by Cindy Skaggs
“Go to sleep.”
“If you insist.” She didn’t need the pill. His body wrapped around hers and her eyes blinked closed. “Rose?”
“Hmm?” His breath fluttered in her hair, raising goose bumps.
“Thank you.” It helped hearing the words from a man. Her father should have moved mountains to win her love and affection. A fist unknotted in her chest as she drifted to sleep. She wasn’t as strong as she wanted to be—yet—but she wasn’t defective either. There was still time to fix her mistakes.
The basement hallway stretched like an abandoned subway station with benches set into alcoves. Rose didn’t want to think about who had sat on those benches and what they’d waited for. Thick beige subway tiles covered the walls and floors, and the same drab hanging lights from the tunnels flickered every ten feet. Narrow archways turned off at random intervals, rabbit holes Fowler had warned, so Rose kept going forward, his footsteps echoing in the cavernous basement. The hall turned off to the right and landed without ceremony in an open room the size of the upstairs great room. On the far side were closed doors leading to a hospital clinic. The cool air stuck to Rose’s skin, reminding him of a morgue.
Debi yanked supplies from a box on a counter under three windows cut into stone at ceiling height.
“You should have waited for me,” he said, stepping into the room.
Petri dishes clattered to stainless steel. The crash echoed like waves through the interior space. “Crap.” Debi leaned heavily on the counter. “You scared me.”
He moved closer to help her place everything in order. “I can’t imagine why.”
She lifted her head to peer around the room. “I’m convinced Fowler hates me. Of all the places to put me...” She pointed across the room, deeper into the dark. “Can you believe this place?” A portable hospital bed was parked against the far wall, tucked neatly into place and left to gather dust. Restraints dangled against rusty legs. “I’m a scientist. I don’t believe in ghosts or spirits or energies, but this place flat unnerves me.”
“Seen any ghosts yet?”
“Honey, if I see ghosts, Echo won’t have to find me, because I’ll have a coronary on the spot.” She turned back to the box and grabbed out something with her good hand.
“Here, let me.” He slid the box closer and started pulling out parcels and envelopes and wrapped supplies. “I’d have carried this down for you. Helped you set up.”
“Oh, I didn’t want to wake you. You were sound asleep when I woke at the crack of dawn.”
Not asleep. He’d needed time to get his head on straight and convince his body that the soft woman in his arms wasn’t meant for his morning pleasure. The six hours wrapped around her made up both the longest and shortest night of his life. Debi had fallen asleep instantly and he hadn’t wanted to wake her, which was a damn lie. He’d wanted to keep her up all night, and not by holding her hand. The silky strands of her hair had wrapped around his arm, filling his head with the smell of strawberry shampoo. Add the curve of her fine ass against his skin and he’d been sunk. Desire was a cruel bitch. He wasn’t a monk, and after so many nights of sharing the same motel room, knowing the little hum she made as she drifted, knowing she woke when the sun peeked through the curtains. All of it added up to temptation incarnate. None of which he could tell her, so he grabbed a microscope from the box and set it on the counter. He had no idea what equipment like that cost, but it was a good bet they wouldn’t find a replacement out here.
Debi pushed the microscope several feet down the counter. “Anyway, I didn’t carry it down. Craft hauled for me and helped me set up.”
Craft. Asshole. Rose just bet Craft was helpful. A surge of anger flooded his veins at the mention of Craft. Rose wanted to deck him for no good reason other than what the other man had said about Debi the night before. Yes, she was hot, and no way in hell was Craft good enough for her. Neither was Rose. “Where did he run off to?”
“Training. Apparently there’s a schedule.”
“There always is. PT first thing in the morning.” He spiked his fingers through his hair, still damp from the post-workout shower. “Puzzles the rest of the day.”
“Will there be croquet later?”
“This isn’t summer camp. The sooner we solve the mystery of Team Echo, the sooner you get your life back.” He hoped for her sake, for all the women, that they could solve the problem, but the idea of Debi leaving put a hurt on his chest. “Dr. Branson called earlier. He wants me to take a look at your stitches and see if you’re ready to start moving the shoulder more.”
“Does that mean I’m joining the ranks of PT in the morning and hand-to-hand in the afternoon?”
“Not yet, but if there’s no seepage and no sign of infection, you can start physical therapy today. The clinic is down here. We should take a look.”
“That’s a very disgusting image you put in my head. Seepage. I think we can skip the wound check.” Disgust turned her frown into a grimace.
“No. We can’t. Into the clinic, Debi.”
She set the petri dishes near the microscope and a tower of bins. It was the second time she’d stacked and unstacked them. “The light’s good if I work during the day, but we’re going to need better task lighting at a minimum.”
He recognized avoidance when he saw it. He set a hand at her elbow and slowly turned her toward the clinic. “We can probably make the lights happen. I’ll talk to Fowler. But for now, let’s go into my office and look at the stitches.”
“I’d rather learn hand-to-hand. One handed.” She dragged her feet as they neared the back.
“Come on.” He led the way to the closed doors that supposedly housed the clinic. “If you’re good I’ll give you a Hello Kitty sticker when we’re finished.”
She stopped dead at the door. “I’m holding out for two Hello Kitty stickers and one My Little Pony.”
“Sure, but I’m all out of stickers. How about a rain check? I’m good for it.”
“I charge interest.”
“How much?”
The edges of her lips curved into a smirk. “Depends on how bad this hurts.”
The reply spilled from his lips without talking to his brain first. “If it hurts, I’m doing it wrong.”
Surprise widened her eyes before mischief glinted there. “Then I guess we’ll have to see if you deliver.”
“Oh, I’ll deliver.” Shit, what the hell was wrong with him? She was a patient. He opened the door and ushered her in front of him.
She stopped cold in the doorway. “Well, this is unexpected.”
Rose eased in behind her. The room looked like an actual clinic, complete with examination table, supplies, and a locked medicine cabinet. Debi open the opposite door and it linked to an identical room. Beyond that was another exam room with a portable x-ray machine. “Shit, he really has been preparing for Armageddon.”
“Do you think he has a doctor on staff?”
“Wouldn’t surprise me. My bet is Dr. Branson. Explains why he was willing to help and keep things off the books.” Rose led her back to the first room and patted the paper covering the table. “Hop up. Let’s take a look.”
She climbed up using the little stool, putting her eye-to-eye with Rose. The velvety brown of her doe eyes gazed with longing at the back door and the rooms beyond. “Fowler really does hate me. Putting me out in a dim, creepy space with torture devices—”
“There’s only one torture device.”
“That you saw. I’m out there in the dust and dirt, with or without torture devices, and he’s got all this antiseptic, well-lit space in here. I have room envy.”
“We can move you into one of these rooms if you want. If we need three exam rooms, there won’t be enough of us left to fight anyway.”
“You’re mighty cheerful, Rosebud.”
“Reality.” He shifted the shirt off her shoulder and tried to ignore the pleasure at seeing her in another of his t-shirts. The worn fabric sported the U.S. Army emblem f
ront and center, right between her full breasts. Not that he noticed. And he also shouldn’t notice the way her long neck stretched out like a dancer’s, not nearly as tempting as the long legs which parted slightly on the exam table. Damnit.
Right now he was her medic. He peeled back the bandages to look at the damages. The skin was cool to the touch with no sign of infection. He’d seen worse. The skin around the wound was soft. Female. The muscles in his hands twitched involuntarily. Not for the first time, he wished he’d been the one to end the shooter.
He stepped closer to get a good look. With an absent gesture, he moved the light closer to make sure none of the sutures had pulled. The doctor had done better than Rose expected from a country doctor. There was a pattern to the stitches that reminded Rose of the work done by surgeons during the Iraq war. He’d have to look it up.
Debi cleared her throat. “Hey, Rose?”
“Hmm?”
“If you’re done staring at my chest, can I get dressed?”
“I’m not.” He yanked his hands back like she was a hot skillet. His head smacked the light with a loud ping that had him biting back a curse. “I wasn’t.”
A sexy chuckle escaped her lips. “You’re easy to tease. I like it. Teasing you.”
He focused on the white gauze and the tape, because everything out of her mouth was starting to sound like an innuendo. And it worked him up. He had to step back so his growing erection didn’t touch her as he finished applying clean bandages. Maybe it was the brush of her hair over his arm or the smell of strawberries. His hands nearly shook as he finished. “The doctor did a good job.”
“So I’m cleared for duty?” She wrinkled her nose as she shrugged her shoulder and righted the shirt. The reaction showed she still had pain, but that was inevitable.
“No duty. You’re cleared for physical therapy. I’ll run you through exercises later today.” He pulled together all the soiled cotton and tossed it in the red bin attached to the wall. They really had thought of everything. “All done.”
“Good.” With the speed of an explosion, she lashed out and wrapped her legs around his waist, pulling him close. Eye to eye, their breath mingled. “I have a confession.”
“Hmm.” Hell, he’d lost his voice. Maybe his capacity for thought. They were headed where his body had wanted her since the day they met. Blood surged to his groin, leaving his brain defenseless. “What’s that?”
She rubbed a finger across his lower lip. “Do I make you nervous?”
She threw off his equilibrium, but he could work with that since he was trained to adapt to new and dangerous situations. He licked his lips, letting his tongue brush the finger she still pressed against him. “I can handle you.”
“Oh, sweetheart, I doubt it.”
“That’s my line.” A part of him doubted he knew the first thing about handling Debi. She had him spun up tight and she wasn’t even operating at top capacity. God help them both when she was back at full speed.
The erotic brush of her fingers skimmed his jawline. “Remember that first morning when you made me coffee with Irish crème?”
“Hard to forget.” Team Echo had just handed him his ass. One of their members attacked from behind, so quietly, so unexpectedly, that he’d be dead if Echo were armed. Afterward, they’d regrouped in Debi’s kitchen. She’d dropped her coffee, shattering the glass and her nerves. The start of a panic attack he hadn’t recognized. “You were afraid.”
“I’m not afraid now. Since that morning, I’ve been wanting to do this.” Her lips trailed her fingers, moving like a whisper across his. The soft tease skimmed the surface of his desire.
“Not enough,” he muttered around the edge of the kiss. Not nearly enough. Fingers wrapped around the base of her skull, he maneuvered her where he wanted her. Head tilted to the side, he dove deep. The moan at the back of her throat encouraged him to lose himself in the taste of her. Temptation whispered at the edge of the kiss, pulling him deeper, into more than a first kiss. Deeper. Tongues tangled, teeth nipped, and the pull traveled straight to his groin.
The loss of fear meant the normal filters that kept him from going too far and too fast were obliterated by the soft curves of the woman he wanted to own. He stepped forward into the vee of her legs. His hands wandered her body, memorizing the swell of her chest, the indention at her waist, the delicious flare of her hips. The woman was built for his hands.
Those long legs he admired wrapped around his hips and yanked him closer to home. His lips controlled hers. His hands roamed her, lifting to brush her... bandage.
Guilt like ice washed over him, drowning the need. He stepped back before he took her right there on the exam table.
Quick breaths lifted her chest. Keeping her eyes locked on his, moving slow to draw attention to the moves, she unlatched her feet, scooted to the edge of the table, and dropped to the tiled floor. The move brought her so close he nearly wore her as a second skin. “That was the interest payment. I still expect my Hello Kitty stickers.”
Chapter Fourteen
“Are you sure it was Captain Johnson?” Ryder stood at the far end of the room, his legs braced apart. He had one hand around a mug of coffee and the other tucked into his pocket in true military briefing style. The discussion was overdue, but with all the chaos raining down plus Debi’s injury, they hadn’t had a chance.
“Hell if I know.” Rose prowled the command post. “Looked like him. Our eyes met for a fraction of a second and then he was gone.”
“I can’t imagine a student losing you. Even in a crowd.” Fowler hopped up to sit on the counter near the surveillance monitors.
Stills dropped into a swivel chair. “Unless you’ve lost your touch.”
“Could be a student. Prior military.” Craft was parked at the computers like his ass was cemented to the chair. “I can tap into the campus security cameras. See what I see.”
“That’s a good place to start, but that kind of surveillance is slow. If Johnson thinks you identified him, he won’t be easy to find.” Ryder sipped his coffee. “Hard to believe it’s a coincidence.”
“Unfuckingbelievable, actually,” Rose said. He’d had time to think while monitoring Debi’s recovery. “If Johnson is on campus, there’s a damn good reason. There has to be a link to the company or the military. Johnson went underground the second the Army released us, and he shows up on campus. Why?” Rose’s brain worked faster than his mouth, so he jumped from one subject to the next, trying to get his teammates to help connect the dots. “We assumed that Echo traced Ryder to campus through Lauren, but what if that’s where they originated. What if that’s where we originated?”
“That’s a huge leap,” Fowler said.
“Think about it. Why El Paso? There are no Special Forces teams. We didn’t fit into the mission or command structure—”
“That could have been reason enough, to keep us off the military grid,” Fowler said.
“You’d believe anything with a conspiracy in it,” Stills said to Fowler. “What Rose is talking about is a giant fucking conspiracy.”
“Doesn’t make me wrong. Why recruit us and move us away from all our military connections? Why go where they had to build a special training facility when the Army had that elsewhere?”
“Because El Paso is where the quacks are?” Crafts offered.
“Exactly.” Rose stabbed a finger in his direction. “The campus has a world-class research lab with plenty of funding. Anyone want to bet that some of their research is funded by grants from the U.S. government?”
Stills leaned back in the office chair. “Grants mean a paper trail. Even if they don’t detail the experiments or the drug protocol, there has to be a way to track the budget expenditures.”
“Budgets and grants have contact names. It’s a place to start.” Craft tapped out several lines on his computer keyboard, the sound angry in the now silent room. “I want to destroy the people who set this shit into motion. The company—whoever the fuck that is—started a
n experimental government program and bailed on us when things went south.”
“We were expendable. Still are,” Ryder said. “We signed on the dotted line and drank the Kool-Aid.”
Anger welled up, filling Rose’s soul like a blood blister that burned and grew with each new revelation. He’d signed, true enough, because he had needed money for his sisters’ education. Fearlessness was the bonus that finally lifted the mantle of responsibility that had settled on his shoulders at thirteen. No more worries over the girls. He’d been able to handle them with logic and not fear over an unknown future, but there was a cost. To save his family, he had to leave them. The reality burned. “I want the quacks to fry for what they did. They played God because they could, without comprehending the cost in human terms.”
“Hooah,” Craft agreed.
Debi stepped through the doorway, her face pale. “Sorry to interrupt. Rose, you said to get you for physical therapy, but you all sound busy. It can wait.”
“No, we’re done,” Ryder said. “Craft, find Captain Johnson. Stills, you track the money.”
“I want in,” Rose said. “I want to destroy the doctors.” They were the true monsters.
Ryder nodded his understanding. “Work with Debi on the science. We’ll meet again in the morning.”
Rose reached for Debi and led her from the room. “Come on, sweetheart.”
Rose braced his legs apart and faced Debi. After the kiss, he’d given them both space, avoiding the basement until it was time for her physical therapy. The room was outfitted like a small gym. Treadmills lined one wall and weights on the other. The mats in the center could be used for hand-to-hand, but right now, he used them for her daily torture. She pulled back on a resistance band until her lips twisted in pain. Mobility on the right was limited. “This is too soon,” she mumbled. “Way too soon.”
“The injury damaged the rotator cuff. Movement is key to maintaining mobility. It’ll hurt, but Doc said you should start physical therapy.”