Lethal Treatment

by S A Gardner

  “I don’t lose track of anyone.”

  The way he said that… Did that mean he’d been tracking me, like Sir Ashton, but had left his organization in the dark? How? Why?

  His gaze burned hotter. “And that’s when I wanted your news like I would a terminal disease. I walked out of GCA headquarters that day intending to forget you ever existed.”

  My next breath felt like inhaling acid vapors.

  I knew how he felt about me. It still hurt to hear him spell out his unequivocal rejection. It hurt more that I couldn’t hurl a similar statement in his face. It never occurred to me I could forget him. Or that I’d ever want to.

  Oh, well.

  I yanked my braid over my chest, started undoing it. Every hair root was screaming for release. “Seems we won’t come to an agreement, then.”

  “We must if you want this mission to work.”

  “You know I do.”

  “Because of Constantine?”

  Jake. Oh, dear God—Jake. Beautiful, brilliant, unique Jake. That he could still be alive. That I could actually see him again, help in freeing him from an eight-year-long nightmare.

  A nightmare I’d been the reason for.

  “I’d do anything to free anyone in the same situation,” I muttered. Jake’s factor only meant a painful edge of emotional involvement that need concern no one but me.

  Damian’s eyes swept over me, lingering on my busy fingers, my hair, my heaving breasts… Air got trapped in my lungs again.

  That surge of erotic imagery was a far worse idea now than it had ever been. Obscene even, when I should be thinking of Jake.

  But…it had been eight years. Most of which I’d believed he was dead, resigned myself to his loss. Eight years of fresher injuries and losses taking precedence, of radical changes in me. Of knowing Damian existed….

  I’d almost forgotten how Jake looked.

  God, I felt like such a sick, heartless bitch.

  Damian wasn’t giving me the privacy of poignant recollections and sadistic self-recriminations, watching me, hawk-eyed, analyzing my every thought, no doubt.

  At last he exhaled. “Let’s just say that Constantine makes it all more imperative to you. A personal stake always changes everything. So again, St. James…” Suddenly, his eyes were openly hostile. “In the interest of not having your lover end up dead, obey orders this time.”

  Something hot and wet burst in my chest. As if my heart had ruptured.

  His pain and rage were as mutilating as they’d been that nightmarish night in Sudan. But it was the brunt of his naked antipathy, that had things I didn’t know existed inside me, vulnerable and hopeful, shriveling up and perishing.

  Other urges surged, as searing. Needing to rewrite history, reanimate the dead. Memories bombarded me, somehow different, as if seen through his eyes, relived through his anguish.

  Melissa. Mel. His lover. Her corpse a macabre heap in the creeping dawn, Damian dragging his bloody body on the dusty ground, his breath shearing out of him, an inhuman sound of horror and desolation calling her name.

  He’d almost died then, too. Bullets had almost severed his left arm’s brachial artery, had gone through his lung just below his heart. He’d almost bled out on one hand and drowned in his own blood on the other.

  My hand shot out, disobeying me, tracing a shaking map of his remembered injuries. And again, like that night, he crushed my hand and hurled it back at me. He hadn’t wanted salvation, if it had been me granting it.

  I’d forced my treatment on him when he could no longer resist me. But saving his life had only made him madder. He’d wanted to be free to hate me, no debts. If it hadn’t been for me, he wouldn’t have been injured in the first place, he’d raved. Wouldn’t have almost lost his arm. Wouldn’t have lost his lover and two of his best friends.

  He hadn’t wanted my care then. Had only wanted to punish me and “end my hazard.” Now he’d confessed he’d walked away happy he wouldn’t see me again, intending not to ever remember I existed. If it were up to him, he’d want nothing to do with me now.

  But it wasn’t up to him, and he was saddled with me. So he did want one thing. My obedience.

  No can do.

  Seeming to think he’d said enough, and this had devolved into a big enough mess, on all counts, he rose to his feet and walked to the door without looking back.

  The urges still roiling in my gut had me call out after him. “I’m not the same reckless novice I was four years ago.”

  He tossed me a glance over his endless shoulder. It skewered through me with resurrected mortification. “You admit you were then?” A harsh huff accompanied a head shake. “And in the same breath you exonerate yourself by blaming it all on inexperience.”

  Rising on quivering legs, I approached him slowly. “I don’t want to recycle condemnations and defenses. I never denied my transgressions, just their exaggeration and the inappropriate punishment.”

  He turned fully now, and I could swear his eyes glowed like hot coals. “You consider any punishment ‘inappropriate’ for causing three people’s deaths?”

  Oh, no. He wasn’t dragging me into another vicious circle. He’d already shredded me in both GCA’s and PACT’s hearings.

  He’d also accused Sir Ashton of hiding my real profile. Of misleading him into thinking I was just an eager-to-serve young doctor, and not a warped vigilante out to avenge the personal wrongs the system at large had dealt me.

  Now I had to wonder. Had that played the major role in Sir Ashton’s relinquishing the reins of GCA? Damian had had us both tried and sentenced?

  I remembered well his closing statement. He’d quoted from the record his refusal to “deploy” me again after a test mission, when he’d realized I was a time bomb. He’d torn into everyone who’d signed on in my deployment to Sudan, saying they’d overridden him once with disastrous consequences. Then he’d recommended I shouldn’t be on an aid mission or let near a patient again. They’d unanimously agreed.

  It had been his testimony that had assured my sentence, that had stripped me of everything.

  But after months of shock and grief and resentment, I’d taken a harsh look at myself, and seen where he’d been right.

  I hadn’t wanted to end up behind bars like my father before I learned, like he had, that method and restraint made us far more effective. That vicious blow Damian had dealt me had made me learn my lesson at a far lower price than my father had paid. Not perfect yet, and might never be, but I kept working on it. I take refresher courses in control every day on the job.

  And this was my most important job ever. Touching deep inside me, way beyond ethics and duty. I had to do it right. Failure wasn’t an option. And Damain and his PACT team were formidable assets. Only a fool would refuse to use such weapons in such a dangerous and unpredictable quest.

  I was many things, but I was no fool.

  For the mission’s sake, for Jake’s, I had to reconcile with Damian. As unwilling and unwanted partner as he was.

  I inhaled a bolstering breath. “I don’t cling to my pride, Damian, so don’t you cling to your prejudices.”

  Then I realized what I’d just said. My lips twisted. His eyebrows dipped ominously. Was it at the unintentional joke, or at my smile? Or was it at hearing his name on my lips? I’d never called him anything but De Luna.

  I sighed, expending some of my tension. “I mean it. I only want the best for this mission. I have no ego here, and I hope you’ll check yours.” In response, he rumbled like a lion about to lash out. I raised a placating hand. “All I ever wanted was to do the best I can for as many people as possible. I made mistakes, but I learned from them. And I know where you’re coming from now. Leadership has—tempered me.” I huffed. “Age, too, I guess. Pushing thirty is very sobering.”

  He walked toward me then, as if against his will and obeying mine. I was willing him to lessen the distance he'd put between us. To understand if not to forgive. To agree to a truce.

  As he approache
d, I thought I glimpsed things in his eyes. Things I’d never seen before. The man he’d never let me near. The depths I could only guess at. The desire he felt and struggled against…

  Yeah, sure. Dream on, St. James.

  Then he blinked and I felt as if he threw me out of his mind. I almost lurched back.

  When he spoke again, he was the old De Luna, my taskmaster. “Tomorrow we assemble, to coordinate roles and plans for the mission. Our window of time to have access to the refugee camp is tight. We have ten days to make it there, two of which are here to get our act together. Pick only your best players. No more than eight, including you. This is going to be a maximum difficulty and hazard mission. I’ll text you the rendezvous location. 0600 sharp, St. James.”

  This time, instructions delivered, he turned and walked straight out. The door closed itself behind him.

  I let myself tremble then.

  For what felt like an hour, I sat their hugging myself, waiting for the breach of all my defenses to subside.

  Who would have thought, huh? That it would affect me this brutally, seeing him again? That for the second time in one day, I’d find myself longing for approval from yet another man who’d shaped me into who I was today?

  So what. Never said I was impervious. Even I was entitled to my stupid, nostalgic moments.

  Now, enough. Anything personal had to be shelved. Indefinitely. Hopefully erased while in storage. One thing mattered now. The mission.

  And it had already started. Every moment counted. I had to inform my team, prepare our ranks. I had to get some sleep before my former slavedriver’s atrociously early meeting.

  But first, I had to find something out.

  Rushing back to my bedroom, I emptied my bag, took that inventory. As usual, he’d been right. It hadn’t been Valium and GHB.

  The one thing missing was a concoction of thiopental sodium and scopolamine. In my special delivery system, they potentiated each other’s effects. They hadn’t in Damian’s case. Maybe his physiology had moved beyond the limitations of our species.

  But the real issue here was one of their major effects.

  Pentothal suppressed higher cortical functions, breaking down resistance and relaxing inhibition. Which was why it was widely known as truth serum.

  Scopolamine, known as Devil’s Breath on the streets, was used to “zombify” its victims. Colombian in origin like Damian, it caused disorientation, suggestibility and suppressed all resistance, like he did. Referred to as “the father of truth serum,” no one could access self-preservation, or form lies under its influence.

  But while those drugs didn’t work like in movies, my concoction had ingredients that boosted their effects tenfold, could peel the truth from the most immune minds.

  And Damian had kissed me, so passionately, so longingly, under their influence.

  But…his antipathy had felt as genuine and as intense when he’d overcome their effects.

  So what did that mean?

  Did I even want to know?

  Probably not.

  Definitely not.

  Not when we were forced to work together. Not when the success of this mission, and Jake’s life, along with seven others, depended on us doing so, impersonally, dispassionately.

  That was all I had to be. Impersonal and dispassionate. Around and with Damian.

  I could do that.

  Yeah. Right. Right after I had a frontal lobotomy.

  Ten

  “As you all know, the part of the Caucasus region we’re concerned with lies between the Black and Caspian seas here…”

  The presenter’s silhouette turned to tap his baton over the projected map behind him. I could hear a couple of suppressed yawns behind me and across the room.

  “…and it’s made of Georgia and the Russian federal subjects of Krasnodar-Krai, Karachay-Cherkessia, Kabardino-Balkaria, North Ossetia, Ingushetia, Chechnya and Dagestan, following the path of the Caucasus Mountains, which define the continental divide between Asia and Europe. We’re only concerned with the Greater Caucasus range, which is divided into the Western Caucasus from the Black Sea to Mount Elbrus, the Central Caucasus from Mount Elbrus to Mount Kazbek, and the Eastern Caucasus from Mount Kazbek to the Caspian Sea. Those regions are favorite locales for the assorted separatist movements to hide from the Federal Russian forces…”

  Bo-ring. That something Daniels from PACT’s Tactical had major sleep-inducing powers. This felt like being back in junior high, subjected to Mr. Patterson’s convoluted expositions on geo-historical intricacies. No wonder I'd expedited my high school education and fled to college at fourteen.

  Why wasn’t Damian doing this? He’d always made debriefing engrossing and memorable. Made info stick in our minds. That guy had been droning for…I flicked a look at my activity tracker…twelve minutes and the only thing he was sticking were our butts to our seats. I think I heard someone start to softly snore in the darkness.

  And he was going on. And on.

  “Since the conflict between Russia and Chechnya began in 1991 in the First Chechen War, hundreds of thousands left Chechnya for elsewhere in Russia and abroad. This included the majority of Chechnya’s non-Chechen population of three hundred thousand who never returned. As for the ethnic Chechens, according to the IDMC—the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center—some two hundred thousand Chechens remain displaced. And as you all know…”

  Okay. Enough. “Excuse me…” I stood up, stretching the crick out of my back. “But we do all know. How about we move on to something we don’t?”

  A ripple of laughter rose behind me. My team, of course. Damian’s people were on the other side of the massive lecture hall-like debriefing room. Matt had christened them the “Dirty Dozen” as soon as they’d arrived.

  Apart from being squeaky clean and painstakingly groomed, the name suited the menacing sight they'd made. They didn't find me funny.

  Figured. My history with some of them was—memorable. They probably hated having me here nearly as much as Damian did.

  The laughter died down only for Matt to make a caustic comment about PACT’s pseudo-military due process. One of Damian’s men, a new guy I didn’t recognize, volleyed with commenting on our street-thug tactics. Then everyone else jumped in.

  Verbal missiles flew like between fans of rival soccer teams. That kind of back and forth that ignited riots. In the dimness I saw Daniels turn to Damian in the dark, body language at a loss. Damian made a movement with his hand, dismissing him.

  Not good. Not Daniels relieving us of his yawn-worthy worldview report, but our people’s hair-trigger rancor. Made me wish they'd go back to ignoring each other as they had after compulsory introductions. And I’d thought that was a bad sign. When would I learn to cherish the bad, since there was always the worse?

  But it wouldn’t do to just shut them all up. That wouldn’t stop this budding resentment from festering. I had to abort this, once and for all. Starting tomorrow we’d be depending on each other for survival.

  Damian stood up. Beating me to it, no doubt. Even in the semi-darkness, his imposing figure and the purpose radiating from his every move made the commotion die down. A dozen long strides across the pitched floor had him on the two-step platform.

  “Lights, please.”

  At his clipped order, the lights came on immediately. And there he was. In his PACT all-black uniform, he seemed to absorb light and emit gravity. The sight of him, as usual, had the impact of a stun gun. That man was made from a consensus of female fantasies. The outrageous kind.

  And I’d had all the overpowering perfection over and under me last night.

  Most probably, never again.

  I dragged my thoughts back to the matter at hand. Wouldn’t do to fidget in my seat as if squirming in frustration. As I was. Even when I knew he’d kissed and called me Calista like his next heartbeat depended on me under chemical compulsion. That alone should extinguish my idiotic yearnings.

  It didn’t. And if the intervening y
ears and the hundred and one simmering resentments between us couldn’t, nothing would.

  Not that it was something I wished gone. Now that he’d renewed my exposure, I realized I never had. He’d remained in my blood, a chronic fever. Seemed I’d adapted to the exquisite torment. Developed a taste for it even.

  Yeah. That bite of perpetual craving had always been there. And if I was honest with myself, it had been my secret weapon for counteracting a lot of the crazy I lived with. It sort of evened my keel. A source of inexhaustible fuel to keep me revved up and sharp.

  Whether I admitted it or not, wanting Damian De Luna was a fact of my life.

  And from the evidence of the past six years, I couldn’t want anyone else. Most logical, really. For how would a woman follow an act like him?

  But I’d been a woman doubly cursed. First Jake, then Damian. The male species faded into nothingness after these two.

  Not that I’d known what to do with Jake when I’d gotten him. I certainly wouldn’t know what to do with Damian if I ever got him.

  Good thing I never would.

  For now, I could feast on his magnificence, and pretend I was only paying attention. I bet everyone else shared my fascination. Anyone with a brainwave had to be enthralled. If not to my level. At least, I hoped not.

  Actually, no hoping needed. I was certain what he provoked in me was unique. Only I had been his Galatea.

  My black ops Pygmalion, both creator and destroyer, reached the podium. Hands that pulverized monsters on a regular basis, that had melted me last night, gripped its sides. He lashed out his aura like a shockwave, snuffing out any remaining unrest.

  “Let me make this clear," Damian said, his voice a scythe. "Every bit of knowledge you pick up, will prove crucial. Think that you know enough, and you could die. And kill others. Maybe all of us.”

  This time went unspoken. I still heard it so loud it was like the deafening tinnitus after a resounding slap.