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ABE GLANCED AT THE WAREHOUSE ENTRANCE again right as Imara came out of the building. A moment later, she joined them around the corner. Her forehead beaded with sweat, and a deep crease ran between her eyebrows. “The taggers are here,” she said. “They’re taking the packages.”
He blinked for a moment before her words sunk in. When they did, he rolled his shoulders back. “Okay, plan D. We distract the taggers until Sef’s gangsters get here, and then we get into the boxes while they’re fighting with each other.”
“That won’t work,” Imara said.
“It might. If we make sure they know the taggers were stealing their boxes, they’ll be angry.”
“No, Abe, you don’t understand.”
“Just use your powers of persuasion, Imara,” Husani said. “You can convince them.”
“The gangsters are working with the taggers now,” Imara said abruptly.
“What?” Husani said as he took a step back. “Since when?”
Abe let out a long sigh and rubbed circles into his temples. “How did they think of this?”
“They didn’t,” Imara said. She dropped her head down. “It’s my fault. I don’t know if we can stop either of them now. The taggers or the gangsters.” She buried her face in her hands. “I’ve been trying to tell you.”
Abe gulped, and his chest tightened with the pain of her emotional wound. She was devastated. Heartbroken. All he could think was how badly he needed to fix this. “It’s not your fault,” he said, hoping it would provide some sort of respite.
“Yes, it is,” she snapped back. “I told Takara to do it. She wanted information. It was the only thing I could say to get her to stop torturing me.”
“To stop torturing—” Abe stopped mid sentence and pinched the bridge of his nose. “It’s not your fault.” This time when he said it, he knew it was true. “She was torturing you. I don’t care what you had to say; I’m just glad you’re okay. And it’s fine. We’ll figure it out. Maybe they win this round. We’ll win the next one.”
She swiped a tear off her cheek and his arms itched at his side, wanting desperately to reach for her. She let out a little huff. “All I want is to be a better person, but I’ve done nothing but make things worse. Takara used my speech to get followers. Now she’s using my idea to join the gangsters. Every gain she’s had is because of me.”
Before Abe could say a word, Husani jumped to her defense. “You were only involved in two things that helped Takara get ahead. She’s done tons of other things besides that, and so has Sef. And besides that, even counting those two things, you’ve helped a lot more than you’ve hurt.”
Those words didn’t cheer her up, but they did seem to calm her. Now it was Abe’s turn. He only hoped he could make thing better because the frown on her face caused him physical pain. He considered words, but went straight for physical contact instead.
He reached for her hand and interlaced their fingers. Her breath hitched, but her shoulders relaxed, and she looked up at him with a softer expression.
“Uh, hey,” Husani said. “Where’s your professionalism? No flirting on the job. Or holding hands.”
Abe swatted Husani’s chest and said, “Go away.” Husani rolled his eyes, but didn’t protest again.
Abe cupped Imara’s cheek, and even though her breathing got heavier, her eyes seemed to be magnetized to his. He looked deep into her gold flecked eyes, choosing to ignore the goop that had somehow reappeared. “I promise you. We will stop Sef and Takara. They’re ahead right now, but we won’t give up. We can do this.”
He brushed his thumb over her cheek. With as much determination as he could muster, he said, “No matter how bad things get, they can always get better. They can get worse too, but if we spend all our energy thinking about what can go wrong, we lose the chance to help things go right.”
She stared back at him, then did a tiny nod. His words hadn’t really been an apology, and her nod wasn’t exactly forgiveness, but it sort of felt like it anyway. The past few days seemed to melt away, and in that moment, things were back to normal. It took everything in him to not kiss her right there.
He almost did it anyway, even though they were on a job. But before he got the chance, Imara’s eyes sparked like they always did when she had an idea.
“What if we destroy the boxes instead of trying to find the dangerous things in them?” She pulled away and peeked around the corner. Her voice lowered to a whisper. “A long time ago, Siluk showed me how to arrange a hologram screen to catch the sunlight and start a fire. You know how you can do that with a magnifying glass? You two distract them and I’ll start the fire.”
Husani clapped his hands and rubbed them together. “All right, gang. What are we on now? Plan E?”
“We can do this,” Abe said just as the taggers came out of the building.
He and Husani rounded the corner, and Husani immediately raised his voice. “Hey losers,” he said. The two taggers stopped pushing the hover cart and looked up with scowls. “You’re out running meaningless errands for the boss, huh? How does it feel to be so unimportant to the team?”
Abe strutted past the hover cart, drawing the taggers’ eyes away from the warehouse so Imara could sneak up to the boxes without them seeing. He puffed out his chest and said, “I hear you’re working with Sef now. Do you like being on the same team as him or are you just too afraid of Takara to do anything about it?”
Both taggers balled their hands into fists. But in the end, he was the one who swung a fist first. Imara worked too close to the taggers, and he worried one of them would notice her. A fist rammed into his stomach, so he used both hands to shove the tagger to the ground.
Before the tagger fell, he jabbed his toe into Abe’s shin, which caused a shooting pain through his leg. He lifted his fists again and felt a very different sensation in his jaw. It wasn’t pain, but more like the awareness of pain.
It probably would have escaped his notice entirely if he hadn’t seen Husani getting punched in the jaw at the exact same moment.
Abe shook his head and swung another fist at the tagger who was coming at him. Not pain, but the awareness of pain. Husani’s pain.
Impossible.
He lost track of time as the fight went on. It all muddled together until one of the taggers said, “Hey! That girl started a fire.”
Abe felt the heat before he saw the cause of it. When he turned, he saw one of the wooden boxes engulfed in flames. Imara glared over her hologram, trying to start another fire. But both of the taggers saw her now, and they were both trying to get to her.
“Time to go,” Abe said.
Husani turned to leave and inadvertently swung his arm into the fire. He let out a shout as he ripped his arm away. At the same moment, Abe felt the same strange sensation along his forearm. Not pain, but the awareness of it. He could feel where Husani had been injured.
That meant nothing. He still couldn’t see a thing. Most healers were seeing healers, weren’t they?
He ignored the sensation and started running, but stopped again when he saw Imara stubbornly trying to light a second fire. He ran back and wrapped his hand around her wrist and she finally started moving at his insistence.
Soon, they were all running. Down three alleys and into an abandoned building the taggers wouldn’t think to check. Hopefully.
“I got a picture,” Imara said as soon as she had caught her breath. “I opened the box and got a picture before I set the box on fire. It was full of a bunch of electronic and metal parts. I don’t know what they’re for, but we can probably figure it out with the picture I took.”
Abe grinned at her just as Husani let out a grunt. Without thinking, he grabbed Husani’s arm and pulled it closer to his face. The burn didn’t look bad, but he could feel that it went deeper than it looked.
Yes, he could feel it.
As soon as he admitted it to himself, the feeling became even easier to pinpoint.
“How’d you know I got burned?” Husani asked.
Abe ignored the question and dug through his bag for ointment. While he slathered it along Husani’s arm, he asked, “How’s your jaw?”
Husani grabbed his chin. “Is it swelling. Can you tell I got hit?”
“No,” Imara said.
“Your jaw will bruise, but it won’t be too bad. And it should be gone in a few days. Your arm will take longer to heal, but it should be fine as long as you put ointment on it every morning and night.”
Husani nodded without question. Apparently, he didn’t think it was strange at all that Abe seemed to know those things with complete certainty. Imara, on the other hand stared at him with one eyebrow raised.
He rubbed more ointment into Husani’s arm. At the same time, he pressed a pressure point in Husani’s palm. He did it so automatically, he probably wouldn’t have even noticed he was doing it. Except, Imara was staring at him with that same look of excitement she always wore when she was trying to convince him about being a healer. “I know,” he said to her.
A smile spread onto her lips, which almost made him chuckle. All along it had been so easy. Once he believed it, then he could feel it. The awareness he always had became more than just a gut feeling. Now it was a real, physical feeling.
“What do you mean? You know what?” Husani asked.
Abe let out a puff of air and shook his head. In one moment, everything he knew about himself had changed.
And all it took was acceptance.
