Athena Force 9: Payback

by Harper Allen

  Through the soles of her sneakers she felt the more stable surface of the road. Taking two last shuffling steps, she set the rear of the hatchback unceremoniously down onto its tires. Slowly she uncurled her grip from the bumper, her arms and back feeling as if they were on fire.

  She ignored the searing sensation and straightened to her full height. Behind the glasses her eyes squeezed tightly shut. “When the abilities are gone, what’s left?” she asked in an uneven whisper. “Face it, O’Shaughnessy, nothing…and that’s why you’re terrified for the first time in your life. Not because of the pain you’re going to suffer if this process isn’t reversed, not because you could die, but because before the end comes you’ll be revealed for what you are—a lab rat whose enhanced sight couldn’t help her see the truth, whose strength only masked the weakness that allowed Aldrich Peters to manipulate her for so long, whose regenerative powers couldn’t heal her destroyed soul. Any one of the Cassandras is more of a superwoman than you are. A mother working two shifts just to bring in enough money to keep her children fed is more of a superwoman than Dawn O’Shaughnessy ever was.”

  For a moment longer she stood there, her posture slightly bowed as if she were still carrying a crushing weight. Then she opened her eyes and thrust back her shoulders, becoming once again the implacable figure Kayla Ryan had confronted in the Athena Academy gym more than nine months ago.

  “But of course, you’re not Dawn O’Shaughnessy now, are you?” Her voice was no longer uneven, but harshly flat. “You’re Dawn Swanson, and don’t you forget it…because like Lee Craig used to say, sometimes all that’s left is to live the lie.”

  She turned on her heel. Wrenching open the driver’s side door, she slid in behind the wheel again, started the car and resumed the last few miles of her journey.

  “I’m a biochem assistant. As long as the labs here aren’t run with the same inefficiency as security appears to be, I’m really not interested in how your people screwed up the paperwork on me.”

  Dawn wondered if she was overdoing the pedantic monotone in her voice, but decided to keep going with it. Even if she hadn’t recognized Asher from the photo in his file, the ID tag on his uniform would have told her she was dealing with the man whose suspicions she most needed to allay. Just your bad luck he’s a hands-on kind of guy, she told herself, who has standing orders to be notified by the gate guards whenever a new employee shows up. Even worse luck that someone here made a mistake over my gender—unless this is another example of that little weasel Carter’s sense of humor.

  But even Carter knew better than to pull something like this, she reflected. “William London certainly knew I was a female when he hired me,” she went on. “If you’ve got a problem with my name being spelled D-a-w-n instead of D-o-n, take it up with him. In the meantime, I’d like to settle in and start work.”

  She shoved her glasses higher onto the bridge of her nose and gave him a sullen stare in keeping with the persona Carter had chosen for Dawn Swanson, but behind the lenses her belligerent gaze was unobtrusively taking a first real look at the man Aldrich Peters had claimed would be her most dangerous opponent on this assignment.

  “Assassinate him first?” Thinking quickly, she’d shaken her head in sharp disagreement when Peters had issued the order in his office two days ago. “Sorry, Doctor, but when I’m working undercover it’s my neck on the line. That gives me a vested interest in the decisions I make. I’ll take out Des Asher if and when I feel the action’s warranted, but if I can complete the assignment without resorting to that, so much the better.”

  Peters had raised an eyebrow. “You sound like a woman who’s lost her nerve. Or at least her taste for killing.”

  “No, I sound like my Uncle Lee,” she’d replied evenly. “He’s the one who taught me any thug off the street can pull a trigger if he doesn’t care about losing his own life. A professional completes the assignment, gets out safely, and lives to work another day. I’m doing this my way.”

  Aldrich hadn’t put up any further argument—most likely, Dawn guessed, because with her as the best Lab 33 assassin, he was forced to recognize the merit of her argument. So you owe me, buddy, she thought as she assessed the fatigues-clad SAS captain who had abruptly walked a few feet away from her and was now conferring with a soldier in the guard shack by the facility’s high barbed-wire gates. I’m not saying you’d have been a cinch to take out, judging from what I’ve heard about the combat training you Special Air Services types receive, but in a one-on-one between the two of us, my money would have been on me.

  He didn’t really fit her preconceived notion of a Brit, she thought with a frown as, impatience showing in every inch of his more than six-foot frame, he bent his head over a logbook a subordinate had handed him. In his late twenties or early thirties, he was deeply tanned, for one thing—a legacy, she supposed, of his recent service in the Middle East, which had been all too sketchily described in the bio she’d read. Peters had shown irritation at the lack of detail Lab 33’s investigators had been able to dig up on Asher’s military career, but Dawn herself had felt a private sense of relief. If Peters’s people hadn’t managed to uncover what assignments the SAS had given Des Asher, there was a good chance her own activities during the months she’d been AWOL would remain undiscovered.

  But besides the tan and the heavy biceps straining the rolled-up sleeves of his fatigues, there were other incongruities that bothered her. So far he’d shown none of the famed politeness she’d always associated with the English. His manner, as he’d taken her credentials from her and then thrust them back, had been decidedly dismissive, and although she was unable to catch his low-voiced conversation with the soldier by the guard shack, at least twice he’d uttered back-alley curses loud enough for her to overhear.

  He didn’t like his job. The revelation came to her with the conviction of absolute certainty, and behind the glasses her gaze narrowed. No, it was more than that, she thought slowly, taking in the tight set of Asher’s jaw, the barely controlled anger displayed as he raked a hand through short-cropped, burnt-pewter hair. He hated what he was doing.

  Which means we’ve got one thing in common, big guy, she thought as he handed the logbook to the guard and met her watchful gaze before she could avert her eyes. Too bad we’re working on opposite sides or I might have let you buy me a shot of Stoli and told you my reservations about this assignment before buying you a round of warm British beer and letting you fill me in on how you ended up in a dead-end job, baby-sitting your famous uncle.

  On second thought, she told herself as Asher nodded curtly to a younger officer who had stopped his jeep in front of the guard shack and was glancing curiously in her direction, maybe it was better having him as an opponent. His antagonism would keep her focused, and right now that was what she needed most.

  Her headache had returned. This time she couldn’t afford to give in to it.

  “If the paperwork’s screwed, my people didn’t do it.” Without pausing to talk to the young officer exiting the jeep, Asher strode from the guard shack and came to a halt directly in front of her. He continued, his manner barely civil. “I’d advise you to contact whoever sent you here and get them to resubmit your information. Until you do you’re not getting past this gate.”

  The hand he clamped onto her upper arm was like a band of iron…or maybe it was just that her headache had progressed to the point that every nerve ending felt raw. This attack was ten times worse—try twenty times, Dawn thought with a sharply indrawn breath—than those she’d so far experienced, but judging from those previous ones it couldn’t last much longer. All she had to do was ride it out.

  Easier said than done, O’Shaughnessy, she told herself tightly. And it’s not ultrahelpful that Mr. Freakin’ Special Air Services has his damn hand welded to my arm right now. If he’d just ease up for a second so I could concentrate on shutting down the jackhammer that’s pounding away in my—

  His hard tone broke through the thin veneer of control
she was trying to establish. “Letting strangers into a restricted area when their credentials don’t check out isn’t the way I work. On your way, lady.”

  Without warning, the pain soared to an unbearable crescendo inside her head, escalating its assault until it took all her energy just to stay upright. No one could endure this, Dawn thought in numb agony, no longer caring whether her face revealed what was happening inside her. She’d been trained to take pain, to resist pain, to rise above pain, and all that training didn’t matter a damn. She wasn’t going to get through this.

  A long way away a voice was speaking, the low and deadly tones searing enough to dimly penetrate the haze of unconsciousness that was shutting down her senses. Faint hope stirred in her. Was the pain losing its grip? Was there still a chance she could win this fight? Drawing on reserves she’d thought were already exhausted, she focused on the voice with the desperation of a swimmer going under for the third time—going under and hallucinating, she thought hazily. Because that voice sounds weirdly familiar, O’Shaughnessy—so familiar that if I didn’t know better I’d say it was your own.

  “Call William London and get this straightened out, dammit! Because if you don’t, I swear I’ll—”

  “Ash! Put the gun down! Lady, back away from him or I’ll shoot you myself!”

  The shouted commands came from the officer who’d gotten out of the Jeep. No longer standing by the shack, he was now only a few yards away and leveling his rifle at her, but as inexplicable as his actions were, Dawn barely registered them.

  Her headache was gone. As instantly as if a switch had been turned off somewhere inside her head, the pain had simply stopped. Shaky relief filled her, but even as it did she stiffened in shock.

  In her hand was a stilettolike piece of steel. The tip of it was pressed to Des Asher’s tanned throat, hard enough so that it was making an impression. She couldn’t even remember snapping the antenna off the hatchback behind her and lunging at him with it, but Asher had apparently reacted with almost the same speed as she’d displayed.

  Because in his left hand was a heavy semiautomatic—a Sig Sauer P226, the weapon he would have been issued upon joining the SAS. The muzzle of the revolver was jammed into the space between her top left rib and her breast, aiming its load of nine-millimeter parabellum rounds toward her heart.

  Glittering gray eyes stared down at her. “If you want to get out of this alive, put down that antenna and tell me again what you do for a living…and this time leave out the biochem assistant crap.” The words were scarcely above a mutter, but with his mouth only inches from hers she had no trouble hearing them.

  She’d blown her cover. The realization tore through the fog clouding Dawn’s brain and icy clarity flooded in. What had happened just now? Why had she gone into attack mode for no good reason? She was a professional, dammit—she didn’t make mistakes like this! Had she lost her edge, as Peters had suspected she might?

  But the answers to those questions would have to wait. All that mattered at the moment was that she was going to have to abort the assignment and return to Lab 33 empty-handed. With no chance now of Aldrich Peters reversing her degeneration in time, she’d as good as signed her own death warrant.

  Not only mine, but Lynn’s and Faith’s, she thought with corrosive self-recrimination. Whatever’s happening to my cells will be happening to theirs, even if they aren’t displaying the same symptoms I’ve been experienc—

  She blinked, her mind racing. Slowly she lowered the snapped-off antenna she was holding, and saw the man in front of her warily do the same with his weapon.

  That was it—the reason she’d gone ballistic just now, that she’d allowed herself to forget everything Lee Craig had ever taught her about her profession. Aldrich Peters had predicted her body would begin to turn on itself, but her guesses about how that would unfold hadn’t gone far enough. Nothing she’d imagined could even begin to approach the horror of knowing that her personality—her impulses, her emotions, her very mind—was beginning to betray her.

  She’d been raised to be Lab 33’s killing machine. She’d just seen a chilling example of what she could expect when the machine finally broke down.

  Correction, O’Shaughnessy: you’ve just seen what’ll happen if it breaks down, she told herself sharply. Now that you know what the problem is, start acting like the professional you are and try to salvage the mission.

  For the second time in as many minutes, hope replaced despair as a plan took shape in her mind. It just might work but there was no time to waste—she needed to get back into the skin of prickly, abrasive Dawn Swanson right away.

  “Don’t you ever put your hands on me again.” She forced flat hostility to her expression. “I didn’t take seven years of self-defense classes just so I could allow myself to be manhandled, and I certainly didn’t accept this position with the renowned Sir William London thinking I’d have to file a sexual harassment suit my very first day!”

  Anger darkened the gray eyes watching her. “Nice recovery, lady. It makes me wonder who the hell taught you to be so bloody slippery. Come on, you and me are going to have a cozy little chat in a quiet room.”

  He had the height, but she had the superior agility. He outweighed her, outreached her and his Sig trumped her whiplike scrap of broken car antenna, Dawn thought—but damn, she’d like to take Des Asher on.

  And you know what? she asked him silently, shifting her balance onto the balls of her feet and seeing him shift his in unconscious response. I’ll bet I could have you gasping for mercy before we were through. You’re good—I knew that when you had your weapon out and ready for me so fast a minute ago. But I’m the best.

  She didn’t allow any of her thoughts to show on her face. Instead she turned to the younger man standing a few feet away, his weapon no longer at the ready but his tense posture an indication that he hadn’t taken himself off full alert.

  “Lieutenant Keifer?” She took her attention from the nametag on his uniform—an American uniform, she noted briefly, unlike Asher’s British one—and met his eyes. He looked uncertain, she noted, which was good. “You heard what your fellow officer just said. I’ll be advising my lawyers to take a statement from you to support the legal action I intend to take. A ‘nice little chat in a quiet room’?” She turned back to Asher. “With no third parties present to monitor your behavior, I’m sure. Men like you who abuse their power to get their sexual ya-yas on would be pathetic if they weren’t so disgusting!”

  The revolted shudder was pure Dawn Swanson, Dawn thought. So was the pinch-lipped expression she was favoring him with and the stance she’d taken up. The persona Carter had created that had so annoyed her two days ago was now her only chance of explaining away her insane actions. She met Asher’s narrowed gaze, her arms belligerently crossed over her baggy sweatshirt.

  “I’m assuming ya-yas means shagging.” His smile was sharklike. “Hate to break your bubble, but save your worries for what’s going to happen after I’m through questioning you and I hand you over to the authori—”

  “She’s right, Ash,” Keifer broke in. “Putting your hand on her was way out of bounds, and as for talking about shagging—” He lowered his voice. “A sexual harassment suit’s the surest way to shoot your career down in flames. Maybe England’s different, but that kind of thing is taken seriously here.”

  Asher’s lips tightened to a line. “We’ve got rules about this in England, too. But when I attempt to escort an unverified visitor off the property and she comes within a hairbreadth of slashing open my jugular, all rules are off. After seeing the moves she’s got, my guess is she’s a bio-technician like I’m an interior decorator.” He turned his attention to Dawn. “Too bad for you that whoever you’re working for slipped up on the name. If we’d been expecting a woman, you just might have bluffed your way in.”

  “The slipup over the name, Asher?” Faint color rose under the younger man’s tan. “I took the instructions verbally from Sir William. I just assumed—”


  It was time for her to cut in, Dawn decided. “You just assumed the position had been given to a male. God, have I stepped into a time warp here?” She exhaled tightly. “Look—working with Sir William London is an honor I never thought I’d have the chance to experience. He’s a great man and a personal hero of mine. In fact—” she allowed her voice to soften and hoped the dreaminess in her eyes wasn’t obscured by the Lab 33 lenses “—when I was a student I used to have a poster of him over the bed in my dorm room. It was a picture taken in the 1950s, when he was one of Oxford’s ‘crazy young men.’”

  “Not young anymore. Still crazy as a shi—” Asher didn’t complete his muttered comment. He gave her a patently disbelieving look. “Even if I was fool enough to buy that, what’s your lukewarm fantasy life got to do with this?”

  “Ash—” Keifer sounded strained.

  “My admiration for Sir William’s got everything to do with this. I’m trying to tell you that I’d rather not have him associated, even slightly, with an embarrassing legal suit. Pick up the phone, confirm my credentials with him, and let me get started on the work I came to do. For Sir William’s sake, I’ll forget what happened here.”

  Without looking away from her, Asher spoke to the man beside him. “Do what the lady says, Keifer, but be sure you talk to the great man himself. If her story checks out, tell him from me that if he’d keep me in the loop like he’s supposed to, maybe balls-ups like this wouldn’t happen.”

  He waited until Keifer set off at a trot for the guard shack before going on. “Your story’s going to check out, isn’t it? Whoever you are, you’re not amateur enough to suggest we talk to my uncle if you weren’t confident he’d back you up.”

  Dawn feigned surprise. “William London’s your—”

  “Stow the acting,” he interrupted. “It’s just you and me right now, so listen and listen good. I’m probably going to have to let you walk past that gate, but I know damn well there’s something wrong about you. The first tip-off was the bloody glasses, in case you’re interested.”