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memories he read in rust-brown water stains on the ceiling, but it was enough to remind him.
    His knee wasn’t healing right. Part of it, Silas suspected, was the fact he didn’t rest long enough to let the tendons knit back together. The other part, which he didn’t need to suspect, was that he was getting too damn old for this job. Too many years in the Mission took its toll, physically and mentally.
    Spending too much time with missionaries and witches definitely dulled the polite side of his brain.
    Then again, Jessie’s trimly feminine silhouette turned his brain to nerve soup anyway.
    “Fuck me running,” he muttered, and tossed the thawing bag of rations onto the cushion beside him. He clambered to his feet, already feeling like a jackass, and limped across the shabby carpet.
    He knocked quietly on her door.
    No answer. He winced. “Jessie?” He felt stupid, hanging outside her door like an awkward kid with a crush. “Are you asleep?”
    Relief warred with guilt when he didn’t hear her husky voice on the other side of the door. She’d probably worked herself into some kind of feminine snit.
    He didn’t think that cleared him of any wrongdoing, though. In fact, it probably just made it worse. Silas rolled his eyes to the ceiling as he said gruffly, “I just wanted to say sorry for my”—suggestion? offer? fantasy? —“inappropriate comment.” He dragged his hand over his face. “You’ve been through a lot.”
    Still nothing. Only the occasional drum of rain against the window behind him. He turned away, shaking his head.
    Then he paused.
    Slowly he turned back, studied the door. Tiny seeds of doubt germinated in his Mission-trained brain.
    Jessica Leigh was a stripper. She made a habit, a fucking art , out of living off the grid. He’d found her only by pure luck, and he’d told her that he worked for the government. Which was about as on-grid as she could get.
    He threw the flimsy door open, already knowing what he’d find. Wind and rain blew in through the open window, pushed aside the cheap curtains, and let the mid-city lights stream through. It lit up the small bed. Highlighted the stripped sheets and the knot tied tightly around the furnace beneath the windowsill. The metal creaked.
    Unbelievable. Surprise, resignation, pure annoyance all tangled together as he took four long strides to the window. He followed the visual beacon of white sheet against stained rock, picked out her soaked silhouette plastered against the wall.
    Her makeshift ladder shorted her one whole floor. She dangled too damned far above the paved ground.
    “Jessie!”
    She looked up. He watched her jaw set, the pale oval of her face gleaming in the golden light. She tucked her head back down against the rain splattering the wall around her as her feet kicked out, searched along the moldy siding.
    Idiot woman. He fisted the sheet in both hands. “Hold on!” The fabric stretched taut as he braced himself against the sill.
    He didn’t have to guess what happened when the sheet went slack and he staggered backward, a whiplash of his own strength. The sheet zipped through the window, slapped into his chest in a sopping coil. He let it fall to the carpet, grimacing through the pop and twang of his knee as he stuck his head out the window again.
    She clung to the gutter pipe bolted to the wall. Damn it, what the hell was she trying to prove?
    “Don’t fucking move ,” he shouted.
    Her hair caught the light in shades of copper as she tipped her head back to look up at him again. Her eyes narrowed.
    And then she let go.
    Silas’s chest clutched as she dropped like a stone. He was already running for the door before she hit the ground.
    T his would hurt, but she’d known that going down.
    Knowing it, ready for the impact, Jessie deliberately forced her muscles to relax. The ground rushed to meet her, hard and fast, and pain shot through her legs as she hit the ground rolling.
    She finally came to a stop with her back