Nick and Jon crowded into HQ right behind them. Catherine looked around, noting the monitors and chairs. The vast amount of high-tech Jon and Nick had installed that allowed them to have eyes and ears almost anywhere in the world was visible. The servers were a mile away, in a secure air-conditioned bunker. They could fly to the moon with the computing power they had.
“Sit. Please.” Catherine’s voice was high, vibrating with tension. Nick and Jon looked at each other, shrugged and sat. She gestured at him so Mac sat, too. They settled in, comfortable with the situation. This was a briefing. They’d been briefed all their adult lives and Mac knew that they all had their minds open, ready to hear what Catherine was going to say.
It was still a blow.
“Patient Nine is Captain Lucius Ward, no question,” she said baldly. Mac shifted slightly in his seat, shooting glances at Nick and Jon. She met his eyes then Nick’s and Jon’s, in turn. Mac had never seen a woman so beautiful, utterly concentrated on her task, a modern-day Joan of Arc. Her trembling started to subside as she spoke, intent on her mission.
“Now I understand he’s been held essentially a prisoner at the Millon facility. What I thought was a form of advanced dementia was pharmacologically induced. I know this now. We must go get him.”
Mac thought—What’s this “we” business?
She looked regal, like a queen mustering the troops for battle. Not Joan of Arc. Boadicea. She should have a plumed pennant streaming in the wind, riding her chariot.
Where before she was vibrating with panic, now she thrummed with determination and purpose. God, just look at her, he thought. Straight and elegant, gray eyes flashing silver like a sword caught in the light. Shiny, dark hair sliding over her shoulders as she paced back and forth. His enormous black tee looked like some elegant warrior’s cloak.
He knew every inch of the body beneath the clothes, every sleek muscle, every tender dip and hollow, knew the softness of her breasts, how hard her nipples could become . . . but now this was a new Catherine. Not the frightened, frozen woman who’d arrived—what was it? Only three days ago? Not the gentle doctor who’d helped a terrified woman bring a healthy baby into the world, not the passionate woman who’d cried out in his arms. This was another Catherine—strong and determined and just as irresistible as the others.
“He needs your help desperately. They are going to kill him tomorrow. We must go now.”
Jon was leaning back in his chair, looking relaxed. Mac knew better. His blue eyes were glittering. “Darling, you know we like you. Everybody likes you and Mac more than likes you so you’re okay in my book. But with all due respect to Mac, you don’t know anything about this. Any kind of hostage rescue takes planning and time and we are not there yet.”
When Jon was like that—when his eyes glowed and his body was coiled for a strike—people did a double-take because the danger that lived just beneath his tanned skin flashed bright, like a rapier suddenly catching the light.
But Catherine was unfazed. “I don’t care how ready you are, we must go, right now. I gave you that striking hawk. It meant something to Mac though he tried to hide it. I don’t know what but you”—she turned slowly—“all three of you know where it came from. It came from Lucius Ward. He was once one of you and he is in deadly danger right now and we are going to go get him.”
“Prove it,” Nick said suddenly. His dark eyes narrowed. “I like you, too, Catherine, but you’re asking us to risk a lot for a man who left us to die. How do you know he didn’t betray us? What real proof do you have? What are you going on? And how do you know that he’s going to be killed tomorrow? We’re not cowboys. We can’t just ride to the rescue right now on your say-so.”
Mac saw her hesitate. She shot Mac a glance but he opened his hands briefly. Empty hands. He couldn’t help her. Nobody could help her. She had to convince Nick and Jon all on her own. And whatever she wanted, he couldn’t do it without Nick and Jon.
She drew in a deep breath, blew it out. Stress reliever. “I imagine both of you were listening when Mac was interrogating me.” Nick and Jon shifted in their chairs, not saying yes, not saying no. She nodded sharply. “Quite right. I would have done the same. You’ve got a community to protect and I was an intruder.”
“Not now you’re not,” Mac growled, the words torn from his chest. Not for one second should she doubt she belonged here.
She smiled at him, the smile sad and brief. “Thanks,” she said softly. Their eyes connected and held. Damn right she was one of them. “Patient Nine couldn’t talk. I know”—she held her hand up—“I know how that sounds. He couldn’t talk so how can I know what he wanted to say? He conveyed information to me nonetheless. Important information, and he was so determined I think he opened up an avenue of communication between us.”
Jon and Nick shot glances at each other. Nick’s jaw muscles jumped.
Catherine moved until she was close to Nick, her knees touching his. “The situation is desperate and we don’t have much time. So I’m going to have to use a shortcut to convince you I communicated with your Lucius Ward.”
Without warning, she reached for Nick’s hand.
Mac tensed, ready to head off trouble. There was no way Catherine could know that Nick didn’t like being touched, by anybody. He’d seen Nick slap a man’s hand away from his shoulder so hard he broke the wrist. Mac watched Nick’s hands. Teammate or not, fellow outcast or not, if Nick made a move against Catherine, he was a fucking dead man.
But Nick didn’t move, didn’t react at all. He simply sat still as Catherine took his hand. Nick’s face never showed anything, but his jaw muscles tightened.
“Oh,” Catherine said, surprised. “Oh my.” Her eyes never left Nick’s face. Her expression softened. “She thinks of you all the time, Nick. I think . . . she loves you. Desperately. Still. After all these years.”
Mac glanced at Jon, who looked as surprised as he felt. Someone loved Nick? Cold, self-contained Nick? Christ, who knew? If she’d said that about Jon, who was a love-’em-and-leave-’em guy, okay. Jon had fucked his way across the country and over several continents. But no one had ever seen Nick with a woman. He was all cold hard mission. The job and nothing else. A lot like Mac.
Nick stirred. “I haven’t seen her—”
“Since that time.” Catherine nodded. “I know. But she still loves you, nonetheless.”
Nick swallowed heavily. Mac could see his Adam’s apple bob up and down. “Do you”—he licked his lips—“do you know where she is?”
Catherine shook her head, a sad expression on her face. “No, Nick. I’m sorry, but I don’t. I have no idea. I’m only reading her through you, through the things you know but won’t acknowledge. You don’t know where she is so I don’t, either.”
Nick looked sad and vulnerable, an amazing sight. Nick had no known weaknesses. Except, apparently, for this woman who was lost to him.
“Is she . . . all right?” His voice was hoarse.
Catherine shook her head and shrugged. “I can’t know that, either, Nick. But I can read from you that you are worried about her. She’s not . . .” Catherine closed her eyes, frowned. “She’s not home. At her home. You’ve checked and you keep checking. You don’t know where she is. You worry that she might be sick or in trouble. That she might need you. It’s eating you alive.”
To Mac’s astonishment, Nick simply bowed his head. Whatever it was, it was eating him alive. And for a second there—though he wouldn’t swear to it—it seemed there was moisture in Nick’s eyes. Nick crying? Mac would have sworn the world would come to an end before Nick could cry.
Nick lifted his head. “So you can—”
“Yes.” Catherine nodded to him. “I can.”
“Jesus,” he whispered.
“I don’t like doing it, but I can read you. Not your thoughts so much as your emotions. And I opened to you. You read me, too, didn’t you? At least partly. Enough to know I’m telling the truth.”
She let go of Nick’s
wrist and he lifted his head. Whatever moisture had been in his eyes had gone, but there was a slight softness there, where there had been none before.
“Fuck,” he breathed. “Sorry. Nothing like that has ever happened to me before. It was like—”
“Like I was in you, right, Nick? Inside your head, feeling what you’re feeling, thinking what you’re thinking.”
He nodded, lips clamped shut.
She put a hand on his shoulder. She was touching cloth so it wasn’t any of the woo-woo stuff. It was simply a gesture of human connection.
“I know how off center you must be feeling. And believe me when I say I would never read you deliberately. This—this ability I have is incredibly draining. I feel like I could sleep for a week. But I had to do it, you had to know the truth. And you do, don’t you?”
He nodded.
“What?” Jon exploded, bristling with hostility. Mac tensed. “What do you know? Goddammit, Catherine, did you just drug him? Because this is crap. It’s crap, Nick. You know it. You know the Captain hung us out to dry and he’s not in some lab, you know that, too. Why should he be? I like you, Catherine, but I think you were sent to lead us into a trap. Maybe unwittingly, but there’s no way we’re coming off the mountain to—”
Catherine reached over and grabbed his hand. Jon stopped suddenly, eyes wide open with shock, jaw dropping.
Catherine smiled gently. “You were betrayed once, Jon. Badly. Worse than what you think Lucius Ward did. It blighted your life. You’ve never let yourself trust anyone until you joined . . . the teams?” This last as a question, aimed at Mac.
He nodded.
“The teams. You found trust and acceptance there and then your leader betrayed you. But, Jon, he didn’t. He couldn’t. It isn’t in him, just as betrayal isn’t in you or Nick or Mac. He is just like you and he’s hurting. He’s in trouble and about to die and his last chance is the three of you.” Her slender hand tightened on Jon’s wrist, but Mac didn’t worry that Jon was going to attack her. He looked wiped out, almost frightened, though Mac could have sworn fear wasn’t in Jon’s vocabulary. He’d seen Jon take outrageous risks without a thought to his own safety.
His attention focused tightly on Catherine when she gasped and swayed a little. He was about to leap to her side when the words she spoke froze him in place.
Her voice deepened, became low and rough, as male as her vocal cords allowed.
“Saddle up, boys, it’s time to ride. You wanna live forever?”
It was the Captain’s war cry at the beginning of every mission. Catherine even had a touch of the South in her voice, a faint echo of the Captain’s deep Georgia accent.
The hairs on Mac’s forearms rose and brushed against the sleeves of his sweatshirt and he felt the blood drain from his face. Nick and Jon looked pale, too. Jon actually looked sick, a drop of sweat dripping off his temple.
Catherine let go of his hand as if it burned her and opened her eyes. Her hand went to her throat and she looked frightened. “Mac . . .” Her voice was a mere thread. She coughed and tried again. “Mac. What just happened? I blacked out for a second.”
It took him a moment to find his own voice. He couldn’t stand to see that lost look on her face. He stood and pulled her into his arms. She was trembling as she put her arms around his waist, hiding her head against his shoulder. He held her tightly, looking over her head at Nick and Jon.
They both stood, as determined as he was.
“She was reading me and then I heard—” Jon shook his head sharply, as if he wanted to get rid of even the thought, but it stuck. “I heard the Captain. He was in her head and in mine. He’s alive in Palo Alto, and he’s in danger. Right now. We have to go get him.”
“No question,” Nick growled.
“Yeah.” Much as he didn’t want to, Mac let go of Catherine. Her trembling had subsided. He wanted to keep her in his arms but he was already switching into mission mode, half of him here with her, half of him planning an on-the-fly hostage rescue mission. They’d been working on it, but at a slow pace. Now they were going to go with what they had.
They could do it. They’d rescued a downed American pilot in the heart of Tehran. All they needed was more intel and Catherine would have that.
“Okay, men, we’ve got some mission planning to do. We’ve got about six hours of darkness still. Go get your gear and suit up and I’ll start debriefing Catherine. I’ll have the beginning of a plan by the time you get back. Double time.”
“I’ll need some gear, too,” Catherine said, and they all three froze.
“What?” She looked each one of them in the face. “I’m coming with you, of course.”
“No,” Nick and Jon said together, horrified.
“Fuck no,” Mac said.
Chapter Fourteen
Millon Laboratories
Palo Alto
His strength was ebbing, the cold fingers of death reaching deep into his heart and squeezing. The fingers had reached for him often, he was used to their icy touches, the feeling of falling, falling . . .
He’d resisted up until now even though he had almost lost all sense of himself. Who he was, what he was—a blank. Lost. He sometimes tried to recall something of who he’d been but everything always danced just out of his reach. There was no language left, only images, growing more and more faded.
Men. Hard-faced, dressed in black. One, taller than the rest, bearing the scars of burns. He’d seen those burns, seen him on fire. The men . . . they were somehow his. Somehow . . . him. He didn’t know who they were or where they were. He had no names, just the faces floating in and out of memory, always just beyond reach.
Pain had blasted so much out of him. He had the faintest recollection of resisting when he’d started this new existence. When he’d lost the man he’d been and became Patient Nine. He’d fought . . . hadn’t he?
Images came. White-coated men with syringes and worse . . . liquid that burned his veins. Waking up over and over again with new stitches, with lost memories, ever weaker. They wanted something from him and he wouldn’t—couldn’t—give it. There had been anger, more needles, more surgeries.
Now they left him alone. It had been days since he had seen anyone except—except The Man. He had no name for the man, but if he concentrated hard, he could see him, as if in a fog. Tall, thin. Dark skin, thin nose, clever, slanted black eyes. The needles came from him.
The man disappeared and though he clutched at the image it was gone. It was all gone, everything.
It was the end. He accepted it, almost welcomed it.
He’d made one last effort, reaching out, touching . . . someone. Someone familiar. A . . . woman? Soft voice, long, dark hair, very pretty. Yes, a woman. She wasn’t here but . . . she was. He’d heard her voice, in his head. When she came and touched him, warmth spread through him, the first warmth he’d felt in . . .
It was gone. Sometime in his life he’d known warmth, physical warmth, the sun on his skin. But he didn’t know when, he didn’t even know if the faint memory was true. Maybe he’d spent his entire life here, half-naked, with needles and probes and liquid fire in his veins.
No.
No, there had been a time . . . before. Again, hard-faced men appeared briefly in front of him, then disappeared.
He’d called out. He had. He’d called out so hard he had lost consciousness, with no idea whatsoever of how long.
He’d called because he was dying. Someone was going to make him die, soon. So he’d reached out and someone had been there. Softness and warmth. The woman.
But there was no woman, there was only an empty room filled with beeping machines and bright lights that never let him sleep.
Sleep . . . soon he would sleep. Soon he’d sleep forever.
Mount Blue
It wasn’t a funny situation, but Catherine had to stifle the urge to laugh.
All three men looked horrified, and Mac looked both horrified and angry. An angry Mac was formidable. If she didn’t know h
im so well, know him down to his bones, she’d be frightened.
His face was dark, the scarred parts pulled tight with tension, eyes narrowed. He seemed even huger, broad shoulders blocking the rest of the room from her sight, enormous hands opening and closing as if ready to do battle.
He was.
With himself.
Catherine looked him in the eyes, then at Nick and at Jon.
What a revelation the two men had been when she’d looked inside their souls. Nick, with his lost love, yearning for her, knowing he would never see her again, sick with worry that she might be in trouble. No one would ever know looking at that cold closed façade he faced the world with that he had all those emotions inside. That he had all that love inside.
And Jon—burning with rage at the treachery that had undermined his life. She hadn’t understood who or what had betrayed him as a boy but it went beyond the betrayal as a man. No, this was something in the past and colored his every emotion. And again, who would have thought all that rage and pain swirled under the Surfer Dude exterior.
Three large, strong men, warriors, trained to kill, standing right in front of her and looking enraged and determined to block her from going with them into the lab to rescue their former leader.
“You can all stand down,” she said quietly. “You know deep in your hearts that I have to come with you. If we have any hope of saving your leader, you need me. I know the laboratory inside out. I know their security system, I know the layout. Above all, you’re going to need me when we find Nine. He is hooked up to machines and it will be a very delicate task to detach him from the machines without killing him. None of you have a hope of doing that. Only I can free him from the machinery he is tethered to, and only then can you rescue him.”
There was utter silence in the room if you could ignore teeth grinding. Well, they were going to grind even harder.
“And I have something else to say. I am not trained as the three of you are. I promise that I will obey you absolutely. Tell me to duck and I duck. I will be your shadow and will follow your instructions. I know full well I am a potential liability, and trust me, I don’t want to be, so count on me to do exactly as you say. But”—she held up her hand when Mac opened his mouth—“the instant we are inside the facility you obey me, all three of you. Instantly. Unless we are actually being fired upon, at which point your training trumps mine, you do exactly as I say. There can be no other way.”
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