What the fuck? It knew her. The doors to the elevator opened, and she heaved Tony inside. Getting his legs inside was a feat, and she had to rest him against the mirrored walls, but she did it. She retrieved her phone, and then the moment they were both securely inside, the elevator door closed, and the car descended.
“It will be okay, Tony,” she said and touched him again. He seemed to like it. The truth was, she had no idea if it was going to be okay, but she had to trust Max knew what to do.
She’d yet to meet the entire Lazarus brood, and had mainly been assigned to watch the wives and girlfriends when she hadn’t been on external security assignments, so when the elevator pinged and two tall, built men were waiting, she took a moment to recognize their faces from the pictures in their files. One was covered in tattoos and wore a dark shirt and gray sweatpants. That would be Evan Lazarus, the artist. The other was unmistakably Wyatt. Tall, dark and brooding, he often accompanied them on outings with his girlfriend, Misha.
“What happened?” Wyatt growled. He indicated for Evan to help him pick up Tony and carry him between them.
“He just started glowing blue. All over his hands and arms.” God, that sounded insane. She rushed after them down a long, concrete hallway. It was scorched near the elevator, but cleared the further they went. “He said he didn’t want me to see him like that and then passed out.”
Tony started to convulse again, moan and fight against his brother’s hold. They passed a few shut doors. As they came to a wide opening of the hall, Bailey glimpsed a big operations room beyond. Televisions on a wall, glass cabinets with Deadly Seven suits on mannequins. Tools. Benches. Two faces peeked out from the room, watching as Bailey rushed by with the men. One was Misha, another was a solemn woman in her fifties with her long dark hair in a braid.
“Is he okay?” Misha asked.
“Stay there, Misha,” Wyatt ordered. “Don’t you dare come out. In fact, Mama, take her upstairs. Neither of you can be here if he goes off.”
Goes off?
Wyatt and Evan barged into a room filled with dim lights and medical equipment. They placed Tony down on a gurney in the center of the room, beneath operating theater lights. Evan switched on a lamp that illuminated Tony. He fought against the two men restraining him, but he was no match for their combined strength. While Evan held him down, Wyatt tore Tony’s shirt down the middle as though it were made of paper.
Bailey gasped at what was beneath. Sparkling light pulsed as though on an electrical circuit, and the wires were his veins. Wyatt wheeled over a heart monitor and switched the machine on. He attached two electrodes to Tony’s sweaty chest.
“Can you get Grace on the phone?” Wyatt asked.
“She’s in surgery,” Evan replied.
“Parker?”
“Work. Not answering.”
“Shit. Fucking shit fuck.” Wyatt cursed some more.
“What can I do?” Bailey stepped forward. “I’ve had triage field training with the CIA.”
“So have we, the triage training, I mean.” Evan looked at her, his dark brows joining in the middle. “I know you.”
“Not the time, brother,” Wyatt ground out.
But Evan wasn’t to be deterred. He pointed at Bailey. “I’ve seen you before.”
“I work at Nightingale.”
“That’s not it.” Evan fumbled in his back pocket and pulled out his cell phone. He thumbed through pictures.
“What the fuck are you doing?” growled Wyatt.
“Trust me,” Evan mumbled. “There.”
He showed Wyatt a picture on his cell. Both men looked hard at it, and then at Bailey.
“What?” The walls began to close in around her. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“But will it work?” Wyatt asked Evan. “How long ago was the dream? What else do you remember?”
“Um.” Evan’s eyes glazed as he appeared to remember. “She was sitting with him. Alone. I don’t remember.”
“For fuck’sake, Evan. I’m not leaving her with him on an I don’t remember.”
“She’s his mate!” Evan pointed at Bailey. “Stranger things have happened.”
There was that word again. Mate. She had the sense it meant much more than Max’s Aussie comradely word for companion.
Tony thrashed about, sweating, in a feverish daze. A permanent frown flawed his handsome face. “No. Can’t see me like this.” He kept repeating the words, holding his breath, legs thrashing. The tendons in his neck and every sinew of ropy muscle bulged in sharp relief.
And then it all stopped. The sparking lights faded to a blue ghost beneath his skin.
Wyatt pushed Evan toward Bailey. “Take her out to a safe spot. I’ll cover him in case it happens again. We don’t have much time.”
“No.” Bailey dodged Evan’s reach and went for Tony’s hand. She picked it up in her own and squeezed. He was searing hot, but she refused to let go. “Tony. It’s Bailey.”
He moaned and shook his head, but his grip tightened. She wouldn’t leave.
“I’m here,” came a deep grumbling voice from behind her.
It was Parker, the eldest. Tall enough he had to crane his neck to fit through the door, and broad shouldered enough he had to angle sideways. The man was a mountain made of flesh. Straight nose, square jaw, long hair tied at his nape. If they lived a few centuries ago, he would have fit in well with the Vikings. He wiped his hands with anti-bac and calmly came to stand over Tony.
“Temperature?”
Wyatt and Evan shrugged.
A muscle in Parker’s jaw twitched, and then he picked up an electric thermometer from an instrument tray on a side table. He held it to Tony’s forehead until it beeped. “He’s off the charts. This isn’t good.”
“Should we run an IV?” Evan asked.
“Grace didn’t do that until after he released.”
“Released what?” Bailey asked. One of these days, someone would start talking, come hell or high water.
Parker blinked at her, only just registering she was there. “What’s she doing here?”
Both Evan and Wyatt answered in unison. “She’s his mate.”
Evan showed Parker the elusive picture on his cell phone. Parker gave her a grim look and then turned to his brothers. “Get us two chairs.”
Within moments, both Parker and Bailey were seated beside Tony. Bailey still grasped his hot, sweaty hand, and he still gripped back. Parker leaned pensively toward Bailey, fingers laced, wrists on his knees.
“What has Tony told you?”
“Nothing!” she gasped. “But I guessed a damn lot. I figured out the rest once I got down here. You’re all the Deadly Seven.”
“And what has he told you about his power?”
Parker hadn’t blinked at Bailey’s revelation. He didn’t seem to care that she knew their secret. “Nothing. He only said he didn’t want me to see him like that. I know it’s something to do with a glowing light, but he keeps hiding it from me.”
Parker rubbed his stubble. “Grace said he’s acting like a transplant patient rejecting the organ. He must suppress what comes naturally.” He met Bailey’s gaze. “He needs to accept what’s happening to him. He needs for you to accept it.”
“What do I have to do with this? I’ve barely learned of his power’s existence!” She rubbed her temple with her free hand. This was all too much.
“Bailey,” Parker said. “You’re Tony’s mate. Do you know what that means?”
She shook her head.
Parker signaled for Evan’s cell. When he got it, he showed Bailey the picture. It was a drawing of Bailey sitting bedside with Tony. This very bed!
He saw her surprise and said, “You’re his mate. It means that out of everyone in the world, you’re the one his body recognized as the perfect antithesis of the sin he battles daily. You’re his balance. The sin we sense is a constant feeling of wrongness in our stomach, but when any of us touch our mate, it goes away. The wrongness in us is reset
.”
Parker paused, letting Bailey soak that in for a while. She’d heard the rumor about their sin-sensing. Stories told of them hunting down the worst criminals, eerily knowing of their whereabouts in a way that was too accurate to be anything but supernatural. At first, she’d believed it to be an urban legend they let circulate to put the fear of God into criminals. You can’t hide, we’ll find you. Her mind latched onto the second thing he’d said. Mate. As in soulmate?
Her mind whirled. What was she supposed to do with that?
“You will help him,” Parker decreed when Tony thrashed again.
“When you say jump, does everyone say how high?” She raised a brow.
Outrage flared in Parker’s golden eyes. “If you don’t accept being his mate, he could not only go nuclear right now, but it could happen anytime he’s out of balance. On the street, on set, teaching a bunch of teens at a sobriety house. Only through regular contact with you, can he live a life without wondering if that next bite of food will send him over the edge, or if he drinks too much water and wakes up one morning in a pool of other people’s blood, knowing he’s the one who made the mess, all because someone didn’t want to make the jump.”
Bastard.
She bit her lip and looked at Tony lying helpless and in pain. “I didn’t ask for this.”
“None of us did, yet here we are. You joined the CIA because you wanted to be proactive, not reactive. I’m not saying you have to get married. I’m just saying, here’s your chance to help, so you must.”
“How?”
“He’s trying to stifle his powers.” Parker stood and folded his arms, looking down at his brother’s prone form. “He’s stubborn. Probably the best fighter out of all of us, but he doesn’t believe in himself. He thinks he’s better off pretending to be someone else. You need to convince him differently.”
Parker dimmed the lamplight, and then gestured for his brothers to exit the room. They left her with a ticking time bomb. Who was her soulmate, or rather, she was his.
She swallowed the lump in her throat and stood to see his face better. “Tony? Can you hear me?”
He frowned and turned away.
“Don’t you turn away from me, boy.” She heard her grandmother’s clipped tone coming out of her mouth and cringed, but she couldn’t work with his stubbornness. “I’m here, so you can damn well get used to it.”
When he didn’t respond, she placed her palm on his slick, warm stomach and felt him breathe. In. Out. She did that for some time while her mind ran a million miles per hour. She wanted to help. It’s all she’d ever wanted to do. It’s what sent her into the agency. It’s what kept her there for years on end, even when she felt herself slowly distancing herself from life.
With each passing minute, Tony grew more twitchy, more agitated, and she couldn’t help hearing his last words to her. I don’t want you to see me like this.
He was ashamed of who he was. Tears burned her eyelids. She sniffed. Everyone wanted a piece of Tony Lazarus, but he’d not even been on a real date. He’d never shared his true self with anyone, until her, until this morning. And she’d only just learned his truth. Maybe he didn’t know who he wanted to be either. Wiping her eyes, she pushed his heavy body to one side of the gurney, and then climbed on next to him. The moment she laid down and entwined her body with his, he tensed, but she didn’t stop. She slid her arm over his front, hooked her leg over his, pressed her lips onto his hot neck, right beneath his ear, and whispered, “I see you Tony Lazarus. I see the real you, and I’m not going anywhere.”
He shuddered. His lashes fluttered, but didn’t open.
“You make people laugh. You entertain them. You take time with your fans, and even with those who aren’t. You make troubled teens feel better about themselves. You put yourself in danger to save—”
Tony’s hand wrapped around her palm and gripped tight. He was still tense all over, muscles hard as a rock, but he turned to face her and opened his glazed, fevered eyes.
“You can’t be here,” he said, voice scratchy. “I can’t control this thing inside of me.”
“Yes, you can.”
He shook his head.
“Parker was right. You’re so damn stubborn.” She leaned up to get a better view of his face. “You went to rehab, right?”
He nodded, confused.
“What’s the first step of AA?”
She saw in his eyes when it dawned on him. “Acknowledge and accept,” he answered.
“That’s right. This is happening. This is you. And that’s okay.”
He squeezed his eyes shut. His lips flattened.
“Shh,” she crooned and nuzzled into his neck. He was so hot, like lava, but she kept herself there. “It’s okay. This is you, and this new power isn’t going anywhere. Neither am I.”
They held each other until bit by bit, his breathing grew steady, but the heat was still there. He still hadn’t let go.
“You’re going to have to release that blue fire, Tony,” she whispered. “You have to accept it as part of you.”
“I’ll ruin you.”
Her breath hitched at his words, and goosebumps erupted over her flesh. Those were the exact same words she’d used to stop drinking herself into oblivion, from falling off the cliff. Every time she’d had a rough day, she’d make her Cosmo and stare at it, telling the drink, You won’t ruin me.
That’s how he saw himself, as the thing that people were addicted to, the poison, the destruction. It was fucked up. And it was cruel. She exhaled slowly. This had been a long time coming, but she had some things of her own to accept too.
“I was ruined a long time ago, Tony, and I pulled myself back together. I made a life for myself, and now I’m here.” She rolled on top of him, not caring if anyone watched through the viewing window. She only had eyes for the blue, sparkling seas of vulnerability staring back at her. There was only one way she knew to get him out of his own head. The last time she’d kissed, she’d been disgusted with her feelings for him and he’d seen it. She’d wiped her mouth. But he wasn’t the man she’d thought. She’d been wrong to do that. Sliding her fingers into his damp hair, she tugged until the message was clear. This was important. Listen now.
“I’ve seen ruin, Tony, and you’re not it.”
She lowered her lips to his in a slow, passionate kiss. At first, he stilled, but when she refused to give up, he acquiesced. His tongue darted out, tasted her lower lip and then bit into the plump flesh. An anguished groan released from his throat, as though he held back the floodgates.
She whispered, “Let it go, Tony. Accept.”
Kiss by kiss, his body softened beneath hers. His hands moved to her hips, bottom, thighs, and roamed. Light leaked from his veins, but she wasn’t afraid. He was distracted, licking and tasting her mouth, pushing his tongue in with new demands. From the corner of her eyes, blue glittered over the dim room—beneath her, around her, above her—as though he were a living firework, or they were underwater. She couldn’t decide. She was either about to combust in his heat, or drown in his sweet, salty scent that made her heady with desire. Tiny sparks of his power shot into her body, but it was more like the burn of embers than a maelstrom of flames. It pinched, tickled and sizzled with sensation.
“You’re beautiful,” she breathed, taking in his wonder. Horrifically beautiful were the actual words bouncing around in her head and she couldn’t look away.
Drugged eyes latched onto hers and then shifted to take in the celestial room. Everywhere they turned, luminescent blue reflected and danced off the metallic medical instruments, the monitor, the glass widow. The sterilizing canisters. The shiny tiled floor. Chrome trims on faucets. He slid his gaze back to her. Whatever he saw in her eyes, it must have been enough. A slow, smug smile curved his sensuous lips, and then he flipped their bodies, as though she weighed a breath. He growled when he took in her yoga top, now riddled with holes. Poking a finger through one, he lifted her shirt and smoothed her hot skin. The biolumi
nescent lines of his body faded, but she didn’t think he was repressing his power. It seemed spent.
“Hey.” She pulled his head back to hers. “I think you did it. You let it go bit by bit. I’m fine.”
His eyes glazed again, and he swayed.
“But you’re not,” she added.
A masculine clearing of a throat near the door.
Parker tried not to look at them but gestured at the IV stand. “Doc said he’ll need his fluids replenished.”
Bailey slid out from beneath Tony and helped him settle back down. When she pulled her hand from his front, he grabbed it and frowned. “Don’t go.”
She gave him a small smile. “Wasn’t dreaming of it.”
But while Parker busied himself around the room, preparing the IV drip, she couldn’t help the niggling thoughts entering her mind. She’d somehow talked Tony off the ledge, basically kissed his pain away, but despite what she said about knowing him, she didn’t. Only moments earlier he’d been flirting with another woman in front of the lobby. If they were meant to have some kind of soulmate connection, maybe it wasn’t as solid as they’d led her to believe. Perhaps she wasn’t as strong as she thought. Perhaps she could be ruined again, because Tony was fast becoming the addiction she worked so hard to control. What had she gotten herself into?
Fifteen
“So you see,” said the Dutch geneticist Levi Van Jansen to Julius Allcott. “The new replicates are proceeding as planned.”
Van Jansen was a man in his late fifties. He had experience in the industry and was without scruples. After the betrayal of Pinkerton, and the disaster with his lab partner, Julius had head-hunted Van Jansen. He’d scoured the world’s top journals, awards and research projects, and then found the man who’d been too forward thinking for society to appreciate. He’d found the man who’d had his funding stripped and been vilified in the media. He’d found Van Jansen. The stodgy man with white hair had fluff growing out of his ears. He had dirt under his nails and saggy eyelids, but he was a creative genius. Julius should have hired him long ago. He’d done in months what Pinkerton had failed to do in years.
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