Page 65 of Night in a Waste Land

“That’s charming.” Rose gathered herself, and sat up, and he immediately regretted the loss of her heat and weight at his side.

Unbothered by her nakedness, she climbed out of bed – on gratifyingly unsteady legs, he noted – and snagged the files of the desk. She sat on the edge of the bed and flipped through them.

She stilled. He saw tension streak up her back, the lean muscles along her spine tightening beneath her skin.

Lance sat up.

“This is New York,” she said, turning the pages more slowly.

“It is.” He’d asked her to his room to begin with because he’d been afraid she would have a reaction – even if it was only to close off and go quiet and tight-lipped enough that he felt compelled to try to coax her back to a softer place.

He shifted across the mattress so he could sit beside her, and set his feet down on the floor, corner of the sheet pulled into his lap because this didn’t feel like a dick-out sort of conversation. “To be honest, I’m a little surprised we haven’t been sent in there since you joined up.”

She stared at the paperwork she held – a printed-out, infrared, aerial map, white circles marking potential target sites. Blinked, after a long, still moment, and then looked up at him, gaze as hard and closed-off as he’d feared. All the warmth of the past half-hour had drained out of her. The flush of pleasure, the spark of humor, the satisfaction – gone, replaced with cold wariness. “I thought New York was a lost cause. That’s what they said in Basic: that it wasn’t possible to retake it.”

He took a breath, and saw her brows lower in reaction, a ratcheting up of her tension. He stroked her back – and she didn’t respond to the touch, not even to avoid it.Okay…

“In the immediate aftermath of the Second Rift, right after we left the city, the mob war blew up. Castor’s death left a big hole in the hierarchy, and a half-dozen smaller-time thugs tried to take up his throne.”

“Right.” She had a gimlet stare worse than any captain or general he’d ever reported to.

“Right. So. There was that. And then there were conduits from both camps: outright biblical war in the streets, gangsters choosing sides with them. It’s – well, it’s like hell there.”

She kept staring, and he was reminded, unwelcomely, of Arthur Becket, burning now in actual hell. Still, he wouldn’t have traded his metaphor; it was the best he could think of.

“If any civilians are left there,” he said, they’re either enslaved to, working for, or at least working at the mercy of the top dogs there – whoever they are. An evacuation would be ideal, but we’re not just talking about one or two targets to eliminate here. It would be a full-out war, and the casualties would be…unimaginable.”

“We don’t deal in full-out war,” she reminded, frostily.

“I know. Which is why I’m proposing, now that there are other companies to relieve us out here, and fewer conduits besides, that we treat it like an op. Us. Golden Company. We’ve got your dagger, and lots of experience under our belt. And, hell, we’ve got Morgan. We’ll be careful, and covert, and…” He trailed off when she frowned. “What?”

“If a company of Walkers could take care of it, why has the army waited until now to put that forward?”

“They didn’t put it forward. I did.”

Her brows finally lifted, high up on her forehead, the rest of her expression smoothing. “Why?”

He sighed. This was the part that shereallywouldn’t like. “I don’t suppose you keep up with the news?”

“It’s all shit. What’s there to keep up with?”

“Do you at least know that the British Prime Minster was in town a month ago? Or, well, in DC?”

“Vaguely.”

“It’s the first PM they’ve had since the London gangs wrested control from the government. The first since the First Rift.”

“Lance.”

“Right, well, he brought his family. It was a lot of trouble and hassle, and the government was trying to keep it all under wraps – but the vehicle was attacked on the drive between bases. The Prime Minister’s son, Logan, was kidnapped. He’s being held for ransom by a New York gangster named Timothy Shubert.”

She sighed. “And they want him rescued.”

“They asked if anyone had the skills to rescue him. Shubert and his people are demanding a ransom. The PM is willing to pay it, but Shubert said the best they’ll do is turn him loose.”

“Which puts a civilian walking throughhell, as you put it, alone and unarmed.”

His pulse beat faster telling her than it had while proposing it to Captain Bedlam. “I suggested an extraction. And, before that, an assassination.”

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