Riding The Edge - Elise Faber Page 0,11

need to extend it.”

“Don’t try to tell me you wouldn’t be as miserable about sitting on your ass as I am,” I muttered. “We don’t get into this job for R&R.”

KTS agents weren’t known for our relaxed, laid-back attitudes. In fact, if there were a greater subset of Type A personalities anywhere else in the world, then I had yet to find it.

“It’s not so bad.”

I’d opened my mouth to argue—the idea of doing nothing for weeks on end was worse than bad—then stopped. Because Ava hadn’t left the moment I’d awoken. Because she’d come into the infirmary to work, even though she could have chosen any other computer at the base.

Further that, she’d stayed and was talking with me.

Since the week we’d spent together two years before, I could count on one hand the number of times she’d done that, how often she’d just hung out and shot the shit with me.

Hell, I could count it on one finger.

Of course, Ava was probably here because I was wounded and at risk of passing out again and Olive had assigned her to make sure I didn’t crack open my head on the floor. The doctor was nothing if not practical, and she didn’t appreciate treating a patient twice—“once for an injury and twice for stupid.”

Yes, that was a direct quote.

Yes, she had the actual T-shirt with the quote emblazoned on the front.

But I digress. For whatever reason, Ava was here, talking to me, and I was soaking up every second. Feeding my addiction, desperate to grasp on to any way to strengthen that thread connecting me to her.

Her eyes danced. “I can hear you thinking, ‘It really is that bad, Ava.’”

“What?”

She laughed, and I felt that husky sound deep in my heart. “I believe we’ve already established that you and the word ‘rest’ don’t really go hand-in-hand.”

I barely heard her words, I was so struck by her laugh.

I hadn’t heard it in two long-ass years.

And—

If you want her to ever hang around and laugh and talk to you again, dumbass, focus and say something charming.

The mental voice was Brit’s.

Namely, because my sister had been giving me shit from the moment she’d emerged from the womb.

And also because she was normally right.

As she was in this case.

“Thanks for saving my ass,” I told Ava, giving in to the fatigue washing over me and sitting down on the bed. “I wouldn’t have made it out of there without you.”

“You’ve saved my ass more than once.” A shrug, her expression cooling, and I had the distinct impression that I’d said both the right and the wrong thing. She didn’t like it when people thanked her for simply doing her job, I knew. But I also understood that she took pride in her work and wouldn’t entirely hate having me, as a colleague, compliment her on her skills.

“How many did you take out?” I asked.

Another shrug. “Just four.”

I grinned. Only Ava would say just four. “How many shots?”

The tension left her shoulders, and she perched onto the bed next to me. “One.”

“Ah,” I said, trying to pretend that having her so close was no big deal. “You showed off your trickiness on the others.”

She rolled her eyes. “It’s not trickiness. It’s skill.”

“I’ll remember that next time you take me to the ground.”

A ghost of a smile. “I—”

The door opened, and she jumped, hopping to her feet, her gaze zeroing in on the person—on Olive—entering. Since I’d done the same—albeit with less hopping and jumping—I didn’t laugh at her reaction.

I was aware, however, that it looked bad for both of us for Ava to be jumping away from me when Olive came in.

How did I know this, one might ask?

Because Olive’s smug expression and raised eyebrow were impossible to miss.

The words, “It’s not what you think” were on the tip of my tongue, but since saying that would be akin to admitting to the very thing that was making Olive’s expression smug and what was most certainly the absolute last thing that Ava wanted, I bit my tongue. Saying those words aloud would probably also earn me a third bullet wound, one that would be courtesy of Ava and her prized possession, a rifle named Luna.

I’d been shot once in the last twenty-four hours.

That was enough.

When neither Ava nor I said anything, Olive closed the door and moved over to the wall of cabinets, peppering me with questions about how I was feeling while washing her hands in the sink. She shut off the faucet,