Rust lets his eyes drift to the nylon stretched overhead. Considers those two distinct reactions, placing them side by side. Lovesick; calculating. Pitiless both. He gives the cuffs another rattle, yanking at the links for real this time. They hold fast.

No drops splattered on the tent, no heaviness to the air. Just opportunity, then: an excuse to give up on her.

He claps his gaze on de Guzman, leaves it there. Intractable. Watching those eyes, waiting for them to twitch or stray. More than a minute gone by, he says, “It was you out there, you'd want me looking.”

It's incomprehensible. The tenor, though—flat but not unsympathetic—he puts as much of that as he can into a look.