Untouched The Girl in the Box - By Robert J. Crane Page 0,11

at the sides and how his mouth had moved from a smile to a flat line. “I can hold my own in a fight. Just because I’m not a meta—”

“It’s not that you’re not a meta.” I aimed for gentle, soothing words. “If Wolfe set a claymore mine as a trap and it blows off my foot, it grows back.” I gestured at him. “You’d never walk again.”

I could see the wheels spinning as he struggled to put together an effective response. He started to say something, then stopped short, frustration pinching his handsome features. “I can’t let you go in by yourself.” His words came out mangled, as if he was at war internally. “But you have a point. Wolfe’s not known for being subtle with his violence, so...” he took on the air of a man proposing a bitter compromise, “I’d be willing to let you lead the way while Kurt and I follow at a safe distance.”

“A mile?”

“About ten feet. I doubt Wolfe bothered with explosives.” He was firm; there was no more room to negotiate. I nodded and started to walk again. “And you don’t know,” he said, falling into step beside me.

“Don’t know what?” I asked, confused.

“You don’t know what would happen if you got an arm or a leg blown off. Yeah, it may grow back, or it may not.”

“I heal pretty fast,” I said. “I’ve regrown an awful lot of skin since I met you.”

“Ouch.”

“That’s what I said.” Deadpan. Perfect. He grinned at my wisecrack and I smiled back.

He walked a few more paces and I saw him gnaw on his lower lip. He turned his head to look at me. “You don’t blame me for all the hell you’ve been through since...”

“Since you and Kurt rousted me out into the world?” I shrugged. “If it wasn’t you, it was gonna be Reed or Wolfe. Reed might have been gentler,” I needled him, giving him a wry smile, “but it all worked out, I suppose.” Except I now had a psychotic mutant squatting in my brain.

“Yeah.” He opened the door to the parking garage and held it for me. “I guess it did.”

I heard Zack beside me, the squeak of the rubber soles of his boots on the tile floors, heard his breathing. I caught a whiff of his cologne and took a deep breath through my nose. I could feel the heat from the exchange positioned in the entrance nearby blowing on me.

Kurt Hannegan was waiting by the car, a thoroughly disgusted look marring his otherwise ugly face. I put my emotional turmoil to the side, because however bad I was feeling, I wanted to make sure that Hannegan felt worse. Again, if I could blame this on Wolfe, I would, but the truth is I loved pissing him off.

“Let’s get this over with,” he said with a grunt. He was wearing a tweed suit coat with brown patches on the elbow and a brown tie to contrast with his white shirt and dark pants. He had tried to comb the meager hair he had left on the sides of his head to the top in an attempt to...I dunno, revive the glory days, I guess, but it failed.

“You mean you haven’t been looking forward to this?” I said, feigning hurt. “Kurt, didn’t you miss me?”

“No.”

“Sure you did,” I said. “You missed me with your little popgun the first time we met. I think it’s a metaphor for our entire relationship.”

He looked at me, wary. “That I’ll always be shooting at you?”

“And I’ll always be dodging and kicking your ass.”

We got in and he drove out of the garage without another word. It was a heated structure, with space enough for a couple hundred cars. The Directorate maintained a fleet of vehicles, along with the countless other things they kept—Black Hawk helicopters, weird and experimental weaponry, a host of agents, facilities all over the U.S. and the world. I had to wonder who funded it all, who ran the whole show, and what the real purpose was, if it was something different than what I’d been told.

Kurt kept the speedometer pushing eighty most of the way. We streaked through the farmland that surrounded the Directorate, zipping along a state highway until we got on the freeway loop that circled Minneapolis and St. Paul. We headed east, as the sky showed the faintest hint of lightening in that direction.

After about twenty minutes we exited onto a street that held houses on one side