Arka Pharmaceuticals Headquarters
San Francisco
The next morning, a vein in Lee’s temple started throbbing. He looked at the attendance sheet for work at the Millon facility. Dr. Catherine Young had not clocked in for the second day in a row.
He’d sent the Africa footage to the three research scientists at the Palo Alto Millon lab who were part of the complete protocol. Even so, they didn’t have the full picture, of course. All they knew was that they were engaged in secret military research beyond their normal duties. And that they were earning $100K a year more than the regular research scientists. They had no clue that Lee had another agenda entirely, which was, of course, perfect.
The day Lee defected back to the mainland with a complete program to turn the Red Army into history’s greatest military machine, he’d leave behind a charred corpse in his car at the bottom of a ravine and clues that would implicate the three scientists in treason.
He was so damned close and yet so far! The Orion Africa debacle was going to set him back by months. His new life was dancing out of his grasp.
He tapped a holographic image of a lock and key on the monitor to his right. It immediately dissolved into Baring’s bullet head.
“Sir?”
“Dr. Catherine Young hasn’t come in to work this morning, either. Check hospitals within a hundred-mile radius and check police reports. Break into her home and see what you can find and make sure she knows we looked. Report back in an hour.”
“Sir.”
Lee drummed his fingers on the shiny teak desktop, jaws clenched as he thought.
What had happened to Young? Had she been mugged, had she had a car accident, was her lifeless body at the morgue? That would be very unfortunate, as she seemed to have an almost uncanny ability to understand the workings of all the iterations of SL on the human mind and was able to make an fMRI sing. If anyone could tweak the molecule, give them another iteration, it was Dr. Young.
She was the very best imaging analyst he’d ever come across. At times it seemed to him that she could look at an fMRI and figure out what the patient ate for breakfast. In her hands, each image yielded so much data they were creating the fullest map of the human brain in existence.
Why wasn’t she at work? The woman who was all work and no play?
She had no friends among her coworkers, and the baseline vetting his security staff had done on her hadn’t turned up a large number of friends. Any friends at all, actually.
She seemed to be wedded to her work, arriving early, leaving late. She showed no signs of political awareness or even unusual interest in the company she worked for.
No, Lee decided. She wasn’t spilling her guts to the FBI right now. Something must have happened to her. Had she spent the night with someone and was still there? Somehow Lee doubted that. She seemed as sexless as she was friendless.
It had been a real selling point with him.
He regretted bitterly his decision not to place tracers in the cars of his top research staff.
The instant Young showed up, a company transponder was going into her car, one that wouldn’t turn off when the car was turned off. Or better yet, Baring would slip into her bedroom, anesthetize her, and inject minute traces of a radioactive isotope with a specific signature into her. She’d never know, and they’d know her whereabouts at all times.
And when SL-59 was complete, tested and flawless, when it had been delivered to the People’s Liberation Army, Young would be slated for destruction. Together with Clancy Flynn, she would be the only one who could recognize what had happened to the soldiers of the PLA. They both had to be silenced. The loss of one blowhard former general and one mere woman was nothing in comparison to the plan.
Catherine leaned forward on her elbows, fascinated. “Come on, Stella. Tell me the truth. Is Gary Hopkins a good kisser?”
God, that scene. The world’s most famous kiss, an iconic image, on the poster of The Hunter. Stella and Gary being pulled apart by enemies, their only point of contact lips locked in a kiss.
Catherine put down her perfect cup of coffee next to the plates which had once held a perfect stack of blueberry pancakes and a perfect whites-only cheese omelette, and the bowl which had once held perfect homemade yogurt with a dollop of perfect homemade strawberry jam.
It was more food than she’d been able to consume in one meal for as long as she could remember. She’d eaten every delicious bite and had scraped the bowl of yogurt, making an embarrassing sound.
It was, hands down, the best breakfast she’d ever eaten, and that included in France. But now that she was replete, fascination with the woman sitting across from her held her in its grip.
Stella Cummings, once the most famous actress in the world, who’d commanded $20 million a picture, whose face had graced a thousand gossip magazines, who’d been a celebrity almost as long as she’d been alive until she’d disappeared from the public eye.
That woman had been a fashion plate, waif-thin and blindingly beautiful. Remote, untouchable. Perennially unsmiling and gorgeous in the pictures of her on the red carpet or in the tabloid snapshots. A twenty-first-century Greta Garbo, only thinner.
The Stella that sat across from Catherine was a healthy-looking woman who was no longer beautiful and laughed constantly.
Her face had been savagely slashed then carefully put together again by a master plastic surgeon, but nothing would ever make her beautiful again. Catherine forgot the scars ten seconds after Stella had knocked on her door bearing a tray of delicious-smelling food.
Stella gave a lopsided smile and rolled her eyes. “Gay, honey.”
Catherine’s eyes bugged. “Gary Hopkins is gay?”
“As a plaid suitcase. Like Lawrence Rome. The two actually dated.”
“Man.” Catherine sat back. Gary Hopkins and to a lesser extent Lawrence Rome were the epitome of macho. Ripped and brooding. Gary had personally saved Planet Earth by his courage and ability with humongous weaponry in Deadly Evil. “Makes a girl think, doesn’t it? Though I suppose he was too good-looking to be straight.”
They both turned as the door to Catherine’s room whooshed open.
“Speaking of good-looking men,” Stella said as Mac walked in.
He gave her the hairy eyeball, but she responded with a sunny smile.
Catherine could barely move. The instant Mac filled the doorway, her muscles were paralyzed, the breath left her body, her palms started sweating. Though her muscles were in lockdown, inside she was a riot of boiling emotions she could barely understand and couldn’t control.
He fascinated her.
That über-male thing made up of long, lean muscles, shoulders out to here, huge, capable hands that looked like they could snap a man’s neck in two and then repair a tank. He made Gary Hopkins look like a cocker spaniel.
Then there was the fear thing. She’d touched him and had felt that he didn’t plan on killing her. Today. But her gift was uneven, unreliable, incomplete, and she knew he had violence in him. Violence he could wield like a surgeon, but still.
She could very well be wrong. The expression on that flat, ugly yet compelling face was stony. There was danger in every single line of his big body and she had no guarantees that the danger wasn’t to herself.
And then there was the attraction thing. Last night she’d been exhausted, frightened out of her mind, in the iron grip of her compulsion. But now, rested and refreshed, the sudden appearance of Mac made her heart leap in her chest. Part of it was the fear and part was the fascination, but a goodly portion of it was sheer old-fashioned sex.
He turned her on.
It happened to her so seldom she barely recognized it as something belonging to her. The whole sex thing was so incredibly fraught with problems, whole thorny forests of problems, she’d more or less given up on it.
Her body hadn’t. It was as if her body had been quietly lying in wait to jump for something it wanted and it turned out what her body wanted was Mac. She shudde
red. This wasn’t just inappropriate, like getting a crush on your married dentist or your banker. This was dangerous. Because the man who walked in, swept the room with a fierce scowl and stood there like an immovable force of nature, was terrifying.
She had no idea of his background but he looked like a soldier, and not the ceremonial kind who stood around in a fancy uniform with a long, shiny sword and who knew how to snap out a salute. No, he looked like Special Forces. The kind of guys who came in under cover of darkness, snapped necks rather than salutes, then left quietly before you even knew they were there.
He distrusted her. That had been made very clear. He distrusted her, didn’t believe her story, half suspected she’d been sent to spy on him.
What a terrible trick biology had played on her that this man—huge, dangerous, a man who didn’t trust her—was the one man she had a violent sexual reaction to.
It was explicit, too, which terrified her. It wasn’t a generic attraction, the kind you’d feel for some good-looking man who crossed your path, even though Mac was the furthest thing possible from good-looking.
This man, this particular man with the muscles and the scowl and the scarred face, he was the one she reacted to as if her body had been waiting all its life for him and him alone.
Her brain telling her body forget it didn’t work.
Her heart was pounding so hard she thought she’d crack a rib. She didn’t dare move, didn’t dare speak, because then he’d know she’d started trembling the instant he appeared at the door.
Oh God.
Heat blossomed between her thighs and she was shocked to feel her vagina clench once, very hard, just as it did in her infrequent orgasms. Her chest was tight, yes, but her breasts felt swollen, heavy. Most shocking of all was a weak, trembly feeling, as if all he had to do was hold out one big hand and she’d run straight to him.
That was the scariest thing of all. She couldn’t throw herself at him because he wouldn’t catch her.
He might end up shooting her, actually.
Mac looked around at the ruins of breakfast, then pinned her and Stella with a hard look. He addressed Stella. “You about done here?”
“Yes, I’m fine, thank you, Mac. Thank you for asking.” Stella tilted her head and studied him. “Always a pleasure to be around a man who minds his manners.”
His jaw muscles worked so hard his temples moved. Catherine would bet that anything that made the temperomandibular joints work so hard had to hurt the teeth.
That stony face showed no expression at all. Catherine wondered at Stella, who seemed to be totally indifferent to his mood.
“Stella,” Mac growled.
“Mac . . .” she answered, in an exaggerated imitation of his growl. To Catherine it seemed like baiting a bear, but Stella just looked exasperated, not frightened.
There was a stalemate of some kind. Catherine could practically see the lines of male and female will crossing. Amazingly, Stella won.
She pointed to the coffeepot. “Coffee? I still have enough for a cup.”
He hesitated, but Stella went ahead and got a cup from a cabinet. To Catherine’s surprise, there was a full complement of teas, a small sink and a microwave inside the cabinet. If she’d known, she’d have made herself a cup of tea last night.
Stella poured Mac a cup and handed it to him. “There you go, black no sugar. Just like your heart.”
Mac put the cup down on the table hard enough for a couple of drops of coffee to slosh over the edge. “Goddammit, Stella—”
“No, you listen to me, Mac. Do you realize that this woman—” She made a graceful move indicating Catherine, reminding her all over again that Stella had once been one of the greatest actresses in the world. “Do you know she thought she was a prisoner last night?”
Catherine made a sound, choked off before it could make its way from her throat to her mouth. She tried to hunker, to become invisible. Stella turned to her. “Didn’t you?” she demanded hotly.
Mac was looking at her narrow-eyed, face of stone. Oh God. She nodded, throat too tight to talk. It hadn’t even occurred to her that she wasn’t a prisoner.
“Well, you weren’t,” Stella said. “I can’t believe he’d make you think that for one second. This community doesn’t do prisons.”
Her eyes were the same eyes that had burned from the screen. Wide, pale blue, almost transparent, still beautiful and expressive, notwithstanding the scar that slashed from the right eyebrow to the edge of a sharp cheekbone, barely missing the eyeball. Those eyes had been magnificent on the screen but were even more powerful in real life. “She wasn’t a prisoner. Was she, Mac? You tell her she wasn’t locked up like an animal. And if you did lock that door you can forget about eating. Like, forever. You can cook your own damned meals from now on.”
That grim face winced, as if in pain. Catherine understood completely. Now that she’d tasted Stella’s cooking, banishment from her meals was indeed something to be feared.
“You weren’t locked in.” The words sounded forced. Painful to say.
Catherine shuddered. She hadn’t been locked in last night. Those miserable hours huddled in on herself, wondering if she would ever be let out of the room—that hadn’t been real?
She stared at Mac. He stared back.
“Oh Christ,” Stella said, and uncurled her long legs from around the chair legs and stood up. She marched over to the door and slapped a spot to the right of the door, halfway up. “There’s a slight indentation. Press it and the door opens. Press it twice and it locks. Come try it.”
Keeping a wary eye on Mac, Catherine walked to the door. Stella took her hand and pressed her fingers to the wall. It wasn’t visible to the eye but it was clear under her fingers. A slight round indentation. She pressed it and the door whooshed open and that fresh plant smell filled the room.
“See? Not a prisoner.” Stella was much taller than Catherine and looked over her head to Mac. “Not only is she not a prisoner, but I think she’s found her way to us. I think she is one of us.”
Catherine had no idea what Stella meant but Mac did. He winced again and shook his head. Stella sighed. “Christ, Mac, you’re hopeless. Go on. Show our guest around.”
“All right.” If his jaw got any tighter, the skin over his cheeks would crack.
Stella turned to Catherine. “See you for lunch. I’m making radicchio risotto and pear tart. I make a mean risotto if I do say so myself. You’ll like it.”
“I bet I will. And for the record, I love risotto,” Catherine said fervently. “I’m looking forward to it.” She watched with a touch of unease as Stella left. As long as she was in the room, there was an air of . . . normality. Three people, talking.
With Stella gone, Catherine was left with this mountain of a grim-faced man who seemed to dislike her and yet who turned her on so much she couldn’t think straight.
God, what a miserable combination. The worst.
She was in this strange building at his complete mercy. The door might or might not have been locked last night, but the fact was she wouldn’t have dared to leave the room to wander around even if she hadn’t been locked in. Even supposing she’d found a way out, they were still in the mountains, far from any town. If she’d tried to escape, she’d have frozen to death.
So she was a prisoner in fact, though one who was being exceedingly well-fed.
He was staring at her, no clue whatsoever as to what might be going through his mind, though it didn’t look like anything good.
“I’m supposed to show you around,” he said, his voice a low rumble. “So let’s go.” He stepped back and opened a huge hand.
O-kay.
Might as well fall down that rabbit hole. Catherine stepped out, crossing the big corridor outside the door and leaning against the railing.
Wow. What a rabbit hole, leading straight into Wonderland. Gripping the railing hard, she stared.
Last night she’d been too exhausted and too terrified to really take it all in, but now i
n the full light of day she saw . . . a city. Some kind of underground city, hidden from the world, stretched out before her. Buildings amid lush greenery, people walking with purpose on the brick and stone pathways. Someone sweeping away leaves, someone else opening doors, putting out two tables . . . a café! Sure enough, a man and a woman sat down and a waiter came out and took an order.
More people started crisscrossing the area below, some following the paths, some cutting across, as people did. Everyone who looked up saw Mac and waved. A couple of men gave a sort of ironic salute.
She glanced up at Mac, saw his nods and realized that she was indeed inside a community and Mac was their king. Or at least their leader.
And no matter how forbidding he looked, no one cowered. The salutes and waves were cheery and informal.
More and more people were pouring into the commons area below. Some had specific tasks—sweeping the paths, taking something from here to there.
The sky above was bright blue. If she hadn’t seen it last night, she wouldn’t have imagined that overhead was a huge glass dome. She’d have thought the city open to the elements. And yet what she knew was a dome was completely transparent.
“Where are we? What is this? If it’s a city, it’s one I haven’t heard about. A city carved out of a mountaintop. Or rather in a mountaintop.”
The look he gave her was sharp. She shrugged. “We traveled uphill. That’s the only thing I know about where we are. I’m surprised I haven’t heard about this place.”
“Don’t be surprised. We designed it to be off the map and off the grid.”
Catherine blinked. “Off the grid? You mean nobody knows you’re here? But—” Her mind whirred. “I mean modern towns need infrastructure, connection to the electricity grid, water mains, the internet . . .”
“We are completely self-sufficient.” Mac’s face gave nothing away, but she could detect a note of pride. “We have our own electricity.” He looked up and, startled, Catherine looked up, too. “That dome? It looks transparent but it’s not. It’s graphene, one of the strongest materials on earth, one molecule thick. There are tiny solar panels embedded in the dome. We have plenty of energy. And water. We have our own internet infrastructure and our own food supply.”