Sophie had fallen back, so weak she couldn’t stand up, though Fritzi could.
They took Fritzi to the vet and a surprised Dr. Felsom told her parents that the X-rays showed bone fractures that had recently healed.
Sophie healed Nana Henderson’s arthritis, her mother’s breast cancer, and her father’s broken femur. She’d healed an aneurysm in an old family friend, Emma Price. Aunt Emma’s aneurysm had disappeared after a session with Sophie, and it was only her father’s influence that had stopped Aunt Emma’s cardiologist from publishing the incredible results—the clear aneurysm on the angiogram on September 12, no aneurysm on the angiogram on September 20.
No one told the cardiologist that Sophie had spent an afternoon with Aunt Emma on the seventeenth. And no one told him that Sophie spent the next week in bed, too weak to get up.
From that moment on, she was forbidden to help anyone.
Sophie had never tried to heal the spirit, but she felt that Jon had an ailment as deathly as an aneurysm. A bone-deep sorrow that in any other human would have been crippling.
The sorrow was profound and deep and old. Not linked to the suffering outside the window. That was like rain falling on an already flooded plain.
So she Touched him, and was nearly staggered by the waves of pain and sorrow.
“Go on,” she urged. “Tell me.”
Jon shook his head, frowning. He looked at her, opened his mouth and shut it. Something was happening to him, something he couldn’t explain. She was absorbing his pain, trying to withstand the onslaught.
“Mac knew of an abandoned mine inside Mount Blue.”
“Yes,” she said softly. “That’s the place Catherine mentioned.”
He had hesitated just a second before saying the name of the location, just as no last names had been exchanged when she was talking with Elle and Catherine Young.
Jon’s head was still in the Old World. In this New World, all secrets were gone. How could there be state secrets when the state had disappeared? He hadn’t understood this yet, but he would.
“Right away, we had people who just . . . come to us.” He raised his eyebrows, rubbed the back of his neck with his free hand. “The damnedest thing,” he muttered. “It’s like we became this—this magnet. For people on the run, for misfits, for people with gifts that got them into trouble. One of the first was an engineer who’d worked for a criminal construction company that got a lot of people killed and framed him for it. He just . . . showed up one evening.”
His eyes slid to hers.
“You have to understand something. Mac, Nick, and I are experts in security. We’re the best. The very first thing we did was surround our hideout with remote sensors so thick a fly couldn’t fart without our knowing about it. And Eric—he just waltzed right in. No one should have been able to do that, but by God he did. So we knew he was either going to be a dangerous enemy or a strong ally. Turns out he’s a strong ally. He built us a beautiful place that somehow just attracted people, the right kind of people.” His beautiful mouth kicked up in a half smile. “Do you know who our cook is?”
Sophie shook her head. “But I’m not up on trendy chefs, so I might not recognize the name.”
“Oh, you’ll recognize this one, all right. Stella Cummings.”
Sophie’s mouth fell open. “Stella Cummings? The Stella Cummings? The—”
“Actress, yeah.” Jon looked as if he were enjoying her astonishment.
“Wasn’t she—”
“Slashed by a stalker, yeah.” Jon’s face turned grim again. “Took her two years and ten surgeries to get over it, and she was badly scarred. She just left Hollywood behind. Got a job slinging hash up north because she’d always loved to cook. I was with her in the diner in a small town when there was an announcement on the news that her stalker had escaped from prison. She’d barely put her life back together. Working as a cook at the diner grounded her, she said. We’d struck up a sort of friendship. We never exchanged names, though I knew who she was. She looks like Stella Cummings, only chopped up and put back together again. She was shaking so hard she could barely breathe. I told her I could take her to a place where she would be safe and she came, and now we can’t do without her.”
“So all these refugees streaming into . . . your headquarters are—”
“Eating like kings. Speaking of which”—he lifted a forkful of her zucchini omelet—“Fabulous.”
“Thanks. So you guys set this place up. People came and found refuge with you. Did I get that right?”
“You did. And since the people who came don’t want to be found, we keep it hidden. And we’d prepared for the worst case scenario—a siege. We’ve been working nonstop on our community, and it is almost completely self-sufficient in water, food, and energy. Now Catherine and Elle are setting up a clinic. Refugees are pouring in, but we have the space and huge food reserves, so we’re going to be okay. Haven will survive this storm. We just have to make sure as many people survive as possible.”
A howl came from outside. It sounded like an animal cry, but wasn’t. Sophie shivered. There might be one safe space left, but it was far away and too late for this city she loved.
Now it was Jon’s turn to comfort her. He put down his fork and leaned toward her, arms open. Sophie burrowed there, arms sliding around that broad back, hands pressed flat against the thick muscles of his back
“It’ll be okay,” he said softly and kissed her hair.
Yes. Maybe. Sophie’s gift was great, but she wasn’t going to be able to save the world. All she could hope for was to make it back to this safe community, snugged inside a mountain, and help produce as much vaccine as possible. If they made it. Another howl came from outside, and another. Sounds of animals snarling, fighting.
Only they weren’t animals.
They were people.
She buried her head against Jon’s shoulder. His arms tightened around her.
“Take me to bed, Jon,” she whispered against his shoulder, eyes closed tight.
He stood so quickly his chair tipped over to the floor. He picked her up and carried her away—away from the terrible noises.
Mount Blue
Haven
His cane slammed to the floor, crossing right in front of two of the most beautiful female legs on planet Earth. The woman’s eyes looked at the cane running obliquely in front of her, following it up to his hand, then going all the way up to his face.
She met his eyes and flinched. It was Stella Cummings’s usual reaction to someone looking her right in the face. He was pleased to note that the reaction was less severe than it had been in the beginning, when she tried to hide, instinctively. Now she didn’t avert her face much, just her eyes.
Lucius Ward reached out to hold her chin between thumb and forefinger and turned her face gently so she was looking him square in the eyes.
“Hello, beautiful,” he said and bent to kiss her. Her luscious lips—with that little indent on the pillowy lower lip that millions of men had dreamed of and lusted after in her previous life—were soft against his. He could feel the scar that slashed across her mouth as a little raised ridge. He didn’t care. He was covered in scars himself.
They were right in the communal kitchen’s entrance. People were streaming by them like water around a boulder. Keeping one hand firmly on his cane—no point falling on his ass just because this woman took his breath away—he hooked his other around her slender neck and deepened the kiss.
Stella gave up trying to maintain discretion and kissed him back. Man, it was heaven. She opened her mouth, her tongue licking his—and right there, in their communal kitchen, right in front of just about the entire Haven population, Lucius’s body woke up.
It was a miracle that perhaps only this one woman in all the world could have engineered.
Before being taken prisoner by Arka Pharmaceuticals and subjected to harsh surgical tortures for a year, Lucius wouldn’t have needed a world-class beauty like Stella Cummings to get a hard-on.
His dick had taken care of itself, and him, ever since he’d been twelve.
But after his rescue from the research lab-torture chamber where he and the rest of the Ghost Ops team had been held, standing upright had been almost beyond him. He’d pushed himself daily since the rescue, falling exhausted into bed each night. At first, simply standing with the help of a cane for more than five minutes at a time had been beyond him. But damned if he’d be a cripple, even though those sadistic bastards at Arka had done their best to reduce him to the level of an animal. Dr. Charles Lee, the head of Arka, the man who’d orchestrated the brutal experiments in his frenzy to find the formula for supersoldiers, had been about to discard him as human waste when Mac’s wife, Catherine, led his former teammates to him.
He’d been in a coma when he arrived here at Haven, as near to death as you could be. But here he’d found his old team, he’d found superb medical care, solidarity, and . . . love. He’d found love, here in this outlaw community.
He deepened the kiss further, losing himself in her. In this beautiful, scarred, very smart woman who’d captured his heart. He would have sworn he didn’t have one. All he had was loyalty—to his teammates and his country, in that order—but it turned out that, yes, he had a heart and it was hers.
Stella stepped forward, slipping one slender hand over his on the cane, the other around his waist, and the instant her torso touched his it happened. While kissing her, he’d felt a heaviness around his groin, the feeling of blood rushing around looking for a place to pool. He always felt that way around her, aroused in his head though his body was too damaged to respond.
The blood finally found its old pathways and his body woke up and smelled the roses. Or smelled her, Stella Cummings, once considered the most beautiful woman in the world until a slasher took a knife to her. The surgeons had done their best to put her back together again, but Stella’s face looked like a jigsaw puzzle. Lucius couldn’t see that. To him, she was still the most beautiful woman in the world. The most gifted actress of her generation, a woman who had enchanted millions around the world.
The woman who now held his heart in her hands.
His dick, too, apparently.
He felt the instant Stella realized what was pressing against her. Her lips smiled under his. He pulled back, pressed his forehead against hers. “Let’s go lie down for a while, Stella.” His voice came out thick, rough. As if it were the first time he’d spoken in years.
Stella kissed his jaw. Though she was a tall woman, she had to lift herself up to do it.
“I can’t,” she whispered. He could hear the regret in her voice. “And anyway, I don’t know if you should—”
“Yeah. I don’t know if I should either. I don’t even know if I can,” he said honestly. “This is the first time it’s been anything but inert meat between my legs in over a year. Maybe if I used it, I’d keel over dead.” He made a rumbly noise in his chest, which took him a few seconds to realize was a laugh. He’d laughed. He wasn’t a laughing man, never had been. Few things about this fucked-up world amused him. This last year had been pain and helplessness and desolation. And right now they were in a crisis as a plague unlike any other had been unleashed.
But this woman—she infused him with such joy. The world was in danger, but there had to be some joy in it, otherwise why save it?
Lucius had lived with duty as his sole motivator for so long. For most of his life. But duty was a cold and harsh mistress. Right now he had something warm and alive and magical in his arms. This was worth fighting and dying for.
Someone holding a big tin vat of tomatoes bumped them as he sped by. “Sorry,” he called over his shoulder.
Stella straightened with a sigh. “I can’t take time off, Lucius.” She cupped his chin and tried a smile. “Much as I’d like to. Soon there will be almost three thousand of us. We’re already feeding in two shifts; we’re going to have to go to three soon.”
“We can take the time off and we should, my darling. You’ve been working almost twenty-seven hours straight.” He touched his finger to the dark circles under her eyes. “You’re about ready to fall where you stand. General Snyder sent forty men and women to help you. He’s organizing what is essentially a mess hall. The Marines know how to do this. They’ll take their cues from you with regard to recipes and menus, but they don’t need help in creating a mess hall.”
She sighed and bowed her head. He was speaking the truth and she knew it.
“And I have gone over plans with Snyder and my men. We’re bringing in refugees and Eric is overseeing a fast extension to the structure. By tonight there will be a hall large enough for everyone to sleep in, and we’ve set up communal showers. A platoon in ten up-armored Humvees has gone out to a ranching town fifty miles outside Bakersfield. We’re in radio contact and apparently they’re holding their own. The platoon won’t be back before dawn. There’s nothing more I can do, and there’s nothing more you can do right now. I don’t think I can even act on what you felt just now, but by God I’d like to lie down and hold you in my arms. I need you in my arms, Stella.”
She rubbed her face against his neck and he could feel wetness. Stella wouldn’t want anyone to see her crying, so he simply held her for a long moment while men and women hurried past in ordered chaos with supplies.
Finally she lifted her head and those famous eyes—a brilliant turquoise—smiled at him.
“Let’s go lie down,” she said huskily.
“Together,” he said. Right then he made a vow to himself. For whatever time they had left—and it might be only a day—he was going to spend every night at this woman’s side.
She nodded. “Together. Oh yeah.”
Chapter 6
San Francisco
Beach Street
She was so light in his arms. It surprised him.
She seemed so . . . invincible. He’d been at the Arka Pharmaceuticals headquarters building when the infection had broken out. He and Nick had barely gotten out alive, and they were highly trained warriors. She’d not only broken away from her captors, she’d taken the time to search for the original virus and the vaccine, fighting both Arka’s security goons and the infected.
And then she’d made her way across a city in chaos.
Trapped in her home, she’d spent her time studying the infected and already had pointers that were going to help them evade the enemy, and were already proving useful to the Haven team out in the field.
Now, this was Ghost Ops terrain. They’d been trained, and trained hard to study and understand the enemy. When he’d been undercover in Colombia, he’d studied the jefes and their muscle so much, he knew everything about them, down to their diet, their bowel movements, the women they really fucked, the women they pretended to. What they bought, who they bought. He knew it all. Nothing had escaped his notice. Nothing.
And yet, flying over infected terrain, it hadn’t even occurred to him to try to study patterns. Okay, he was flying over the terrain pretty fast, but he hadn’t been thinking of anything but getting to Sophie Daniels before a monster ate her face. Still, he could have observed movements, migrations patterns, drawn some conclusions.
He was heartsick, but that wasn’t an excuse. Sophie’d been heartsick, too, and she had pages and pages of observations.
So besides being as beautiful as a movie star, she was smart and brave. Resourceful, rational.
And, oh so delicate.
He could feel this in his arms. When they’d had frantic sex right after he fell into her apartment, he’d been too blasted with survivor’s lust, guided by his combat boner, to notice much of anything besides how good she felt and how good she tasted.
But now?
Now he could feel how incredibly delicate she was, one arm around a slender torso, the other under long slender legs. Everything about her was fragile, hidden before because she was so smart and so courageous. Her soft cotton tee gaped open, showing the delicate collarbone, the narrow shoulders. Such courage, such spirit in su
ch a fragile body.
Jon didn’t have to ask where the bedroom was. Away from the door with its potpourri and scented candles and air freshener sprays, there was another source of good smells and he simply followed his nose.
Good soldiers have a keen sense of smell and he was one of the best. He simply followed the scent for the room that smelled of Sophie. There was a short corridor and he nudged the door with his foot and . . . bingo!
The blinds were drawn, one small light on a dresser drawer, the rest in shadow. It was a girly girl’s room and he nearly smiled. The bed was an ode to femininity—frills and flounces and floral sheets, and a billion pillows. Most unusual for a no-nonsense scientist.
He looked down at her, in his arms, and smiled. It was genuine, a light-hearted moment while the world burned around them. Jon’s few smiles were a cynic’s smile. He had no illusions about the world and the people in it. There were a lot of things he found grimly humorous. The hypocrisy most people tried badly to hide. The greedy, grasping nature of most people. People were like children, with uncontrollable urges and appetites. If you had a cynic’s sense of humor, the world was a feast.
But right now, he had an extraordinarily beautiful, brave, smart woman in his arms, who had shown nothing but a sense of sacrifice. His usual cynicism somehow wouldn’t kick in. His smile reflected how good she felt in his arms, how pretty that bed was, what they were going to do on that bed.
Sophie’s hand cupped his cheek. “You smile.”
He moved his head until her hand covered his mouth, then kissed the palm of her hand. “Look carefully because it doesn’t happen often.”
“No.” Her own smile disappeared. “Not much to smile about right now.”
Jon placed her carefully on the bed, like depositing a jewel in its box. “Well, right, right now, things aren’t looking so bad.”
A laugh escaped her and she covered her mouth, as if laughter were forbidden. Jon gently brought her hand away from her mouth, brought it to his, kissed the palm again.
“You laugh.”