by CW Browning
Alina's lips curved into a responding smile.
“Me either,” she admitted.
Damon smiled slowly and leaned toward her. Alina felt the moist heat coming off his body as the water from the shower evaporated from his skin. She got a big whiff of his shower gel before his lips settled warmly on hers. The action just seemed so natural, so right, and she was lifting her arms to his shoulders when she remembered why she was there. Pulling her lips from his, she pushed him away gently.
“Start that and we won't stop,” she told him, slightly breathless.
His dark eyes were unreadable as he smiled slightly and went back to his razor.
“Then you'd better start taking my mind off of that,” he retorted. He missed Alina's grin.
“Regina Cummings.”
“Well, that will do it,” he muttered, spreading shaving cream on his jaw. Alina shifted away slightly. “What about her?”
“You know her from boot camp,” she told him.
Hawk paused in the act of lifting the razor to his face. His startled gaze met hers.
“Yes!” he exclaimed, staring at her. “You broke her leg!”
“Yes,” she agreed with a nod. “Well, I broke Lani Cunningham's leg, to be exact,” she qualified.
Damon's chest was gleaming with droplets of water and Alina tucked her hands under her legs on the counter to prevent herself from reaching out to smooth them away.
“Didn't she get discharged after that?” he asked, turning his attention to the shadow growing in on his face.
“Yes.” Alina watched him, her mind darting back in time. “She just disappeared from training,” she murmured. “I'm almost ashamed to say it, but I never thought of her again.”
“I suppose her cousin had something to do with her discharge,” Damon commented, turning on the faucet and rinsing his razor under the water before going back to his jaw.
“Yep.” Alina turned her attention to the wall opposite, her gaze thoughtful. “Did we know at the time that she had rich relatives in politics?”
“I doubt it,” Damon murmured. “I don't think we knew much about anyone. Didn't you break her leg in a training exercise?”
“It was a defense exercise,” Alina answered with a nod, the memory coming back. She frowned slightly. “At the time, I just wanted to get through the round so I could move on to a more challenging opponent. She wasn't much of a fighter. She had the basics down, but she wasn't a very smart fighter.”
Alina paused and her frown deepened. Damon glanced at her. Her eyes were fixed on the wall opposite her, staring at something he couldn't see or remember.
“We got into the ring and she went kind of crazy,” Alina said slowly. “I put her down almost immediately, but then she snuck an attack from behind after the instructor called match.”
Alina remembered walking to the side of the padded ring, thinking she was finished, when hands suddenly tried to close around her throat. She had reacted on pure instinct, dropping and spinning around, sweeping her leg to take the legs out from under her opponent. Lani, as she was known then, had gone down heavily with a cry and Alina felt the crack when her ankle made contact with Lani's shin. She remembered it now, a long forgotten memory, and grimaced slightly.
“I broke her tibia.” Alina's gaze came back into focus and she glanced at Damon to find him watching her, his eyes hooded. “The medic told me later that it was already cracked, probably from the drills.”
“I remember now,” Hawk said slowly. “You were walking to the side of the ring. You were done.” Alina nodded and Damon went back to his face, turning his attention to the other side. “What reminded you of all this?” he asked, focusing his attention on his jaw. “You haven't even seen the pictures yet.”
“My contact in Egypt,” Alina told him. “That's who I was talking to on the laptop. She dug it up. As soon as she said the name, Lani Cunningham, I remembered.”
Damon rinsed his razor, turning off the water, and Alina handed him another towel. He took it with a nod of thanks, wiping his face.
“Why do I feel like there's something more?” he asked her, lowering the towel. His blue eyes met hers and Alina smiled slightly.
“Because you know you haven't asked the one question that you should have asked right away,” she retorted.
Hawk grinned and tossed the towel aside, leaning his hip against the vanity and staring at her.
“Why did she change her name?” he asked.
Alina's lips curved into a grin and she couldn't stop herself from leaning forward and pressing a soft kiss on his smooth jaw.
“Because the Cunningham side of the family has a documented history of mental illness, drug addiction, and violence,” Viper whispered a moment later.
She leaned back and brown eyes met blue. Damon thought again how much he preferred her deep brown eyes over the strange, green contacts. When she spoke again, those brown eyes glinted slightly.
“The future Vice President of the United States couldn't be associated with that part of the family, now could he?”
Chapter Sixteen
“What do you mean, he's dead?!” Regina stalked across the patio angrily, her cell phone pressed against her ear. “What happened?”
She stopped just outside the pool of light cast from the outside spotlights and stared at the blooms of a huge potted Delphinium, listening intently to the voice on the phone. As the voice went on, her grip on the phone tightened.
“Well, where's the body?” she finally demanded, keeping her voice pitched low so that she wouldn't be overheard. The answer didn't please her and she reached out and swatted the tall spike of blue flowers before her ruthlessly. “What the hell are they doing with it?!” she exclaimed, swinging around and stalking across the long patio again.
Regina stomped past potted plants and rattan patio furniture without giving them a glance, her eyes narrowed into slits, until she reached the other side of the patio. She came to a stop and glared at her feet while she listened to the report in her ear.
“What about his laptop? Where's that?” she demanded after a few moments. The answer made her let loose with a stream of profanity. “Everything? They took everything?”
“Reggie?”
A tall man stepped outside, glancing around. Regina swung around and waved, pasting a smile on her face. She motioned to the phone apologetically.
“Look, I can't talk now,” Regina hissed into the phone. “Find out the cause of death and call me later. And find out why the damn Feds have everything!” she added harshly before pressing end on her phone.
“Everything ok?”
Alex moved further onto the patio toward her and Regina smiled brightly, striding forward into the light to meet him.
“Fine,” she answered calmly. “Something cropped up at the security firm, that's all. Nothing to be worried about.”
Alex looked down at her and nodded.
“Good,” he said. “I don't think I can take any more surprises today.”
Regina smiled reassuringly at him and tucked her hand into his arm, turning him back toward the house.
“No surprises here,” she replied soothingly. “Let's have a cocktail, and then I'm going to head home. I'm just exhausted tonight.”
Alex patted her hand.
“It has been a long day,” he agreed.
Regina nodded and they stepped off the patio and into the house. Neither of them noticed the Secret Service agent that had become a fixture in their vicinity two years before. He faded back into the night silently once they were both safely inside and pulled out his phone.
Michael sipped his scotch and stared at the map on the wall of his dining room broodingly. It was almost two in the morning and he couldn't sleep. He was still trying to wrap his mind around the bizarre events of the past two days. Was it really only two days? It seemed unreal that so much could have happened in one short weekend. It was even more unreal that he couldn't seem to make heads or tails out of any of it. All he knew for ce
rtain was that out there, somewhere, was Viper.
And, somehow, everything hinged on her.
A week ago, he would have been convinced that she was somehow responsible for all the events of the past two days. He would have thought, as Blake did, that it was Viper who had shot two men and tried to blow up a Federal Agent. He would have wondered if she was coming after him next.
Now, as he stared at the map with all the red pins dotted over it, Michael was just as sure that she wasn't directly responsible for any of it. Given the massive amount of information he had discovered in the past few days regarding the assassin called The Engineer, coupled with Ms. Walker's remarks, Michael was becoming more and more convinced that Viper was working on the side of justice. The question plaguing him was whose justice she was fighting for: hers or her country's? Or both?
And where was she now? After assaulting him, had she remained in the city? Michael frowned and sipped his scotch again, his eyes drifting to his laptop. He felt that she was still nearby. It was just a gut feeling that he hadn't shared with anyone, but Michael suspected that she hadn't left the area. She was on a manhunt. Viper wouldn't leave until she finished what she was here to do.
Michael was still staring absently at the map when his email alert dinged. He set his glass down and leaned forward, clicking on his email to open the new message. It was another message from a contact in Interpol. It told him the same thing as countless other messages the past few days. Yes, they were aware of an international assassin known as The Engineer. He was a phantom. People said he had a 100% success rate, but they had no information on him other than his existence. They didn't know if he was or had been in the US recently. Michael closed the email with a sigh and deleted it. He sat back in the chair again and reached for the scotch.
Viper seemed to be the only one in the world who thought that the Engineer had been in New Jersey three months ago. Was that because she had seen him? Had she followed him there? Or, as was implied by all her actions since, had something more sinister brought the international assassin there? Had someone in Washington paid him to come to the US? And, if so, why?
Michael frowned ferociously and got up impatiently to refill his glass at the sideboard. He poured two fingers of scotch and turned to stare across the room once more at the map hanging on the wall. He took a slow, deep breath and walked over to the map, staring at the Eastern seaboard of the United States. His mind churned as he gazed at the tiny finger hanging off the coast beneath New York.
Viper wanted him to find out who paid The Engineer to go to Jersey. He had been poking around now for four days and all he had to show for it were more questions, two dead bodies shot while tied to a chair, and two missing windows in his house. Her agency wouldn't release any information to help him, and his agency was making his job harder by issuing unfounded alerts saying she was in the area, alerts that they were bound to justify in the morning by pointing to the rash of .45 slugs popping up everywhere.
Michael frowned. It wasn't looking good for the mysterious Viper, he admitted. All they needed now was to find out that her weapon of choice was a .45 and the water-boarding team would be getting the hoses ready. If they managed to take her alive, Michael qualified to himself. Somehow, his gut was telling him that whomever hired the Engineer had no intention of doing that.
“Talk to me, Viper,” Michael whispered. “Tell me what I need to know so that I can help you.”
Hawk was floating on the waves of the ocean, weightless, drifting along the steady rise and fall of the tide. His body felt separated from his mind. If he opened his eyes, Damon was sure he would be looking down at himself, but his eyelids were too heavy to lift. He couldn't see his body being carried along by the waves, he could only feel it.
He had experienced this feeling once before, in the distant past. Hawk reached out his hands, trying to grasp the fleeting memory, but it dissolved like mist as soon his fingers touched it and his hands fell into the water again with a splash.
What happened? Where was Viper? How had he ended up in the ocean?
Questions swirled in and out of his mind, hampered in their progress by his intent concentration on the sensation of floating. The tides were fading now and his body had stopped, no longer being carried forward. He was suspended, bobbing with the under-current. The air above him was silent as the lapping of waves against his ears gently assaulted his senses. The mix of silence and waves confused him. Hawk tried to open his eyes again, but they refused to cooperate.
He frowned, forcing his mind to concentrate. The last thing he remembered was Viper kissing him in the bathroom. He had just finished shaving and she had leaned forward on her own, with no encouragement, and kissed him. She had! Right on his jaw. He remembered it.
A tide pushed up beneath him and Hawk's body rose above it, riding the crest gently before descending into the valley again between waves. It reminded him of surfing when he was younger.
They had gone on vacation out to the beaches of California, where he saw the ocean for the first time. There, he discovered surfing and the rush of catching a perfect wave and riding it in to the shore. His love affair with the water had begun. He decided that summer to join the Navy. At the tender of age of ten, he made up his mind to dedicate his life to his country on the water.
It wasn't until later that Damon learned about the SEALs...
Harry glanced down at his watch and pressed the button to illuminate the dial. It was just after two in the morning and the silence surrounding the car was deafening. He lifted his eyes from the watch dial and turned his attention back to the darkness of the woods surrounding him. He still got nervous in the trees at night, a throwback from his days in the jungles of Vietnam, when survival depended largely on luck and little on yourself.
Harry sighed and leaned his head back tiredly. He was here only because there was no other choice. He thought back to Vietnam. There hadn't been any choice there, either. They had all gone because they'd been starry-eyed with tales of the Great Second World War from their fathers. They believed that they were there to fight for greatness and freedom. They had believed there was no other choice but to fight for their country as their fathers and grandfathers had done before them. In some ways, they had been right. But in others, they had been terribly wrong.
The jungle had taught him the most valuable survival skills a man could acquire, however, and Harry had the wonderful opportunity of passing them onto his pupils in later years. Hawk and Viper had both excelled in the art of jungle warfare; Hawk through his sheer determination and natural physical abilities, and Viper through her honest love for all things of nature and her grasp of how to use them to her advantage. Viper also had that uncanny ability to understand and communicate with animals, that sixth sense that made her more at home in the wilds then among ordinary civilization. Between them, Hawk and Viper were a true joy to teach. They became Harry's favorite pupils. Once they moved on in their career, they also became his friends. That friendship was about to be tested greatly.
Harry glanced at his watch once more.
It was almost time.
Viper?
Hawk tried in vain to open his eyes as he heard her voice far away. Or was that just his imagination? He couldn't hear her anymore now. His tongue was swollen and when he tried to swallow, his throat wouldn't obey his mind's command either. He was so thirsty! The ocean had made him thirsty.
The ocean...the waves....
They were gone. He wasn't in the water any longer. The rolling of the waves was gone and in its place was a controlled weightlessness. The complete stillness in which it existed was interrupted occasionally by a gentle motion. Hawk tried to determine where his body had landed. He knew what that gentle motion was, but his brain couldn't seem to convey the message to his consciousness.
Where was he?
He tried to lift his hands and found them weightless. He reached into darkness, trying to feel something, anything, to give him a clue as to where he was. His seeking fingers enco
untered only air. It was like he was in a vacuum. A silent, noiseless vacuum.
Except...there had been noise. He had heard Viper's voice...hadn't he?
Damon took a deep breath and tried to relax his mind. His mind knew where he was. His mind knew what had happened. He just had to extract the information he needed in order to know how he could regain control of his motor skills. Hawk exhaled slowly and focused on the sensation of nothingness because that was where the something was.
Because he was somewhere. He was breathing. He was thinking. He was alive.
He just had to remember....
Michael sat back in his chair, rubbing his eyes and yawning widely. It was past three now and he had been staring at the laptop screen for over an hour, pouring through documents from all the agencies. He had discovered quite a few shocking discrepancies between funding and expenditure within Homeland Security, but nothing to lead him any closer to what he needed to know. Glancing at his watch, Michael sighed and stretched. It was time to call it a night. He would continue tomorrow. God willing, he may get a few hours of sleep in yet.
He was starting to log off when an alert he'd never seen before popped up in the bottom, right-hand corner of the screen. Frowning, he clicked on it. A black DOS box flashed up and rapidly streamed some script, disappearing before he could click it closed. Michael stared at his screen dumbfounded.
What the hell was that?
He was still staring at the screen, waiting for something to happen, when the entire screen suddenly went black. Michael scowled, about to hit the power button to shut the whole thing down, when white text appeared at the top of the screen. He realized with a shock that someone had opened a remote chat screen on his laptop.
Any luck with The Engineer?
Michael stared at the text, his heart thumping almost out of his chest. How the hell had Viper broken into his personal network? He had it secured and locked down so that no one could access it. No one at all.