else, I waited on the bench by her stuff. When ten minutes had passed and the water was still running, I stripped, grabbed a bath-size towel, and entered the shower room. There were no separate stalls, but half-height tiled walls offered the illusion of privacy. Steam filled the enclosure, diffusing the sunlight through the frosted windows high on the east wall, and I couldn’t see much.

“Summer?”

The hissing patter of the water cut its volume in half, and I realized some of what I’d been hearing was crying. I called her name again, and her hand appeared above one wall, twisting the knob to turn off the water. Her lack of response was loud in the sudden silence, broken by occasional drips from the showerhead and the trickle of water in the drain.

“You okay?”

Sniffle
.

That was enough. “Summer, you answer me or I’m coming over there and hauling you out to an ambulance, naked or not.”

Another, bigger sniff. Then she hauled herself to her feet.

“Oh, don’t be so dramatic, Daley.” She retrieved her towel and wrapped it around her body at normal speed. “I’m fine.”

“Don’t tell me you’re fine. Tell me you don’t want to talk about it. But don’t lie.”

Though I could see the steam-muted glow of misery oozing out of her, she wasn’t depressed. So I started my own shower to give her a buffer while she talked, assuming she wanted to. She didn’t leave, but didn’t say anything right away.

“Is it Frank?” I told her what Trace had seen.

“He wants me to quit HQ,” she admitted. “I’m afraid if I don’t, he’ll leave me.”

I turned to wet my hair. “Because of CASE?”

She nodded.

“Are you thinking about it?”

“Hell, no.”

Guilt at her unhesitating response when I’d been much less certain myself prompted me to say, “Maybe you should.”

“No way!” She stomped over to the side of the room, where she’d propped a series of bottles, and pumped lotion onto her palm with jerky movements. “I’ve been in HQ longer than I’ve been with Frank.”

“He’s just scared for you. Like my mom.” I lathered my hair and missed her response while I rinsed.

“What did you say?”

“I said, that’s not the reason. He’s not worried about me. He’s jealous.”

I blinked. “No way. Jealous that we’re being targeted by a hate group?”

“No, jealous that we have this big enemy to conquer. His boss keeps giving him piddling little unimportant cases, and he’s taking his frustration out on me.” She gathered up her stuff as I turned off my shower, and I followed her back to our lockers.

“Sounds petty to me.”

“It is. He knows it is. But honestly?” She sighed and slumped onto the bench. “I’m thinking it’s for the best.”

“What?”

“Ending this relationship.”

Sympathy panged in my chest. “Are you sure? This sounds like something that can be worked through.”

“No, I’m sure. I think.” She sighed again. “It’s not this little thing. It’s the bigger thing the little one is part of. When Frank thought I was just a trainer with a grand hobby, we were fine. But now that we’re getting press and praise and
gasp!
A real supervillain! It’s too much for him. He might be okay if he were doing better as a prosecutor. But shoplifting and vandalism aren’t enough.” She stood, and in less time than it took me to put one leg into my jeans, she was dressed and packed.

“Do you need a place to stay?” I offered. “Trace is moving out soon.”

She smiled and hefted her bag over her shoulder. “Thanks, but no. He’ll move out. The lease is in my name because he had a case the day I signed it.” Her eyes closed for a few seconds. “It hurts less thinking about being without Frank than it does thinking about being alone for the rest of my life.”

I knew exactly what that felt like.

“What about Evan?” I blurted.

She looked shocked at the very idea. “What about him?”

“He’s . . . interested in you.”

She snorted. “Trust me, Daley, he isn’t. Not like you think. He’s an ass and a pighead. You should date him.”

“What?”

“Well, he’s only an ass and a pighead to me. You’re perfect for each other.”

“Hey!”

She laughed. “I’m just teasing you.” The laughter faded. “He’s not an ass, not really. He’s a good guy. But even good guys can do something unforgivable. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t see him.”

I remembered her saying something at her dinner party—it seemed a long time ago now—about keeping certain people close. Was that why she was fixing us up? I wanted to ask what he’d done that she couldn’t forgive, but she glanced at her watch. “I’m meeting Frank for lunch. Do you mind . . .?”

“Go. I’ll walk to HQ with Trace.” Assuming he waited for me. Summer buzzed out the door and I finished dressing, lost in thought. That was three of us ending longish-term relationships in less than a month. Trace had never gotten close to having one, and Kirby and Chad had failed almost before they started. Maybe we were all doomed to be alone.

I would have admitted to a streak of the melodramatic, if further consideration didn’t support the idea. I’d always believed Rachel was with Adam for cachet, not because she loved him, and he, like me, held a lot back from people. Trace and Kirby covered their emotions with humor and bluster, respectively, and Summer, the only one of us who really tried, had never in her life succeeded.

I wondered how long ago she’d been involved with Evan, and in what way. She’d never mentioned him, not during college or after. Was he a high school sweetheart, pining for the one who got away, even if he didn’t really want her? Did her presence in HQ muck up whatever investigation he was doing of us?

The digital clock on the wall beeped at the hour, interrupting my thoughts, and I hurried to pack up. Trace wouldn’t wait forever. For someone who had immeasurable endurance, he sure had trouble being patient.

But when I emerged into the lobby, Trace wasn’t the one I saw pacing the worn gray rug.

It was Ian.

Shit
. I so did not want to face him now. I tried to slip out behind his back, but Eugene called my name from the desk, and Ian spun and caught me.

“Daley! I was looking for you.”

I halted, surprised. “Me? Here?”

“I went to HQ and Kirby sent me here.” He removed his hands from the pockets of his khakis and held the outer door open for me. “Do you have time for a sandwich?”

Say no. Tell him no. Walk the other way.
But I turned with him in the direction of HQ and we fell into step with each other. I could smell his citrus aftershave, and, nostalgic, I agreed to have lunch with him. Though curiosity played its part. Maybe he was done with Miss Infatuation and realized what he’d had with me was better. Maybe he was ready to work harder at our relationship and ignore basic chemical attraction to other women.

And what if he was? I smiled my thanks when he held the door at a deli a block away from the club. Was I willing to take him back, when he’d been so ready to abandon me? It would sure solve all my Evan/Adam problems if I did. At the least, it would be easier than whatever was going on with either of those two.

We ordered veggie wraps and waited silently while they were being prepared. Ian kept rocking back on his heels and jingling the change in his pockets, casting me nervous smiles whenever he caught me looking at him. He had the air of a guy who was going to ask for something he knew he had no business asking for. I dropped my ‘wants me back’ theory and stepped on it. Life was never that easy. And maybe it shouldn’t be.

I took the plastic basket from the cashier and led Ian to a table against the window.

“So how’s work?” I asked.

“Fine, fine. The same.”

“And what’s her name? The new girlfriend. How’s she?”

“Great. We’re, um, getting married.”

I dropped my wrap into its basket. “You did not ask me to lunch to tell me you were getting married.”

He definitely heard the warning in my voice. “No, no!” He waved his free hand in the air. “Nothing like that. It has nothing to do with her. Really. It’s . . . actually, I guess it’s business.”

I raised my eyebrows. “You need a superhero? Or an empath?”

He frowned as he chewed a bite. “Same thing, isn’t it?”

“Not always.”

“But that’s what you are.”

He put it so simply, my recent doubts and fears seemed ridiculous.

“That’s what I am.” I picked a cucumber out of the tortilla and ate it. “So what do you need?”

He finished half his wrap, drank some iced tea, and fingered a couple of potato chips before answering. “It’s my sister.”

I felt jarred, like something had knocked my contacts askew. “Sister?” We’d been together that long without me knowing he had a sister. Illustrates our problem, I thought, and then hid my smile. Ian was not in a smiling mood.

“She’s much younger. Lives in Southwest with her dad. She, uh, she’s having some trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?”

He squirmed on his seat and crumbled one of his chips into pieces. “Well, you know, she— She got involved with this guy.”

I didn’t like where this was going. “And?”

“And, she’s, like . . .” He shaped a big belly with his hands.

I cracked up. “She’s pregnant?”

He nodded, his lower lip sticking out a little.

“Why couldn’t you just say that?”

He shrugged a shoulder. “The guy is a gangbanger.”

“Which gang?” I named a couple in Southwest, but he shook his head impatiently.

“I don’t know. He’s just bad news.”