Heart of Danger

  Clods of dirt rose up and fell onto the cart, together with shards of the hard ceramic. It all bounced off their suits and the refractive blanket harmlessly.

  Jon drove straight through the center of what had once been a deadly microwave fence, the cart bouncing hard off the uneven terrain. The camouflage blanket came loose, lifted up, blew away.

  Shit! They were visible now to guards with scans.

  A shout, and five men veered off and started running toward them.

  “Busted!” Jon shouted, looking in the rearview mirror to the side of the open-topped cart. “Hang on tight!”

  He began a series of evasive maneuvers as more clods of earth sprang up from the bullets. It was a numbers game now. Number of minutes times number of shooters. Nick was behind them, now pacing them . . . he hopped aboard, walking over the sick men to his sentry position. In a second, he had his rifle to his shoulder and they were back-to-back again, covering 360 degrees.

  “Drone!” Mac barked. “Outer perimeter?”

  Nick had his screen set to holo, he positioned it to the side so they could both see. There were three red points running forward, the outer perimeter guards. Fuck, this was exactly what the guards were trained for. Preventing an outbreak.

  Nick sent a copy of the holo to the front of the cart so Jon and Catherine could watch it. They were four minutes out.

  IR showed dots converging on them, a hundred meters away.

  “They can’t see the helo, they’re coming for us!” Jon shouted.

  They needed to get to the helo fast and get out of Dodge. Once they were in the air, they could breathe easy. Until then, they were targets and outnumbered. And Catherine was with them.

  She was quiet, hanging hard on to the bar in front of her, beautiful face set, saying nothing. Not wanting to distract them.

  Three minutes out.

  The dots were running fast toward them, weapons up, seventy meters away. They shouldered their rifles at a dead run. Mac shouldered his own rifle, took aim, feet naturally counteracting the bouncing vehicle, waiting . . . there it was! A moment of steadiness. He breathed out, and halfway through the breath squeezed the trigger. One down. Another steady moment and the other went down. He swiveled and the third went down.

  Two minutes out.

  The three guards would have given their coordinates. Now the entire compound would know a Millon cart full of armed men was making a break for it. Nick shouldered his rifle and a man speaking into a shoulder mike behind them went down.

  One minute out.

  They were near the helo, though they couldn’t see it. It was going to be tight. Red dots were converging on them from all points of the compass.

  Mac tapped his ear, to the entire team. “Catherine, pull the camouflage tarp off the helo. Nick and I will provide security. Jon, load the Captain and the men. We’ll have a window of about a minute and a half to take off.”

  Unspoken was the idea—if we can take off. The helo was rated for speed and invisibility, she wasn’t a workhorse. She was a sleek piece of technology but she had her limits and carrying seven people was definitely it. The only thing that could save them was that the sick men were so emaciated. Together, the four men weighed as much as two men.

  The helo would simply have to be up to it.

  Mac quickly ran alternate scenarios through his head if they crash-landed somewhere between here and Haven. They could steal a van, make it up the mountain . . .

  Here they were! The cart stopped, rocking a little. Catherine raced out and quickly, efficiently started pulling the tarp off. Jon was loading the Captain and the men. Catherine had finished and had hopped up and was helping to position the unconscious men and restrain them for takeoff.

  Four men were running toward them, shooting. Mac felt a sharp pain in his side and ignored it. The ballistic vest would take care of it. He might have a bruised rib but that was all. He took the fucker down and the man next to him. Nick took care of the other two.

  Jon was in the cockpit, powering up the engine. “Go go go!” he shouted.

  Mac grabbed hold of the strut, pulled himself up with a wince. Man, his side hurt like a bitch. The helo started lifting, slowly at first. Nick had put on his harness and was hanging outside the open door, laying down suppressive fire. Another bright light, and another man went down.

  Something crackled and danced.

  Fuck! That was a stunner! Put on high, it would have dropped them like cattle.

  A bullet pinged harmlessly off a skid. They would be barely visible to the men on the ground now and invisible on scan.

  Nose down, the helo rose in the air, now beyond the reach of bullets and stunners. Mac looked down at the pale green faces, guns pointing in every direction as the guards lost them, unable to track them by sound and radar and IR. The helo veered north, gaining speed with every passing second. They were headed home.

  Mac heaved a sigh of relief. Nick was disengaging himself from the harness, looking back into the small bay. His eyes widened.

  Mac whirled, weapon to shoulder, ready to take down anyone who’d jumped aboard at the last second but there was nobody.

  Except . . . a pale figure slumped over the bodies of his teammates.

  Catherine.

  Dead.

  Lee strode down the corridors, listening to the guards sounding off. There’d been a break-in, an equipment cart had made it out of the compound and had been abandoned close to the outer perimeter.

  No one had any idea who had been in it.

  Lee knew, or he suspected. The two men at the entrance, who kept an eye on the vidcams, swore that nothing amiss had happened, but Lee knew that someone had come for Patient Nine.

  Patient Nine was the key. Someone knew that and someone had stolen a year of work from him and perhaps his future with it.

  He stepped into the room, alerted by the red light flashing above the door.

  Nine was gone. Disconnected from the machinery, not ripped from it. He’d been disconnected by someone who knew what she was doing.

  Oh yes. Catherine Young.

  He keyed in the code for the entrance security. “Who entered the premises this evening besides those who were scheduled?”

  A pause, then one of the guards answered. “Ah, Dr. Benson, sir. He entered at 3:17 A.M.”

  “His emergency contact number is listed. Call and tell me where he is.”

  “Ah, sir, isn’t he—”

  “Now!”

  “Yessir.” The line was kept open and Lee listened as the guard called Benson and asked where he was. He didn’t hear Benson’s answer but he knew where he wasn’t. At Millon. “Sir.” The guard sounded confused. “Dr. Benson isn’t here. He’s in Boston, visiting his sick mother.”

  Lee closed his eyes, then opened them. The guard was squawking in his ear but he paid no attention.

  “Tell security to stand down from the cart and send a team of techs to gather forensic evidence. If there is a molecule of DNA or extraneous material, I want it.”

  “Yessir.”

  Through the bedlam of the sirens, Lee slowly made his way down to Level 4. The building was deserted, the evacuation protocol having been followed to the letter.

  At the entrance to Level 4, the sirens suddenly disengaged. Security would be doing a sweep up in the upper levels, gathering evidence, interrogating the night shift workers. They wouldn’t be coming down here; Level 4’s secrets were safe.

  Lee walked to the entrance of the door where Patients Twenty-Seven, Twenty-Eight and Twenty-Nine had been kept. They’d been comatose, now they were gone/missing. No one person could have carried four men away.

  So this was an organized raid. Could Catherine Young have organized it?

  Nothing he knew about her suggested that she could have done so. She was a brilliant researcher, a fine scientist, but not a leader. Her personality was quiet and withdrawn. But the fact was, she was missing, and his lab had been raided.

  If she had anything to do with this, he wo
uld hound her to the ends of the earth.

  In the meantime, he wouldn’t let this stop him. In fact, he’d found something very interesting in Young’s brain scan. Something he could use, build upon.

  This was a setback, nothing more.

  Nine and the other patients were close to death anyway. He’d been deprived of their brain tissue, that was all.

  But he was getting closer to his goal.

  No one could stop him.

  “No!” Mac screamed, pure panic prickling through his system. Panic and blinding, crippling fear.

  He knelt, gathering Catherine to him. She was utterly slack with the boneless look of the dead.

  No!

  “Medic bag!” he screamed just as Nick thrust it into his hands. As he scrambled to find the defibrillator patches, fit them into the tiny battery, disengaging the Securloc of Catherine’s ballistic vest, tearing open the shirt underneath and fitting the patches to her white white skin, he totally ignored the fact that touching her was like touching something inert . . . dead.

  No!

  Every time he’d touched Catherine her skin sang to him. Life pulsed in her, touching her was like touching life itself. Warmth and energy traveled through him at the slightest contact. He could feel her heart beating, the swirl of emotions that was Catherine, the gentleness and light that was uniquely her.

  Touching her had been sheer magic, always, a touch that brought him to life, too.

  Not like now, where there was nothing beneath his fingers but a cold blank void.

  He turned on the switch with sweaty fingers. Her back arched and for a second he thought—She’s come back to me! But it was nothing. It was the electrical current running through her muscles, artificially contracting them.

  He pressed the current again and her back arched again, high, slumping back down lifelessly.

  There was a loud noise in the cabin and it took him a moment to realize it was him, screaming at her to live, goddammit live!

  Another pulse, she arched and fell back. Mac laid his hand on her chest, something he’d done a hundred times these past days and every time it was as if her skin kissed his. Warmth and welcome slid into him in honeyed pulses and he’d grown addicted to the feeling. Always, always . . . except now.

  Now there was nothing under his hand but emptiness.

  No!

  He had no idea if he screamed it aloud or only in his head. Didn’t matter. He tore the patches off and began manual stimulation of her heart, the skin lifeless under his hands but he didn’t care because he was going to bring her back to life himself, she was going to live through his hands, as he lived through hers.

  Left hand on her chest, the heel of the right hand over the back of the left, compression at least 5 centimeters deep, 100 compressions per minute.

  Training kicked in and he pumped her chest hard, rhythmically, unceasingly, counting the compressions like a chant, over and over again. Sweat dripped from him onto her chest and his hands were white with the pressure and he couldn’t give up, wouldn’t give up . . .

  “Boss.” Nick’s hand on his shoulder. “She’s gone. I’m so sorry. I saw the stunner, it was green, set to kill. She caught killer current. I’m so sorry, boss.”

  Mac wasn’t listening, could barely hear him. There was noise in his ears, the static of panic as he tunnel-visioned and there was only his hands over Catherine’s heart and Catherine’s heart silent under them, and nothing else in the entire world.

  He chanted the numbers, loud, so he wouldn’t have to listen to Nick. He didn’t want to hear him, he didn’t want to hear anyone, he didn’t want anyone or anything, all he wanted was to feel her heart beat under his hands and he was going to stay here for a hundred years if he had to, just like this, willing her back to life.

  Pumping his own life into her because he couldn’t exist without her. Everything he was, all his thoughts and dreams and fears, it was all there in his hands, his hands were beating her heart for her. He’d do that. He’d do that forever, his heart would beat for hers, he’d do anything, anything at all . . .

  Tears were mixing with the sweat and dripping onto Catherine’s chest. His eyes stung but it never even occurred to him to wipe his eyes, his brow, because Catherine needed his hands, needed him for her heart to beat.

  “Boss . . .” Nick spoke again, a note of pity in his voice.

  Mac shrugged away the hand. He’d slap it away if he could but he couldn’t leave Catherine, not for one instant because he was her. His hands were reaching deep inside her now, beneath the skin, through bone and muscle, reaching for her heart, pumping heat into her . . .

  His hands grabbed her heart, squeezed it directly somehow, though he was still compressing her chest, 100 beats a minute, steady steady . . . and below, he was touching her heart, touching it with everything in him, and if he could have he would have given her his own life but he couldn’t, he could only work his hands on her chest, 100 compressions a minute.

  He chanted and worked and sweated, frenzied and terrified.

  “ETA fifteen minutes,” Jon announced, but Mac didn’t hear. Didn’t want to hear. He wanted to stay here forever, heels of his hands over his love’s heart, because as long as they were here he didn’t have to let her go, didn’t have to say goodbye . . .

  “Mac . . .” Nick said low. It was the first time Nick had ever called him by his name. Mac chanced a look up and saw tears in Nick’s eyes. He didn’t know Nick could cry. “She’s gone,” he whispered.

  No!

  No, he wouldn’t let her be . . . gone. His mind shied away from even thinking the word dead. Because Catherine couldn’t be dead. Nothing would make any sense at all in the world if she were dead. She was life itself and joy and that heart of hers, that magical heart of hers . . .

  Was beating.

  Was he hallucinating? He couldn’t feel anything under the heels of his hands but that other sense, the one that allowed him to feel, touch her heart with his phantom hand, it felt a pulse, a sharp electric jerk.

  Catherine’s back arched again as if under the patches but she wasn’t wearing patches. She arched, coughed, her head turned.

  “Jesus fucking Christ!” Nick yelled, backing away, hands up.

  “What?” Jon yelled from the cockpit.

  Nick was white. “She’s . . . Catherine’s . . .”

  “Alive!” Mac screamed. He pulled her up and into his arms, held her tightly and cried, great gulping raw sobs, crying so hard he couldn’t breathe but he didn’t need air, all he needed was Catherine, alive once again in his arms.

  Something brushed against his scar. Her hand. It stroked him once, then fell weakly. “Mac,” she whispered, the sound barely audible above the raw sounds coming from his chest. “I love you.”

  “Oh God!” His throat was so tight he couldn’t speak, couldn’t get the words out. I love you, too, he screamed in his mind, but she couldn’t hear him.

  She slumped in his arms in a faint.

  They rode into Haven like that, Catherine held tightly in his arms, his hand over her back, feeling her heart beat. Her precious precious heart.

  Beating.

  Two weeks later

  Mount Blue

  “Did you eat?” Mac asked anxiously, closing the door behind him. He walked across the room and sat down across the table from her.

  She should be asking him if he’d eaten. He’d lost tons of weight these past days. At least that was what it seemed like to Catherine. She’d been in a coma for ten days and had woken up only four days ago. Pat and Salvatore had kept her hydrated and she’d been on a parenteral feed course and a glucose drip, so when her eyes opened, she felt . . . refreshed. As if she’d slept for a very very long time and was now awake.

  Mac had looked like a human wreck. He’d been sitting by her bedside when her eyes opened and later Stella told her he’d left her side only to go to the bathroom the entire ten days.

  He hadn’t shaved and he had barely eaten and he certainly hadn’t washe
d in those ten days.

  When she opened her eyes and saw his face, with a beard beginning to grow mountain-man bushy, red-rimmed eyes, new hollows under his cheeks and new permanent lines, she’d smiled, then frowned at the big, fat tears running down the sides of his face. He’d ignored them totally and simply smiled at her and said, “You’re back,” in an unused voice that cracked.

  That had cracked her heart wide open and it hadn’t closed since.

  She’d gotten her strength back quickly, no thanks to Mac, who was against her doing anything more strenuous than lifting a fork to her mouth.

  She was in her room and had finished off some of Stella’s food which had been arriving in industrial quantities. Mac had been called away because in the ten days he’d been offline a lot of things had happened. At first, Catherine had had to pry him away from her with bolt cutters and a crane, but slowly he was persuaded that she wasn’t going to die on him if he disappeared for an hour or two.

  The thing was, she felt great.

  She knew, intellectually, that she’d received a lethal shock and that her heart had stopped. But she couldn’t remember anything about it. The last thing she remembered, they’d been racing to the helo with four very sick men in back, then they were in the helo and then nothing until she woke up in the Haven infirmary.

  But it was theoretical knowledge, not knowledge she kept in her heart or even in her body. She felt a little weak and a little light-headed but that was all.

  Actually, she felt something else. It was too soon to tell and there were no pregnancy tests here on Haven but there was an unmistakable glow inside her. A hidden bubble of light and joy and the faintest tendrils of life. It made her hum with delight.

  Mac narrowed his eyes at her. “Was the food that good?”

  “Fabulous.” She pushed her plate across to him. “Try it yourself. You need to put on weight. You look awful.”

  He winced. “I’ve never been handsome, honey. If that’s what you want, you’re with the wrong guy. However, if you do find that guy I will bust his pretty face to a pulp so you might as well stick with me.”