by Cindy Dees
“Not good. I think I’ve really hurt Gray. He’s a mess. He won’t speak to me and just sits and stares out the window like he’s contemplating the most efficient way to kill himself.”
“He was already a mess. I needed someone to shake him up. Give him a swift kick in the pants and force him to come out of his shell.”
“I’m pretty sure I drove him way deep into his shell, boss. He about took my head off when he found out that I knew.”
“He yelled at you?” Jeff asked in surprise.
“Yes. He was really angry.”
“Outstanding!” Jeff exclaimed.
“Excuse me?”
“He hasn’t shown a real emotion since the day Emily and the kids died. He’s been holding it all in. And it’s killing him. I knew you could draw him out. Force him to finally feel something again. To start living.”
“I don’t know about the living part, but I definitely made him feel some things. Like rage and betrayal. He hates my guts.”
“That’s fantastic!”
“Speak for yourself,” she grumbled.
Jeff fell silent. “Oh, no. You like him, don’t you?”
“He’s a pretty great guy when he’s not being all stoic and withdrawn.”
“I just assumed...you being fresh off your breakup with that Rocket guy that you wouldn’t fall for him... Oh, jeez. I’m so sorry, Sam.”
She squeezed her eyes shut in mortification. “Hey. I’m an adult. I knew what I was getting into. I just bit off a little more than I could chew with this guy. He’s too damaged for me to fix. I just hope I didn’t make a bigger mess of him than he already was.”
“Sending you to him was a last-ditch effort on my part, Sam. If you can’t reach him, nobody can. Don’t beat yourself up over it.”
Yeah, well, she was. But for all her self-flagellation, she didn’t have a clue how to make it up to Gray. He’d retreated further into his own private little hell than she was able to reach. She’d lost him. And she feared he’d lost himself for good this time.
She asked Jeff, “Do you know anything about this business of him counting down days?”
Jeff swore under his breath. “Where is he in his count?”
“Nineteen.”
Her boss answered heavily, “He’s counting down the days until he can kill himself. He makes these bargains with himself where he sets a date that, if things haven’t gotten better by then, he gives himself permission to commit suicide. He said it helps him deal with the pain.”
Great. She’d made the guy suicidal. She hung up, more depressed than ever.
Three more days counted down while they waited for the NSA to approve Gray’s request to turn off the satellites pointed at the NRQZ. Jeff had recalled an ops team from somewhere overseas, and they were due in any minute but had yet to arrive.
Sam began to suspect she was obsessing about Gray’s countdown more than he was. Sixteen. The number loomed huge in her mind as she woke up near sunset. A little over two weeks. They had to finish this case, and soon. Give him time to get far away from her and get some breathing room to recover from the hurt she’d caused him before he got to zero.
She couldn’t take it anymore. She jumped out of bed, dressed and barged into the kitchen to confront him. “Gray, I’ve had it. I can’t take this anymore. I’m calling Jeff and getting that satellite shut down now.”
“What can’t you take anymore?” he asked emotionlessly.
“You!”
He frowned. “What have I been doing?”
“Nothing. And that’s the point. I’m not sitting around here one more day watching you wait to die. I can’t do it. You’re making a stupid decision, and I won’t be part of it. If you plan to kill yourself, you can bloody well do it on your watch.”
His eyes flashed briefly, the first sign of life she’d seen in them in days. Maybe that was the key to breaking him out of the funk he’d fallen into. Maybe she ought to pick a massive fight with him. At least then he’d feel something.
She picked up the phone.
“Wait.”
Hark. He’d spoken to her. It was a single word, but it was more than he’d said to her for the past several days. She looked over at him expectantly.
“The NSA approved the shutdown a few hours ago. It goes offline at 2:00 a.m. tonight. A memo’s gone out that the satellite is being taken offline so a software upgrade can be installed.”
“And when were you planning to share that information with me?”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
“You were going to try to sneak out and leave me here?” she asked ominously.
He shrugged.
“Has anyone told you recently what a self-centered jerk you are?” she snapped.
His mouth quirked for just a moment. “Not recently.”
“Well, you are. I get that a horrible thing happened in your past. But you don’t have the corner on that particular market, Sparky. My life hasn’t exactly been a picnic, either, but you don’t see me moping around counting down the days until I can slit my wrists.”
She knew she got a rise out of him. Irritation glinted in his eyes and his shoulders went tense, but still he said nothing. Frustrated nearly to the point of screaming, she battered at the walls he’d built around himself. “Do you think you’re the only person who’s ever suffered a terrible and violent loss? Pick up a newspaper. Terrible things happen to good people all the time. It’s not pretty, but it’s part of being human. But you know what people do? They grieve and they suffer...and they go on.”
Gray shifted in his chair uncomfortably, but she wasn’t about to let him get up and leave. Not until she had her say. She aimed a glare at him and dared him to try to walk out on her. He subsided in his seat.
“People who’ve lost every bit as much as you get up in the morning and they paste a smile on their face and wait for the day when it becomes a real smile. And it does, eventually. Sure, it takes time. And the hurt never leaves entirely. But that hurt also adds a sweetness to the good times to come. You learn to appreciate life a little bit more. But you have to let yourself live again first.”
He opened his mouth. Closed it.
“Don’t give me some crap about not deserving to be happy. You didn’t kill your family. Some psycho, probably paid by another psycho, did it. You couldn’t have stopped the killer. If not that night, he’d have waited for some other time, some other night you worked late, to murder them. The guy was a pro, and you had no idea he was out there waiting to strike.”
Gray threw up his hands. “Do you seriously think you’re the first person who’s ever said any of this to me?”
“Of course not. But I am the first person who could’ve made you happy again. We could’ve had something really good together, Gray. But you wouldn’t let yourself reach out and take what was right in front of you. I have no need to replace your wife and kids, and I know not to bother trying. I’d have been okay with their ghosts being part of our family. You really could’ve had it all.”
She turned to leave and stopped in the doorway only long enough to add, “I’m going with you tonight. And then I’m out of here. I give up, Gray. If you want to count all the way down to zero and give in to your cowardice completely, you’re going to have to do it without me.”
* * *
Call him a coward and then sail out of the room like a queen, would she? Gray was so furious he could hardly think, let alone breathe. But a tiny part of him had to admit that this fire in his belly felt better than the ice-cold nothingness of the past few days. Lord, that woman knew how to make an exit.
Why couldn’t she leave well enough alone? But then, that wasn’t her style. At all.
His irritation gave way to amusement as he headed for his room to check and pack the gear he’d need tonight. He was going in armed to the teeth, particularly if Sam was coming—
The thought startled him. What did she have to do with anything? How could he still feel protective of her, even after she’d made
it crystal clear she was out of here the minute this op was concluded? Obviously, logic had nothing to do with his impulse. But then logic rarely had much to do with Sammie Jo. She’d made him feel a hundred different sensations in the past several weeks, but anything remotely resembling reason was not one of them. Mostly, she made him crazy.
He stocked up his rucksack with freshly wound rope and new cyalume sticks.
She made him mad, too. And frustrated.
He sheathed a freshly sharpened field knife in a side pocket and tucked several flares into a waterproof pouch sewn into the pack’s lining.
Of course, she also made him laugh. And got him all hot and bothered....
He slammed his hand against the wall. The stinging pain in his palm snapped him out of his ridiculous ruminations. He could not afford to be this messed up in the head hours before a dangerous mission. He checked over his night-vision goggles and put fresh batteries in them; he had faith he’d need every bit of help he could get to keep up with Sam tonight.
He was not wrong. Promptly at 2:00 a.m., she climbed out of the Bronco without saying a word to him and set a blistering pace through the woods around the north end of the Proctor compound. They’d never approached from this direction before. It required more time in the woods, but it also put them beside the fence closest to the barn that was their target tonight. They’d still have to traverse an alarmingly wide patch of tilled soil without being spotted. But he’d decided that speed might ultimately be more important than stealth. The satellite would be out of commission for approximately two hours. It was the best the NSA could do for him without compromising other security needs.
Sam had insisted on going first, and her head swiveled constantly as she marched along. She seemed relieved when she stopped abruptly and pointed out a trip wire to him. He stepped over it gingerly. Had Proctor been warned about the coverage gap tonight and taken additional precautions?
She spotted two more trip wires as they approached the fence, and they easily avoided both. Gray consoled himself with the notion that he’d have spotted the wires on his own. Of course, he’d have been moving at a fraction of this pace.
Finally, they crouched at the fence. There’d been a brief debate at the kitchen table over cutting their way through the fence or digging under it. He’d wanted to cut through, Sam wanted to dig. As they examined the fence, though, the bottom was sunk in concrete buried in the ground. Cutting it was.
He pulled out wire cutters, already taped and padded to ease the job, but Sam put a restraining hand on his arm. His biceps tensed involuntarily at her touch, and she jerked her fingers away.
“There’s a sensor wire,” she whispered. “I’ll reroute it while you cut.”
He nodded and got to work while she efficiently pulled out a spool of wire and claw clips to reroute the sensor. He was shocked at how good it felt to cooperate with her on something for a change. They’d been pulling against each other so hard the past few days he’d almost forgotten what it felt like to be on the same team with her.
She nodded her readiness, and he snipped through the sensor wire. No sirens or floodlights exploded to life.
“Are we good to go?” she whispered.
He shrugged. “No way to tell except having company in a few minutes. And we’re on a short timetable. No time to sit around and wait.” He pulled back the panel of hurricane fencing and held it for her while she crawled through. He passed the packs to her and then followed, pulling the panel back into place behind him.
As they’d agreed upon, Sam took a quick look around. When she signaled an all clear, they took off running across the field. The dirt was soft and deep, and they left footprints a three-year-old could track. But there was no help for it. And hopefully, they’d be out of here long before it mattered.
He and Sam dived into the shadow of the barn, breathing hard. Now for the padlock on the door. That was his field of expertise, and Sam played lookout while he picked the lock.
He almost had it when Sam whispered, “Routine patrol passing between the dormitories.” He froze as she continued under her breath, “One guy. On foot. And he’s out of sight now.”
Gray’s pulse pounded nonetheless as he finished the lock. It clicked open quietly. He eased the big sliding door open just far enough to slip inside. Sam pushed it shut behind them, and they both froze in horror as it gave a hefty squeak.
“Keep moving,” he murmured. “If someone heard it, there’s nothing we can do about it.”
Sam nodded, but she looked scared. “I can buy us a little time, just in case.” She looped the lock through a hasp on the inside of the door to prevent anyone from opening it from the outside. They’d decided she would search the computers while he checked out the rest of the building, and they both set to work.
She draped a piece of black fabric over a computer monitor and ducked under it to boot up the system. Using his night-vision goggles, he popped a tiny, two-inch cyalume stick and used its scant light to have a look around.
He jolted as five pairs of red eyes glared at him out of the darkness. He pointed the cyalume stick at them and two rabbits, a squirrel and a fox stared back at him from a line of cages. Proctor’s inexplicable wild animal rescue program was alive and well.
“I’m in,” Sam announced quietly.
Dang. That password-decrypting gadget she’d received in the mail yesterday was as good as she’d said it was. The device was something Jeff’s people had designed and Sam swore by. He moved over to her side and ducked under the black hood with her. The intimacy of it caught him by surprise, but he forced his intense awareness of her aside. Still. It felt good to stand close to her again.
She was scrolling rapidly through a file directory.
“Just copy the whole mess. We can look through it later,” he ordered.
She nodded, plugged in a flash drive and typed a series of commands. While she did that, he continued his search of the building. Storage cabinets and toolboxes didn’t yield any interesting finds.
“Any luck on the tunnel?” she asked quietly.
He snorted. The thing was impossible to miss. A huge bundle of orange extension cords led right to it, and a big fan stood not far from the opening. The tunnel was a good eight feet in diameter and headed straight down into the ground. “It’s over here.”
He expected her to join him, but glanced over at her when she didn’t. She was standing in front of some sort of workbench, examining something small and electrical-looking. Whatever it was, she jammed it in her pocket and continued over to him. Even clothed entirely in black, nondescript leggings and a turtleneck, she was stunning, a shapely shadow in a sea of lime-green.
“There’s a ladder,” he murmured. “I’ll go down first.”
The vertical shaft turned out to be short, four feet or so down to what turned out to be a ledge. Another ladder led down to a second, lower level. And it was off this that a tunnel extended away into the dark.
He started forward into the blackness. The scale of the tunnel was staggering. Although it wasn’t much more than shoulder-width for him, it was easily seven feet tall. He had plenty of headroom, even with wires and air ducting overhead.
Moving cautiously and keeping a sharp eye out for booby traps, they made their way forward. They’d been walking for maybe ten minutes when the tunnel widened out into a small room of sorts. They flashed their lights all around the space but saw nothing special about it.
“I think this is just a turnaround or rest area,” he announced.
“Let me go first. We’ll move faster,” Sam replied.
He nodded and she took off down the tunnel quickly. They’d been striding along briskly for maybe five minutes when another area opened up. And this one had electric lights installed. They found the switch and a widely spaced row of bulbs illuminated on down the tunnel. More interesting, a set of steel tracks wound off into the gloom. A small cart not much larger than a wheelbarrow sat at the end of the track.
“Wanna ride?” Sam
asked.
“May as well. There’s no telling how far this thing goes.”
“It’s quite the excavation project,” she commented as they climbed into the little railcar. He picked up the remote control lying inside it and pushed the green button. The cart lurched into motion, dumping Sam in his lap. “Uhh, sorry,” she grunted as she scrambled to right herself and push away from him all without touching him any more than she had to.
“Oh, for Pete’s sake. Stop squirming.”
She froze against him.
“Just turn around and sit down in my lap. It’ll be more comfortable for both of us because I’ll have somewhere to put my legs.”
She did as he suggested without comment. And all of a sudden, the train ride seemed to go on forever. She smelled good. Even though she was tense against him, she felt as feminine and sexy as ever. The only sensible thing to do with his arms was to put them around her waist. If he wasn’t mistaken, she snuggled a little closer before she went ramrod-stiff against him.
“Relax already,” he muttered. “I won’t bite you.”
She drew a quick breath, no doubt to make a snappy comeback, but then said merely, “How long do you suppose it took them to dig this thing?”
“They must have worked on it for months. Years, maybe. That scaffolding supporting the ceiling looks like they expect the tunnel to be here for a while, too.”
She nodded, looking up. “They wouldn’t go to all this trouble if they were planning a one-time sabotage of the computer cables.”
Sam was absolutely right. What on earth were these people up to? As the ride continued, she wiggled in his lap without warning. For an alarmed and thrilled second, he thought she was making a grab for his male parts. But sadly, she was only digging in her pocket for something.
She said eagerly, “Look what I found.”