“It—it’s beautiful,” she breathed, then looked sharply up at Mac.
It was beautiful, but it was also hidden, as he wanted to remain hidden. It was a town, only a town turned inward, not outward. Tucked away, mysterious, remote.
Man, he was so going to zap her memories. This secret community was going to be MIB’ed away forever and she was sorry for that, because it was the most interesting place she’d ever seen.
A huge domed space with a lush park along the bottom, plants twining around the balconies ringing the area. Doors opened off the balconies. She had no idea if the rooms behind the doors were occupied or not. So far she’d seen exactly three people here. But what she saw was well-designed, well-tended, pristine.
Someone had to do that.
Two more people walked along a path, a man and a woman. The man looked up, did a little double-take at seeing her, then waved to Mac. He gravely dipped his head. They walked off, heads together, discussing something earnestly.
This was a community. People lived here, worked here. It was gorgeous and hidden and unlike anything she’d ever seen before. The huge black arching dome with the twinkling lights, the intense greenery, the curving balconies looking a little like the New York Guggenheim.
“So beautiful,” she repeated in a whisper.
To her surprise, he answered her.
“Yeah.” His big hands clutched the railing so hard the knuckles turned white, then lifted. “We want to keep it that way.” He turned his head to her, look penetrating and hostile.
“Where are we? And what is this place?” She lifted her hands, palms out. The universal sign of surrender. No threat. No weapons. “You’re going to MIB me anyway. Why not let me know where I am? There are obviously other people around. It’s so well-cared-for, so well-planned. Down there it looks like a park. And all these doors . . . people live here. Work here. Cook here. That meal was, hands down, one of the best I’ve ever had. If that’s the way you feed your prisoners, I’d love to know how you treat your citizens.”
“You’d be surprised who the cook is.”
Her eyes widened. It was the first thing he’d said to her that wasn’t a question or a threat. For a second, she thought she saw astonishment on his face, too. That he’d talked to her openly.
But then she wouldn’t remember any of this. She was going to have her brain zapped, poof, gone. She wouldn’t miss the memory of sitting in her freezing car, waiting for death. And being scared nearly out of her wits at the huge man with the black ski mask rapping on her window. But the interrogation . . . she could admit to herself now how much Mac fascinated her. And this huge, gorgeous space under the dome, unlike anything she’d ever seen before. She was sorry that would have to go.
It had all been such a surprise. The name of the talented cook would be nothing in comparison. “Try me.”
“You might have heard of her. Stella Cummings.”
Catherine’s jaw dropped. “Oh my gosh! Stella Cummings, the actress?”
He’d taken her utterly by surprise. Stella Cummings had been a child actor who’d won an Oscar at fifteen and another one at thirty. She’d been attacked by a stalker and had disappeared from view, completely. It was as if the earth had opened up and swallowed her whole. Online tabloids had an entire Where is Stella Cummings? industry going.
“I don’t suppose—” This was so stupid. For all she knew she was going to be killed soon. And yet here she was, morphing into fangrrrl. “I loved her in Dangerous Tides. If she’s around, could I meet her? If she doesn’t want to talk about acting I can compliment her on her taco. It was great.”
“Let’s go.” He took her elbow and started walking. Startled, she had to trot to keep up with his huge strides.
“Where are we going? Am I going to get to meet Stella Cummings?”
“No.” His jaws clenched. “Maybe. Maybe tomorrow. Right now I’m taking you to your room.”
He shut up after that and she couldn’t pry another word out of him. Questions were useless and after a few minutes it took all her breath to keep up with him.
They circled the huge space until they were on the opposite side from the interrogation room and went down a story. He stopped in front of a door and touched a part of the wall that had no distinguishing characteristics. No buttons, no panel, nothing. But when he tapped a specific spot the door whooshed open.
He gestured with his hand and she moved toward the threshold gingerly, heart pounding. For just a second back there, she’d had the impression that he was . . . well, not softening toward her, but at least not hugely hostile. And she’d thought maybe they could sit down and talk things over now that she’d read him.
But no. He was ushering her into a dark prison cell. Four walls, no windows. Only blackness.
She walked in slowly, giving a quick glance back at the door. No internal handle. No way out.
A prison. A check of his dark eyes confirmed that.
Nobody on earth knew where she was and her lonely life was such that no one would think of looking for her. Maybe she was going to be left in this room to die. It wouldn’t take much. Just leave her here until she rotted. No one to know, no one to care.
Just one woman, in a closed room, forgotten. Time passing. Dying locked up, alone, weaker and weaker until the darkness closed in.
Her throat tightened. Her chest wouldn’t—couldn’t—move.
He stepped behind her, that huge body almost pressing against hers. A huge force, pushing air ahead, forcing her to stumble another step inside. Farther from the door, farther from the light of the corridor.
She gasped in a breath, another. I can’t do this, she thought. All her resources were gone. She was exhausted and terrified, a drumbeat of terror in her head. A dark tide of it, lapping higher and higher. Soon she would drown in it.
She stumbled another step forward, then turned, craning her head a little to look Mac in the face. She could barely make out his features in the backwash of light from the doorway.
She had to know, had to. Was she going to be closed up here and left to die?
“May I—may I touch you?” she gasped.
There was barely enough light to see his frown, his head jerking back in astonishment. Without waiting for an answer, she reached for his hand, clasping it in hers.
Heat. That was the first thing she perceived. His huge hand was hot, as if he were a radiator himself. Her own hands were chilled and the heat of his simply sank into her through the skin, sank deep into muscle.
And then—“Ah!”
She let his hand drop, missing the connection, the heat immediately.
No use clinging to him, to a man who distrusted her, who considered her a threat.
But who wasn’t going to kill her. That had come through loud and strong. This wasn’t going to be a permanent prison. However long she was going to be locked up, it wasn’t going to be forever.
Or so she hoped.
Without a word, he stepped back beyond the threshold. The door whooshed closed and the room lit up. There was no specific source of light, no lamps and no fixtures. Just light.
The room was comfortably furnished, large and spacious. It had seemed sinister in the darkness but now that it was lit it was just an ordinary room, larger than most hotel rooms, with a queen-sized bed, a sitting area with two armchairs, a desk doubling as a table. A quick glance into the room beyond a door showed a very nice bathroom. Stocked, she could see, with a tall stack of blindingly white towels, a bar of soap and a brand-new ultrasound toothbrush.
Okay. A Hilton-level prison. She could do that.
To her surprise, she found the small bag she’d packed, just in case her quest required an overnight stay. She had her small cosmetics case, a nightgown, slippers.
A shower made her feel better, more human. She’d been on the road and on the run for almost twenty-four hours. She crawled into bed and stared at the ceiling,
Everything ached, everywhere, inside and out. Her body and her head and her heart. A wave of lonelin
ess washed over her. Touching Mac had reassured her that he wasn’t dangerous to her, not in the sense that she feared.
But . . . what did she know? Could she be sure? Her gift was so unreliable. Maybe she should have cultivated it instead of pushing it away with both hands, forcing it back into the deepest corners of her mind like a nasty, broken, misshapen twin of herself.
The gift had never been wrong, though it had so often been incomplete. Discerning top notes, the emotions of the moment, utterly missing crucial underlying emotions, because she didn’t want to explore, couldn’t stand delving into the truth of people. So she often got people wrong because she hadn’t been able to discern tones and shadows underneath the strongest emotions.
Mac might not be planning her death, but he had no particular incentive to keep her safe, either. And yet . . . yet there’d been . . . something. Something there, something elusive. Some faintest feather tickling her mind, like a gentle finger touching her.
It felt like safety.
Was it real?
Probably not.
Why should this man care in any way for her? Anyone she’d ever dated considered her a freak. And sex . . . well, that never worked out well.
She was tired. Tired beyond today’s stressful events. Tired of being who she was, tired of being pushed and pulled by things inside her she had no control over, tired of knowing things she shouldn’t.
Tired . . .
The lights went suddenly out and she fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.
January 7
“Maybe I should just keep her locked up until she starves to death,” Mac said sourly the next morning.
Nick and Jon didn’t pay him any attention at all. They were riveted to the Hawk emblem, Jon studying it carefully, then passing it on to Nick.
Jon looked up briefly, white teeth flashing. “Nah. I’ll bet you’ve already sent Stella to bring her breakfast.”
Mac’s teeth ground together. Busted.
Right now his prisoner was being tortured, lashed with the whip of the best breakfast ever cooked in the history of breakfasts.
Nick didn’t look up from the Hawk. “Wouldn’t be efficient. To kill her. Until we figure this thing out.”
“Shit.” Jon cocked his head as he stared at Nick. “More than ten words from Nick. All at once. I think that’s a record, isn’t it, Mac?”
Mac met Jon’s eyes for a second. Nick had only been a team member for a week before the shit came down. He’d been introduced by Lucius—and goddamn, there it was again, that blow to the heart—as the sixth man after Randy Higgins had been lost in a HALO jump. Parachute malfunction two miles up was unforgiving.
Nick had quietly joined the team, doing exactly what he was told, efficiently and well, without speaking more than a word or two at a time. None of the Ghost Ops teammates had a life he could or would talk about, but clues would come out. Mike Pelton’s southern accent. Jon’s California Surfer Dude drawl. Rolf Lundquist’s love for skiing and intimate knowledge of the Rockies.
Not Nick. He could have been hatched in a lab for all the clues he gave to his past.
“Fuck off, Jon,” Nick said unexpectedly, and it was so unusual for him to react that Jon blinked and shut up.
Nick had been scrutinizing every molecule of the Hawk. He finally placed it carefully down on the table and looked up, meeting Jon’s eyes, then Mac’s.
“It’s real. And it’s his.”
Mac nodded. He’d come to the same conclusion himself.
“Yeah? And so?” Jon finally broke the silence. Surfer Dude didn’t do too well with silence when they were off an op.
Nick frowned. Expressions on his dark face were even rarer than words.
Jon turned the emblem over in his hand. “I mean—if this is real, then—then Lucius what? Gave it to the woman? Instead of lazing about in his villa on Capo Verde or Bali he’s in a lab in Palo Alto with his ass hanging out? Does that sound real? Is that even possible?”
“I didn’t know him like you two did. Never really had a chance to. So I don’t know, but . . .” Man, Nick was on a roll. Several sentences. “Could it be we’re wrong about him?”
“You mean about what went down?” Mac asked harshly.
Nick nodded.
Mac and Jon exchanged glances. Jon had been as devastated as Mac. Like Mac, he’d considered Lucius a surrogate father and had taken the betrayal hard. Nick had simply gone into stoic mode, the betrayal one more shitty thing in a shitty world. It had brought Mac and Jon nearly to their knees.
“Mac?” Jon asked. “You think—”
Mac shook his head sharply. He didn’t know. The betrayal had been bad enough. The idea that Lucius might have been betrayed himself, might be in serious danger . . .
“It depends on the woman.” Nick seemed to be the only one who could think clearly about this. He turned to Mac. “Looker like that, I think you should interrogate her more fully.” And then, to Mac’s astonishment, Nick grinned. It lasted just a second and then Nick’s features rearranged themselves into his usual stony façade, but it had been there.
Jon picked up on it. “Yeah, man. Interrogate her. Get to the bottom of this. The front, too.” He waggled his eyebrows. “Hands-on interrogation, if you get my drift.”
“Idiots,” Mac growled. But he’d had a punch to the chest at the thought of putting his hands on her, dammit. That mass of shiny hair, the silver gray eyes and vulnerable expression blossomed in his head and something stirred throughout his body. Stirred south of the border, too. Shit. He started getting a chubby and had to will it down.
That shocked him. He was a focused man, all business, all the time. Sex had its place, a narrow enclosed space, usually bar to bed, couple of hours max. Then back to business.
The woman was fucking with his head. He’d thought of her all night, dammit, and not in a strategic way. Nope. Not focusing on her story, pulling it this way and that looking for holes, which is what he would have done with anyone else.
All night he’d stared at the ceiling, wide-eyed, remembering that burst of heat rushing through his veins at her touch. He’d never taken drugs. His entire childhood had been spent around people who retreated into drugs to wipe out their reality. He was thirty-four and he was sure that most of the people he’d known as a child were either dead or wished they were. So no, drugs had held no appeal. He didn’t want to die, he wanted to live, fiercely. He always had.
But one kid had explained to him the rush of heroin as it hit the system. The kid rented his ass out on a nightly basis to get it and hated himself 23/7. That one hour of heroin was worth it—worth the pain and degradation. Worth being treated like butcher’s meat. Worth being beaten and abused every night. He’d said that when the drug entered him, all the bad things went away and it was like being in heaven, if heaven existed.
Well, fuck it if that wasn’t a pretty good explanation of what had happened when Dr. Catherine Young touched him. A rush. A rush like nothing he’d ever felt before. Like having his heart stroked by gentle hands. Like having his mind invaded by an angel.
He wanted to snort. Angels. There were no angels in this world and there was no other world. Angels didn’t exist, and no one had stroked his heart. Not that he had one anyway.
Damned if he understood what had happened, though. Something had. Something huge and scary.
She’d pulled this stuff on him out of thin air. How had she done it? Maybe it was like those magicians onstage who pulled up a member of the audience and asked them to think of a number and write it down. He’d always suspected those acts to be pure bluffs and the members of the audience part of the act.
But what Catherine Young had said had been, terrifyingly, the pure truth. She’d read him. Nailed him, like a butterfly to the board.
Mac wasn’t used to being seen, understood. He was used to being obeyed. The men under him in Ghost Ops knew damn all about him and that was the way he liked it. The only person to have a slight insight into him had been Lucius and already
that had made him uncomfortable.
Even now, even in exile, Nick and Jon and the rest of the small community they seemed to be building knew him as a tough, strong leader with no chinks in his armor, nothing there to hang on to but a big, hard, shiny surface.
So being understood like that—it was scary. Even scarier was that he’d liked it, for that short burst of time in which she’d touched him. Before his head could catch up to what she was doing.
It had been like a shot of heroin to his system, and like any addict, now he craved it. He’d spent the night thinking of it—thinking of her. Remembering that soft touch, the rush of warmth spreading in an instant from her hand to his entire body, zinging through his veins.
She’d . . . glowed, while touching him. Like some unearthly creature. As if there were a thousand-watt lamp inside her beaming light and warmth. In that instant, she’d been impossibly beautiful, the most beautiful woman in the world. Some enchantress from another planet, too delicate and beautiful for this one.
That hadn’t lasted. When she’d broken the connection it was as if something had broken inside her. That pale skin no longer glowing but ashen. Shadows under those beautiful eyes. Nostrils pinched and pale.
That had kept him awake, too, because the glowing fairy princess from Planet Zog had been fascinating but the vulnerable, fragile woman who’d sprinkled fairy dust over him and paid a price for it nearly broke his heart.
He’d had to fist his hands to keep from putting his arms around her. He, Mac McEnroe, balls-to-the-wall tough guy who could and had watched enemies die by his hand without blinking, had been about to put his arms around a potential enemy. A completely unknown entity, who had somehow found them in their hideout. Someone who could put his community in jeopardy.
“Okay,” he said, putting on his war face, making his voice cool. “I’m going to see what else I can get out of her.”
Nick gave a curt nod, turned away and picked up the Hawk again.
Jon grinned and made kissy noises.
Mac flipped him the bird and walked out.
Chapter Six