When she closed her eyes, the small, clean space retained Reed’s image like pencil marks that clung to a piece of paper even after the drawing had been erased.He’d told her once, during the night after their joint shower, as he’d folded her against his body, that he always traveled lightly for a job. So lightly that he rarely brought anything but the clothes on his back. It added to the anonymity, he claimed, and helped to maintain the separation between the Retriever and his true self. She wondered what had been left behind next door. Some socks, maybe. A pair of jeans.The thought buckled her body and she collapsed onto the bed. In the rush and worry of that morning, she hadn’t straightened the sheets. For once in her life she didn’t care. She cursed the tears that came as she burrowed into the wrinkled sheets and encased herself in the dark of the piled blankets.Her fingers brushed something hard and cold.The object in one hand, she stretched for the lamp and clicked it on.
