Aftershocks by Natalie J. Damschroder Page B

Henricksen will give me a list or anything. He can only do so much.”
    “I can get it. Tracking people down is time-consuming, though. That might not be the most expedient path. But first, we need the history. We need to know exactly what we’re going after and why it’s so important.”
    “It was like a bedtime story to Pat. He told me the legend of the totems over and over again.”
    “I know the story. Jordie told me before he died.”
    “Oh.” She twisted her fingers together. That had to be the last time he saw him. Even when she and Grant were together, during those high-school summers, he didn’t talk much about all that. One of Pat’s gang had grabbed him after school. He’d been so freaked out he couldn’t remember, later, all the details. Just that they’d used him to get Jordie to do what they wanted, Jordie had caved, somehow gotten Grant out and home, and then died anyway.
    Why had Jordie told Grant the legend? Was it to distract him from everything else? Jordie was several years older than Grant, so they hadn’t been close, but she knew they’d loved each other.
    Grant cleared his throat. Pointedly. “That’s not the part we need. We don’t know what details in Pat’s version are real and what are legend.”
    “I’m pretty sure the part about immortality is legend,” she joked. Grant just stared at her, unamused. “What? You can’t tell me you think we should take that part seriously?”
    “I don’t think we should discount anything. And you’re the one who pointed out that what Pat believes matters the most.”
    There was something he wasn’t saying, but he rose and started cleaning up the rest of the stuff from their dinner, so Zoe joined him.
    “But you think there’s a logical reason that’s part of the story, right? Not that they can actually all be brought together to make the holder immortal. Like a vampire or something. Right?”
    “Right.”
    He sounded amused, and she scowled at him.
    “Something in that sentence had to be right,” he said.
    Zoe rolled her eyes and backhanded his upper arm, then had to pretend to bobble the glasses she held to hide her surprise. The man was rock solid. Not tight and wiry like he’d been back when they were barely not-teenagers. Not even “mmm, muscles” as one would imagine just to look at him. But very, very hard.
    And, of course, that made her think of the possibility that he was hard all over.
    And that made her knees weak.
    History , she reminded herself. That was all it was. All it was ever going to be.
    She thought of the sand dollar, and shivered.
    * * *
    Forty-caliber ammunition. Lines of sight. Uzbekistan. Orange alert. Wheels up. Paid-up life insurance. Beach bunnies.
    It wasn’t working. No matter what anti-Zoe things Grant tried to think of, she filled his senses and his brain.
    When she’d said it had been a mistake to come, he wanted to agree with her. He had enough adventure in his paying job. A job that didn’t dredge up the worst of his past.
    But he couldn’t hurt her like that, which proved he was too far gone. This wasn’t just about nostalgia and scent memories. At some point since she arrived—hell, maybe the minute he’d seen her on that bike, coming down the road—he’d known he’d lied to his mother. The reason he’d never had a long-term relationship was because none of the women was Zoe.
    He handed her a dripping glass and watched her dry it. She did it the same way she’d done when they were kids, washing dishes at the yacht club every night. She dried the bottom, then the sides, turning the glass around and around until she could see no external moisture. Then she tucked the towel down deep into the glass and spun it until it was dry. Then she placed it in the open cupboard over the sink.
    She was lost in thought, or pretending to be, no longer putting any expectations on him, neither for retrieving the totems or over their shared history.
    Over. It really wasn’t. Didn’t matter that she