Page 9 of Winter Reckoning
I moved along the back of the cabin, looking for prints near the windows. Nothing. The drifts were smooth and unmarked except where the wind had carved shallow waves into the surface.
I completed the circuit and stood at the front door, scanning the access road one more time. No signs anyone had come or gone since my arrival. My truck had a snowdrift against the driver’s side and at least a foot of snow on the hood. The old girl would struggle next time I needed her.
I opened the door and stepped inside. I realized I had forgotten my jacket. Flexing my fingers, I could almost feel the cold. It was there, clinging to my skin, but I could hardly tell. With a soft exhale, it vanished, replaced by the heat from the ever-burning fire.HeatI could feel.
Charlene was asleep on the couch, wrapped in a fleece blanket with only the top of her head visible. She'd kicked one leg free, and her sock-covered foot hung over the edge, toes pointed toward the floor. Elves riding reindeer covered the wool. It fit. She murmured something unintelligible and rolled toward the back cushions.
Nick sat at the kitchen island, gently blowing on a spoon. He slurped. He caught me staring and glanced down at the counter. I hadn’t seen a second bowl, steam rising off the surface. It was the closest thing to an invitation I was going to get. When my belly rumbled, I realized I couldn’t resist the offer.
I sat across the counter, not surprised to see chicken soup. The last time I had soup not from a can would be… now that I thought about it, I never had. It didn’t smell of preservatives and an abundance of salt. Just like everything else in the cabin, it had a warmth to it.
“Grandma’s recipe?”
“No grandmother.”
Interesting.
We ate soup in silence. Underneath the short words and standoff attitude, he had made me a bowl of soup. It was almost comical how we avoided each other’s eyes. Why not make it more uncomfortable? I stared. His eyes held the same gray asthe clouds outside. If I didn’t know better, I’d say it was a reflection. Somewhere inside there remained a torrid storm, it had just softened.
A chime sounded from my duffel bag. “Mind if I work?”
“One of us has a job to do.”
He couldn’t sound more ominous if he tried. I grabbed the gauntlet out of my bag and mounted it on my forearm. With a couple of clicks, it projected a screen. I had received the usual security logs from headquarters. I scrolled through the data from the last forty-eight hours. Door activity: all accounted for. Thermal signatures: two stable readings, one intermittent when Charlene moved between rooms. Movement patterns: unremarkable.
I stared at the screen and tried to find something worth flagging. Anything that would justify the Redline classification on this assignment. Just like everything I had observed, there was nothing worth noting. The intel didn’t sit well in my gut.
I considered inventing something. Some vague concern that would look professional in a report without triggering an actual response. Cap would read it as soon as it came in, and I didn’t want her to think I was sitting on my butt… slurping soup.
I double tapped the gauntlet, and the screen went away.
“All good?”
It was as if mocked me. He knew something. “It shouldn’t be.”
Nick’s spoon clanked at the bottom of an empty bowl. Finished, he walked it to the sink. He rinsed it in the sink, holding it under the water. His shoulders slumped. He didn’t look up. Everything he did felt etched in habit, and for a man who had given up, what was the point? I had the same feeling when Alvarez handed me the file.
I took another sip of soup. His fingers gripped the edge of the sink as if he were trying to ground himself. It’d be easy enoughto ask, “Are you okay?” I opened my mouth to speak and closed it. With the similarity of our situations, if those three words left my lips, I’d have to deal with what happened two days from now. Retirement I could handle, it was everything that came after that worried me. Without the Task Force… I shoved the thought into a trunk, tossed it in a dark room, and locked the door.
Charlene snorted loud enough she woke herself. Her head shot up, trying to figure out if anybody had caught her. What had she been doing in the woodshed that made her sleep like the dead? She stretched, yawning loud enough I’m sure the windows rattled. She sat up and blinked at me, then at Nick.
“Oh. Good. I was worried you’d ignore each other to death.”
“Is she always?—”
“Yeah.”
Her eyes widened like we promised her a puppy for Christmas. She pointed at both of us, words coming out in a sputter. “Did you two just communicate?” Her hands clasped together as she crawled along the couch on her knees. “Did the two of you share soup? It’s a Christmas miracle.”
Nick must have given her a look. Her hands whipped behind her back as if he had scolded her. “Sorry.”
What had she said that rubbed him the wrong way? Did outing his ability to talk strike a nerve? Or did it have something to do with her Christmas miracle proclamation? Without saying another word, she was already tugging on her boots.
“I’m heading back to the shed. You two work on your positive masculinity.”
She suited up in a winter jacket and threw a scarf around her head. I wanted to follow her to the shed and see what kind of operation Nick’s intern had going. Explosives? Could she be one of those tech geniuses who created suits of sentient armor to take over the world? Charlene maybe, but I couldn’t see Nick as the world conqueror type.
It’d be dark soon, and I’d need to do another perimeter sweep. I’d add ‘Nothing to report’ to the log. Only a day and a half to go, and I’d just be another civilian. I had been too disgruntled to connect the timeline of the mission. Captain Alvarez said this assignment would be over at the same time. What happened Christmas night?
