Page 62 of Rarely Pure and Never Simple
"About what?"
"Stubborn. You."
"Yeah. But I make stubborn sexy."
Damien managed a little choke-laugh and pushed away. Reluctantly, Blaze wanted to think.
It wasodd following Damien's piloting all morning. He had obviously done this more than he let on as he slid around obstacles and switched headings on a pin without so much as a stabilizer wobble.
"He jockeys that thing better than I do," Shudder murmured from his blanket nest in the passenger seat.
"You're awake. All right there?"
"More or less. Headache."
"There're pain pills in the door pocket. And water. Damien made sure."
Shudder rummaged around and ended up with a helpless expression, holding both water and pill packet in trembling hands. Blaze put the Raptor on auto to help him with both.
"You're being awfully nice for such a jerk."
"Gee. Thanks." He let the silence sit between them for a few minutes. Then the corner of his mouth quirked up as Damien flipped the skimmer to the left to avoid a rock formation. "Hell, yeah, he's a better bush pilot than you'll ever be. Better with blunt weapons, too."
Shudder blinked at him in a fuzzed, pained way. "God, you're adorable."
"Shut the fuck up."
Shudder's laugh broke off in a pained moan. "Oh, no laughing. Shit." He reclined the seat farther and closed his eyes. Blaze was sure he'd fallen back to sleep, but no, the annoying shit wasn't done yet. "Youreallylike him."
"That head wound's making you hallucinate."
"Maybe. There may or may not be fluffy rainbow unicorns on the dash. I'm not saying. But about you and Damien? No. That'd be like hallucinating sunlight."
"Idiot."
"You haven't denied it yet."
No, he hadn't. As much as he wanted to hide from certain truths, it grated on his sense of honor to lie about them. "You're still an idiot."
"Sometimes. But at least I'm not as dense as you."
The skimmer handledlike an old friend. Damien kept an ancient Frankenstein's-monster one at the cabin for his supply runs, so he was used to a more cantankerous, difficult machine. Shudder's was a factory model, old but with all its original parts, and lovingly maintained.
He pulled the right strut up and accelerated around a turn simply for the exhilaration of it. When he thought it over, he realized he might have been showing off a bit, too. The trail in his head had finally cleared. His heart felt dangerously light.
Tara Hernandez. She had been to the Fredamine Data Project not once but twice. Her doubling back had been part of the confusion of her trail. Tara walking over her own footsteps had made the when of things a challenge to decipher. Now he had the pieces, and he knew how the map of her trail played out, her timeline clearer.
Shehadescaped. How, he couldn't say, but whatever goons worked for the Fredamine Project had kidnapped her and brought her there. Tara had escaped and wandered the wilderness. Eventually, she had returned to the school, though in hiding, and spoke to Katie. Then, defying all good sense, she had returned to the Project. At first, Damien had been afraid of recapture. Possible, even possible that she allowed her recapture, because then she left the site again. The second time she was not alone.
Four other kids from the Academy were with her. Since the trails continued, since he had reached no terminus yet, he dared to hope that five more were safe. Six. Ten. Five. Twenty-three in all accounted for. There had to be significance in the numbers.
He drew in a sharp breath, pulling his mind back from hopscotch wandering. Yes, there was a cold joy in being alone. Yes, there was a more practical one in flight. Most of the strange weightlessness in his heart came from following firm, unambiguous trails, though ones no longer laden with despair. His heart was heating, becoming lighter than the cold winter air, and soon he would be in danger of floating off into the high streamers of clouds painting in tempura brushstrokes across the afternoon sky.
Northeast again, they were heading into increasingly mountainous territory, out of Idaho and across the extreme northwest corner of Wyoming. This was true wild country, some of it still officially listed as national park territory, but the federal government had no resources to maintain such vast areas as patrolled parkland as it did in smaller preserves back east. Even in the days of the continent's heaviest population densities, this area had still seen sparse human habitation.
Elk lifted their majestic crowned heads from icy streams to observe as the vehicles passed. A small herd of bison rumbled across their path in one of the grassy valleys. Scattered flashes of blue zipped from winter-bare bushes as flocks of bohemian waxwings foraged. It was beautiful, so beautiful, and Damien found himself turning to Blaze to say so.
Of course, Blaze wasn't there.
