Nike's Wings

by Valerie Douglas

  He owed her that much.

  And the fact that she was in love with Ty. He could see it now in her face.

  As Ty was – had been – in love with her.

  He gave Ty a sympathetic look. They’d been friends for too long.

  For the first time, Niki looked at Ty.

  Ty felt her eyes on him, but he wouldn’t, couldn’t, look at her. Something inside him ached.

  In silence, they walked out of the building toward the National Mall, neither wanting to speak where they could be overheard. It was a long, silent, and uncomfortable walk.

  Chapter Twenty Nine

  It was high summer and warm. The air was heavy. Around he and Niki the leaves on the trees fluttered and whispered with the breeze. The grass was thickly green, the sky clear, cloudless and blue. Music blared from passing cars. The thump of an overworked woofer went past. The sun shone down brightly, but Ty wasn’t aware of the heat even though he wore a suit. He tried not to feel anything until they finally reached a spot where no one was close enough to overhear what was said.

  “What is it about you that I don’t know that I should?” he said, suddenly, bluntly.

  Nike’s breath caught. She wanted desperately to apologize, to beg forgiveness, and knew even then that she’d left it too late. Her throat was tight, her chest felt heavy, and she had the right to none of it. She’d done this to herself. And to him.

  She searched for the words, for some way to explain. With a sigh, she removed her glasses, looked down to turn them in her fingers. She wouldn’t do this from behind them. There was no easy way to say what needed to be said.

  Looking out across the grass, the glistening water, she said softly, “Ty, I was born Callie Martin. I didn’t die in South America. I tried to contact you after I escaped to tell you, to let you know I was all right, but they never passed along the message. I didn’t find out until later, much later, that you didn’t know. I’m sorry. Then…? I simply didn’t know how to tell you.”

  She turned to look at him.

  Ty went still. What she’d just said didn’t make sense. He couldn’t wrap his mind around those words. Until he saw her eyes.

  Until that moment, he’d only ever seen them in darkness, in shadow, or hidden behind her glasses. Now he saw them in sunlight.

  They were as green as new grass in the bright sunlight, long-lashed and beautiful. Callie Martin’s eyes. The eyes that had haunted him for nearly a decade.

  Looking at her now, knowing what to look for, he could see it, hints of the girl he’d known so briefly in the woman who stood beside him.

  “Why?” Ty demanded, his voice sharper than he’d intended. Why hadn’t she told him who she was? He’d grieved, laid flowers on her grave.

  Why had she kept that secret?

  She looked at him, took a breath, and then gave a helpless shrug.

  Letting out that breath, Nike said, “I didn’t want you to know what I’d become. What they’d done to me, what they’d made me.”

  A part of her felt frozen, and she had no doubt he felt much the same, his face had gone so still. She could feel a wall between them, a separation…

  Fear clogged her throat, and pain.

  Ty couldn’t look at her.

  The scars.

  Remembering that morning in the hall, remembering touching her, remembering her touching him, his heart twisting he said, “Santiago?”

  In that one phrase Niki knew what he was thinking, remembering, and wanted to weep for the memory. The thought of him reading that file made her sick, but she couldn’t protect him from it.

  “Yes.”

  Almost involuntarily, she reached out to touch his arm, to offer comfort. He did nothing, and yet it was as if he’d pulled away, as if that wall had suddenly become real.

  Her eyes burned, her throat grew tight.

  “I need to think,” Ty said, and felt her flinch at the harshness of his tone, but she nodded.

  He needed to process it.

  “I need time,” he said.

  Again, Nike nodded. She drew a shuddering breath and watched him walk away.

  It felt as if her heart had shattered. The fear of losing him was so thick in her throat she couldn’t speak. Didn’t dare speak, to call him back, to beg him to forgive her.

  Feelings like these, feelings this strong, were new to her. She didn’t know how to act, how to react, to them.

  In the years since she’d left training she hadn’t exactly been celibate, but no one had gotten as close as Ty, she’d never experienced this kind of pain.

  She fell back on her training, tried to pull herself together again, to lock away the emotions that were destroying her. It was far better to be Nike, again. She looked out over the Mall. The light was too bright, everything shimmered.

  From the corner of her eye, she could see Ty moving away, tall, lean, handsome, his silver hair brilliant in the sunlight.

  All her breath left her. She fought back tears, fought the pain of letting him go. She wanted to rail against the gods, to shout and to scream that it wasn’t fair. The pain was terrible, like acid in her chest, burning in her eyes, but she had no one to blame but herself.

  All she’d wanted was a little more time.

  Instead, she looked down at her glasses, still in her hand. Her time had run out.

  Tears burned behind her eyes.

  With an effort, Ty walked and kept walking. He wouldn’t look behind him. Flipping his cell phone open, he speed-dialed.

  “I want to see that file,” he said.

  He had to know, needed to know, the truth. All of it.

  Byron hesitated, then said, “There are tapes, too.” He took an audible breath. “Now that their ‘special project’ has been exposed, apparently the Agency is more than happy to give us everything. I just received them.”

  He paused again. “They make for difficult viewing.”

  “All of it,” Ty said.

  He stopped, turned, looked back.

  Niki still stood where he’d left her, wearing the pretty pink sundress she’d put on after they’d made love that morning. It fluttered around her beautiful legs. From this distance, he couldn’t see the fine tracery of scars on her calf. Her mahogany hair flagged in the breeze, thick and beautiful. The sun picked up sparks of fiery light from it as it blew. He remembered thinking how lovely she’d looked when they left Austin.

  For a moment she stood, head bowed, looking down at the glasses in her hand.

  He’d known she’d be incredible all those years ago and she was - more so than he’d imagined.

  As he watched, she looked at the sunglasses in her hand a moment longer, before she straightened and slipped the concealing lenses back over those green eyes. Hiding herself behind them once again.

  The gesture twisted something inside him.

  And what had she felt? Had it all been a sham?

  What about him? What about what he’d felt?

  He remembered how it had felt to kiss her, to hold her… How it felt to make love to her. The urge to go back, to take her in his arms and hold her, was strong.

  She’d kept something from him, and there was that file…

  Until he knew more…he couldn’t, wouldn’t.

  He needed to know the truth, all of it.

  The one image Buck couldn’t get out of his head was Niki standing between him and Daniel Garcia. He had the stitches in his back to show for what she’d done rather than a long hospital stay or a cold slab in the morgue. So did Niki, on her forearm. He couldn’t forget that.

  Whatever else, he got the fact that she needed to talk to Ty first and in private. They’d all known something was going on between Ty and Niki.

  Still, he wanted to know what was happening. If he couldn’t get it from one source, there was another. It hadn’t been that long since they’d left the Secretary’s office.

  Buck also had a pretty good idea who’d gotten that file sprung from the CIA when even he couldn’t.

  He st
epped out from behind the pillar by Anita’s car when he heard the tapping of her heels on the pavement.

  Those slanted blue-gray eyes assessed him quickly.

  Startled, Anita fluttered both her eyelashes and a hand over her ample breasts when she saw the man step out of the shadows and realized it was Buck.

  “Oh, Buck,” she said, “you scared me.”

  Eyeing him, she smothered a smile of satisfaction.

  “So, she told you already. That was fast,” she said.

  Buck shook his head. “She asked to talk to Ty first and in private.”

  She smiled coquettishly. “So, you came to me.”

  “What’s she hiding, Anita? What did you dig up on her?”

  Anita wasn’t sure she liked his tone, but you caught more flies with honey than vinegar and while Buck wasn’t Ty Connor, the newly named Director of the NIO, he was the Ops Agent in Charge. She wasn’t averse to working her way up the ladder.

  “Remember that thing in South America?” Anita said. “The girl you and Ty had to leave behind? The one you thought was dead? Callie Martin? She didn’t die like you thought she did. She’s been lying to you all along.”

  Buck went still, looking at Anita, but thinking about Santiago and young Callie Martin. He still dreamed of that long terrible cry, too, now and then. It was something you couldn’t fake. He thought of what Santiago would have done to that girl, what it would have taken for her to survive. He let out a long breath.

  Callie Martin. Suddenly a lot of things made sense.

  He could hear what Anita implied in her tone. His stomach hurt.

  Buck eyed her.

  “Ty won’t love you for this, Anita. In fact, he’ll be pretty pissed,” Buck said as he turned away in disgust. “Neither will I. You haven’t made any friends today. If I were you, I’d stay away from Mitch, too, once he finds out what you’ve done.”

  There was more to the story, but he thought he’d get that from the horse’s mouth. Either Ty or Niki…

  Callie.

  Shaking his head, he swore softly, but eloquently in Spanish.

  Chapter Thirty

  Almost everyone had gone home except Toby, Mitch noted. Everything within the NIO building was painted in the rich amber light of the setting sun that poured through the windows. It was just him, Brad and Andy, waiting for the signal to go. And for Niki. He watched Niki walk back into headquarters from her car through that gilded light with something like relief. They’d been trying to reach her for more than an hour, but she hadn’t been answering. That wasn’t like her.

  The situation where they were needed was going downhill, fast.

  “Where have you been?” he demanded, distracted, “We’ve been calling you.”

  He took a good hard look at her. She seemed pale, strained. Something was wrong.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  Nike looked at Mitch’s familiar, broad, handsome face and let out a breath. He’d only ever really known her as Nike…never as Callie Martin.

  This place was the closest she’d come to a home since she’d returned from South America. It was the first place she’d tried to put down roots, the nearest she’d come to a place where she felt she belonged. Mitch, Brad, and Andy were the closest she’d ever come to friends. Until Ty and Buck, Jerry, some of the others.

  What if she lost all that? If Ty couldn’t work with her any more…

  She remembered Elizabeth Bonham’s last comment and the implications of it. It might not be Ty’s choice. She pushed it away. They hadn’t specifically let her go yet, although that was clearly the intent. Her heart wrenched at the thought. Until it was said to her directly and formally, though, as far as she was concerned she still worked for the NIO.

  “I’m fine,” she said, in answer to his question.

  She would be.

  “What’s up, Mitch?” she said.

  Mitch said, “Remember that bomber we read about in the newspaper back in Texas?”

  Nike looked at him questioningly, falling in beside him as they headed for the armory.

  “You know they were searching for him, right? They’d asked for backup from us – from you – if they found him. Well, they think they have – in one of those White Supremacist/Confederate compounds in the back woods of the Carolinas. That’s local cops, state cops. Byron approved the request, if they decided to formally request it, before he left.”

  Toby had given Mitch, Brad, and Andy the word on the change of leadership. Byron had sent a copy of the official announcement. A press conference had been scheduled later in the week to release it, once Ty had had a chance to settle in, and all the teams were informed.

  At a guess Mitch had thought that was where Ty and Buck were, getting the official word from Byron and the Secretary about their promotions.

  “The request just became official,” Toby said urgently, from communications. “I was just about to call you again, Niki.”

  “Sorry,” she said, “I had my phone turned off.”

  “You need to suit up, Niki,” Mitch said, “The chopper’s waiting. All the arrangements have been made. We have to move. By rights, we should have left nearly half an hour ago. We’ll need to make up the time in the air, if we can.”

  “I’ll be ready in five,” Nike said.

  That was the Niki Mitch knew.

  “We’ll meet you at the landing pad.”

  It was just what Nike needed. Some action. A distraction. Anything to keep her from thinking.

  Pulling her old gear on, the halter and well-worn pants, the scent of the leather filling her nose, was like stepping into Nike again. It was familiar, known. Nike hadn’t known emotion, all she’d known was the mission, was getting the job done.

  It was better that way.

  She looked in the mirror as she tied her hair back, low on her neck, her face impassive. It was Nike she saw reflected there. A touch of grief went through her, but she put that aside as well.

  This man they hunted and his sympathizers had killed at least one innocent – by her terms – and risked other lives. He’d taken the law into his own hands. They’d promised more bombings, bringing their judgment day to the rest of the world.

  Not if she could help it.

  In the mirror, Niki saw Nike Tallent and only Nike as she packed up her gear. She raised her hand, secured her glasses, took a breath, and walked out of the building.

  To her surprise, her phone rang. Her breath caught… Hope shimmered.

  Flipping the phone open as she ran across the grass with her gear in her hand, she heard a familiar voice. Not the one she’d hoped for.

  “Hello, Nike.”

  Suddenly everything made sense.

  “Victor,” she said. There was a pause as all the pieces fell into place. Her throat went tight. “You sent the file.”

  “No,” he said, almost sadly, but she could hear an undercurrent of amusement in his voice. “That was Evan. He’d developed an unexpected excess of conscience.”

  Was. Past tense. Something in Victor’s voice sent a shiver through her.

  Niki went still inside and slowed. “What have you done, Victor?”

  “It was an internal matter,” he said. “We need to talk.”

  Mitch beckoned to her from the helicopter, trying to get her to hurry.

  “Where is Evan, Victor?” she asked, her blood going cold even as she gestured to Mitch, quickening her pace until she was almost running.

  Victor was gone. There was nothing, but silence. The signal was gone, too.

  Turning her cell phone off, she ran for the helicopter, took Mitch’s outstretched hand as he pulled her inside, and they lifted off.

  Settling inside, buckling herself in, she tried to ignore a growing sense of apprehension.

  It seemed as if everything was going wrong…

  And there was Victor.

  The air outside was perfumed with summer flowers and the exhaust of a thousand cars. It was bright in the office they’d cleared for hi
m, the air outside so thick and humid, so close, that the cool quiet of the halls was almost welcome.

  Almost.

  They weren’t out in the sweet air. The office was closed in and close, confining.

  Byron stood quietly in the corner as Ty scanned the file, passing the pages to Buck as he finished them.

  What Ty read sickened him. There’d been rumors of this sort of thing throughout the Agency, but he hadn’t wanted to believe they were true. To see it confirmed…

  Niki…Callie…

  Now he understood her pain, her shame, as she’d understood his that morning in Texas.

  “The last administration was the most secretive history has ever known,” Byron said, as he stood at the window. “There were stories about a secret branch of the Army Rangers, answerable only to the Vice President, until Congress started sniffing around, insisting they should know what that unit was doing. He hated being accountable to them.”

  “Now we know what the alternative was,” Ty said, quietly.

  Niki had been their first experiment, their test subject. After Santiago she’d been perfect for them, physically, psychologically, and emotionally damaged.

  Everyone had believed she was dead so there’d been no one to protest, to protect her. And if it went wrong? If they damaged her beyond repair? If they didn’t kill her outright she’d have been locked away in some asylum somewhere. Even that had been noted in her file.

  She’d disappeared into the cracks even as he’d laid those flowers on her grave.

  A note in the file said she’d asked Torrance or Halstead to contact him to let him know she was alive. They hadn’t. He hadn’t missed that.

  After all that time, after all that had been done to her, she’d thought of him. She’d tried to let him know… She hadn’t expected him to come, but he would have.

  They’d never contacted him. They’d never intended to. That was in her file, too.