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When Holley meets Finn McMissile again in Belgium, he tells her, “I have a joke for you.”
“Save it for when we’ve lifted.” She opens her screen and starts inputting their coordinates to send to Siddeley, who she knows has been hovering around within a ten-kilometre radius as Finn had instructed in the case that at any point the mission were to go belly-up. Which it has. Which is why she’s here, and Finn is pretending his arm doesn’t look like a bear has savaged it, and the building is littered with bodies Holley’d tasered unconscious on her way in.
“A little humour won’t affect the bleeding, Miss Shiftwell,” Finn says, but lapses into rare solemn silence when she doesn’t respond, only taps at her screen a few more times, muscle memory, as they hurry through the halls of the powered-down laboratory. She’s had to scoop younger field agents from pools of their own gore before, but never ones like Finn.
“Your age might be catching up to you, sir,” she says, without preamble.
From the corner of her eye she can see Finn watching her, something muted scurrying about his expression, turning it soft then hard, then soft again. “And I thought you warned me not to quip.”
“Thirty-one consecutive years of service to the crown since you were twenty. Retirement may be on the horizon for you soon.”
“I know my own body, Miss Shiftwell,” he says coolly. “As do you. I’m well aware that all you technicians have thorough access to the database containing our health papers.”
“A vacation might be nice.”
“My next job is in Portofino.”
“A vacation, sir,” she repeats with effortful patience. As if he’d listen once his mind was made up. Damned field agents and their double-edged stubbornness. “For recuperation.”
“Approaching,” Siddeley crackles from their comms.
Finn rams his good shoulder into a jammed door without flinching, not even when Holley glares at him. “It opened,” he says. “Bless your expeditious heart, Sid.”
“How your bones forgive you is beyond me,” she says. Then, “What about Radiator Springs?”
He’s too trained to run into a wall, but it’s a near thing. “What?”
“Radiator Springs,” she says. “I miss Mater.”
It’s a strange emotion that darts through his face, and she’s barely looking. “You go, then. He’s your boyfriend.”
“Not my boyfriend,” she snaps, and sidesteps a hazardous spill pooling into the veins of tile. What are they, teenagers? “And my job isn’t to bust my ass on a weekly basis with fatality rates sky-high,” she says. “You miss him too.”
“Holley,” he warns lowly. She dares a glance: there’s a crease to his brow that wasn’t there before. Target struck with accuracy.
“Consider it,” she says.
They bolt through three more sets of half-opened double doors. The last hall is wholly lightless, a windowed door in the distance glinting through the opaque black. “That’s the exit, then,” Finn says, and makes to speed up. Holley lashes out an arm and hooks him by the elbow, the one without bone peeking through open folds of flesh. She’s seen worse, but he’s harder to look at.
“Hang on, let me do a quick scan.” She stops, and to his credit he halts beside her, quick as anything, eyes faintly mirthful on the grip she has on his arm, her hands smooth and skilled and unscarred. With how he moves, Holley can almost believe the thread of blood he trails behind isn’t his. “There are several hidden intruder response systems, but their sensors are electric. You’re sure the central power system is clear?” He nods. “Then we’re safe.”
“Fancy,” he remarks, peering at her through the holographic projection. His gaze is steel blue, gliding smoothly down her arms that are gadget-studded beneath the sleeves. “What else have you got tucked away in that nice jumpsuit?”
“Nothing from your century, I’m afraid, sir,” she jabs, and then they’re taking off through the darkness and bursting through the doors. She hears Siddeley before she sees him, the deafening whirs of his jet as he touches down in the deadened field beyond, no more than fifty meters, a delicately artful landing.
“The vacation, Finn.” Holley has to shout over the noise, tailing him stubbornly as he breaks unfathomably into an even faster run.
Ahead of her he’s quiet, holding his bad arm close to him as they speed across the grass. She watches him for several moments, heady with exertion, just keeping her eyes on the back of his head, aging silver streaking down his wheat-coloured hair, like sand kicked over rivers of stars. “Mater will want to see you,” he yells over his shoulder. She narrows her eyes; he’s being dismissive on purpose.
And if there’s one thing, just one thing intelligence agents are unfailingly inept at, Holley thinks she can wager a guess.
“We’ll go together,” she tells him as Siddeley begins lowering the stairs. “I could use a lazy weekend.”
“With Mater there? I commend your optimism, Miss Shiftwell, but I fear he’ll be towing us every which way of his interests.”
And this is the third time in Holley’s five years of work she’s heard Finn laugh, a low throaty texture that tingles dimly in her belly, but even vast relief won’t slow him down. He hauls himself steadily up the steps with only one working arm and not a hint of a stumble, and again Holley thinks wryly, field agents, and clambers up onto the jet behind him, turning to smother her grin before he can see it.