“Nice ink,” Callahan said, strolling into the room to where Mathias sat with a computer tablet, reviewing the intel from the recent murders. The young warrior sat down next to Mathias at the workstation, studying the sword tattoo on his back. “Think your lady will do one for me?”
“I don’t know,” Mathias answered. “What would you want?”
The warrior shrugged. “Something badass, like the one you have.”
“No way,” he said. “That one belongs all to me.”
And so does the woman who created it.
“What about the one you’re drawing on that report, then?”
“Hmm?” Mathias glanced down to where he’d been idly toying with the stylus on the tablet. He didn’t have a fraction of Nova’s talent, but he recognized the symbol immediately.
The rose window from the ruins of Winchester Palace.
One of Nova’s many tattoos.
One that meant something very important to her.
And that was where he would start looking for her as soon as night fell.
~ ~ ~
Nova tucked Eddie into the thin cot in the basement of the cathedral. The poor kid was exhausted. She was too. She sat on the edge of the mattress and smoothed his hair off his drowsy face.
“How long do we have to stay here?” he asked her, his words slurred from the sleep that was already pulling him under.
“I don’t know,” she answered. “For a while. Until I find us someplace better.”
He nodded sleepily. “Okay. Just don’t leave me.”
“Never,” she whispered, realizing only now that she had just stepped into Ozzy’s shoes. They wouldn’t be easy to fill. But she would do her best. She would find a way to give Eddie the same security and support that Oz had given her all those years ago.
God, she missed him already.
Would always miss him.
And she missed Mathias too, although that was a pain she didn’t have to accept.
She could contact him. He’d given her his number. A number she’d tossed in the trash almost the same moment he gave it to her.
Now, she wanted nothing more than to pull that moment back to her. Rewind it. Play it out a different way.
Maybe Ozzy would still be alive.
Maybe she and Mathias would be together.
Maybe she was a fool, losing her heart to someone she’d known only a handful of days.
As Eddie’s soft snores drifted up from his pillow, Nova carefully eased herself up off the bed.
It was early, just past sundown. She was restless, twitchy, even though she hadn’t slept more than a few minutes last night.
She glanced around at the dozens of other similar cots, occupied by men and women and children, a community of all ages and descriptions. She was homeless again. Faced with the decision to either run some more or hide.
She needed space to think. Time to heal after Ozzy’s death and all of the awful things that had surrounded it.
And she needed to feel Mathias’s arms around her, with a desperation she could hardly reconcile.