by Lara Adrian
All at once, his nightmare vision seized him in a cold fist. The opened gun cabinet. Three rifles inside. Then the explosion that obliterated everything in its path. He lunged for her. “Lisa, no. Don’t—”
She pulled the doors wide, throwing a questioning glance over her shoulder at the same time. “What’s wrong?”
Nothing.
He stood behind her, panting as if he’d run a marathon, his entire body coiled in horror. Terrified for what might have happened to her. To all of them.
But the gun cabinet wasn’t the one from his premonition. Half a dozen rifles stood inside it, not a single one of them anything less than pristine. There was no derelict weapon. No earth-shattering roar of obliteration. No hellish fire and heat that he could never prevent.
Lisa’s hands were tender on him when she turned to face him. She held his shoulders, touched his face, smoothed her fingers into the sweat-dampened hair at his temples.
“John, are you all right?” Genuine care and concern shone in her sweet hazel eyes. “What just happened?”
“Nothing. It’s nothing.” The words were a raw croak on his dry throat.
Alec eyed him gravely. “Not the vision again? While you’re awake this time?”
“No,” he said. “I thought... Forget it, it’s cool now. Wasn’t the same as in my vision.”
“What vision?” Lisa searched his gaze. “What are you two talking about? Another vision about Kyle? About me?”
“Nothing like that.” Duarte caught her anxious hands and brought them to his lips. He kissed her fingers gently, then stepped out of her embrace because holding her felt too damn good.
He wanted her arms around him, and he wasn’t going to be satisfied with having just her sympathy if she kept on touching him so tenderly and looking at him so... affectionately. Lovingly.
“John, tell me what you’ve seen.” Her voice and gaze were soft, but he could tell from the angle of her chin that she wasn’t going to let him off until he leveled with her. Not after today. Not about anything anymore.
He cleared his throat. “I’ve had a recurring nightmare since Phoenix went down. Alec’s been having the same one, too.”
She glanced briefly at Alec before looking back to Duarte for confirmation. “You mean a premonition? Something awful.”
He gave a sober nod. “A massive explosion. Catastrophic. When it happens, it obliterates everything. In the vision, I know I have to stop it... I know what’s coming every time the damn thing starts, but I’m too late. Every fucking time, I’m too late.”
She absorbed the information in silence for a long moment. “And when I opened the gun cabinet? Is that part of the vision, too?”
“The cabinet, yes. The detonation happens right after I see it. In the vision, it’s me who opens the cabinet, but when you reached for it...” He trailed off, unwilling to speak the words.
The dread he’d felt when she had started to pull open those doors still gripped him. Seeing her in harm’s way—imagined or not—was a terror that still raked him with icy claws. And the danger for her was real in other ways, from the men who had her in their sights now, and from the other vision he and Alec shared. The one that predicted Lisa being held at gunpoint, the nose of a pistol resting at her temple.
Chilling, hideous thoughts, all of them. His gut clenched, and it took every bit of his self control to resist dragging her into his arms now, just to feel her against him, safe and sound.
He cleared his throat, needing to get a hold of himself and his thoughts. “Alec’s recurring vision is different from mine. He doesn’t see the gun cabinet or the three rifles inside. But the end result is the same.”
“Total annihilation,” Alec confirmed grimly. “My hair ignites. My skin melts away. The heat and fire leaves nothing behind. It’s a destruction that can’t be stopped.”
She looked to Duarte in question and he nodded. “The same for me.”
“My God...” Her voice was reduced to a whisper. “You’ve both been seeing this vision—living it—how many times for the past three years?”
“Hundreds, easily.” Duarte had lost count a long time ago. “I didn’t know Alec was having the same premonition until we met up again yesterday.”
“It’s possible other Phoenix members are having it, too,” Alec suggested.
“And if they are?” Lisa asked. “Maybe there’s something more to the vision. Maybe if you work with the others, there could be a way to prevent it from happening.”
Smart girl. She was just coming up to speed that moment, and she was already on the same page as Alec and him. “It’s something we need to find out, yes.”
“First we’d have to locate them,” Alec said. “And there’s no telling which of them we can trust.”
“Including my brother,” she murmured.
Neither Duarte nor Alec could deny it. It killed him to see her soft gaze on him shutter now, but he refused to reassure her with what he felt in his heart would be tender lies.
She crossed her arms over her chest in the heavy, uncertain silence that followed Kyle’s mention. Her lovely face was pinched with worry, with regret. And with fresh hurt as she looked at Duarte. “I need some time to think,” she said quietly. “I need to process... everything.”
When she turned to leave the weapons room, Duarte took a step after her. He reached for her hand, took it gently in his. “I’ll come with you. We still need to talk.”
“Please don’t.” Her head shook slowly and she withdrew from his loose hold. “Don’t come with me, John. I don’t want to talk anymore. Right now, all I need is for you to leave me alone.”
14
Although she’d told him she refused to run or hide anymore, Lisa knew that’s exactly what she was doing behind the closed door of her guest room the rest of that day and into the evening. She’d ventured out once, only to eat. To her relief, John had been off somewhere else on the property with Alec, the two of them no doubt planning and preparing their next move.
Seeing them working together, undertaking a new personal mission, kindled something warm inside her. Pride, she thought. And a sense of reassurance, that no matter how dark and dangerous they believed Phoenix’s enemies to be, no matter how grim the fiery premonition John and Alec shared, these two men would not rest until their world was set to rights.
The problem was trying to imagine that her brother could ever willingly stand on the wrong side of his friends and his former operatives in the program.
To believe that would mean she had never really known Kyle.
The same way she’d never known about his gift of precognition.
And then there was the fact that he’d been acting so strangely the last time she’d seen him. Anxious. Paranoid.
Guilty.
The word whispered in the back of her mind as she idly rotated her bracelet from him around her wrist. She never would have let the idea of Kyle’s possible duplicity form in the least, if not for her conversation with John today. Her argument with him. The one that had left a wedge between them that she wasn’t sure how to mend.
He’d hidden the truth from her. He and Alec had suspected Kyle of a terrible betrayal—they had all but condemned him—and yet John had chosen to hide that information from her.
It was as bad as a lie. And it had left her angry and hurt, feeling like a fool.
She was still nursing that emotional sting when she heard the firm rap on her guest room door.
“Lisa.” John’s deep voice sounded weary from where he stood in the hallway outside. “You planning to avoid me forever? Open up. We need to talk.”
She knew he was right, but it was difficult making her feet move when her heart was still a heavy weight in her breast. Slowly, she went to the door and pulled it open.
As always, the sight of John Duarte stole her breath.
Tonight, aside from looking broody and sexy as usual, he appeared tired, hesitant. His shaggy mane of dark hair was tousled, as though he’d been repeatedly rak
ing his big hands through it. His beard-covered jaw was rigid, ready for a battle. But his eyes... God help her, his chocolate eyes were intense with a bleak, private torment.
All of it focused on her.
He glanced pointedly at the fact that she was blocking the doorway with her body, not moving aside to let him in. “There are things I need to say to you, Lisa. Things that can’t wait anymore.” His full lips quirked into an uncertain smile. “You gonna make me do that standing out here in the hallway?”
She exhaled sharply, refusing to be charmed. “I think we both know what’s liable to happen if I let you in.”
The way he looked at her said he knew damn well and didn’t think it was a bad idea. His dark eyes seared her, penetrated her. And as his faint smile faded into a sensual line, her own mouth began to water a bit. She crossed her arms in front of her as if she could physically ward off the primal effect he had on her.
It wasn’t working. Even her heart was beginning to warm to the sight of him.
“What do you want, John?”
“To check on you, make sure you’re okay.”
She frowned. “You’re not my bodyguard or my keeper, so there’s no need for you to feel responsible for me. I can take care of myself.”
“I know you can. Not what I meant.” He paused for a moment, an unreadable emotion flickering across his handsome, troubled face. “Are you okay? I don’t like how we left things today.”
Neither did she. But that didn’t mean they could change any of it. “I’m confused right now... about everything.”
He nodded once. “I’ve had better days, too. I know you said you didn’t want to talk to me. Hell, I get it. But not talking to you is driving me fucking mad, Lisa. Knowing you’re in here upset, disgusted with me. Hating me...”
“I don’t hate you.” She could never do that, especially not after these past two days. Not even five years ago when he’d broken her heart the first time.
No, it would never be hate where he was concerned. What hurt so badly right now was that she loved him. She always had.
“I owe you an apology for today,” he murmured. “For not being totally honest with you about what Alec told me about Kyle. I should’ve told you right away. I should’ve trusted you to handle it. I owed you that much.”
“Yes, you did.”
“I said the reason I didn’t tell you was because I didn’t want to hurt you.” He shook his head, his gaze solemn, contrite. “I said that, but it wasn’t really true. Not the complete truth. The complete truth is that I didn’t want to tell you what I knew about Kyle and see you looking at me the way you did this morning. The way you’re looking at me right now.”
She stared at him for a long while, her emotions tangling with her confused thoughts. “I can’t do this with you again, John.”
“Do what?”
“Let you into my heart when I know you won’t stay. I did that five years ago. I started making that same stupid mistake three nights ago when I came looking for your help.” She swallowed past the regret that was caught in her throat. “I may not have the gift of precognition, but I can see the heartache coming, and I can’t do it again with you. Not now.”
John said nothing, not for a prolonged moment. She thought he might turn around and leave as she’d pretended she wanted him to do. But he didn’t go.
His eyes stayed tender on her, and his deep voice was as soft as velvet. “I told Kyle no twice, you know. When he called and asked me to stand in for your date that weekend. I didn’t want to do it.”
Lisa swallowed. She didn’t know that. Hearing it now made her feel awkward... as embarrassed as she’d felt when she had first heard John was going to rescue her from attending her friend’s wedding alone.
John didn’t show her any mercy now, holding her in his penetrating gaze as he spoke. “I knew if I went on a date with you, even a pretend one, I was playing with fire. And then when I got to your place to pick you up... Christ, you looked so beautiful.”
Beautiful? She felt heat creep into her face at his praise. Her throat wasn’t working anymore. She went utterly still, watching his handsome face as he spoke.
“You were wearing a peach strapless dress and matching sandals. Your hair was done up all pretty. Swear to God, Lisa, you looked like an angel that night.”
She couldn’t bite back her nervous laugh. “That dress was awful. Maybe guys don’t know this, but it’s an unwritten law that bridesmaids’ dresses have to be hideous.”
“It wasn’t the dress that stopped my breath,” John said. “It was the girl wearing it. You stop my breath every time I look at you, Lisa Becker.”
Without warning or asking permission, he stepped in close and kissed her. He kissed her like he couldn’t go another second without it. As though he couldn’t get enough.
His hands came up to cradle her head as his mouth claimed hers possessively, reverently. She felt him guiding her backward and she didn’t resist. When they were both inside the room, John reached back and closed the door behind them.
His hands left searing trails everywhere he touched her, and his mouth was quickly burning up all her defenses. As wounded and scared and angry as she was with him today, she couldn’t deny—at least to herself—that she felt better in his arms than away from him.
When John drew back, his eyes hadn’t lost a bit of their solemnity. When he spoke, his voice was thick and raw. “I suck at relationships, Lisa. As a rule, I don’t do them. Never seen them end up in a good place, so I never wanted to try. You changed all that.” He stroked her cheek. Ran the pad of his thumb over her kiss-swollen lower lip. “The first day he introduced you around the base, Kyle made sure everyone knew his little sister was off limits. I tried to respect that. No man wants to violate that code. Truth is...” John exhaled an airless chuckle. “Truth is, I was already half in love with you when he insisted I take you to that wedding.”
Was he serious? She couldn’t find her breath to speak now. Joy and disbelief and confusion crashed together inside her. And as much as his admission astonished her, it also infuriated her.
“No,” she said, her scowl deepening. “No, you can’t do this, John. You can’t say that to me. I wanted to hear those words five years ago, not now. Not when we don’t know where my brother is. When we don’t know who’s been tracking me or what they want. You can’t stand here and be the man I needed you to be back then, when right now we don’t even know if either of us will survive past tomorrow or next week or next year.”
Unless he knew that answer already...
Was he baring his soul to her now because he knew something more that she didn’t?
She drew out of his arms. “Back on the mountain, you and Alec said you both had a premonition that someone was holding a gun against my head. But the man who tracked me there didn’t do that. There was no gun to my head. It didn’t happen...”
And then she knew.
A coldness crept into her, an ache started blooming in her chest. “What you and Alec saw didn’t happen then... It hasn’t happened yet.”
“No,” he said, somber with the admission. “Not yet.”
“Oh, my God.” She closed her eyes as the understanding settled on her.
“The visions don’t lie, Lisa. But they can be altered. That’s the power of precognition. And I’m not saying any of this because of what I saw. I’m telling you how I feel because I should’ve done it that first night we spent together. Or three nights ago, when you showed up on my mountain again.” He stepped closer, his hands moving gently on her face, over her hair. “I don’t want to let another night pass without letting you know what you mean to me. What you always have meant to me, if I’d been willing to admit it, even to myself.”
He framed her face with his large, careful hands, holding her with a fierce reverence. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you. Not ever.” He growled a low curse. “I’ve had five years to think about what I let go of—what could’ve been, if I’d been honest with mys
elf... and with you. I didn’t want to betray my friend’s trust in me, so instead I betrayed yours by letting you leave my place thinking you didn’t matter to me. You deserve white picket fences and fairy tales, Lisa. I can’t give you any of those things. At this point, I’m not even sure I would know how.”
“I never asked you for any of that,” she murmured.
“But you deserve someone who can give it to you.” He caressed her cheek, his dark eyes searching, tender. “Five years ago, I was scared shitless to even try to be that man. And now... damn it. Now I want to try, but I’m afraid I’m losing you before I even get the chance.”
She wanted to hold on to her anger from earlier today. She wanted to hold on to her anger from five years ago, too. More than anything, she wanted to deny that she could trust this man, love him, after just a few days and nights together and a handful of pretty words.
But this was John Duarte. And if he’d been half in love with her at one time, she’d been all in for just as long.
She had no fight left in her when he drew her into his arms. His mouth came down on hers in a tender, yet claiming kiss, leaving no room for anything but the two of them. She kissed him back, melting into his embrace, losing herself to the moment, and to him.
It took her a few seconds to feel the tension—the alarm—seep into the strong muscles that held her. John broke their kiss and pulled back, his eyes stark... distant.
He blinked, and when he glanced down at her a shiver of dread snaked through her.
“They’re coming now.” His voice was quiet, so grim it shook her to the bone. “I just saw them—a flash of precognition. The men who’re after you... ah, fuck. They’re close. They’re heading here now.”
15
Duarte took Lisa by the hand and ran with her out to the main house. Alec was in the kitchen finishing a sandwich and drinking a beer. A pistol lay on the table in front of him. A long-range rifle outfitted with a silencer rested against the wall in easy arm’s reach.