Right now, she needed to analyze the situation carefully, start making plans. She’d disappeared before—surely she could do it again. But no thoughts appeared. No analysis, no strong sense of reasoning her way through as she’d always been able to do.
Instead, with her last reserves, her entire being had sent out what could only be a distress call. Just to show how crazy she was, she hadn’t even sent it out to any of her coworkers.
Nope, she’d sent it to Nick. Who could be anywhere in the world.
Nick, whom she hadn’t seen in ten years and would never see again.
Nick, who wherever he was, wouldn’t care.
Insanity.
These past years of hard work, rewarding work, making new friends, entering the exciting world of scientific research—she’d tried so very hard to forget all about Nick. Every girl got her heart broken by a handsome man, right? Nothing new about that. Happened to everyone. Whole days, then whole weeks would go by when she wouldn’t think of him and then wham! A smell, a taste, a sound—it was always something. It would remind her of the years they spent together—or worse, remind her of the night they spent together.
And it was enough to set her off.
Her heart would clench, a cascade of hormones, bad ones, the ones associated with fear and loss and pain, such as CRH or cortisol, would flood her system. Before she knew the words, she understood the mechanism.
And now that she knew the words, now that she’d made this her field of study, she thought she’d banished her ghosts. Her ghost. Nick.
She’d made a successful life for herself, rarely thinking of him. And yet at the moment of her direst need, who did she think of? Nick Ross. Damn him! Wasting time wanting him was dangerous. Folly of the highest order.
Though there really wasn’t anyone to call. Maybe that was it. Most of her friends were fellow research scientists and, lately, members of the experimental protocol. There was no one capable of fighting those men in black, certainly not the men she knew.
Slope-shouldered, nearsighted men, pale and thin. No. Paul Mela, Alex Karras, or Thomas Chu—even if she could contact them, even if they came, they’d be massacred.
She’d been right not to call them.
It was so hard to be in the dark, in every sense. She’d seen the men and disappeared. She needed more information. A scientist dealt with data, and she had none.
What was happening?
Could she—dare she check?
Elle was only beginning to test the boundaries of her gift. Today’s projection of herself halfway around the world—that had been the first time she’d tried to deliberately project herself to an unknown place far away. It had left her so depleted she’d felt half dead.
She could do short distances. She’d tested that, over and over. But she didn’t have total control over where she went. It was like being in a Porsche with only the accelerator, no brakes and no steering wheel. Heady and dangerous.
Those men had moved with the professional grace of athletes or military men. They were heavily armed. She needed to know where they were.
The decision was made.
She slid down until she was lying on her back on the dirty carpet, grabbing a pillow from the bed and putting it under her head. Close to the floor, the smell of grime intensified. She shut it from her mind, along with the lumpiness of the carpet and the lint she could see under the bed. She wasn’t here for comfort, she was here for safety. A little dirt and a few smells were a small price to pay.
She closed her eyes and willed herself to start shutting down. Slow down her pounding heart, will her hands to still, her breathing to slow.
It was all so very new. She’d only gone on four voluntary trips before. All her life, her Dreams had taken her away when they wanted, where they wanted. There’d never been any question of directing herself, projecting herself where she wanted to go.
Hell, she’d been twenty-one and still heartbroken over Nick before she realized that what happened to her sometimes wasn’t merely crazy dreams. It had been in San Francisco, working hard to pay tuition before the grants and scholarships had kicked in. Desperate for reading material, she’d taken the bus to Clement Street and gone to Banana Split, a huge bookstore with tons of used books and a friendly staff that didn’t mind if you spent hours there. On the second floor, browsing the Paranormal section she’d seen a book, dusty and badly printed, and it had changed her life.
A simple title—Astral Projection. But she’d recognized instantly that it spoke directly to her, to what she’d always been able to do but had been unable to recognize. She learned she wasn’t alone. A number of people were able to astrally project, and Elle started to make it her business to know everything about it. That semester, she switched to biology, aiming at a PhD in neuroscience, and it had led her straight to Corona, which was studying extrasensory powers.
Until she’d actually enrolled in the Delphi Protocol, she’d never been able to control her projections. They just … happened. Maybe more when she was stressed than when she was relaxed, but there’d been very little relaxation in her life after her father became ill, so that wasn’t a big help.
Some nights her trips were brief. A few minutes in an unfamiliar landscape and then she’d be back. One constant was that the longer the trip, the more exhausted she was when she woke up.
The Delphi Protocol was controlled in every aspect. From the drugs in the IV line to the monitors checking her status. And still, she’d been told her vital signs had gone dangerously low in today’s experiment. What would happen if her vital signs started plummeting? She was alone here. She could lapse into a coma, even die.
But she could die, anyway. Those men had been armed and Sophie’s call had been a panic call. Sophie had said some people had been killed. In all likelihood, for whatever reason, something highly dangerous was going on and it was entirely possible that the men in black had orders to shoot her on sight.
So staying here, alone in the dark, wasn’t going to save her.
They’d know she hadn’t hailed a taxi and there was only so far anyone could get on foot. If they had the right resources they would find her, no question. She’d signed in under another name but presumably they’d have a photo of her. That bored and stoned young man at the front desk might remember her.
They could break in her door at any minute.
The Delphi Protocol had been exact and precise. Elle tried to duplicate it, though she had no equipment at all except her body and her mind. First, she’d been told to lie flat on her back, arm out for the IV. Silly as it seemed, she lay there flat on her back and put her arm out from her body. There hadn’t been a pillow so she removed it from under her head.
What had Sophie done next? Inserted the needle. It was the new generation of hypodermics—thin as a human hair while inserted, it expanded once in a vein. It hadn’t hurt at all going in, and she’d felt only the lightest whisper of sensation when it expanded. But the drug had burned a little when it started flowing in her veins.
Corona had refused to give the exact molecular structure of the drug, citing patent concerns, but Sophie had told her that though she didn’t know its exact composition either, it had been tested thoroughly on animals and had never caused an adverse effect.
So Elle lay still and imagined the whisper of the superthin needle being inserted into the vein of her right arm, the slight sensation of fullness as the needle expanded, the feeling of warmth as the drug began to course through her system.
There must have been a light sedative in the drug because she had instantly relaxed and had felt so light that it was as if she floated an inch or two above the mattress.
She felt herself relax, as if she’d been perfused with the drug. It had been a wholly pleasant sensation and she willed herself into feeling it. Feeling weightless, as if gravity had suddenly been revoked. So light that she rose a little, hovered, then continued up, up, up …
It was pitch-black outside, the darkness broken only by the few in
tact streetlights. Palo Alto was a prosperous community, and further east she could see well-lit streets and cars whishing by, brightly lit storefronts and restaurants and bars. But in this small corner of town, darkness reigned.
Few cars passed by on their way to somewhere else. Nobody was walking on the sidewalks, which were narrower than normal, cracked in places from the roots of the big, old, unpruned trees lining the street the motel was on.
Elle drifted over the rooftops, all sense of anxiety gone. It was peaceful up here in the chill air, under the star-filled sky. The moon had set. The brightly lit center of town was aglow in the distance, like a huge campfire. Two streets over, where the shops started selling something other than cheap clothes and liquor, some young kids spilled out of a bar, reeling in the street, shouting. They were drunk and laughing. One kid, tall and lanky, bent over from the waist, hands on knees, and threw up in the gutter. They all laughed harder.
Students, she thought with an inward smile. Always the same …
What was that?
Thick, untrimmed bushes across the street two blocks down from the motel quivered, as if a wind had passed through. But it was a windless night. Two men stepped out, clad in black, black mask, black goggles. Black holsters with thick black handles sticking out of them.
They didn’t speak, instead communicating with hand signals, easy to follow. Two more men stepped out from the bushes another block down and they met up with the first two.
The men were utterly silent, almost invisible in the blackness of the night. Nobody noticed them. One man, taller than the rest, pointed his finger at one of them, then pointed the finger down the street, at the motel whose flickering sign could be seen. The man who’d been singled out pulled off his mask and pulled a windbreaker from a side pocket. In a second, he looked almost normal.
Maybe an observant person would notice a bulge on his hip, but the stoned guy at the front desk wouldn’t notice if a grenade went off right beside him.
The man in the windbreaker walked down and across the street, stride easy and relaxed. Guy crossing the street to a motel.
The other men melted back into the bushes.
Elle followed the man into the lobby where the night clerk was gently dozing, a Justice League Dark comic draped across his chest. His mouth was open and he was snoring lightly.
At the sound of the bell over the door ringing, he gave a slight start and opened his eyes. They were unfocused. When he saw the man in the windbreaker he smiled. “Hey, dude.”
“Hey.” The man dug into his pocket. “I need to ask you a question. I just had a fight with my girlfriend. A big one.” He winced and gave a rueful smile. “She’s right and I was wrong and I need to talk to her now that I’ve sobered up.”
The clerk waggled his head. “I hear you, man.”
The man in the windbreaker placed a photograph on the counter and tapped it. “That’s my girlfriend. She isn’t with any of her friends, so I’m making the rounds of hotels and motels. I really need to talk to her. Did she check in here?” A hundred-dollar bill slid across the counter and disappeared behind it.
“Pretty, pretty lady.” The clerk smiled dreamily.
“Yeah. That she is. So … you seen her this evening?”
“Yeah, man. Came in about two hours ago.”
The man in the windbreaker slumped in relief. “Thank God! I was so worried that she was walking around in the dark. What’s her room number?”
That rang a bell of alarm. The clerk’s eyes opened wide. “Hey, man. Sorry. I’m not supposed to—”
Another hundred-dollar bill slid across. “I really need to talk to her. Tell her how much I love her.”
The bill was pocketed. “Awww. Okay. I can tell you’re a good guy. She’s in room number nine. Down the hall and to the right. She’s checked in until—”
Elle watched the man pull a stunner from his holster, set to green. Lethal charge. In a second, he’d pulled it, placed it against the clerk’s heart, and pulled the trigger. He turned around before the clerk fell to the floor and gestured out the door.
The three other men came at a dead run while the man in the windbreaker shot out the lights in the lobby. The only illumination came from the clerk’s old-fashioned flat computer monitor, which illuminated the scene with an eerie pale glow.
Without speaking a word, the man in the windbreaker pointed down the hall, then gestured right. The four men pulled their stunners, all set to yellow, a voltage guaranteed to knock out a bull, and moved silently down the corridor toward Elle’s room.
Where her defenseless body waited, unable to wake itself up.
Chapter 9
The hovercar had been tested at 200 mph. Nick pushed it to 160 off highway in hovercraft mode. Coming down off Mount Blue, Nick had to be careful not to ram into trees. The hovercar responded like a dream and he speed-slalomed his way down the mountain.
Once he was off the mountain and into the flatlands, though, Nick took off, paralleling the interstate, sailing over ditches and fences. The hovercar had excellent forward radar and he swerved around obstacles the hovercar couldn’t clear. When the quickest way forward was the interstate, he simply jumped the guardrails, went to wheel mode, and flew down the fast lane. The hovercar was invisible to radar and not too visible to other drivers. By the time a driver could flip him the bird, he was twenty miles away. He could outrun any police car. And frankly, he didn’t give a shit about anything except getting to Elle as fast as humanly possible.
Jon was in contact over the comms link. He was making good progress fitting a new rotor head. Mac was giving a hand and he estimated he could be in the air within the hour.
Maybe, just maybe he could get to Elle and save her from whatever danger she was in. But there was no one in the world who understood the underlying principle of the universe—shit happens—better than Nick Ross. He wouldn’t feel anything like relief until he had Elle with him, in his bed, in Haven. Surrounded by a mountain and sensors and trip wires and drones up the wazoo. And once she was in his bed in Haven, he’d keep her there for the next week. Maybe more. Not only to bed her, but to feel her, touch her, reassure himself that she was safe and with him.
And she’d stay that way for the next hundred years.
But first, he had to find her.
He had no idea what that distress call was about, but it had been potent. A blast of pure terror. He’d woken up, heart pounding with fear. Up until about an hour ago, Nick would have said he didn’t know fear, but now that was a lie. Sheer bone-chilling terror had infused every cell of his body when he’d received the blast in his head.
Nothing like that psychic blast had ever happened to him before. Well, except for Catherine somehow reading through touching him that he’d lost Elle and mourned her. Which made sense because Catherine had the gift of reading people and missing Elle was in his blood and bones, not just in his skin.
As far as he knew, Nick had no gifts beyond strength, a good aim, and an ability to fight. Certainly nothing woo-woo. He’d fought and worked like a dog for everything he had, no “gifts” at all. So receiving that blast from Elle had been completely off his radar.
It wasn’t a dream and it wasn’t craziness. It was definitely Elle who’d contacted him, no question. The blast had had Elle in it, unmistakable. Fear, yes, but gentleness and smarts in a mixture that was simply her. He hadn’t questioned it for one second.
So here he was on the interstate going as fast as humanly possible to get to her.
Traffic was getting intense on the approach to Palo Alto, requiring all his attention, when Jon’s voice sounded in the comms button behind his ear. “Yo man,” he said. “Check the drone monitor.”
Nick glanced down to his left and froze.
Fuck!
Faint lines moving toward the motel, almost invisible. The men on the screen were wearing stealth combat gear, but Haven’s drones combined IR and thermal imagery that made visible what would have escaped the drones’ technology if the two
sources hadn’t been combined. Four men, moving slowly and carefully down the street where Elle’s motel was. The street was dark, every other streetlight was burned out. When they were still, the men disappeared, but when they moved, he could see—just barely—their outlines. They moved like fighters. That and the fact that their signature was mostly cloaked was enough for him.
They were operators and they were dangerous and they were out for Elle.
He checked the GPS and saw that he was five minutes out. Jesus. He moved the accelerator stick to its maximum power and shot forward, leaving a wake of startled cars behind. As he zoomed down off the interstate ramp as fast as the vehicle could go, straining forward as if he could personally make the hovercar go faster, he kept checking the drone monitor.
Three of the men disappeared into a dark spot by the side of the road that was clearly bushes. One man pulled off his face mask and his head bloomed bright red in the thermal images. As Nick watched, he pulled on a windbreaker and made his way across the street, a shimmering red man shape, head twisting, checking the road for traffic.
There was none. The place was deserted. It looked like the motel was half deserted too, to judge by the empty parking lot. And whoever was in that motel, including Elle, would be no match for the four trained men who would converge if they discovered Elle was staying there.
Nick studied the maps, calculating a trajectory that didn’t include roads. He didn’t need roads, he just needed a path that didn’t have barriers over one meter high. He could do it, just, in hover mode. Haven had rules against using hover mode in densely populated places. Hovercars were military secrets. He and Jon had liberated two hovercars from a base in Nevada and appropriated them for their use. They were particularly useful in winter on Mount Blue when the roads were snowed in. Using hover mode in towns would raise interest and maybe alert military authorities, and that was the last thing they wanted.
But this trumped everything. Danger to Elle? No question.
Lisa Marie Rice - [Ghost Ops] Page 16