Her Hero After Dark

by Cindy Dees

  She frowned. “Why not just walk in the front door and check it out in plain sight?”

  “What if there’s a mole in the place sorting the data streams and collecting the good ones for sale? Do you want to warn the mole you’re after him? He’d either run, or worse, sabotage the place and then run.”

  She stared into her coffee cup for a long time. Finally, she looked up and said grimly, “It’s possible you’re right. I’m not sure about anything anymore.”

  “Would it help if I said you could be sure of me?”

  “But I’m not!” she exclaimed. “You won’t answer my questions about your health, you only told me about what happened in Africa after it didn’t matter anymore, and for all I know, this is just an elaborate trick to get me to lead you into H.O.T. Watch so you can compromise the place even further!”

  As he’d expected. She was no dummy, and the possibility of being used by him had occurred to her. It stung, though, that she would make love with him when she didn’t trust him entirely. But she was a CIA agent, after all. Maybe she never fully trusted anybody. His gut twinged a warning at him. How was he supposed to have a long-term relationship with her if she wouldn’t let down her guard entirely with him? But then, it wasn’t like he had any plans to be entirely open and honest with her, either.

  “Where do we go from here?” he asked in resignation.

  She didn’t hesitate. “Tell me exactly what those drugs you take do. How they work. Why you’re on them.”

  He stared at her, frustrated. “Anything else. My life is an open book to you. Just not that.”

  “Why not?” she ground out.

  “Other people’s lives could be put at risk. If the government found out about our research at this juncture—” he broke off “—I’m sorry. I can’t.”

  They stared at each other in frustration.

  “All right, then,” she said tightly. “How about this? Is there a way for you to wean yourself entirely off your medications? Permanently?”

  The questions slammed into him like an invisible freight train that had managed to sneak up on him and flatten him entirely without warning. The truth was, he could get off the drugs. He would have to give his body ample time to lose muscle mass first, of course. But once he’d lost enough of muscle, he could come off the drugs safely enough just by stopping them. Gemma thought his bone density would return to normal and not be negatively affected by his having spent several years with it unnaturally boosted.

  He stared at Jennifer in stubborn silence. If he admitted to her that he could stop the meds, she would never let it rest. Ever. He knew that with the certainty that he knew the sun would rise in a few hours.

  “I see it in your eyes, Jeff. You can stop the drugs. Which leads to the next question. Why haven’t you? You’d be insane not to. Who knows what damage you’ve already done to your body? You need to stop. Now,” she urged.

  He slashed through the air with his hand. “This is not open to discussion. It’s my body. My life. My decision.”

  “Then that’s it. I’m out of here.”

  Damn, they’d hit that wall fast. He should have known she’d see immediately that there was a way out from under the meds. She was too smart to miss the little clues. As it was, she knew far too much about the program already.

  “It’s unnatural, Jeff. You have no idea what it’s doing to you. Stop now, before the damage gets too bad.”

  “I’m not damaged,” he ground out.

  “Don’t even try to convince me that the agony I saw you suffer was okay. Can you seriously tell me you’re willing to risk that again? It almost killed you!”

  “As long as I don’t go off the meds, I won’t be in any danger of going to that place again.”

  “I’m not willing to risk it,” she blurted.

  “Nobody’s forcing you to stick around and watch,” he snapped.

  As soon as the words left his mouth, he wished them back. She went silent and perfectly still. Pulled into herself emotionally.

  “I’m sorry, Jennifer. I didn’t mean that.”

  “Sure you did. And you’re right. It’s your choice to treat your body however you want to. And it’s my choice whether or not I want to stay and watch you suffer like that the next time.”

  “There won’t be a next time.”

  She snorted, and he added with no small amount of desperation, “You’ve only seen the downside of the project. You haven’t seen the benefits of it, yet. Don’t judge it, don’t judge me, until you’ve seen what I can do.”

  “I have no doubt you can lift tall buildings and heave them over your shoulder. I get that. I just don’t happen to think it’s worth the pain. I’d stop you if I could.”

  “Please. Don’t interfere with this.”

  “I don’t even know what ‘this’ is,” she snapped. “You’re asking me to expose a major classified facility to you with hundreds of lives at stake. But you won’t extend the same trust to me and tell me exactly what you’re doing to your body? That’s not how it works.”

  He closed his eyes. Took several long, painful breaths. Was he really willing to lose her over his secrets?

  Chapter 10

  Jennifer watched in agony as Jeff waged an internal struggle with himself, her heart shattering by slow degrees. It could’ve been so good between them. But there was no way she could stand by and watch a man she cared about destroy himself.

  Funny how much maintaining his enhanced strength resembled an addiction. How could he not see it? Whatever rush he got out of being abnormally strong was powerful enough that he wasn’t about to give it up for her. He might be hooked on a classier poison than most people, but he wasn’t so far from an alcoholic or heroin addict. She only wished his secrets weren’t more important to him than she was. She slid off her stool.

  “Should I walk to the front gate, or will somebody give me a ride?” she asked soberly. “I assume the Feds are still parked out there.”

  “Don’t go,” he ground out.

  “Give me a reason to stay.”

  His entire body stiffened. And then, all of a sudden, the tension went out of him. “Fine. Is it possible for me to get off the meds? Yes. I would have to give my body maybe a year to lose muscle mass first. But eventually, once my muscles wouldn’t tear apart my skeleton, I could stop the drug therapy.”

  She turned around slowly. “Would you go through those awful withdrawals again?”

  “No. The only reason I was in pain was the torque on my bones. Take away the overpowering muscles and all that goes away.”

  “Then stop. Now! Become a normal man again.”

  “But I don’t want to be normal. I like being strong.”

  “You’re not strong. You’re a freak.”

  His jaw rippled angrily. Didn’t like hearing the truth, did he? That was too damn bad. The man was taking a completely unnecessary risk with their future—whoa. Their future? Since when had that happened? Were they a couple already? She didn’t recall him giving her the right to make decisions for both of them.

  “I’m sorry.” She sighed. “I had no right to call you a freak.”

  He smiled without humor. “You are very good at that whole, spy doublespeak thing. You apologize and say you had no right, but you never actually admit you were wrong.”

  “I don’t think I am wrong.”

  He pressed his lips together until a white line formed around them, and she suspected her mouth was the same. Clearly, the two of them would have to agree to disagree on this one. If he could stop, he would be crazy not to. Period. She simply didn’t understand how he couldn’t see that.

  “Why did you start taking the meds in the first place?” she asked.

  “The bad guys in the world are getting the best of us. The free world desperately needs to keep what little technological and scientific edge it has over them if we’re to remain free. How many years do you think it would take our government to approve a program to fund and test something as controversial as Gemma’s
research?”

  She winced. “Decades, maybe.”

  “Exactly. And we don’t have that kind of time. The world moves too fast these days. New scientific discoveries come along all the time. Stem cell therapy is a hot field. Someone will duplicate Gemma’s work before long, and then some other nation, maybe one not at all friendly to us, will start cranking out supersoldiers. And where will the good guys be then?”

  She stared at him weighing his words. Finally she asked, “But did it have to be you?”

  He shrugged. “I can’t very well ask my employees to take a risk that I’m not willing to take myself.”

  Arrgghh. She hated that logic! But she also reluctantly understood it. As the civilian supervisor of H.O.T. Watch, she would never ask her people to do anything she wouldn’t do herself.

  “What other risks are there to this therapy?” she asked soberly.

  Jeff frowned. “Gemma’s still studying whether or not my DNA is actually being altered or not. It’s possible my children would be born with bones like mine. If so, they would probably have to be delivered by C-section. Their bones might be too hard for a regular birth. Their growth would have to be monitored carefully.”

  “What about you?”

  “So far, Gemma hasn’t discovered any negative effects on my body. We watch my kidneys closely because of the amount of protein I consume to maintain this muscle mass. It turns out my cardiovascular system has kept up and grown stronger apace with my demands upon it. By building muscle through working out, my heart and veins had time to grow, as well.”

  Eeyew. But she supposed it was good to know he wasn’t in danger of keeling over from a heart attack. “Anything else?”

  “Ask me that in twenty years.”

  If only she was around in twenty years to do that. “You said there are other test subjects?” she asked.

  “I never said that.”

  She rolled her eyes. “It’s obvious there are. Like that girl in your ops center with the funny glasses. Is she one of them?”

  Jeff scowled. “I’m not going to discuss anyone else who might or might not be part of the research and testing.”

  “Oh, please. No one outside this building would believe what you guys are up to if I told them, anyway. And in case you forgot, I keep secrets for a living.”

  “Let’s say for argument’s sake that there are other test subjects. You’re asking me to put their lives in your hands.”

  “Like you’re not doing the same thing to me when you insist on my taking you with me to infiltrate H.O.T. Watch?”

  “Touché,” he murmured. “I guess it all comes down to this, then. Do you trust me or not?”

  Jeff watched Jennifer carefully. He realized belatedly that he was holding his breath as he waited for her answer.

  Her mouth turned up in wry humor. “Some pair we make, circling each other like two dogs with a bone lying between them. Each one’s afraid to break eye contact and look down at the bone, lest the other one attack while we’re not looking.”

  He swept her up off the stool and hard against his body. “No more circling. No evasion. I trust you with my life. Do you trust me back or not?”

  She stared up at him for a long moment, not as if she was hesitating, but rather as if she was considering the question. And then she nodded. “Yes. I do.”

  “With your life?”

  She laughed with scant humor. “The answer to that seems obvious, since you can break my neck with your bare hands any time you want.”

  “Good lord, woman. We made love together. I could never hurt you!”

  Her dark eyes went serious. “Fine. All jesting aside, I would trust you with my life if it came to that.”

  But he’d bet she wasn’t willing to share all her secrets with him any more than he was willing to share his with her. Funny how trust and honesty were two entirely different beasts. “What about your employers?” he asked.

  “What about them?”

  “Are you willing to turn your back on them if it comes to a choice between me and them?”

  She frowned, obviously not seeing where he was going with this. He elaborated. “My team and I occasionally work outside the law. Your government’s law. I swear to you any laws we break are for the greater good. But as you’ve already seen, we use methods now and then that Uncle Sam might not approve of. If it comes to a choice, who would you choose?”

  To her credit, she didn’t evade the question. She looked him square in the eye and answered heavily, “I don’t know.”

  It wasn’t the answer he wanted, but it wasn’t like he had any choice except to live with it for now.

  He said gently, “One more question, and then no more tonight. I promise.”

  She looked up at him warily. She was coming to know him too well. “There’s a bolt-hole out of this compound. You and I can leave right now. Long before Uncle Sam has any idea we were ever here. Do we make a run for it and go find out what’s up with H.O.T. Watch, or do we stay here and hand you over to the Feds out front?”

  Jennifer whirled out of his arms and threw up her hands. “How am I supposed to answer that? You’re asking me to determine my entire future this very second.”

  He refrained from reminding her that her future could include him. And that wouldn’t be all bad, would it? He was asking her to give up her career, possibly become a fugitive from the law, maybe even give up her identity and assume a new one before this was all said and done. Yep, no doubt about it. Being a good guy sucked, sometimes.

  She spun to face him, hair flying, eyes blazing. “The hell of it is I don’t have any choice at all. I have to find out what’s going on at H.O.T. Watch. No matter what it costs me personally. Too many lives ride on that place’s security being intact.”

  As she stared at him, her chocolate gaze filled with tears. He instantly stepped forward and drew her into his arms. He couldn’t make it better, but he could at least suffer with her. She sobbed against his chest until her grief and frustration drained away.

  She said woodenly, “We probably ought to get going, shouldn’t we? It’ll be light outside before long.”

  He made another silent vow to himself to put the light back in her eyes, the smile back on her face, before this whole mess was over. He looped an arm over her shoulder. “C’mon. You’re gonna love what I have to show you next.”

  Chapter 11

  Jennifer stared as Jeff led her into what could only be likened to Batman’s Bat Cave. A half-dozen cars were parked in the cavernous space, along with a pair of motorcycles and even a motor home.

  She followed as Jeff strolled down the row of cars. “Something inconspicuous, I’d think.” He stopped in front of a midsize Chevrolet sedan.

  “But what if we need to outrun someone?” she asked doubtfully.

  He grinned at her. “Every vehicle in here is not as it seems. They’ve either been retrofitted with substantially larger engines than they usually come with, or in the case of the Chevy here, the body of a sedan has been mounted on the chassis and engine of a Corvette.”

  Of course he’d modified these cars. It was what a superhero did when he had all the money in the world. She shook her head.

  “What?” Jeff asked.

  “Boys and their toys,” she grumbled.

  He grinned. “Guilty as charged. Wait till you see the exit.”

  She climbed in the passenger side of the Chevy, and, indeed, when Jeff started the engine, she recognized the muscular growl of a Corvette. He punched a remote control and a metal door slid up in front of them. A long tunnel came into view. It was illuminated with halogen running lights low along both sides of it.

  “Oh, good grief,” she exclaimed, rolling her eyes.

  He grinned unrepentantly. “If my team and I have to suffer for our abilities, we might as well have fun when we can.”

  She went silent at the reminder of the cost of his special powers. He accelerated down the arrow-straight tunnel until the lights were flashing past at an alarming s
peed. Finally, she blurted out, “I swear, if your tires leave the pavement, I’m going to make you stop and let me out.”

  Jeff grinned broadly without taking his eyes off the tunnel. “Chicken.”

  The passage ended as quickly as it began, with another metal garage door rising silently at its far end. She glanced behind them as they pulled onto a dirt road and wasn’t surprised to see the door’s exterior looked exactly like the rocks into which it nestled.

  “Nice,” she commented as he guided the car down the twisting road with his headlights off.

  They drove slowly through the dark for maybe a half hour before he finally turned onto a paved road and flipped on his headlights. “Where to, Mata Hari?”

  That one was a no-brainer. “New Mexico,” she answered.

  “What’s in New Mexico?”

  “Home.”

  * * *

  Late-afternoon shadows softened the alpine forest around them as they wound up a mountain on a dirt road into a stand of spruce, fir and pinyon pines. A log cabin sat tucked among the trees, looking deserted. As she got out of the car, Jennifer took a long, deep breath of the sweet tang of pine sap on the air.

  “Is this where you grew up?” Jeff asked as he stretched out the kinks of the long drive.

  “No. This is my brother’s hunting cabin. He won’t mind if we use it. I’ll give him a call to let him know we’re here.” She stopped on the porch to call her brother because cell phone coverage inside the cabin was notoriously bad. It was part of why Rex liked this place so much. His work—and his wife—couldn’t bug him up here. “Hey, bro. It’s Jenn.”

  “Sis! Long time no talkee. What’s the occasion?”

  “I’m at your cabin with a friend. Just got here. Mind if we shack up for a day or two?”

  “Well, I dunno. I don’t cotton to nobody messin’ with my little sister,” he answered in a fake drawl. “Is it serious between you two?”

  Heck if she knew. The sex might have started out as casual, but she didn’t think it had ended that way. She evaded a direct answer. “You’ll like him.” She added hastily in a blatant attempt to distract Rex. “Any chance you can run up with some food in the morning?”