by Debra Webb
“I want to know who you really are,” she demanded, fury making her eyes glow with fire.
“All right.”
She looked startled, as if she’d expected a fight.
He sat down in one of the chair’s facing the sofa and waited for her to take a seat there. He needed the distance the small expanse of floor and the coffee table between them would provide.
“I came from this place you recall as Center.”
She trembled, but didn’t make a run for it as he’d feared she might do.
“The dreams you’ve experienced for so many years have a basis in truth.”
“Explain,” she ordered, unable to wait even a second for the full explanation.
“You and I are the same. We were created at Center. Genetically designed to be superior to other humans.”
This was when the denial kicked in. “That’s insane.” She bounded off the sofa and glared at him. “Do you really expect me to believe that?”
He opened his hands to her, revealing his unmarred palms. “Look closely, Darby.”
She leaned toward him, stared at the hands that had touched her intimately only this morning. But her distraction with the pleasure he’d wrought had kept her from noticing that not a single abrasion or cut remained from his rock-climbing adventure just yesterday.
“How did…” Her gaze collided with his and challenge gleamed there. “That proves nothing.”
“How do you suppose I know your every thought?” He smiled. “Well, almost your every thought. You block my touch at times.”
She blinked, startled. “I…that still doesn’t explain what you’re doing here or this outrageous story about my being created at that place.”
She started to pace, her long hair swinging around her waist as she executed an about-face and started in the other direction. Her conservative “teacher” garb couldn’t hide the sexy, vibrant woman beneath. He couldn’t lose her. He had to make her see…to make her understand.
“Doctors Archer and Galen perfected gene manipulation. They designed a team of Enforcers to protect the nation’s interests. Each of us—” he placed his hand against his chest “—has our own special abilities. You and I are seers. We can feel disaster coming…can read the senses and, at times, the thoughts of others. Superior strength and intelligence. The ability to heal at an accelerated rate.”
He could see her remembering a childhood without illness, a broken bone that healed overnight. She couldn’t deny his words though she wanted desperately to do just that.
She shook her head, pausing in her pacing to stare at him. “I don’t have any superior strength. This so-called gift I have is totally unreliable. How can you say we’re the same?”
“You merely lack the training and education I have. You haven’t been properly instructed in the art of focusing your gift. That’s the only difference. Your superior strength has been restrained all these years, but it’s there. You are special, Darby. Not like others.”
“Just stop,” she fairly shouted. “I don’t want to hear this. Center isn’t a good place. It’s bad. They wanted to keep me prisoner…they’re still looking for me.”
He drew in a deep, fortifying breath, gathered his thoughts before continuing. “It’s true that we are not allowed to leave Center as children. But it’s necessary for our own protection. If the rest of the world discovered our genetic superiority, we would be looked upon as lab rats to be analyzed. The ability to design superior beings would fall into the wrong hands and mankind as we know it would collapse.”
Darby shook her head and huffed her disbelief. What he expected her to believe was totally insane. Sci-fi city. How could he believe such nonsense? She refused to consider that his hands, had, in fact, healed overnight without leaving the first scar.
“Once our training is complete and we reach a certain status, we are allowed to leave Center. We are assigned missions, as I was assigned to this one.”
Her gaze tangled with his once more. That was the real reason he was here. Center had sent him. The men in the white coats.
“Why did they send you here?” Willis had been right. This had nothing to do with Lester.
Aidan remained silent for a time. She could see him weighing the words he was about to say.
“Your dreams are right, Darby,” he admitted. “When you feigned failure, Center released you from the program. You were mainstreamed into the population and all continued as it should until Lester’s case brought attention to the gift you had suppressed.” He stared at her for two beats before going on. His eyes begged her to trust him, but how could she? “Dr. Galen,” he went on, “was banished from Center years ago. He has worked hard since to bring us down. When your existence was revealed by the media, Center feared that Galen would try to use you against us.”
The man in the white coat. “So Galen is one of the men in my dreams wearing the white lab coat,” she said, knowing the answer before he replied.
“Yes. He and Dr. Archer. There were others. Lab techs and such.”
“Dr. Archer is the one that I sense is kind,” she persisted, wanting to know more details.
Aidan nodded, then added, “Was. Dr. Galen saw to it that he was eliminated. He’s ruthless, Darby. You must understand how dangerous he is. He wants you and he will stop at nothing to have you.”
Her gaze narrowed. He was hiding something from her. “And what exactly is Center’s role in this? Why were you sent here?”
He stood and moved toward her. She backed away, not wanting to connect with him on any level until she knew everything.
“I came to protect you from Galen.”
“And to see just what I remembered?” she suggested, suddenly certain that evaluating her status was top priority.
“Yes,” he admitted. Those dark eyes looked dull with pain. He didn’t want to tell her any more, but she would know all of it.
She thought of what Willis had told her about the Interpol incident. These Enforcers from Center were vested with the responsibility of keeping the world safe, in a manner of speaking. She’d read enough thrillers and seen enough movies on the subject to know what happened in cases where their secrets were in jeopardy.
“So Center is this big secret,” she commented. “I managed to get loose all those years ago until I suddenly resurface, flaunting the gift I’d sworn I didn’t possess. What were you supposed to do if you learned that I knew too much?” That was the key—she felt it so surely that her soul wept with the knowledge.
“If I learned that you posed a security risk, you were to be eliminated.”
“So you came here to kill me.” The words came out harsh, every bit as cold as the ice currently freezing every muscle, including her heart.
“If necessary.” He reached out to her, closed his long fingers around one arm. She couldn’t move…couldn’t evade his touch. His words had paralyzed her. “Falling in love with you wasn’t supposed to happen. I didn’t know that they’d created us to be together…that the connection would be so strong. I won’t let them hurt you. You must trust me.”
How could she trust the man who’d been sent to kill her?
“I want you to leave,” she said hollowly, the words lacking any real conviction, but no less clear in their meaning. “Now. Don’t ever come back.”
“Don’t do this,” he begged. “I’m the only one who can protect you.”
She laughed, the sound dry, empty, just like her soul. “And who’s going to protect me from you?”
Before he could answer, the telephone rang.
She turned sharply and strode to the table where it sat at the other end of the sofa. “Hello.” The shaky word reflected every bit of the hurt shuddering through her.
There was no hiding the pain…the anger.
“Darby, this is Detective Willis.”
She closed her eyes and held on to the receiver with both hands. She didn’t want to talk to him right now. She didn’t want to talk to anyone.
A rush of energ
y cut through her, shook her to the core of her being.
“What’s happened?” she demanded abruptly, certain that something horrible had occurred…something she had caused.
“Penny Wiseman is missing. She was taken exactly like the others…he left the same flowers behind…but he also left a note.”
Goose bumps raced over her flesh. This wasn’t possible. Lester was dead. Not Lester, she realized with a sinking feeling that made her sway. “What did the note say?” Her knees tried to give way beneath her, but she fought to hold herself steady. She had to hear this…had to know what she’d missed seeing while distracted by the fight with Aidan.
“He said that he was waiting for you…that you would know the place. If you don’t come alone…the child dies.”
Fear tightened like a noose around her throat.
She did know…she’d dreamed it just this morning.
Chapter Fourteen
Darby sat in the darkness of Aidan’s car. In five more minutes, they would go inside the dilapidated warehouse Galen had selected for this confrontation.
He hadn’t called or given specific instructions and though her senses had failed her to a degree, Aidan knew right where Galen was the moment they approached the waterfront. She hadn’t wanted him to come with her…still didn’t want him here, but she’d needed his power to see.
He said nothing but she could feel him watching her, trying to read her thoughts. Well, her ability to see might be diluted, as he called it, by her too keen human emotions, but she was still the key to this operation.
Galen wanted her. He would release the unharmed child when Darby turned herself over to him.
When Aidan’s involvement had proven necessary, she had made him swear that he would take the child and leave. He had told her he would, but she wasn’t sure she could trust that promise.
It wasn’t as if she’d had much choice, since he could see Galen’s location and she couldn’t.
The matter was simple—she needed him, whether she wanted to or not.
She closed her eyes and pushed away the other thoughts that tried to penetrate her concentration. The memory of making love with him…of his saving her life in that swamp. The way he’d kissed her beneath the water to keep her still and quiet…giving her his last breath.
The tears brimmed instantly and she hated herself for being so weak. Where was that damned strength she was genetically designed to possess? Why couldn’t she be stronger than this?
“It’s time.”
She brushed a tear from her cheek with the back of her hand and faced the man who’d spoken. “This is my show. I say when it’s time.”
Aidan restrained the need to touch her. He wanted desperately to make her trust him again, but that wasn’t going to happen. By the time she realized the truth of his words, it would be too late.
He knew the events that would unfold in that warehouse and he would do all he could to change the final ending. But a part of him sensed that his fate was unchangeable.
He was going to die tonight.
“I’m ready,” she said, her voice quivering.
Aidan resisted the impulse to smile. She was so damned strong. Stronger than she knew. Her life would be good. She would make a difference in many ways. The world was a better place with Darby Shepard.
She was out of the car before he could come around the hood and open her door.
“Remember,” she said, those sandy colored eyes lifting to meet his, “the moment you have Penny in your arms, I want you out of there. No deviations. Okay?”
“There’s just one thing,” he countered. The glimmer of tears in her eyes ripped open his chest and tore out his heart. Never had he known such pain.
She folded her arms and glared at him with even more defiance and disdain. “What’s that?”
He kissed her…pulled her against him. He didn’t care who watched…didn’t care how angry the move made her. He could not die without kissing her one last time.
She tasted so sweet…so good. He wanted to remember that…to remember her forever…to make her a part of his soul. He’d lost her once; this time, he fully intended to take a part of her with him for all eternity.
The wetness slipping down her face startled him, made him draw back. The hot, salty droplets streamed down her cheeks. “Don’t make this any worse than it already is,” she murmured woodenly.
He nodded and scrubbed a hand over his face. He couldn’t be sure if the dampness there had come from her or from him.
She turned away and started toward the entrance to the warehouse. O’Riley and the team he had assembled were out there somewhere. Aidan had alerted his superior the instant Darby got the call from Willis. A man of great foresight, O’Riley had had a team standing by.
They couldn’t get too close, however, for fear of triggering Galen’s thermal scans. If he suspected the presence of others, he would kill the child. Aidan’s presence was expected. Galen would likely be quite suspicious if Aidan didn’t show.
The last thing he wanted to do was disappoint the bastard.
Darby had given Detective Willis a location on the other side of town. The detective would be seriously annoyed when he realized he’d been had.
But it would be too late then.
Aidan climbed the steps of the platform flanking the front of the warehouse ahead of Darby. The smell of decaying fish lingered in the air. Rats in search of nourishment ran this way and that as he took the final step. The ambient sounds of night and the water lapping against the pillars supporting the pier were all that broke the silence.
At the entrance, he faced Darby. “You go in ahead of me. I’ll be right behind you.”
Darby didn’t like that suggestion. Didn’t trust him to do what he’d promised. “If you do anything that gets that little girl killed,” she threatened, still angry with herself for being so affected by his kiss even now, “I swear, Aidan, I’ll kill you myself.”
His smile was slow and arrogant, caressed by the moonlight and so damned beautiful that new tears came to her eyes in spite of her anger. He looked just as he had the first time she saw him. Dressed completely in black, including that long, sexy duster that gave him the look of a night creature.
“You have my word that I will do nothing to further endanger you or the child.”
She rolled her eyes and made a sound of disbelief. “Like I can trust anything you say.”
He took her chin in his hand and forced her to look at him. “You can trust me, Darby Shepard,” he said firmly. “Remember that always.”
She pulled free of his touch. Dammit. Why did he have to make her feel that way? She wanted to stay angry with him…wanted to hurt him the way he’d hurt her.
“Whatever,” she muttered and turned back to the door.
Darby took a breath and firmed her courage. Time to face the music. Penny was counting on her. If Galen wanted Darby, he could have her just so long as he didn’t hurt that little girl. But the moment that child was out of harm’s way, Darby intended to kill that bastard…or die trying.
A flash of light stabbed deep into her brain; images from her dream last night followed hot on its heels. She was in the warehouse…watching. The little girl in her dreams hadn’t been her…Penny. It was Penny. No one left but Galen. A pain pierced her chest…Aidan. The image of him being stabbed through the chest exploded in her mind.
It was all coming true…just like she’d seen it.
Oh, God.
“You can’t come in.” She whirled around to demand that Aidan leave right now. “You have—”
He was gone.
She hadn’t heard him move…hadn’t sensed his absence.
A chill permeated her being, sank all the way to her soul. He was already inside…killed his men one by one.
It was happening exactly as it had in the dream.
She had to stop it.
Inside the building was silence. The two-story structure had seen better days, felt as old as time. An image of pirate
s hiding their booty flashed in her mind. She swallowed back the fear climbing into her throat. She had to be strong…brave. Penny’s and Aidan’s lives depended upon her.
Rats scurried across the old wooden floor, their feet making a sound that sent a shiver up her spine. She hated rats.
Her heart thumped violently against her sternum. She allowed the image of Aidan and the way he touched her…kissed her to distract her mind from the fear. She would not be afraid. Aidan loved her…she knew he did. All they had to do was survive this night.
Aidan would die before help arrived.
She denied the voice that whispered through her mind. No, he would not die. She would not let him die.
Your life is in grave danger.
Madam Talia’s voice.
She’d been right.
So damned right.
Large wooden crates were stacked two and three high all around the enormous room. She moved through the rows of crates, her gaze sweeping left to right. She turned down an aisle and stumbled.
A body.
Her breath caught.
A man in black combat gear lay sprawled in the aisle, his neck twisted at an odd angle.
He was dead…Aidan had killed him…one by one.
It had begun.
She wove her way between the stacks of crates, moving toward the rear of the warehouse. To where Galen waited with the child. She could feel his presence now. She hadn’t even seen him and she hated him already.
The next stack of crates she cleared brought her into a wide clearing where a couple of desks cluttered with papers stood. Her mind immediately flashed the image of shipping clerks working madly at the desks. Carts sat here and there, loaded with the necessary supplies, including box cutters, twine, drill drivers, hammers, pry bars and varying lengths of steel for bracing items to be packed.
On the far side of the open space, a man stepped out of the shadows to stand in the fringes of the light. The little girl was at his side. She whimpered but didn’t dare move. He’d rigged her in such a way that if she moved the rope looped around her tiny neck would tighten.