Heart of Danger (29 page)

It hurt him somewhere deep inside, a place he’d never felt before. It hurt so badly, seeing, hearing,
feeling
her panic.

He hugged her more tightly, letting his body absorb her shudders, trying to offer the comfort of his body, like you’d comfort a terrified child or animal. She seemed beyond words but he tried anyway.

“Shhh.” He rocked with her in his arms. “It was a dream, honey. A nightmare. A doozy by the look of it. But just a dream. Nothing can hurt you, you’re safe now—”

Catherine pushed at his chest, hard, and he let go of her in surprise, instinctively. It was the push of a woman who was saying
no
. The instant his arms loosened she shot out of bed, rushing frantically to find her clothes, pulling on her jeans, shuffling sockless into her boots. All the while shaking and shivering as if just pulled out of freezing water.

“Honey,” Mac said carefully. Everything he knew about her was that she was sane and stable. Her emotions were steady, tinged with a little sadness. But this had all the hallmarks of an emotional breakdown, a psychotic episode. “Tell me—”

“No time.” Her teeth were chattering. “No time.” She looked up, eyes wild, searching for her shirt and sweater, but only for a second, snatching up his huge tee and throwing it over her head. It billowed and settled on her slender shoulders, making her look like a fragile teenager. “Where do you guys meet?”

Mac was already dressed. Whatever it was that had happened, whatever she needed, he wanted to help her and he couldn’t do that with his naked ass hanging out.

That threw him. “What?”

She put her hands on her head and twirled around, as if unable to contain her agitation. “Where do you guys meet, do you have a meeting room with communications? Some kind of headquarters?”

“Of course. Do you want me to take you there?”

She was already at the door, standing in front of it, practically dancing in place, searching for the door release button, missing it in her anxiety. “Let’s go, let’s go,” she chanted under her breath. “Get your men. Do you have anyone else besides Nick and Jon?”

He shook his head no and tapped on his ear, glad he’d automatically put in the comms.

“Yeah,” he said when Nick answered. He’d been asleep but Nick woke in a second, fully operational. They all did. “HQ, two minutes. Tell Jon. Slingshot.” Their code for an emergency.

He touched the right spot on the wall and the door slid open. Catherine shot out into the hall looking wildly right and left. A vein was pulsing visibly in her throat. “What direction?”

“Right. Elevator at the end of the corridor.”

She took off, running. Mac easily kept pace. From ten feet out, he waved and the elevator doors opened. Without breaking her pace she ran inside. He followed her in, calmly punched in the floor and turned to her.

She was shaking, arms wrapped around herself as if to keep herself warm. It hurt him to see her like that. He stepped to her, wrapped his arms around her, rested his cheek against the top of her head.

“It’s okay,” he murmured, rocking her a little because she needed movement to dissipate some of the anxious tension racking her. He knew the mechanism well. The body is screaming for action but you don’t know what action to take, so the body just hums with tension. “It’ll be okay.”

“No,” she whispered into his shoulder, though the shudders had subsided some. “I don’t know if it will.” Catherine pulled her head back to look him in the face and he winced at her expression. She was white-faced and hurting. Tears welled in her eyes, and as he watched, one slipped over and slid down her cheek, like a drop of water over marble. “We have to move so fast. It will be so hard.”

Mac didn’t make the mistake of smiling. Whatever had spooked her was terrifying her and was real, to her at least. He wiped the tear with the pad of his thumb and bent to kiss her cold mouth. “We can do hard, honey. We’ve been doing hard for a long time. We specialize in it.”

A soft ping and the doors opened. Mac took Catherine’s elbow and walked fast to their HQ, Catherine running to keep up. Two people across the great atrium looked at them, frowning at the speed, then looked away.

Nick and Jon crowded into HQ right behind them. Catherine looked around, noting the monitors and chairs. The vast amount of high-tech Jon and Nick had installed that allowed them to have eyes and ears almost anywhere in the world was visible. The servers were a mile away, in a secure air-conditioned bunker. They could fly to the moon with the computing power they had.

“Sit. Please.” Catherine’s voice was high, vibrating with tension. Nick and Jon looked at each other, shrugged and sat. She gestured at him so Mac sat, too. They settled in, comfortable with the situation. This was a briefing. They’d been briefed all their adult lives and Mac knew that they all had their minds open, ready to hear what Catherine was going to say.

It was still a blow.

“Patient Nine is Captain Lucius Ward, no question,” she said baldly. Mac shifted slightly in his seat, shooting glances at Nick and Jon. She met his eyes then Nick’s and Jon’s, in turn. Mac had never seen a woman so beautiful, utterly concentrated on her task, a modern-day Joan of Arc. Her trembling started to subside as she spoke, intent on her mission.

“Now I understand he’s been held essentially a prisoner at the Millon facility. What I thought was a form of advanced dementia was pharmacologically induced. I know this now. We must go get him.”

Mac thought—
What’s this “we” business?

She looked regal, like a queen mustering the troops for battle. Not Joan of Arc. Boadicea. She should have a plumed pennant streaming in the wind, riding her chariot.

Where before she was vibrating with panic, now she thrummed with determination and purpose.
God,
just look at her,
he thought. Straight and elegant, gray eyes flashing silver like a sword caught in the light. Shiny, dark hair sliding over her shoulders as she paced back and forth. His enormous black tee looked like some elegant warrior’s cloak.

He knew every inch of the body beneath the clothes, every sleek muscle, every tender dip and hollow, knew the softness of her breasts, how hard her nipples could become . . . but now this was a new Catherine. Not the frightened, frozen woman who’d arrived—what was it? Only three days ago? Not the gentle doctor who’d helped a terrified woman bring a healthy baby into the world, not the passionate woman who’d cried out in his arms. This was another Catherine—strong and determined and just as irresistible as the others.

“He needs your help desperately. They are going to kill him tomorrow. We must go now.”

Jon was leaning back in his chair, looking relaxed. Mac knew better. His blue eyes were glittering. “Darling, you know we like you. Everybody likes you and Mac more than likes you so you’re okay in my book. But with all due respect to Mac, you don’t know anything about this. Any kind of hostage rescue takes planning and time and we are not there yet.”

When Jon was like that—when his eyes glowed and his body was coiled for a strike—people did a double-take because the danger that lived just beneath his tanned skin flashed bright, like a rapier suddenly catching the light.

But Catherine was unfazed. “I don’t care how ready you are, we must go, right now. I gave you that striking hawk. It meant something to Mac though he tried to hide it. I don’t know what but you”—she turned slowly—“all three of you know where it came from. It came from Lucius Ward. He was once one of you and he is in deadly danger
right now
and we are going to go get him.”

“Prove it,” Nick said suddenly. His dark eyes narrowed. “I like you, too, Catherine, but you’re asking us to risk a lot for a man who left us to die. How do you know he didn’t betray us? What real proof do you have? What are you going on? And how do you know that he’s going to be killed tomorrow? We’re not cowboys. We can’t just ride to the rescue right now on your say-so.”

Mac saw her hesitate. She shot Mac a glance but he opened his hands briefly. Empty hands. He couldn’t help her. Nobody could help her. She had to convince Nick and Jon all on her own. And whatever she wanted, he couldn’t do it without Nick and Jon.

She drew in a deep breath, blew it out. Stress reliever. “I imagine both of you were listening when Mac was interrogating me.” Nick and Jon shifted in their chairs, not saying yes, not saying no. She nodded sharply. “Quite right. I would have done the same. You’ve got a community to protect and I was an intruder.”

“Not now you’re not,” Mac growled, the words torn from his chest. Not for one second should she doubt she belonged here.

She smiled at him, the smile sad and brief. “Thanks,” she said softly. Their eyes connected and held. Damn right she was one of them. “Patient Nine couldn’t talk. I know”—she held her hand up—“I know how that sounds. He couldn’t talk so how can I know what he wanted to say? He conveyed information to me nonetheless. Important information, and he was so determined I think he opened up an avenue of communication between us.”

Jon and Nick shot glances at each other. Nick’s jaw muscles jumped.

Catherine moved until she was close to Nick, her knees touching his. “The situation is desperate and we don’t have much time. So I’m going to have to use a shortcut to convince you I communicated with your Lucius Ward.”

Without warning, she reached for Nick’s hand.

Mac tensed, ready to head off trouble. There was no way Catherine could know that Nick didn’t like being touched, by anybody. He’d seen Nick slap a man’s hand away from his shoulder so hard he broke the wrist. Mac watched Nick’s hands. Teammate or not, fellow outcast or not, if Nick made a move against Catherine, he was a fucking dead man.

But Nick didn’t move, didn’t react at all. He simply sat still as Catherine took his hand. Nick’s face never showed anything, but his jaw muscles tightened.

“Oh,” Catherine said, surprised. “Oh my.” Her eyes never left Nick’s face. Her expression softened. “She thinks of you all the time, Nick. I think . . . she loves you. Desperately. Still. After all these years.”

Mac glanced at Jon, who looked as surprised as he felt. Someone
loved
Nick? Cold, self-contained Nick? Christ, who knew? If she’d said that about Jon, who was a love-’em-and-leave-’em guy, okay. Jon had fucked his way across the country and over several continents. But no one had ever seen Nick with a woman. He was all cold hard mission. The job and nothing else. A lot like Mac.

Nick stirred. “I haven’t seen her—”

“Since that time.” Catherine nodded. “I know. But she still loves you, nonetheless.”

Nick swallowed heavily. Mac could see his Adam’s apple bob up and down. “Do you”—he licked his lips—“do you know where she is?”

Catherine shook her head, a sad expression on her face. “No, Nick. I’m sorry, but I don’t. I have no idea. I’m only reading her through you, through the things you know but won’t acknowledge. You don’t know where she is so I don’t, either.”

Nick looked sad and vulnerable, an amazing sight. Nick had no known weaknesses. Except, apparently, for this woman who was lost to him.

“Is she . . . all right?” His voice was hoarse.

Catherine shook her head and shrugged. “I can’t know that, either, Nick. But I can read from you that you are worried about her. She’s not . . .” Catherine closed her eyes, frowned. “She’s not home. At her home. You’ve checked and you keep checking. You don’t know where she is. You worry that she might be sick or in trouble. That she might need you. It’s eating you alive.”

To Mac’s astonishment, Nick simply bowed his head. Whatever it was, it
was
eating him alive. And for a second there—though he wouldn’t swear to it—it seemed there was moisture in Nick’s eyes. Nick c
rying?
Mac would have sworn the world would come to an end before Nick could cry.

Nick lifted his head. “So you
can
—”

“Yes.” Catherine nodded to him. “I can.”

“Jesus,” he whispered.

“I don’t like doing it, but I can read you. Not your thoughts so much as your emotions. And I opened to you. You read me, too, didn’t you? At least partly. Enough to know I’m telling the truth.”

She let go of Nick’s wrist and he lifted his head. Whatever moisture had been in his eyes had gone, but there was a slight softness there, where there had been none before.

“Fuck,” he breathed. “Sorry. Nothing like that has ever happened to me before. It was like—”

“Like I was in you, right, Nick? Inside your head, feeling what you’re feeling, thinking what you’re thinking.”

He nodded, lips clamped shut.

She put a hand on his shoulder. She was touching cloth so it wasn’t any of the woo-woo stuff. It was simply a gesture of human connection.

“I know how off center you must be feeling. And believe me when I say I would never read you deliberately. This—this ability I have is incredibly draining. I feel like I could sleep for a week. But I had to do it, you had to know the truth. And you do, don’t you?”

He nodded.

“What?” Jon exploded, bristling with hostility. Mac tensed. “What do you know? Goddammit, Catherine, did you just drug him? Because this is crap. It’s crap, Nick. You know it. You know the Captain hung us out to dry and he’s not in some lab, you know that, too. Why should he be? I like you, Catherine, but I think you were sent to lead us into a trap. Maybe unwittingly, but there’s no way we’re coming off the mountain to—”

Catherine reached over and grabbed his hand. Jon stopped suddenly, eyes wide open with shock, jaw dropping.

Catherine smiled gently. “You were betrayed once, Jon. Badly. Worse than what you think Lucius Ward did. It blighted your life. You’ve never let yourself trust anyone until you joined . . . the teams?” This last as a question, aimed at Mac.

He nodded.

“The teams. You found trust and acceptance there and then your leader betrayed you. But, Jon, he didn’t. He couldn’t. It isn’t in him, just as betrayal isn’t in you or Nick or Mac. He is just like you and he’s hurting. He’s in trouble and about to die and his last chance is the three of you.” Her slender hand tightened on Jon’s wrist, but Mac didn’t worry that Jon was going to attack her. He looked wiped out, almost frightened, though Mac could have sworn fear wasn’t in Jon’s vocabulary. He’d seen Jon take outrageous risks without a thought to his own safety.