Chapter 19
I awoke without waking, and in the darkness I saw the outline of the construction site take shape once more. I wanted to sigh, but I didn’t, instead staring into the hazy night surrounding me and waiting for him to appear. I glanced down and found myself dressed in slacks and a blouse with a leather jacket to cover it all. At least it wasn’t pajamas this time.
“All right, come out,” I said with that same feeling of weariness. “If you’re going to go to the trouble of dragging me here, you could at least show up promptly.”
“Just trying to give you a moment to adjust,” he said, stepping out of the shadows. He looked much less young this time, furrows in his brow as he stared at me. He seemed taller, too.
“Yeah, well,” I said, and ran my fingers over the leather jacket I was wearing, “I don’t need that much time to get used to this. It’s not like I get a ton of dreamwalk action … errr …” I adjusted my jacket to cover the indignity of misspeaking. “Err, I mean I don’t really dreamwalk that often, or with many people, or …” I sighed. “Never mind. What do you want?”
“I wanted to see if you were all r—”
“If I was all right,” I said, cutting him off and finishing the sentence for him after he stopped speaking. “If that isn’t becoming a familiar refrain …” I folded my arms in front of me and listened to the leather squeak on my jacket as I did so. Nice detail. “I’m fine, I assume, though I won’t be sure until I regain consciousness. You see, I landed on the highway after your friend Claire shot me with a hand cannon and sent me flying out the back of a van doing about sixty on the freeway.”
His expression darkened. “I didn’t order that.”
I rolled my eyes. “Wow. I couldn’t have predicted you singing that particular song again. It’s almost as familiar as asking me, ‘Are you all right?’ after your thugs have just attacked me.” I let my gaze settle on him. “And just as tiresome.”
He pushed his lips together and caused them to subtly turn white from the pressure. “I did not send Claire after you. I ordered her explicitly to stay away from you.” He hesitated. “And your friends,” he added after a moment.
I looked at him, watched him for a response. I had my own ideas about what had happened here, and he didn’t need to know them. “She did mention something of that sort.”
He looked as though he wanted to speak but said nothing for a long moment. “I know I don’t deserve your trust—”
“You nailed that one,” I muttered.
“—and that I’ve done things you … despise,” he said, and his emotions looked closer to the surface than I’d seen from him so far, “and I don’t expect you to believe me right now, but I had nothing to do with what just happened to you. I had to hear about it through … other sources.” He straightened. “Not from Claire, in this case.”
I shrugged. “You’re right. I don’t believe you.” He almost flinched. “But if what you say is true, you’ve got some serious problems in your organizational structure. You might want to worry about them rather than starting your much-vaunted ‘phase two.’”
“I’ll think about it,” he said. “But you should watch your back just the same.”
“Because more of your flunkies are going to come after me?” I asked, twisting the knife a little. “They must have been awfully loyal to Weissman to be so willing to throw their lives away to get back at me.”
Sovereign pursed his lips again. “Yeah. They were. He had this whole … inner circle put together before he even came to me. They’re the ones who started the ball rolling, who began the recruiting process to build the one hundred that they eventually got to. They believed in his vision long before I bought in, and they were all about carrying it out.” He looked suddenly uncomfortable. “Maybe a little too enthusiastically.”
I rolled my eyes again. “Let me guess. This is the part of our conversation where you demonstrate how uncomfortable you are with the partners that you’ve thrown yourself into bed with for this endeavor.”
There was a flicker of emotion that tightened every line of his face, and then it fell. “Like I said, I don’t expect you to believe me. Or understand.”
“But you keep talking anyway.”
“And you keep listening,” he said, looking at me. “Is it just because you’re hoping I’ll give something away that will give you a tactical advantage in a fight?”