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It’s not Graham that calls, it’s Benford, and Leon stares at his phone for approximately five seconds before flipping it open and acknowledging the call.
‘I’m sorry to call you so early, Leon,’ Benford says, sounding far too chipper for – he checks the clock on his bedside; two in the fucking morning – ‘but I have a favour to ask.’
He snaps all the way awake at that; being asked a favour by the DCI is never a good start to the morning, and he’s not long got back from Finland. It had been a bust, but he’s still got a few bruises. Throwing the covers aside, he flips on the table light and pads to the kitchen, gets the coffee machine on. He assumes he’ll have time for that, at least. Claire keeps recommending cold brew, but he’s not a complete savage.
‘At your disposal, sir,’ he says as he does.
‘Adam, please. We’ve known each other too long for formalities, and it’s far too early for that, besides. This isn’t a work – well, no, it is a work-related favour, but you’re not being shipped out anywhere. It’s a little more domestic than that.’
He frowns at the coffee pot, percolating far slower than it should be. Benford is taking far too long to get to the point. Maybe it’s the time; the middle of the night tends to be like that. Seconds hanging for minutes at a time.
‘Why do I feel like Graham doesn’t know about this?’
‘Because he doesn’t. Yet. I’ll tell him when he wakes up. I need you here. At the White House.’
‘You have suspicions?’ Leon says, frown deepening. He hasn’t heard anything of any dangers heading for the White House, but he’s been out of the country. He would have thought Hunnigan would keep him abreast of anything, though, especially considering Ashley’s still at home there. She’s had a time of it, from what he’s been hearing, but she’s powering through.
‘Not of any bioweapons, no, unless you count the state of the men’s bathroom on the third floor. I think it could be classed as nuclear waste at this point, but they can’t find the leak. No, I – it’s the Egg Roll today, and I know it’s not exactly your paygrade, but I want you on site for support.’
‘I don’t think anybody would stoop low enough to use children as a BoWs at Easter. Even evil has standards.’
Benford snorts. ‘I don’t expect to see a BoW on the lawn, but I fully expect Ashley to have a panic attack.’
It hits him where it hurts. Coffee sloshes over his hand, and he hisses, puts the mug down, shoves the wet spot on his hand against the tea towel on the side, wipes it off.
‘Sir?’
‘She didn’t attend the Christmas events, understandably, and neither her father nor I were inclined to make her. Her therapist certainly recommended strongly that we didn’t force her into public events before the new year, but she wants to be involved with the Egg Roll. She likes that sort of thing, always did. But it’s going to be crowded, and she hates the corridors on meeting days, never mind a few thousand on the lawn.’ He pauses, and Leon can hear him debating how far to go.
‘Spit it out, sir. With respect.’
‘Your report had a few convenient gaps, which I don’t pretend not to notice, and her account hasn’t exactly filled those gaps in. I respect you enormously as an agent, as a man, as a friend, and I’m not accusing you of anything, before you get any ideas. I’m just saying that I don’t – and probably never will – understand what all went down in Spain. But I do know that she trusts you, and she’ll feel safer with you here.’
‘Does she know you’re calling?’
‘No,’ he says, jovial. ‘It’s why it’s a favour. I’m not asking you to come as a job.’
‘Civilian.’
‘Yes. Just a White House friend. With immunity from punching any tabloid paps you see fit to sock in the jaw.’
‘Once,’ Leon says, ‘I do that once and suddenly I have a reputation.’
‘Leon, you punched the senior photographer for Hit and Fun in the face.’
‘He asked for it,’ he scoffs, and that had been a fun few hours in a cell. He pretends that his skin doesn’t crawl at the thought of the station, of that rainy September night all those years ago, the cell doors, the rattling cages. The dogs. Ada. In, out. Count to ten.
‘I’m not saying he didn’t, I’m saying you can punch anyone you like, if you have to. I’ll allow it.’
The unspoken ‘as if I need your permission,’ hangs in the air for a moment, and then Leon says, ‘what time does it start?’
‘Mid-morning,’ Benford says cheerfully, ‘you’ve got time to eat breakfast this morning. See, I can be nice.’
And the bastard hangs up. Leon stares at the coffee. It’s too early in the morning for this shit.
Showered, shaved, in civilian clothes – casual button-up shirt and white trainers he’d forgotten he owned – and for a moment, he feels younger than the years forcibly added to his shoulders, feels like he’s been taken back to before all of this, before the shit and the piss and the terror, before the alcohol and the antiseptic and the catgut, and he stares at himself as he brushes his teeth, tries to see the man he used to be, the man he wanted to be, in his reflection.
A fool’s errand, certainly. Benford hadn’t given him a choice, not really. Serve or die, and he’d bargained for Sherry’s life, used his own as payment. She’d be eighteen now. He knows he’s missed it. He needs to check with Claire when it was, so he can send a belated card, a bracelet or something. It’s not adequate, as a gesture of apology, but it’s all he has. They haven’t told him where she is, and even Hunnigan can’t find her, had looked for him, without being asked. She’s safe, though, by all accounts. Fuck’s sake.
He spits and rinses, throws his brush into the tumbler on the side, flicks the light off. It’s five now, and he has a few hours to get to the White House, has no rush. If he stops off to pick up an Easter egg or three on the way, well, he loves a bargain.
It’s a busy beehive this morning, staff running back and forth to get the last bits set up. Normally, the First Lady would be in charge, so he understands, but the lack of one in this administration leaves it to the VP’s wife. He thinks it unfair that Ashley doesn’t do it, but he knows she did the first term’s. It’s a lot to put on her at this moment in time, he supposes; it’s a nationwide event, with a lot of scrutiny. Hit and Fun would have a great time tearing her decisions apart, and he cracks his knuckles as he sidesteps a harried-looking girl carrying an enormous rabbit head.
Ashley is awake, which he isn’t surprised about, is unsure if he could sleep in the racket. Her bedroom door is open, and she’s rifling through her closet, throwing items of clothing this way and that, and is oblivious to him standing there. He watches her for a minute, leans against the doorframe. Her hair is in a towel, and she’s in comfortable-looking lightweight pyjamas, a scowl on her face. She’s silently fuming, and it makes him smile.
‘Forecast says it’ll be pleasant this afternoon, but a breeze first thing,’ he says, and she launches a kitten heel at him with a speed that almost takes him aback.
Catching it and giving it a cursory look – silver satin, barely any wear on the sole, the label on the insole still intact – he laughs.
‘Good morning to you, too,’ he says, and she gets a very panicked look around her eyes for a second.
‘Leon,’ she breathes. He thinks she might be about to cry, but she swallows it down, offers him a smile instead. ‘Good morning. I didn’t expect to see you.’
He shrugs, steps over the threshold, something hot crawling down the back of his neck. He’s seen her a dozen times since returning from Spain, has picked her up from her bedroom before, but he’s never entered the room.
‘Day off,’ he says, ‘BoW dealers are giving me a break, in honour of Jesus’ love of chocolate eggs. Which I bring to you, as a gift.’ He holds the bag of eggs up.
She grinds the heels of her hands into her eyes, laughs at him, steps away from the wardrobe. The laugh is a little too tight, a little too breathy. The stress is rolling off of her in waves, but she’s ignoring it, so he does the same. For now, anyway.
‘Bullshit,’ she says, rubs the towel over her head for a second before pulling it free. Her hair is a mess of damp tangles, but she seems unbothered by it, exchanges the towel for a brush on her dressing table, sits in the chair to start combing through it. ‘Jesus preferred eggnog. Take a seat.’
She gestures at her bed, seemingly not thinking about what it could, in another world, imply. He saved her life, and beyond that, he’s employed by her father to make sure the world doesn’t turn into a zombie apocalypse, with an occasional phone call to make sure she’s not completely insane yet. Because that could happen, with the greatest of respect. Spain had been fucked up, even by his standards. He’d told Claire some of it, and she’d passed it on to Chris, who’d said it was fucked up, and he’d seen far worse and far weirder shit.
So it doesn’t mean anything, there is no implication, and he sits on the end of her bed, watches her comb through her hair.
‘I know it’s stupid,’ she says, gesturing next at the pile of clothes haphazardly thrown at the foot of the wardrobe. ‘It’s just – I haven’t done any public events since getting back. I know it’s not a big deal, the attention isn’t even going to be on me, but I want to make a good impression for Dad, you know? He needs me to be at my best.’ A pause and before he can reply, she adds, ‘you look good.’
‘Yeah?’ he asks, accepting the deflection, recognising her need to ignore her own admittance. ‘It’s an old shirt, had it years, since – God, since before I became a cop. It just lives in my wardrobe, so I figured; it’s going to be a nice day, I’m not expected to shoot anything today, I don’t even need to bring my gun, I can just relax. Wear clothes that are a decade out of fashion.’
She snorts. ‘Shirts never go out of fashion. A man always looks good in a shirt.’
He’s seen some truly horrendous shirt patterns out there, and makes a note to himself to buy the most garish and ugly one he can find for the next time he sees her. It’d make her smile, and from what Graham has said, she’s sorely lacking in those these days.
‘It’s easier for us men, I guess,’ he says, reclines onto an elbow, pretends he feels far more casual than he actually does. ‘We can just wear a suit to these things, a shirt at minimum. Girls have got so much more to think about. Hair and makeup and making sure the shoes match and all that. You’ll look lovely no matter what you wear, so don’t think too hard about it.’
She snorts, but she’s blushing. ‘Why are you always so charming?’ she asks, ‘it’d be creepy if I didn’t know you don’t mean it.’
His turn to snort, and he straightens back up, is glad for the excuse. Being that casual had felt wrong, somehow.
‘Who says I don’t mean it?’ he asks, ‘you’re America’s Sweetheart, and you do look lovely no matter what you wear. You could go down in that, and nobody would care.’
‘Hit and Fun would take a few photographs, I’m sure.’
‘And they’d learn not to when they have no fingers to press the shutter with,’ he replies, as if it’s nothing.
He thinks he sees a flush on her cheeks, but she’s turning back to the mirror, focusing on her hair.
Hair combed through, if not dry, Ashley returns to her wardrobe, roots through it to find something suitable. She pulls out a pretty little dress in a soft pastel yellow with a floral pattern, and she twists her lips.
‘It’s nice,’ Leon says, helpfully, and her mouth twists the other way.
‘I’ve, uh, I’ve not worn – I’ve not worn yellow since, uh, since Spain,’ she admits. ‘Or a skirt. I just – I haven’t really made any kind of effort with anything. Just jeans and sweaters.’
‘It’s been cold,’ he shrugs, as if that’s why. ‘But like I said, forecast says it’ll be nice.’
She holds the dress against herself, checks her reflection in the mirror standing on the far side of the room. She doesn’t look convinced.
‘All you gotta do is try it,’ he says, and wonders when he became like this. ‘Nobody says you have to keep it on.’
‘Why, Condor One,’ she teases, and twirls a finger. It takes him longer than he’s willing to admit to realise she wants him to turn around, which is obvious, in hindsight.
Really, he should leave.
He just obligingly lifts a leg onto the bed, turning his body the other way, staring at a peculiarly neutral painting of what could be the sea on the wall. He listens to the shush of the fabric as she dresses, hears it as the shush of waves, the gentle lap of them against the jet ski as they let the waves carry them briefly, in interludes, when the noise and the wind got to be too much. They’d been further from land than he’d thought, and he’s lucky they didn’t run out of fuel before they hit sand. After all the noise of the village, and the castle, and the island, hearing just the waves, Ashley’s breath against his neck, it had been downright heartbreakingly beautiful. The first moment’s silence, the first moment’s peace. He wonders whether he’d experience that again.
‘Leon?’
His name, called in a manner suggesting she’s already spoken. He flinches, turns back, is glad to have been proven right; she is lovely.
‘It’s lovely,’ he assures her, and she tugs at the hemline, lifts her toes, rocks on her heels.
‘I feel very exposed,’ she says, and he supposes it’s a quite short dress, though a little longer than the skirt she’d worn when they met.
‘A cardigan, perhaps?’ he offers, and she forms an expression with her mouth that conveys just how stupid she finds him, in the most positive light.
‘It’s not about the cardigan, but okay.’
Her hands are fidgeting again, picking at each other like pigeons with breadcrumbs. Before he really thinks about what he’s doing here, he’s on his feet, closing the gap, hands closing over hers, swamping them, despite not being that much larger, not really. There’s only inches in height between them, and other than his upper arm being the size of her thigh, there isn’t much to separate them. She’s breathing deep, in through the nose, out through the mouth. Her damp hair clings to her neck, her cheeks, and her eyes, fixed on their hands, are red-rimmed, brimming with tears she’s fighting to keep on her lash line. The scar on her chest is just about visible beneath the sweetheart neck of the dress, stands pink and slightly raised, the same as his, against her skin.
‘Sweetheart,’ he says, gentle, and her eyes snap to his. ‘If you want to wear jeans, do that.’
She looks for a second like she might plead with him – for what, he doesn’t know – but then she shakes her head.
‘I can’t,’ she says, ‘I can’t. I – See – before – before Spain, I was – it’s not vanity, okay? It’s not – I know I’m not an A-list superstar. I’m not Britney. I’m just some girl, when you get down to it. But magazines always – there was always something about my outfit, whenever there’s an event. Whatever style I wore, it would be sold out the next week. And I – I didn’t care, not really, but it was – I liked knowing that I was making good fashion choices, that I was – that I was pretty.’
He scoffs, and the vulnerable look in her eyes flutters into betrayal for a second. But he has to lighten the mood.
‘I’m not feeding your ego on that one,’ he tells her, and releases one of her hands to cup her cheek, brush her hair behind her ear. ‘Dress is a little short, sure, but you’re twenty, your dresses are always going to be short. I saw that skirt.’
She snorts then, vulnerability suitably squashed back into comfortable camaraderie. ‘You saw up that skirt.’
He backs away, hands spread, a not-guilty smile on his face as he takes his seat on the edge of her bed again. ‘I’m saying nothing. My eyesight is classified. Need to know.’
Turning back to the wardrobe, tugging the hem a little with one hand as she rifles for a cardigan with the other, she scoffs. ‘Imagine making Dad read a report about how you looked up my skirt.’
‘I didn’t have much choice, a few times,’ he says, ‘kind of hard to avoid when you’re directly above my head.’
‘You could have closed your eyes.’
‘Oh, sure,’ he snorts, puts a hand over his eyes, makes a finger gun with the other, waves it wildly. ‘I’ll keep you safe, Baby Eagle. You can count on me. Never missed a shot in my life.’
She laughs at that, a proper laugh, and he drops his hands at the sound, feels the smile ache in his jaw. There hadn’t been much to laugh about in Spain, but he’d gotten a couple of chuckles out of her. She’s got a beautiful smile, and an even nicer laugh.
‘Why are you really here?’ she asks, tugs a soft off-white cardigan on over the top of the dress, turns to a chest of drawers and finds a pair of sheer tights, sits at her dresser to ease them on. ‘Honest answers only, Condor One.’
‘I wanted to bring you an Easter egg, or three.’
She raises an eyebrow, hips shifted so she can ease the tights over her hip crease without flashing her underwear. Not that he’s looking. ‘Try again.’
‘I – you’re not going to like the answer.’
‘Try me.’
‘Benford asked me to come. It’s your first public event since Spain, and he wanted to make sure you felt comfortable. So he asked me to come, because he knows we get on.’
‘You’re right,’ she says jovially, ‘I don’t like that answer. And I’ll tell him that later. But – ugh, you’re here now. And I am grateful you are. You – it’s just nice to see you.’ She heaves a breath, runs a hand through her hair. ‘Come on, those eggs aren’t going to eat themselves. What’s the point in Easter if you haven’t eaten your weight in chocolate by lunchtime?’
He barks a laugh, and pulls an egg out at random, tosses it to her. She cracks it one-handed as she starts drying her hair with the other, and he sits there for a minute just watching her. If she feels the weight of his gaze, she says nothing. Hair dried, she turns her attention to her makeup, light and airy, barely there, mostly just concealer under the dark circles, a little blush to bring some colour to her cheeks. Ramming the last of the egg into her mouth, she puts some dainty earrings in her ears, finds a pretty little necklace to put around her neck, and gives him a twirl.
‘You gonna put shoes on, or just go out like that?’ he asks around a mouthful of caramel.
She throws the scrunched-up foil at him, rolling her eyes. Shoes obtained, she offers her arm.
‘Walk with me?’ she asks, and he tucks her hand into his elbow, lets her lead the way.
‘You know what the most insane thing of all of it is?’ Ashley asks, quiet, leaning on the balustrade as the children hoot and holler and chase their eggs.
He glances one side and the other, checks their six; nobody is near enough to hear her murmur, and those that are nearby are engrossed in their own conversations. She’s done her time with the socialising and the schmoozing, and had the professional photographs taken with her father, smiling politely and posing appropriately. Her hands had been folded over her heart, hiding the scar, and it makes him wonder if that was why she was so dubious about the dress, why the cardigan wasn’t the issue. Claire keeps saying he’s a bull in a china shop, the way he handles tactful things, and maybe she’s got a point. Regardless, Ashley’s handled herself incredibly well, given the crowd, given the noise. If he didn’t know better, he’d think Benford had underestimated her. But he does know better, and knows it’s only a matter of time before she cracks. It’s in the little details; the shake of her hands, the darting gaze, the forced smile. It’s brewing, but he’s not sure what the tipping point will be.
‘What’s that?’ he asks, because there has been enough insanity that he doubts he could guess.
Her knuckles bleach white on the stone for a second, and then relax.
‘I remember getting back,’ she starts, tentative. ‘To land, I mean. Being picked up. Dumping the jet ski on the sand, seeing the cars, the helicopter circling. I remember – I remember it being separate cars. I remember – I remember driving back in total silence. Nobody spoke to me. It was like, an hour’s drive to get to the chopper’s landing pad, so that they could – I don’t remember which airport we went to.’
‘Teruel.’
‘Whatever. Made separate cars pointless, since we were going to the same place. I remember it. And the – the most insane thing about it. The radio. They put the radio on, and there was this fucking song. That one in the charts, by that Romanian band, I can’t remember what it’s called. I genuinely thought I’d cracked, that I’d gone mad, that I was going to go to an institution, that I’d made the whole of Spain up. Just this song, and it must have played like, five times. I laughed so hard that I threw up out of the window. And they just kept driving. Driving, and this song, over and over again. I honestly thought I’d lost it.’
He knows the song she means, and had heard it just the same.
‘They must have put the same station on in my car,’ he tells her, and the relief that visibly sweeps down her spine nearly puts her on the floor. He wants to touch the small of her back, help keep her on her feet, but he resists, knows she doesn’t need it, rests his hand in touching distance from hers on the stonework. ‘Between that and the stupid shit they were saying to each other – I filed a complaint, I ever tell you? They were so unprofessional that the first thing I did was ask for a complaints form.’
‘You have complaints forms?’ she asks.
‘No, but they made one for me.’
She looks at him like the penny’s dropped, but he’s not having her on; they did genuinely find a complaints form and doctor it to suit USSTRATCOM purposes. What can he say, he’s a trendsetter.
‘I didn’t laugh, though,’ he admits, ‘I – Claire will tell you, if you ask her. When we got out of the city, when we got to that first motel, there was a little TV in the corner, and Sherry managed to find a rerun of the VMAs, and it was just such a – they call it cognitive dissonance, I think. We were sat there, covered in literal shit, and A-listers are faking a fight in the audience. It was just. It was lunacy. I’ll admit, and Claire doesn’t know this, I sobbed my guts up in the shower when I finally got in there. Just sat on the floor and wept like a baby. I told Claire I took so long because I had a splinter in my toe.’
It’s the most he’s ever really spoken of the aftermath, of the city and what happened immediately afterwards. She stares at him, mouth slightly open, a furrow between her brows. It’s not quite pity, certainly not disbelief, but it’s warm, whatever aplomb it is.
‘Leon,’ she says, soft, and her fingers brush his, just for a moment.
If she wants to say something else, she can’t, because someone calls her name, and she turns, frowns.
‘Ugh,’ she says, and Leon leans past her, sees who’s approaching.
A photographer, press lanyard around their neck. Ugh.
‘Miss Graham,’ the photographer repeats, looking a little flushed, a little too eager. ‘I wondered if I might get a picture, a few words, about the event? It’s your first White House event since your supposed sabbatical.’
‘Supposed,’ Leon echoes, before he can help himself. Ashley’s hand comes back, without her turning her head to look, and touches him, briefly, a staying gesture he’s electing to ignore. ‘If you want an interview, you need to speak to the Press Secretary.’
Ashley does turn her head at that, gives him a look, which he shrugs his eyebrows at her over. He’s under Benford’s orders to be a civilian. Frankly, he can do what he wants. The girlfriend he’d split with before that godforsaken drive to that godforsaken city had accused him of being too mouthy, and he supposes not much has changed. Huh. He’s not really thought about her, since that drive. They’d split acrimoniously – she’d wanted him to stay, and he’d been too eager to go, and she hadn’t been willing to consider following, and so the breakup happened, very loudly, very publicly, in their favourite restaurant – and for all he knows, she thinks he’s dead. News of the bombing had been on every station for weeks, and she’d known that was where he was going. He didn’t reach out, had other priorities, and then time passed, and now here he is, mouthing off at a photographer on behalf of the President’s daughter. Christ.
The photographer looks him up and down, lingers on his white trainers like that’s something to pass judgement over.
‘And you are?’ he asks.
‘None of your business,’ he says. ‘Like I said; you want an interview, you go through the proper channels. Now, on you go.’
He even waves his hand in a shooing gesture.
The photographer does not go.
‘Oh, I see,’ he drawls, ‘you must be the new boyfriend. We’d heard from a trusted source that there was a man on the scene.’
Ashley snorts, but there’s a note of panic in it, bubbling in her throat. He can’t tell if it’s because there’s a degree of truth to it, or she finds the whole thing so horrendous.
‘No,’ she says, ‘no, he’s not. Even if he was, it’s still none of your business. Now please, go away.’
One of the Condors has been doing their job, has seen the photographer standing too close, has seen something in Leon’s posture, in Ashley’s finger-twitching, and is making their way over. Leon catches the movement from the corner of his eye. Good. At least someone’s paying attention.
‘I think I’ve touched a nerve,’ the photographer coos, ‘you were awfully quick to defend Miss Graham’s absence from White House engagements over the winter there, Mr None-of-Your-Business. You know something a little more personal about her sabbatical, do you?’
His turn to snort, but there’s no panic in it. He knows far more about her “sabbatical” than anyone else ever will. He knows near enough every personal detail of it. He’ll take several of those details to his grave.
‘The lady has asked you to leave,’ he says, ‘I have asked you to leave.’ He points at the Condor, almost in arm’s reach. ‘He is about to make you leave.’
As soon as the photographer’s gaze turns to see the Condor, all six-five of him, in his neat suit and earpiece, hulking arms making up for the brain cells he’s missing, Leon catches Ashley’s elbow and tugs. She goes, pliant and accepting, and follows him as he makes his way through the throng of people on the terrace, through a side door, and as soon she’s out of sight of the crowd, and the cameras, she collapses against the wall, heaves for breath, hands on her thighs, fisting the hem of her dress like it might keep her upright.
Keeping one eye on the open door, he drops to a crouch at her feet, ducks his head to find her eyes. Her gaze is wild, far wilder than anything he’d seen in Spain. The stress does that, forces a calm that doesn’t hit until after, but here she is safe, and so the panic has a foothold.
‘Leon,’ she gasps, and he knows, reaches for her hands, wriggles his fingertips under her fists to thread through her fingers, hold just as tight as she does.
‘Breathe,’ he tells her, sighs it out, already slowing his breathing to model for her. He tightens his grip on the inhale, softens it on the exhale. ‘In, out. C’mon, you got this. I gotcha.’
It takes a minute of haggard, gasping breaths, of a visible heartbeat in her neck, of her eyes so wild as to be feral, to be not with him at all, and he wonders where she is, what she’s remembering, but her breathing slows, her gaze strengthens, tightens, and the gaze that meets him is a little more present, a little more Ashley.
Her hands flex, so he lets go, lets his hands hover near her knees for a moment as hers scrape over her face, press into her temples.
‘I’m going to be sick,’ she says, matter-of-fact, like she’s reporting on the weather, and he casts a glance for a bin, but of course there isn’t one available.
There’s a plant pot, though, and she spits something about it not being the most undignified thing she’s ever done into the foliage. He rakes his fingers through the hair at her crown, hums an agreement. Some things are best left unsaid.
‘I’m not,’ she starts, and he doesn’t want to say anything either way. ‘I’m not weak.’
‘Nope,’ he agrees, still with one eye on the door. The Condor comes to it, sees them there, Ashley bent over a plant pot, Leon’s hand on the back of her head, threaded into her hair, and they lock gazes. Leon nods, and the Condor nods back, finger to his earpiece. Reporting on Baby Eagle’s safety. ‘This is probably why our parents didn’t let us eat our weight in chocolate before lunch.’
A shove at him, and she straightens, wipes her mouth with her hand.
‘The – I don’t have a boyfriend,’ she tells him, ‘I don’t know where they got their source.’
‘Ash, you – you don’t have to justify yourself to me. Or explain yourself. I don’t care?’
It comes out as a question, like he’s not sure that it’s what he wants to say, and honestly, it isn’t. It’s not that he doesn’t care – of course he cares about her life, about her happiness, about any potential safety risks, even if she isn’t his to worry about any longer – but it isn’t his business. If she wants a boyfriend, if she has a boyfriend, she doesn’t have to spill her guts about it. Her life is hers. She hasn’t pried into his, and he won’t do her the injustice of not offering the same.
She looks back to the door, wraps her arms tight around herself.
‘I don’t want to go back out,’ she says, ‘that was – that was so stupid. I don’t want to – I’m better than that. I am. I just – I know they’re going to ask questions. I know there’s rumours. I just – I’m sorry that you got dragged into this.’
‘I haven’t been dragged into anything,’ he says, and then, far more casually than the sudden twist in his ribs makes him believe, he adds, ‘if you want me to be your fake boyfriend for a year to get them off your back, I’m sure I can convince Benford to give me hazard pay for the paparazzi photos.’
She laughs, which is what he wanted, even if it’s one just huff of a laugh. Gently, hand on her back, he guides her to the interior door, getting her into the building proper, and then she can decide where she wants to go.
‘What do you mean, hazard pay? I’m no trouble.’
He snorts, follows her down the corridor. ‘You’re going to be twenty-one soon. I know how much trouble twenty-one-year-olds can be. I was twenty-one once, you know. I ended up being accused of kidnap and press-ganged into government slavery after a wild night when I was twenty-one.’
She mouths ‘kidnap’ to herself and he can hear the cogs whir.
‘That is the most batshit way of describing Raccoon City that you could have come up with.’
‘I tell you I was hungover?’ he asks, and she stops, stares at him.
‘Hungover?’
‘It’s probably the only reason I survived, because I was late going in. I shouldn’t even have been able to, actually. There were already barricades. But I slept in, because I’d gotten completely wasted the night before, and I was hanging out of my ass the entire time. I was probably over the limit driving, too, come to think of it. That would have made a great first day, though, eh? Fired and arrested for drink-driving on the first day on the job.’
She shakes her head, expression baffled. ‘Why?’ she asks.
‘Got dumped. My whole life, just completely uprooted and flipped upside down by a girl telling me to go fuck myself.’
‘She sounds like a mug,’ she scoffs, and they’re back at her bedroom, where she goes straight to the bathroom and the mouthwash. Gargling, she adds, ‘she did me a favour, though, so I should thank her.’
‘A favour?’
‘Mm. If she hadn’t dumped you, you wouldn’t have been drunk, and you wouldn’t have been late, and you wouldn’t have survived, thereby you wouldn’t have been able to rescue me. So, kind of owe her. What’s her name? I’ll send her a fruit basket.’
He shakes his head. ‘Don’t do that. I’d definitely need hazard pay for the shit she’d throw my way. And the shit she’d say about me.’
‘Oh?’ Ashley hums, throwing herself on her bed, and he’s reminded, vividly, as he sits at her dresser, that she’s twenty. She’s a sorority girl at heart, TerraSave be damned. ‘She got gossip? All of Leon S. Kennedy’s dirty secrets? I bet you were still a good guy, even if you were twenty-one.’
‘I was an ass,’ he tells her, which is probably downplaying just what an asshole he actually was. ‘I was up my own ass. I thought I was some hotshot, going to go and save the world. Or at least the city. Clean up all the mess, all the crime, be a hero.’
Her expression is too soft, too warm, and he feels it in his bones, flooding through his veins. The scars on his chest and palm itch. He digs his nails into the latter, turns his gaze elsewhere. She has far too high a regard for him, and he wonders when the other shoe will fall, when she’ll decide he’s not the man she’d built up in her mind. Claire had spoken about it once, after Rockfort, about how the brief moments of connection they’d had in the city, those first days in the motels, she’d had such a conflicted and complicated mess of feelings, and then Rockfort had happened, the fact it was her brother that came and not him, and now, years later, she admits to being too quick to throw her eggs into his basket. An apt metaphor, considering the season.
‘You were my hero,’ Ashley says, a little too soft, and he feels the heat in his ears.
‘You were my hero,’ he bats back, ‘couldn’t have done any of that without you. Owe you my life.’
It derails her, as he’d intended, and she goes to the window, looks out on the children hooting and hollering out on the lawn.
‘I don’t know how you do it,’ she says. ‘Be normal.’
‘Don’t accuse me of that,’ he scoffs. ‘I’m insulted.’
She throws a glance over her shoulder. ‘I’ll give you a proper insult,’ she warns, an empty threat. ‘I just mean – I – do you like, leave it at work? Like it’s just a normal nine-to-five? As soon as you wash the guts off, that’s it, job done? I don’t – I can still hear him. When it’s quiet. I still hear the moans, the shouting. I hear ahí esta again, I think I’ll crack up.’ She shakes her head, sighs. ‘I suppose I. I don’t know. I’m going back, to Amherst. In the fall. I’m working on transferring. Uh. TerraSave is – I don’t think Civil Engineering is going to help much.’
‘I didn’t think Drivers Ed quite covered why you knew how to use the wrecking ball. Where you going instead?’
‘I’ve applied for Public Policy, with a minor in PoliSci. I wanted to do a unit or two in Legal, but I doubt they’ll let me. I offered to do it remotely now, but they’ve said no. Too much paperwork, probably.’
‘Public Policy,’ he echoes, ‘you gonna get up in Senate hearings and start shouting about the death of democracy?’
‘Why, is democracy dying?’ she asks, and he shakes his head. ‘It’ll be years before I’m able to do much; I’ll just be supporting the higher-ups, I imagine. We’re only here for another three years, I won’t have any weight after that. “My Dad’s the President,” surprisingly doesn’t get you very far, never mind if you have to change is to was.’
‘Determined to stand on your own, huh?’
She shrugs, turns away from the window properly, comes and sits on the edge of her bed, legs crossed, picking at her nails. ‘Well, a nice guy once told me that I could put him out of a job, so.’
He smiles, and her smile beams back at him. For a moment, he thinks she might say something else, but then his phone rings. Fishing it out of his pocket, he heaves a breath at the name on the display.
‘Kennedy.’
‘I hear you’re having fun at the Easter party,’ Hunnigan says, ‘and I hate to cut it short, but we’ve got a situation developing in an industrial complex in the south of France. Need eyes on it ASAP.’
Leon nods, gets to his feet. Ashley follows him, can’t hear the call, but knows the set of his shoulders, reaches for him as he hangs up. Her arms wrap tight under his, press tight to his ribs, her face buried in his collar. Her cardigan is skin-warm under his hands, her hair like silk, and she smells of shampoo and chamomile.
‘Be safe,’ she murmurs into his neck, ‘please. I don’t want to get to the Senate only to have to read your name on a list of the dead.’
‘It’s just eyes,’ he tells her, whispers it into her hair, will deny until he dies that he’s breathing her in, memorising it, holding it tight in his chest. ‘It’ll be fine.’
‘Heard that before,’ she scoffs, pulls back to look at him. ‘I mean it. Be safe.’
She touches his chest, where the scar sits, raw and pink, and lays her hand flat against his heart. Her eyes are a little wet, but they’re clear. He touches her cheek, brushes a lock of hair behind her ear.
‘I’ll be back before you know it,’ he assures her, fingertip so gentle against the earring in her lobe. ‘Buy you a drink for your birthday?’
She breathes deep, turns her face slightly, as if into his palm. ‘I’d like that,’ she breathes.
His phone rings again. Hunnigan; no doubt she’s organised a ride for him. He drops his hand with a touch to her chin, catching the edge of her lip. A deep breath, a second’s hesitation, and he turns, heads for the stairs.