Frost Bite

Chapter 26

Jack

Josie is apparently a computer genius. She works at the phone until she gets it and I just look at her and I'm stunned. Future doctor, current phone hacker, all around boss of my heart.

She sets the phone down in front of me at the kitchen counter, where I'm trying not to go at it with Ryan, and she smiles. "I'm done," she says and walks out of the room, calling behind her, "I'm going to take a nap."

Just like that.

Ryan looks at the phone and then looks up at me and shakes his head. "I think we're outmatched."

I nod. "Most definitely," I agree and it's the first amicable exchange Ryan and I have ever had.

If there were ever an indication that I should hope for the impossible, I'm pretty sure that's it.

The phone isn't exactly a trove of information. Everything is in a shorthand I don't understand. The numbers dialed are probably all burner phones and I doubt that Josie could find a way to track them. She's good, but all she has at her disposal is my computer, not the CIA.

All in all, it's aggravating.

Ryan worries at the edges of the room, pacing back and forth, fraying my nerves. He drums his fingers across every surface he can find, taps his foot to a frantic beat that speaks of anxiety and the urge to go to the bathroom.

"Why don't you look at the GPS?" he asks.

"I don't know how to do that and Josie is asleep. I don't want to wake her up," I say.

Ryan sighs but doesn't argue because if there's anyone he cares about more than himself it's Josie.

"Why do you call her Jo?" I ask.

Ryan makes an irritated noise in the back of his throat, like I'm bothering him with something trivial when I should be beating my head against the desk trying to solve problems I don't know how to solve. "Why do you call her Josie?" he throws back at me.

"That's how she introduced herself."

"I call her Jo because her mom called her Josie and only her mom. Even her dad calls her Jo. It just... She was someone different."

"Then why introduce herself to me as Josie?" I ask because even though I hate to say it, Ryan has a kind of knowledge about her that I'm not sure I'll ever have. I've only ever known the Josie in front of me – I can't speak to her past in the way that he can.

I try not to be irrationally jealous.

"Because she knew she liked you," Ryan says with no small amount of bitterness in his voice.

"I almost killed the two of you."

Ryan gives me a dark, humorless smile. "I didn't say she was smart, did I?"
 I mirror his expression, only mine is colder, sharper. "You didn't have to."
 Ryan sighs. "Do you ever get tired of it all?" he asks, and I recognize in his voice exhaustion. And I smile because I bet he thinks he can't get any more tired than he already is. He has no idea. I just raise an eyebrow at him and he makes a rude noise in the back of his throat. "Yeah. Right, a thousand years old or whatever."

"Whatever," I echo and I keep going through the phone because I don't know what to say to him. I don't know how to be a friend to Ryan when he clearly hates me and isn't going to change his mind anytime soon. When he has every right to hate me because I almost killed him and got the girl when he couldn't.

When I'm so, so jealous of his humanity.

"Find anything worthwhile yet?"

"If I had I would have told you," I say with as much patience as I can muster because for Josie I need to try to be nice to him.