“And then they just…released her back into the public?”
His grip tightened on the steering wheel. “No. She’d actually only been out for a week before you saw that video.” He smiled weakly, but it lacked humor. “I guess she wanted to celebrate waking up with a concert.”
“Waking up?”
“They kept her in a coma after giving her the cure. Told me they’d release her after you’d gotten settled into your new role. Which was really just your old role but with us living together. They released her on the condition that you didn’t find out about the cure and that she didn’t remember what happened. She didn’t. She thought she and her boyfriend were in a car accident.”
“Are you still an agent?”
“Would I be picking you up if I was?”
She glared at him from the corner of her eye. “Maybe rethink sarcasm, given the status of our relationship.”
“Got it.” His lips quirked. “Although you admitting we still have a relationship is doing wonders for my confidence.”
“Happy to help.” She sunk further into her seat.
“I haven’t officially quit, but between stealing confidential files and releasing the captive thermies at the Denver base, I think they got the message.”
“Did you get Ellie out?”
“I did. She’s staying with a friend of Lucas’s for now, another thermy, up at a farm in Iowa.”
A tree shaped air freshener swung from the rearview mirror. It wasn’t green, but pink, and smelled of something sickly sweet. It flung around with every slight shift of the car, repeatedly smacking into the mirror. Ruby ripped it from the mirror, snapping the string, and tossed it out of the window.
She refused to look at Jonah directly. “What took you so long?”
“I had to help my parents and sister get out of the country before I could come find you. They’re on another extended European vacation. My mom thinks I’m running from the mob but is too scared to ask me outright.”
“Did you think about telling her the truth?”
“Would you want to know?” He ignored the way she shifted in her seat, angling away from him. “If you were human, ignorant of thermies and everything that comes with them, would you want someone to tell you that a bacteria floats in the air, lingers in your lungs, crawls around inside of you while it waits for enough of it to gather to take over your body?”
The hum of the heater filled the silence. Outside of the car, the landscape shifted back into something urban. Motels and fast food restaurants lined the street, blending together in a swirl of neon lights as they whipped past.
Ruby frowned, nose wrinkling. “No, I wouldn’t want to know. I wouldn’t want to spend the rest of my life wondering when, or if, it’ll hit. And I wouldn’t wish the knowledge on anyone. It’s a curse.”
“You sound like the TCA.”
The quiet remark cut through Ruby. She shook her head.
“That’s not why the TCA keeps it from the public. The government doesn’t give a shit about its citizens outside of ensuring they remain inside of their little boxes. I don’t know why, yet, but they want to use thermies, and the knowledge of thermies, to their advantage.”
“I know why. That’s why I’m here.”
They pulled into the parking lot of the motel her and Lucas were staying at. Jonah’s hand wrapped around her wrist as she reached for the door.
She glanced at him over her shoulder. “What?”
“I’m sorry.”
“You’ve already said that.”
He shook his head. “Not nearly as much as I should. And I won’t ever stop saying it. You were my partner and I should have told you. If you let me, I’ll spend the rest of my life making it up to you.”
THE MOTEL PARKINGlot lay quiet, swallowed in the kind of stillness that only came in the dead of night. The neon sign buzzed, casting jagged, bleeding light across the pavement, its flicker like the stutter of a failing heartbeat. Somewhere beyond the lot, a car engine rumbled and faded into the distance, swallowed by the heavy press of heat and asphalt. The air smelled like rain that would never come, thick and cloying, settling deep in her lungs.
Ruby stood in the parking lot, motionless, her fingers curled around the key in her pocket. She wasn’t tired—she couldn’t be tired—but something inside her had settled into a weary ache, a weight that stretched down to her bones. The kind of exhaustion that wasn’t in the muscles, but in the marrow. The kind that made her feel like if she stood still long enough, she might sink into the pavement and disappear.
