He looks so clean, so untouched. Like he looked that morning... or did he? How did he look that morning? Did Reno look that clean, that untouched? She needed to know, she needed to know how did they all look? Did they all look clean and untouched before everything changed?
Angie didn't see Chris hand off his weapon to Ham who took it as if he expected the offer. She didn't see the stares of the random new rebels who were still trying to figure out if this commando's wife was badass or just crazy. And she didn't see Donovan pull Fred aside to tell him to get his kids on the job, because he knew that this wasn't something that needed to be seen by strangers.
"Hey sis, you gonna act like I'm not here I might get offended."
He'd dubbed her "sis" the day she married Ham. An acknowledgment if not a new discovery, given the history of the three of them.
Angie looked up from where she'd first marched out of the office demanding "This better be good!" and then pulled up as if she'd hit a brick wall. Because for everything she'd been determined to hope, she'd never convinced herself she wasn't the last one left, because she knew she was the least deserving.
"Chris."
It was a gasp and a shout of joy bound up in a sob of regret. When he covered the space that she could not, and plucked her up as if gravity was a rumor, she grabbed on tight. "I'm so sorry," she moaned against his neck, "I'm so sorry...'
"You don't have to be." That was his way; when her feelings didn't synch with reality he never told her she shouldn't only that she didn't have to.
They stood that way for so long, locked together in the gratitude and relief of sole survivors, that even the wild boys who'd lingered in curiosity left the lobby. Even Donovan, who knew them better than anyone present except Tyler, shifted uneasily and followed Fred into the conference room-cum-strategy zone.
Finally Farber set Angie on her feet, but didn't let her go.
"I know you," he said. "I know you know that five seconds can mean everything or nothing and nobody knows which until it's too late to change it, and I know that Ham has told you that, one way or the other, since it happened."
"He wasn't there," she protested.
"Yeah, but I was. And I know the five seconds' difference between 'lockdown' and 'lockdown, baby!' meant nothing. C'mon Angie, you knew Reno long enough to know the way he wanted to go out... raising hell and cursing the enemy. And the rest of them... they went out the same way. Five seconds would only've put it off or made it worse."
She acknowledged with a tight nod. She believed him, she really did. Then her original misplaced guilt shifted elsewhere, to the man whose reassurances she should have believed without a second thought because even though he loved her beyond all reason he was incapable of lying to her.
But he wasn't there.
Angie looked Farber up and down, trying hard to get back to normal. "So, you don't look much like the last man out." Then she gulped. "Oh God... I didn't mean..." The wave drove over her then and she burst into tears.
"Easy there," Chris told her quietly, wrapping an arm around her again as he shot a look toward Tyler who, his own desperate welcome already witnessed by everyone, pretended not to pay attention. "You don't wanna worry him more than he's been." It was a cheap move to calm her down by reminding her of the one thing that always made her abandon her own immediate concerns. Hey, whatever works.
"Yeah," Angie nodded and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand but still reached up for him again, like an infant grabbing for comfort. Chris picked her up once more, this time more gently because it was for her and not for him.
"I still think you look a little too tidy to avoid inquiry," she warned as he put her down.
"There's a reason for everything, sis, and I'll tell you and Ham and Donovan all about it as soon as I get that cup of coffee." Then he laughed and gestured toward the sentry he'd hauled in when he arrived, once again stationed outside the door. "But I still think you need to stop hiring from the bottom."
"Talk to management," she replied, nodding toward a now more-relaxed looking Tyler.
Things were getting back to what passed for normal.