Exit Strategy (Nadia Stafford 1)

"No, and it wouldn't matter if I was. Once I start having the nightmares, they don't end until I stop sleeping."

He nodded. I adjusted the sheet some more, but he still didn't get up. His hand moved to the space between us, bracing himself, and his bicep flexed. The skin there was rough, unnatural, and when I looked closer, I could make out the ghost of a surgically erased tattoo, a symbol of some kind, invisible from more than a few inches away.

My gaze slid off his arm to another patch of disfigured skin over his breast. A star-shaped pattern of quarter-inch circular burns. I'd seen marks like that before, and knew immediately what they were. Cigarette burns--the lit end held against the skin, applying enough pressure to scorch but not to put out the flame. A crude torture tactic. These marks were old, the burns faded to skin color.

Jack followed my gaze before I could look away.

"War wounds." His mouth opened again, as if considering saying more. It shut, then reopened, but he only said, "Old."

"So I see."

Again, that hesitation, lips parted, debating the urge to say more. Again, he stopped himself. Again, he restarted.

"Hungry?"

"What?"

"You hungry? We could get breakfast. Catch an earlier flight."

Figures. Here I am, waiting for a great personal revelation, and he's just trying to figure out whether it's too early to suggest breakfast.

"Well, I'm up," I said. "But you're the one whose sleep was disturbed, so if you'd rather catch another couple of hours--"

"Didn't disturb me."

"Okay, then. We might as well get going. As for breakfast--" I checked the bedside clock. Four-ten. "Our chances of finding a place serving food at this time are pretty slim."

"It's Vegas."

"Right. Breakfast it is then."

I shifted up in bed, but he still made no move to stand until I tapped his leg. As he turned, I saw a pair of fresh scratches clawed across his back.

I touched them with my fingertips. "Did I do that?"

"Hardly mortal."

"Geez, I'm--"

"Don't say it."

We put on our disguises, but didn't play them up to full effect. It was four-thirty in the morning, and neither of us was in the mood to take on the guise of a character who made our skin crawl.

By four-forty-five, we were seated in the corner of a diner, as far as we could get from the other patrons, most of whom were nursing coffees in silence, recovering from a long night of drink or disappointment.

As I rearranged the containers on the table, Jack thumbed through the menu. Under the harsh florescent lights, he no longer looked sexy. Just tired. Very tired, the creases over his nose turned into furrows, shadows under his eyes, skin pale against the beard shadow, the black threaded with gray.

"At least now we know who we're looking for," I said quietly.

A slow nod.

"But it doesn't really help, does it?" I laid down my menu, and traced my finger over the cartoon pig on the front. "All we have is a name, and it's not even a name; it's an alias."

"Evelyn knows his name."

"His real name?"

"Yeah. Evelyn knows everyone's name." A pause. "Well, most everyone."