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An arm weighing down her waist.
A chest pressing against her back, radiating warmth into her.
Although the dream was fading and reality settling in, she pulled the covers up, denying the start of a new day, willing herself to go back to sleep. Then she could wake up to being held all over again. And anyways, who could blame her for stretching this short moment of magic?
“Morning,” Leon whispered, his soft breath tickling her neck. She turned around. His eyes were still foggy from sleep.
When did they last wake up like this? Six months ago? Eight? Longer? So many promises made, so many promises broken. Last minute requests, missions stretching longer than expected, investigations tying them down… But it was worth the wait.
“Morning.”
“Where are you going?”
“Nowhere,” she said and wormed closer to him. The stubble gently scratched her fingers as they danced up and down his face, tracing the lines time etched into the skin. He caught her hand and held it in place.
“Good.” His eyelids fell; for a moment she thought he went back to sleep, but then they sprung open again. “I’ve been thinking. Tomorrow is Saturday—what do you say we go…”
Screeching erupted in the room. Leon jumped, reaching for the gun he kept hidden between the mattress and the bed frame while she pawed furiously at the nightstand. Her phone clattered on the ground, still wailing her latest choice of a ringtone.
Magic broken. Completely.
“Do you really have to take that?” Leon asked, sounding degrees more sober than just a moment ago, which was probably a good thing, given the loaded gun he had in his hand, the other already on the slide.
“It’s work,” she groaned, peeking over the edge at the threateningly flashing number of her boss’s boss.
Well, that cannot be good news.
Leon pushed the gun back into its hiding place. “Exactly. You’re supposed to be on PTO.”
“I don’t think you are the one to lecture others about that.”
“It’s hard-earned wisdom,” he said, falling back down.
The cool air nibbled at her skin as she slipped out from under the covers, then accepted the call, putting an end to the nightmarish howling. Leon shivered and he ducked back under the covers with a relieved sigh; the man hated to be cold. Loathed it, even, but for her he kept the room ten degrees colder than he liked. And wasn’t that sweet?
Despite the news Marco was relaying her, the corners of her lips quirked upwards again at the sight of the freshly brewed coffee sitting on the kitchen counter. And to no one’s surprise, when she opened the cupboard in search of breakfast, a brand-new batch of her favorite treats looked back at her.
“Claire, are you listening?” Marco sounded tense. He had every right to be; by the sounds of it, the brewing storm was promising to be a big one. Not even the memory of being carried inside in a blanket smelling of sunshine and flowers could keep the bit of warmth in her chest from ebbing away.
“Yeah, sorry. I’m here,” she said. Her mouth was sour from the coffee, and the light in the kitchen was no longer golden, but dull and straw-colored.
“You need to get to Seoul, ASAP.”
It made sense. Few had the kind of expertise to deal with what they suspected was going on there, and most of them were tied up in other investigations. No ifs, no buts; they could not risk a potential outbreak in such a densely populated city.
She hung up and let her hand drop onto the table.
Leon appeared in the door, still wrapped in a blanket. “I don’t like that look. Are you all right?”
“They want me to go to Korea.”
“And you said yes.” It wasn’t a question; perhaps he was listening, perhaps he just knew her too well. Still, the hollow ring the words had to them stung.
“I had no choice. They think it could be something major.”
“When are you leaving?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Right.” Leon kept his gaze fixed on a spot somewhere above her head. “Sure.”
He disappeared back into the gaping darkness of the room, and she followed, only watching in silence as he drew the blinds a little too roughly, then yanked the top drawer of the dresser. Soon a little pile of clothes laid by his feet as he rummaged through the neatly stacked shirts and trousers.
“What are you doing?”
“Getting dressed. What does it look like?”
“Like you are angry and are taking it out on the furniture.”
Leon scowled at her, then yanked a pair of socks up.
Agitation reared in her. This was not fair.
“Look, what was I supposed to do? Say no?”
“Could have at least tried.”
“We are talking about human lives, Leon.”
“What about our lives?” he demanded, then dropped onto the bed, burying his haunted face in his hands. “I thought I can do this. I can’t. I just can’t.”
Dread stuck its bony fingers into her abdomen. “What can’t you do? This is what we’ve always done.”
“I know. I fucking know. Running from one outbreak to the next, risking our lives again and again. That’s us, isn’t it? A couple days off, then back into the hamster wheel from Hell.”
His eyes were red, and shining, but no tears rolled down his cheeks. No. Life beat that out of him long ago, he told her as much. She should have cared about that, perhaps, tempered her, but the injustice of his behavior poked her in all the wrong spots. Being angry at her for doing the right thing? How did he dare?
“So what am I supposed to do? Huh? Tell me. I’m all ears.”
Leon threw his hands into the air. “I don’t know! But I need you in my life more than once a year!”
“And you think I don’t?!”
“It doesn’t feel like you do.” His hand, trembling as much as his voice, could not find its way into the arms of the shirt. With a string of curses for company, he threw it across the room.
“So you want me to quit?” she hissed. “Is that it?”
“No, of course not.”
“It certainly sounds like you do. Here is an idea; why don’t you quit?”
Leon’s back went rigid as he bent to pick up the shirt, but in her, saying the words out loud stilled some of the raging waves. It wasn’t actually a half bad idea. It’d have been better if the idea occurred to her in a more peaceful setting, but since it was out in the open…
She exhaled slowly. “I mean it,” she said, her voice still quivering from the adrenaline, but already much calmer. “You could. You could leave the DSO and work with me. We need a man with your abilities. Or if not TerraSave, there are many other…”
He was avoiding looking at her again. “I can’t.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Why?”
“I just can’t.”
“You’ve gotta do better than that.”
Leon, fiddling with something in his hands, nodded and said in a deflated voice, “I know, but… No. Forget it.” The man rose from the bed, his mouth pressed into a thin line. “Get dressed. We’ll be late for the hike.”
Oh. Yeah. The plan was to hike a peak of the surrounding mountains every other day while she was here.
She took a step back. “I’m not going anywhere until you…”
“Please,” he said, looking at her intently, as if there was something he wanted her to understand. “I’m sorry about being an ass. I didn’t mean to… Want to… I messed up. I’m sorry. But you are leaving tomorrow, so let’s make the most of this day, ok?” He pressed a note into her hand.
Leave your phone.
They hiked for a while. Up and up, without stopping, the complete silence only disturbed by chirping birds. Claire’s chest began to burn after the third hour, but Leon didn’t seem bothered. She only realized that they arrived when Leon dropped the bag from his soaked back and plopped down beside it, with his eyes closed.
“I used to come here with my mom,” he said. The breeze swept the hair back from his face. He looked worn.
“Not your dad?”
Leon barked a laugh. “Not him, no.”
“Well, it’s a nice view,” she said, drinking in the sight of spring-green trees on the slope opposite the one they were on and blue ridges in the background. “But I suppose that’s not why we are here.”
He straightened up. “You want to know why I won’t leave the DSO.”
“Yes.”
“And I told you. I can’t.”
“Sure you can. Just say I quit, then walk out the door.”
He huffed. “I’m not an employee in the normal sense. It’s closer to what you’d call an indentured servant.”
The soft grass gave way as she settled down next to him. “You are joking right?”
He sighed, playing with a leaf between his fingers. His eyebrows furrowed, accentuating the lines on his forehead. His mouth opened and closed again, as if trying to speak the words he was thinking, but not quite managing it. She waited. Just what else did he leave unsaid until now?
“I didn’t choose to work for STRATCOM or the DSO. They found us not long after you left, after Raccoon.” Another moment of silence. Rough, calloused fingers found hers and intertwined with them. “They offered me a deal; Sherry's life for mine. I do their dirty work and she gets to live as normal a life as she can; or they find a different use for me and she becomes their lab rat. Those were my choices. They did package it neatly and written it all down before I signed the contract though.”
“That’s insane,” she blurted out.
“Is it, though?”
No, she supposed not. They both had enough experience with various governments to know that his case didn’t even rank top 10. And it did explain many things she never quite understood. Like how the idealistic rookie turned into someone willing to cover up the government’s involvement in BOW experimentations.
With a faraway look in his eyes, he went on. “It’s still valid, as far as anyone knows, and the DSO brass likes it that way. Graham had an army of lawyers to get me out of it, out of gratitude, I suppose, so did Adam, but whoever wrote the damn thing knew what they were doing. So I continue playing the attack dog, and you two are safe.” The crumbs of the leaf fell from his hands.
“What do you mean?”
“They found out about you quite quickly. Turns out, they can add clauses to my contract.”
“Back in Washington, when you didn’t give me the chip…”
“You were already on their radar and they knew about it. Bombed a family to keep it from getting back to the States.” His hand tightens around hers. “I know the risk was yours to take, but I couldn’t risk you. They’d have come after you and everyone they thought you might contact. The President himself wasn’t safe from them; Adam wanted to come clean about Raccoon and Umbrella in Tall Oaks and it got him and the whole city a one-way ticket into zombie land.”
Yes. Chris told her about that; but that the President himself was assassinated for trying to do the right thing?
To be fair, it didn’t exactly surprise her.
“Leon,” she said, cupping his face, “If what you say is true, Benford must have known the risks and he accepted them.”
“And he is all the much deader for it. I can’t let that happen to you.”
“That decision it’s not yours to make.”
“I know.”
“You do, but you don’t,” she said, drawing back. “You are selfish, you know? You don’t want to get hurt, so you make choices for others, even if it means going against what they stand for as a person. But then you walk into the fire yourself and don’t care who else gets burnt. You can’t have it both ways.”
“It’s better me than…”
“No. It’s not. I respect your choice to risk your life for what you believe in; but you gotta do the same for me, or this? Us? It won’t work.” She stood up, hands on her hips. “Now this thing with the DSO and Sherry… Is there anyone who can help us from the inside? Someone you can trust?”
“A few.”
“I’ll figure something out, but you need to trust me. Can you do that?”
He nodded weakly. “I can try.”
The scent of pine surrounded them like a mother’s embrace. Claire sighed and sat back down, leaning against Leon. She spoke with confidence, but perhaps, as much as she wanted to convince Leon, she also wanted to convince herself. Can she—can they—really do it? Going up against the DSO? The government?
No, she decided, it’s not a matter of ‘can’. The very thought made her blood boil, but there must have been others; people blackmailed into service. Men and women, young and old. Children even, perhaps. They needed justice, too.
No, it’s a question of ‘should they’.
And the answer is yes.