“And you'd hate to have a little turnabout, I'm guessing. Hate to have someone reading what's in your head,” Nate said.
He needed to speak to Giles. If he was bothered by what was between him and Kel——not that it was going any-freaking-where, or, not near as fast as he'd like——but if Giles was bothered by it, well . . .
“Tough?” Giles supplied.
Nate grinned. “Thanks. Just the word I was looking for.”
Kel looked between them, but didn't ask what the hell was going on. She checked her watch, frowned. “Greenway could discover we've gouged a large part of his secret off-shore account at any time. Soon as he does, he'll know we could only have gotten to the money because we have all his files. That's just a short hop from working out what we're up to.”
Nate shrugged. “Even if he does notice the money's gone, he'd never think we'd try anything as nuts as this. Even I'm having trouble with the idea.”
“To use your own word——tough.” Giles's face hardened a little.
Giles had always been more on board with Kel's plan to systematically rescue the other inmates who'd been part of Greenway's freaky set-up than Nate had been. He had trouble with it because it just wasn't safe for Kel, but there was no reasoning with her.
As soon as she'd learned Greenway had shipped his failures out to other facilities, she'd been determined to find them and break them out.
Since Giles had gone undercover four days ago to suss out the facility they were planning to extract Nina Calvados from, he'd become as implacable as Kel about finishing the operation.
“Damn right. She's one of us, Nate.” Giles didn't even pretend he hadn't been listening in on Nate's thoughts. He pushed off the wall, tilted his head in Kel's direction. “Nina Calvados reminds me of you. She's able to block better than anyone I've ever come across. We have to get her out.”
“Well, if everything goes right tonight, we will.” Kel reached out and touched Giles on the arm. It was a gesture of comfort, and affection.
He gave a sharp nod, turned and walked out the door.
“You wouldn't really try to persuade us to abandon this, would you?” Kel turned her pale blue gaze on him. She stood, strangely vulnerable, in the middle of the spacious room.
He felt wrong, somehow, approaching her loaded down with guns, but he did it anyway, snagged an arm around her shoulder and pulled her close.
She didn't flinch anymore when he did that. She'd been skittish when he'd first started, but he was getting her used to being touched again. She seemed to like it, pressing up close to him, but she couldn't hold it for long.
Still, they'd gone from a few seconds to about a minute in the few weeks he'd know her.
He carefully slid his arms around her back, and instead of the resistance he usually felt, she gave a sigh and leaned against him.
He was so surprised, he stood, still and shocked, as her arms came around his waist. The first time she'd done that.
She rested her cheek against his chest and sort of nuzzled in, and his arms tightened their hold.
“What's changed?” He didn't want to ruin the moment, or do anything to scare her off, but he couldn't help the question that leaped out of his mouth.
“I know this rescue could end badly, and I just don't want to regret . . .” She breathed out on another sigh. “I know I'm too stiff. I hate how I get tense and freeze up. I want you touching me and I love doing this.” She burrowed even closer. “I want you going in tonight knowing that.”
He lifted his hands and cupped her face, tipped her head back so he could look her in the eyes.
“I already do.”
She smiled at him, that Kelli smile that blinded him every time and made him blank to everything else around him.
That terrible tension rose up in him again. He'd do anything to keep her safe, but if he wanted to keep her, he had to let her be free.
If he couldn't stop her going, he'd watch her back. Protect her.
She had her priorities. He sure as hell had his.
* * *
Kelli felt Nate's arms go hard as iron around her, and she forced herself not to pull away, even though the skittish part of her wanted to do just that.
Instead, she lifted her lips to his jaw and planted a feather-light kiss on its edge.
He went still and she did it again, working her way up to his earlobe.
She realized, with surprise, she didn't feel like pulling away any more.
Or, not yet.
She'd come to associate touch with pain over the last three years, and it would take more than three weeks to overcome that. But she was winning.
One look in Nate's eyes and she knew failure would be too costly.
He would give her all of himself. It was a gift too precious to give up on.
She kissed him one last time and pulled back, but his arms tightened just a fraction before he released her.
She didn't step away, and suddenly she was caught in the deep midnight blue of his eyes. Without holding her, without touching her at all, he lowered his lips and kissed her, and she opened her mouth under his gentle, relentless demand.
It felt good.
She could feel the heat of him they were so close to each other, but she closed her eyes and didn't try to hold him again. It was as if she were floating, the only sensation the feel of his lips and tongue on hers.
He drew back, and there was a grin on his face. “Floating on air, I see.”
She looked down, and he was right, she had leveled their heights, floating up so he didn't need to bend down to her.
She grinned back.
“Ready?” Giles called from the other room. “I need to leave now to make my shift on time.”
His question brought her back to earth with a slight thump.
But Nina Calvados deserved this, too. Deserved freedom and a chance to live a full life.
Something Doc Greenway and the people holding Nina captive were not planning to give her.
So tonight, Giles would go in again as part of the maintenance staff as he had for the last couple of days, and she and Nate would be ready to help him extract her from her prison.
One by one, they were going to bring Greenway's victims out.
And if it could be over the doc's dead body, she thought fiercely, so much the better.
CHAPTER 2
Nina didn't know when she'd given up, but it was some time ago. Or rather, she thought she had.
But there was always something, even here in the white, sterile lab. A flare of irritation, a spurt of anger, and then she'd shove the feeling deep, deep down.
She was working hard. Grunt work, low-level tech work, but more than she'd had before. She looked around the clean, well-equipped room and knew she'd gained back a piece of herself because of it.
It was the saving of her.
She'd have given up for good in a cell like the one she'd been kept in at Doc Greenway's little clinic. There had been nothing for her there but four walls, and the trembling wait for the sound of footsteps——of wondering if they were coming for her again, or just walking past.
Here at least she was busy. And maybe her compliance, her obvious enjoyment of the work, had fooled her captors into believing that she was a good little girl now. Nice and docile.
When she was really anything but.
Coming out from behind the work station next to her, Simons shuffled toward the door as the clock hit five o'clock exactly.
She wondered how he knew the time——he certainly didn't have a watch and he'd never once raised his eyes high enough to look up at the cheap white and silver clock above the lab's double doors. Not in all the four months Nina had worked with him.
She'd like to ask him how he did it. But that wasn't going to happen.
They'd never exchanged a single word in all the time they'd been assigned together in the lab.
He'd been brought in, the broken product of some experimental hellhole, just like her. But where Nina had been subj
ect to mental pain, with only a side order of the physical, she had the strong feeling Simons had been placed on the modern-day equivalent of a medieval rack and every bone in his body broken.
Sometimes, it hurt to look at him.
As he pushed the door open, Hart, the third member of their happy little crew, finished packing up and stepped out from behind his table.
He didn't look her way. And that was fine with her.
There was something about Hart that made Nina nervous. The time he'd picked up his table——solid stainless steel——and thrown it at the wall, was only part of it.
Where Simons looked down, shuffled, Hart's eyes darted everywhere, but never rested on anything for long. He certainly didn't make eye contact and had never spoken to her.
She could understand why Simons kept his distance, kept his mouth shut. He was so closed off, he had no way of coming out, but Hart? Sometimes she had the sense he did want to say something, then thought better of it. Or was waiting for her to make the first move.
He'd wait a long time.
She didn't need any more complications. She didn't need any more attention.
Simons waited for Hart, holding the door, and the two of them stepped through it together, neither of them looking back at her, or acknowledging her in any way.
She packed up.
Security wouldn't get antsy until about ten minutes after five, but why make them antsy? Being a good girl was what would set her free. Not because they would finally say, okay, Nina, you're obviously no threat to anyone now, off you go.
She actually wanted to laugh at that thought.
But she still played the good girl, never causing any waves. That would give her the window she needed. One day, she'd walk out of the lab, or toward the canteen, or to her room, and a door would be open, or an opportunity would present itself, and she would take it.
Calm, smooth. And because she was such a good little girl, no one would be too jittery if she wasn't where she should be for a few minutes. Maybe even longer.
She would buy herself a nice chunk of time by being Miss Predictable and No Trouble.
She set everything straight——because that's what a good girl does——and followed Simons and Hart out of the lab.
They went to the canteen straight after shift end. Like five year olds, they sat down to their dinner at 5.15.
She was used to it now, but she remembered a time in her life when dinner at 5.15 would have made her laugh.
That time was gone, and never coming back.
As she swiped out with her card, she looked up at the camera in the corridor.
She was used to them watching. What she needed was for them to find her too boring to bother with. And while she waited for her chance, at least there were some perks. The top one being, so far, no one had tried to mess with her mind.
She really didn't like it when they did that. As Doc Greenway had found out.
Greenway had made out she was lucky he'd found her a place at this facility, and she believed him, because the alternative had been to kill her. The doc seemed to baulk at that.
She was still trying to figure out why. And why she'd been given a place here at all. They hadn't tried anything on her, and all she was doing was low-level technical work. Giving her something useful but unimportant to do to pass the time.
Maybe the doc just liked knowing he had her stashed somewhere where he could come get her when he needed her.
There had been something sullen about his attitude to her placement, like he'd been coerced into it.
He could be biding his time, waiting for whatever incident had forced him to ship out his experiments to blow over before he claimed them back.
He would do that over her dead body.
Up ahead, she could see Simons and Hart.
She frowned. They should be further ahead——at the canteen by now——and she slowed her steps. Being a good girl didn't involve getting caught up in anything with these two.
No way.
She had no reason to speak to them, and so now she simply put herself on the other side of the corridor and made to pass them.
"I wouldn't go to the canteen today, if I were you." Hart's voice was gritty, with a thick accent she couldn't quite place.
She stopped. Looked across at him.
He was standing next to Simons, not touching him, but close enough, and there was something protective in his stance.
"Why not?" she asked.
Simons shuddered and turned away from both of them to face the wall.
"Simons saw someone he knows there."
There was only one thing that could have shaken Simons out of his usual zombie mode that she could think of. "Someone from where they held him before?" Nina felt a little burn of nausea in her throat.
Hart's gaze met hers. He gave a nod.
"What's he doing in the canteen?"
"Eating dinner." Hart shrugged.
She took a step down the corridor, away from them. "Thanks for the warning but I——we——have to go to dinner. What else are we going to do?"
"I know it." Hart reached out a hand and put it on Simons shoulder. "But I got to tell you, Simons can't go into that room. There is no way."
"How about I go in, see what he's up to?" She had to go. Had to keep up the good girl image.
"Sure. But how would you let us know? Not like you could call us on our cell phones." He pronounced cell phones as two very separate words, drawing each one out sarcastically.
"No. But what can I do in this situation? And if they really want us, any of us, they don't need to grab us in the canteen. That's the last place they'd do it. Or am I the only one who gets locked into their room every night?"
Hart conceded her point with a quirk of his lips. "I'll just say this. You don't want to go in there. I was with Simons. Before. Same place. I know this guy. He's not someone you want in the same room with you, and that's a fact. I don't know if he's waiting for me in there, or Simons, or even you. Or just playing with us before he takes his victim.” He paused, scratched his arm. “Come to think of it, playing with us is just his style. And given we're the only special cases here, I have a good idea the guy is not on a social call." He leaned back against the wall, spread his arms wide. "Do you want to take the chance?"
She thought it through. Really thought it through.
"Likely, it's not me, because I've deliberately kept myself on the straight and narrow since I got here. I don't know why he would go after Simons again, he obviously succeeded in what he wanted to do there. But you?" She tapped her lips, and decided to lay all her cards on the table. "You're not okay. You haven't played it safe and that throwing-the-table thing might have made someone nervous. If its any of the three of us, it's you."
His eyes, when they met hers, were cool. She shrugged. Turned and started down the passageway.
Behind her, she heard Simons make a choking sound and she glanced over her shoulder. He was leaning forward, arms hugged tight around him, forehead resting against the permanently cold pale grey of the corridor wall.
She forced herself to keep going.
Even if they were in trouble, she couldn't help them. She was just as much a prisoner as they were.
And chances were it was Hart they were after.
She was halfway down to the canteen when she slowed. Stopped.
Turned.
Hart was watching her.
She strode back, anger in every step.
"What can I do, dammit? I was minding my own business. Biding my time. Waiting for a chance. But you? You had to throw tables. Act out. You idiot."
His eyes narrowed. “Don't hold back. Tell me how you really feel.”
She crossed her arms over her chest and at last, he looked away.
"You're right.” It sounded like Hart was forcing the words across his lips. “We have to go in to the canteen. Every door out is locked, and the cameras might not be pointed this way yet, but if we're less than a minute later than we are now,
they will be."
He started walking back to the lab, and she followed, leaving Simons rocking against the wall.
"You're going to find some weapon to use in the lab?"
Of course he was. Of course.
He gave her a sidelong look, and she knew, even though she'd work with him on this, probably die with him today, she didn't like him. Actually hated him.
He picked up a glass stirrer, and slipped it into his pocket.
She went to her table, lifted a beaker and tapped it hard against the table top. Then she took out a rubber stopper and carefully pushed a shard of sharp, thin glass into the end.
"You've been thinking about this," Hart said.
She gave him a look of disdain.
It was the only decent weapon she was going to get out of this lab, and she watched Hart follow her example, do the same with a beaker from his table.
"Tick, tock," she said.
She started for the door, and he was right behind her. They walked to Simons, and in unspoken accord, she took his right side, Hart his left, and they simply hustled him along the corridor with them.
He seemed to be completely out of it. He didn't resist and she hoped he was catatonic enough to simply go with the flow.
They were close enough to the canteen now to hear the bang of trays and the murmur of other staff as they ate their meal.
Everyday sounds.
Sounds Nina had enjoyed because back at Doc Greenway's she'd eaten in her room. There was no canteen, no sign of other life. Here at least she had the semblance of normality, the illusion of freedom.
Perhaps that was part of the way they controlled her.
It was a hurtful, breath-squeezing thought and she forced herself to let it go as she followed Hart and Simons through the door.
Hart's gaze flicked to the right and she turned her head casually.
The new maintenance guy was in his usual place. He'd been here three days in a row now, and just like every time she came in, his gaze met hers. She jerked away instinctively.
He unnerved her. No one here had ever looked at her so directly before. It was well known that management did not tolerate fraternization and no one had so much as glanced her way.
They had explained it to her in nice, easy to understand words when she'd first got here. She could eat in the canteen with the staff who didn't know she wasn't here willingly, but if she said anything, did anything, to ask for help, or let someone know her situation, they would kill the person she told and she would be eating in her room from then on.
Breaking Out: Part I Page 5