Maverick

by Lora Leigh

  “Everything is in place, I’ll have the items you need,” Jordan assured him. “But you better get a handle on those emotions, Micah. I thought I could trust the lack of emotion you’ve always displayed. Especially where women are concerned. You’re going to make me start wishing I had put John in her bed instead.”

  Micah stared back at Jordan, knowing his emotions were throwing a kink in the cold, logical operation they were working within. At no time before had his emotions ever been displayed. He’d been cold, hard. Even before Orion had destroyed his life, Micah had known to protect his soul. Somehow, Risa had managed to break through that barrier, and now she held a part of him that he wasn’t familiar with.

  “Try to put another agent with her and we’ll all regret it,” he stated harshly.

  Jordan’s lips parted to speak when a choked cry drew his and Micah’s gaze back to Risa.

  Her eyes were open. Her face was sheet-white now, her body tense, her expression still dazed but bordering on complete horror.

  Her gaze swung from Jordan to Micah. Micah had never seen such fear in anyone’s eyes in his life.

  “I want to get out of this bed.”

  Risa hadn’t known such complete horror since her incarceration at the clinic where Jansen Clay had placed her eight years before, after the SEALs had rescued her, Emily, and Carrie from Diego Fuentes’s cells. Risa had been unconscious during the rescue. But when she awoke, she’d been strapped to a bed, drugged, groggy. For nearly two years she had remained in a state of sedated hell.

  She’d been sedated again. She could feel the grogginess, the inability to function as she wanted to, and it terrified her. Adrenaline began racing through her body, making the effects of the sedative worse. She felt the haze in her mind, the panic fighting to overcome it, and the knowledge that she couldn’t help herself. She couldn’t fight it. She had to get away from him, and she couldn’t make her body move.

  The scent of disinfectant wrapped around her senses, threatening to force her to throw up. She could feel the cramps in her stomach, the fear that battled with her efforts to make sense of what was going on.

  Micah was with her. He wouldn’t let her be harmed, she reminded herself. He’d promised to protect her.

  “Risa?” Micah tucked a heavy strand of hair behind her ear as his thumb caressed her cheek. “Do you remember the wreck?”

  She nodded quickly. She remembered it in that fuzzy, out-of-this-world way. “I remember it all. Now get me out of here.”

  She saw the look he exchanged with Jordan. God, they were going to make her stay. They couldn’t make her stay.

  His lips parted to speak.

  “Micah, I can’t function here,” she rasped, breathing roughly. “Please don’t make me try. I know I was drugged. I remember the wreck and the man trying to force me into his vehicle. I remember the injection. I know I’m safe.” Her voice broke on a sob. “Don’t make me stay here.”

  It was a hospital. It was filled with doctors who would lie to her and slide the needle into her arm no matter what she wanted. There were nurses who only followed orders, and who stepped away when they were told to.

  She couldn’t separate the present from the past. Bleak, black memories of the sedated hell she had lived within for nearly two years washed over her again.

  A hard hand gripping her arm. The flesh was soft, so soft, but the hand was thick and heavy. A male hand. A needle punching into her arm, anger in his voice.

  You should kill her and have done with it, the voice whispered through her mind. A cultured voice, almost foreign. It resonated with superiority and condescending hatefulness. She’s a weakness we can’t afford.

  A man doesn’t kill his own child. That had been Jansen’s reply. No matter how dismally ugly she is. For the moment she’s of use to me. And to you. We need to know if your drug works.

  The drug was horrifying.

  Risa shook her head, fighting against the memories as Micah’s voice drew her back to the present. Something about staying, about letting the doctors check her.

  She shook her head desperately.

  “I’ll be fine.” She had to get out of here before the past overcame her and left her screaming in horror. “Get me out of here, Micah. Now. I can’t bear it.”

  She watched his expression tighten for a moment as he stared down at her. There was a battle waging in his eyes, and she was terrified she was going to come out on the losing end of whatever he was considering.

  “Micah.” Her hand tightened on his wrist as she struggled to push away the fog wrapping around her senses. “I can’t…” Her voice caught on a sob, and she hated that. “Please, don’t make me stay.”

  Fear clawed at her stomach, sucked the oxygen from her lungs, and made it hard to breathe.

  “Jordan, have the car brought around,” he suddenly decided.

  “Micah, she’s in no shape to leave,” Jordan protested quietly. “The doctor needs to examine her. We need to be certain she’s not going to have a reaction to the drug she was given.”

  “Please,” she whispered. “Don’t make me stay.”

  He had sworn he would protect her, that he wouldn’t let her be hurt. She trusted him. The very fact that she wasn’t locked in hysteria attested to her trust in him. But she knew if he didn’t take her out of here, she would never trust him again. The knowledge of it seared inside her brain. She couldn’t exist here, not even for another moment.

  “Have the fucking car brought around,” he ordered again as he tucked the sheet around her, then bent and eased his arms around her.

  Risa wrapped her arms around his neck, buried her face in his shoulder, and fought the tears that wanted to fall. She shuddered as the scent of disinfectant disappeared. She could smell Micah now. His scent, warm and male, wrapping around her as he removed her from the room.

  The sheet protected her against the chill that would have penetrated the hospital gown. His body heat seeped into her, wrapped around her, and eased the almost mind-numbing horror that threatened her sanity.

  There were protests. She could hear the nurses, perhaps a doctor.

  “She’ll be looked after,” Micah snarled to someone. “You are no longer required, Doctor.”

  She heard the swish of the door, felt the cool night air as it bit into the thin covering, then, seconds later, more warmth as Micah bent and moved into a car.

  Her arms tightened around him.

  “It’s okay,” he whispered against the top of her hair. “Jordan had a limo standing by. You’re safe. Trust me, Risa. It’s okay.”

  It was okay. Her mind was still groggy; the sedative she had been given made it so hard to think. She knew it was a sedative; she remembered it from the clinic. Strangely, she remembered the doctor arguing with her father over his choice of drug.

  “Same thing,” she whispered against Micah’s shoulder. “The sedative. The same thing Jansen ordered at the clinic.”

  He stiffened against her. “Are you certain?”

  She nodded. “I know how it feels.”

  She knew because the doctor at the asylum had always put her on another sedative after her father left. One that didn’t cloud her mind so much, one that allowed her to retain memories, impressions of what was going on.

  “I’ll get on that, Micah,” Jordan said. “We’ll know exactly what the sedative was within twelve hours. It takes a while to complete those tests on the blood.”

  She shook her head. She knew the name of the drug. It was on the tip of her tongue. She remembered Jansen talking about it once.

  “We have her records from the clinic as well as the hospital she was taken to after her rescue from there.” Micah’s voice drifted through her mind. “It should be in there.”

  “The drug they found in her system after her rescue from the clinic isn’t the same,” Jordan stated. “I already questioned the doctor tonight concerning that. The drug that was found in her system from the clinic was milder.”

  “Not always.” Risa had t
o force the words past her lips, but it was getting easier to think, easier to make sense of what was going on around her, though she was still groggy. She would be groggy for a while.

  “What do you mean, ‘Not always’?” Micah asked.

  She breathed in, out, tried to force her mind to clear enough to tell him.

  “The doctor.” Her voice was halting, a little slurred. “When Jansen wasn’t scheduled in. He changed the sedative. The other, it would damage me, he said. He didn’t want to damage me. Jansen didn’t care.”

  She was still locked in that in-between place. Not really here, not really there.

  “You had halperidol in your system when you were taken from the clinic,” Micah said.

  Risa nodded. “GHB before Jansen’s visits.” She frowned; why hadn’t she remembered that before? “He injected me with GHB.” She knew what GHB was. “The doctor called it GHB. Said he could kill me with it.”

  She heard their voices in her head, insidious whispers she couldn’t escape. Jansen’s laughter, the doctor’s concern. And she heard the other man. Snide, his voice imperious but with an underlying accent.

  “Don’t take me back, Micah,” she whispered, feeling the grogginess becoming darkness. “Don’t let them touch me.”

  “I have you, Risa.” His arms tightened further around her. “I have you.”

  She drifted off into that never-never land, aware of the tension that had invaded Micah’s body. She would ask him about it later, she told herself. If she remembered.

  Jordan stared at that girl in Micah’s arms, aware of the way the agent held her, the possessiveness in his hold and in his eyes.

  “Ariela Abijah was given GHB,” Jordan said, watching Micah, knowing the tender spot he was pressing. Ariela had been Micah’s mother, a woman of rare strength in Jordan’s eyes. He’d met her once, just once, and she had impressed him when it was hard for anyone to do so.

  “Orion always uses GHB,” Micah said, his voice bleak. “It’s easy to find, impossible to trace.”

  “She knows the difference.” He nodded to Risa. “The doctor suspected it might be GHB from his initial tests.”

  “She came out of it early.” Micah smoothed his hand down her arm as Jordan watched.

  Hell, another perfect agent shot in the fucking heart, he thought. His Elite Operational Unit was going to hell in a handbasket. First Noah, now Micah? God help them all if John or Travis decided to bite the love bullet.

  “How do you know she came out of it early?” Jordan questioned Micah.

  “She drifted off again,” he stated. “She would have never done that if she wasn’t still under the influence of the drug. She would have fought it. I’d say six-to eight-hour dosage is what she was given. The tests on her blood should come back with that answer. That means he’s most likely got a hole outside of Atlanta somewhere, perhaps further. The SUV had tinted windows. He could have dumped her in the back and gone for at least four hours before he had to get her secured. He has this planned down to the last second, from kidnapping to death. He’d be living close now that he can’t depend on the bugs he had in the apartment. He took a chance today. He’s being pushed to finish this and he’s making mistakes.”

  “Then he’ll make more before it’s over with,” Jordan decided with a nod. “He’ll be pissed now. We’ll get a plan together and get started on it.”

  He watched Micah closely. The other man didn’t nod, he didn’t agree. That was a damned bad sign. It meant that at any moment Risa Clay could end up on the missing persons list and only one man would know where to find her. The man who had claimed her.

  Ex-fucking-Mossad-agent. Bastards. He’d never met a harder, more cunning agent than those the Mossad produced. Problem was with such men, once they lost their minds to a woman, then they were worse than lions protecting a cub. You took your life in your hands if you dared to endanger that woman.

  Micah had that look. Noah had that look when his Sabella, or Bella, as most knew her. Yeah, that was the problem with hard-core black agents. They were only black until some damned female came around and decided to light up their friggin’ lives.

  Jordan pushed his fingers through his hair and started considering alternatives to each plan that he knew faced them. He’d have to make certain Risa wasn’t just protected but had a damned bulletproof bubble around her; otherwise Micah would fight him.

  He could enforce any plan he wanted to use. It would be simple enough to have Micah jerked off the unit during this op and replaced.

  He rejected that idea quickly enough. He could jerk the agent off the case, but as Micah had warned him, he’d turn rogue. Risa would disappear and with her would go one of the best damned agents to be found on the face of the earth. Nope, that one wouldn’t work at all.

  “She remembered the wreck,” Jordan suddenly pointed out as the thought tripped in his brain. “GHB affects memory and perception. She shouldn’t have remembered.”

  “She shouldn’t have remembered her rape or the fact that her own father gave her to the bastard that hurt her.” Micah cursed. “She remembered it. That was the reason why he had her placed in the private asylum. He was there when she first awoke, she remembered, and he kept her drugged and out of the way so she couldn’t reveal what he was.”

  “Damned strange,” Jordan pointed out. “Even Emily Stanton didn’t remember exactly what had happened until after Jansen kidnapped her again. It took a catalyst, and full memory still hasn’t returned. According to the psychologist, Risa’s memories are amazingly intact.”

  “Intact enough that someone wants to die by striking out at her,” Micah stated, his voice harder, colder, than before and savage enough that it pierced the fog that still wrapped around Risa’s head.

  She could hear them. She could feel Micah’s tension, hear the murder in his voice when he spoke of the doctor her father had brought to the clinic with him. The doctor hadn’t liked coming. He’d been angry. Her father had laughed at him, because he’d forced him to come, to inject her with what he called his creation. But the creation hadn’t worked as they’d wanted it to somehow. It had been painful. And each time Jansen arrived, Risa had tried to fight to get from the bed, to get away from them.

  She knows me. The voice crackled in her head. She can identify me.

  She’d looked at him. Looked straight at him. But her vision was foggy; her mind was drugged, slow. Who was he? If she knew him, she should recognize his voice; she should know him if she saw him again.

  “I know him,” she whispered against Micah’s chest.

  Silence filled her head then.

  “I can identify him.” She felt Micah’s arms tighten around her. “His hands are so soft. Like a baby. Such large hands, big and scarred. But his palms are so soft….” She felt as though she was drifting away and fought to rise back to consciousness. Whatever she knew, Micah needed to know; she understood that. “But I can’t see his face,” she sighed. “I’m so sleepy, I can’t see his face….” Her voice trailed away.

  Micah wanted to curse. He laid his forehead against hers and clenched his eyes closed for a long moment before he touched his lips to her forehead.

  Strength. He could hear the strength in her voice. She was trapped somewhere between memory and reality, and she was fighting to remember both. He knew the effects of the drug, knew that the rare few whom it didn’t totally work on were tormented by the distant quality of their memories.

  She was strong enough to fight it, just as she had been strong enough to fight Orion when he’d attempted to take her. Strong enough that when she had awakened in the clinic, she had held on to her control, fought back her hysteria, and remained coherent.

  “I want him dead,” Micah whispered against her brow before lifting his head to stare back at Jordan. “I’ll kill that bastard that helped Jansen Clay myself.”

  “To kill him, you have to identify him,” Jordan pointed out, infuriating him. “We have to take Orion alive if we’re going to identify anyone, Micah. You
know that.”

  His lips thinned as he lifted Risa closer and watched the lights of the city as they headed back to her apartment rather than the hotel he would have preferred. John had checked the apartment; it was bug-free. The team was watching the corridor that led to her home, and two men were stationed in her room. Nik was still working on the surveillance tapes from the parking garage and trying to figure out how Orion had gotten past their defenses on the car.

  They were close; Micah could feel it. Orion had made his first mistake. They now had his DNA and they had more of Risa’s memories than ever before.

  Almost there, Micah thought, stroking his hand down her back. They would have Orion, and when they had him, they would have his employer. Just a little longer, then Risa would be safe.

  And when she was safe, he would walk out of her life and leave her to the future she deserved. One where she could name her dreams and go after them. Where she would know no more fear, no more danger.

  She would be safe.

  He would ensure she was always protected and he would start, he thought, by attempting to get her out of this game immediately. At this point he could have her sent to a safe house. There was always the chance that if Orion didn’t see her coming or going from the apartment, he would suspect she was hiding inside and make a move for her when he thought Micah was away. Moving her to a safe house would ensure that her life, her dreams, survived.

  But a woman couldn’t have dreams with a dead man, he reminded himself. And Micah Sloane was no more than a borrowed name for a man who had died years ago.

  David Abijah no longer existed. He had signed away his soul for vengeance. He had lost the right to dream.

  CHAPTER 13

  SHE WAS GOING to die of arousal.

  Risa stared up at the ceiling as she brought herself awake, aware that her fingers were pushing beneath the loose band of her pajama bottoms, in the process of searching for her own satisfaction as she fought to pull herself out of the explicit, rousing dream that had filled her head while she slept.