Page 32 of Thorne
He considers that for a moment, weighing the words the way he weighs everything.
"We need her functional." Ghost shifts his weight, his posture hardening. "Her job is to track down every patient who received ML-273. That's the mission."
"I know."
"She's your asset. Handle it." Ghost's words hang there a second after he says them.
"I will."
He studies me for half a beat longer, then nods once and pushes off the wall, heading back toward the common room.
I watch him go.
Ghost didn't say it outright, but the meaning is clear enough. Don't let it interfere with the mission.
The kind of quiet nonjudgment commanders sometimes give when they don't want to manage the personal lives of the people under them.
But that isn't what he meant.
Ghost noticed the tension.
He noticed the way Stratton and I looked at each other outside the building. He noticed enough to know something volatile is sitting between us, and what he just gave me wasn't approval. It was a boundary.
Handle it.
Control it.
Don't let it compromise the operation.
Which means if something happens between Stratton and me, Ghost isn't going to step in like a school principal breaking up a problem. He's going to let it play out.
Right up until the moment it threatens the mission.
I stand there a moment longer in the quiet hallway, thinking about the woman locked thirty feet away.
About the way my hand fit around her throat.
About the way she looked at me when I leaned in close enough that a kiss would have been the simplest thing in the world.
Then I exhale slowly and turn toward the common room.
Because right now there's a dinosaur war happening at the table, and Lily-bug is waiting for reinforcements. I stay where I am in the hallway, listening to Lily moving around the common room, asking Halo whether dinosaurs can live in a bunker.
And despite everything: the bunker, the mission, the fact that Stratton is currently locked thirty feet away, my mind drifts back to that same moment.
Not the control room in Ghostwater Dam, where I pressed a gun against her chest and she accepted the possibility that I might pull the trigger.
No.
The corner of the building.
The way she looked at me like she understood what I was capable of and didn't flinch.
I drag a hand over my face and stare down the quiet corridor.
This is going to be a long few weeks.
8
