Michaela Roessner by Vanishing Point

Author:Vanishing Point [Point, Vanishing]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2012-06-01T23:05:45+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Two

Renzie went back to her room at the House afterward and sat on her bed, numb, until past nightfall. She’d touched those plants, carried them against herself for almost a day. When she’d told her story at the center and handed over the bouquet, Nesta and Adrienne had donned rubber gloves before picking the flowers up.

She’d thought nothing of it at the time—lab procedure. But now—could contact with those extra strands of genetic material affect her? And what about Minda? The little girl had gathered the flowers. At the meeting no one had raised the issue of Minda’s ability to enter the anomaly area when Renzie could not. Why? Did they think Renzie had imagined that? She shook her head angrily. No. In that case they wouldn’t have bothered to test the plants in the first place, or been so careful with them.

Renzie had been a hunter too long not to recognize her fright as that of any heavy, clumsy, slow-moving target. She felt everything beginning to turn, to change, and she was standing still. Events were gathering over and around her in an enfolding trap. Renzie needed to talk to someone to gain some perspective. She would have talked to Tuck. But Tuck had chosen to become part of the changes.

Renzie picked at her nagging questions over and over like itching scabs as she walked through the labyrinth of the House, till she reached the end of the corridor that connected Nesta’s archipelago to the rest of the House.

Nesta and Hake jumped and turned toward her like guilty children when she opened the door. Hake sat on the bed, Nesta in a chair across from him, their heads bent closely together, unmistakably intimate.

Renzie felt a surge of all the feelings she’d been suffering the past week; awkwardness, loneliness, abandonment, and above all, confusion.

She hadn’t even thought to knock, hadn’t even considered that Nesta might be having an affair. With, of all people, Hake. Renzie flushed at her own thoughts. And why not Hake?

“Sorry, didn’t mean to interrupt,” she said.

Hake had flung his arm over a large box in a counterfeit gesture of nonchalance. Renzie almost smiled to herself. She’d never seen him flustered like this before. Nesta and Hake traded a glance. Renzie cleared her throat in embarrassment and turned to go.

“It’s okay, Renzie,” Nesta said. “Come on in. You can stop blushing. It isn’t what you think.” The older woman looked again at Hake. “She should know. It’s her subteam, too.”

It seemed for a moment as if Hake were going to object. Then he must have realized how that appeared. “I didn’t mean to look as though we don’t trust you,” he apologized to Renzie. “It’s just that you’ve been through a lot the last week. I thought maybe you could use a break from more weirdness for a while.”

Renzie’s curiosity flared. All the other troubling emotions rapidly faded. “I don’t need a break from the weirdness, just some sort of reassurance. Tell me—please.”

Hake wrestled the box he was leaning on around in front of him.

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