I Dream of Danger (20 page)

She’d been just as he’d described to Catherine. Older, even more beautiful.

She’d been a beautiful girl and she was now a stunning woman. That glorious pale blond hair was cut short, waving around her face like a halo. He hefted her in his arms. She was easy to carry, but she’d put on some weight. The last time he’d seen her she’d been frighteningly thin.

Why was she here? Where had she been? Who was she now? And above all, who were those men gunning for her?

Only one way to find out.

Nick lay Elle gently on the bed, two fingers to the wrist pulse and waited. Sixty beats per minute. Okay. Now to frisk the fuckers who’d wanted to kill her. Or kidnap her. Either way they weren’t going to do anything now.

Nick went out into the corridor, pulled off masks, and took snapshots of the four faces. They were slack in death, but Haven’s facial recognition software would identify them soon enough. He kneeled by each body and frisked them, but wasn’t surprised to find nothing at all. Their LocTite suits were top of the range, but nothing that couldn’t be bought if you had the money. Weaponry ditto. No pockets, only holsters and a knife sheath. The knives were Gerber Mark IV, black oxide, brand-new.

Everything was brand-new. The LocTite suits didn’t have a scuff on them and looked like they’d never been cleaned.

Nick gathered their nightvision goggles, stunners, guns, knives, and wristwatches in a small nylon bag folded in his backpack. The cells he put into another bag that emitted a strong masking signal so the cells couldn’t be traced, and then went back into Elle’s room.

She was still out. That worried him, but there was nothing he could do for her except get her back to Haven as fast as possible and have Catherine examine her.

The bud behind his ear buzzed. Jon. He’d forgotten all about Jon trying to contact him as he was getting out of the hovercar. He tapped a point on his wrist, opening the connection.

“Sitrep!” Mac barked. “We saw the four bad guys on our monitor. Status?”

“Dead,” Nick replied, walking out of the motel with Elle in his arms. “Put me on speaker.” Now he could communicate with Jon and Catherine too. All three had been waiting in the war room for him. No way would they be able to go back to bed.

“What’s wrong with her, Nick?” Catherine’s voice was gentle. She was the only person on earth who understood what Elle meant to him.

“I don’t know.” Striding toward the hovercraft with a limp Elle in his arms, Nick’s voice came out hoarse and strained. “She’s alive, that’s all I know. I’ll get back as fast as I can so you can examine her.”

“About that, Nick . . .”

Jon cut in. “I’m in the helo, coming down. Meet me at Cache 4D. We’ll put away the hovercar and I’ll fly you back. Tomorrow night I’ll come down with Eric and he can drive it back.”

“Thanks, Jon,” Nick choked. His knees nearly gave out with relief. Haven kept caches all over the state. He wouldn’t dare abandon the hovercar, but Cache 4D was a large storage unit nearby. Haven owned the entire unit via seven shell companies, and it had a helipad disguised as a loading apron. With any luck, he’d have Elle back in Haven in under an hour.

He opened the passenger door and gently lay Elle in the seat, clicking the biomorph scan and getting out of the way. Once scanned, in case of an accident, a jet of instantly hardening foam would envelop her, set to the exact specifications of her body. Once the scan was complete, he reached into the compartment under the dashboard and brought out a paper-thin thermal blanket. He’d heat the seat too. He lay his hand against her cheek. She was still so cold. Whatever was wrong with her, surely heat wouldn’t hurt?

To his astonishment, a soft hand cupped his and he was looking into Elle’s beautiful light blue eyes.

“Nick,” she whispered, eyes wide, looking shocked. “You came. I called you . . . and you came.”

He turned his hand to clutch hers, loosening his hold when she winced. He kept staring into her eyes, completely unable to talk. He opened his mouth to speak and nothing came out.

He thought he’d never see her again. He thought he’d live his life to the bitter end full of regret and fear for her. He’d joined Ghost Ops because without Elle the fact that the old Nick Ross had to disappear off the face of the earth meant nothing to him. Ghost Ops soldiers could have no loves, no attachments, and that suited him right down to the ground. Elle had taken all of that away.

And now he’d found her, against all the odds. She was here, right now, watching him out of those beautiful, expressive eyes. Nick, who always knew what to do, who always had that next step mapped out, and the one after that and the one after that . . . he couldn’t think. Couldn’t talk.

Elle slid her hand from his and touched his face. “I can hardly believe you’re real.” She looked around, blinking. He knew she could only see a dark street and the inside of a strange-looking car. “Is this a dream?”

Nick leaned forward and kissed her. Very quickly, because she was weak and they had to go now. But it served an important purpose. Those lips were very real. Elle was real.

“No dream. But we have to get out of here fast, honey. Some bad guys were after you, and we have to go right now.”

Her brows drew together, a faraway look coming into her eyes. “I saw them,” she said in a whisper. “I saw them coming down the street, coming to the motel. And I saw”—she focused on him, searched his eyes—“I saw
you,
Nick. I thought I’d gone insane. What happened?”

“Later. I’ll explain everything later.” Much as he hated leaving her, forsaking the touch of her, Nick moved away, sprinted around the front of the hovercar, slid into the driver’s seat. “Hold on tight.” He put himself in wheels mode and took off north, just as fast as the hovercar could go.

“Where are we going?”

Nick slid his eyes over to her.
Goddamn, she is beautiful
. He knew she was beautiful but when he thought of her, it was the golden waif he remembered. Lost and thin and frail. Lovely, because nothing would change that perfect bone structure and coloring, but soft and vulnerable. Sitting next to him was a woman who would turn heads every time she walked down the street, but who looked strong and capable. Though bruised and dazed, she was composed.

When he found himself sneaking peeks at her, looking at her elegant pale hands folded in her lap, memorizing that perfect profile, following that long white neck down to where her coat fell open to show a V-neck sweater, he realized he could crash them at the speed he was going. So he gripped the accelerator stick with white knuckles and turned his face resolutely forward.

“We’re going to a place no one will find you, honey,” he said grimly. “I’m taking you home.”

W
as it magic? Was she a witch? Had she somehow conjured Nick from thin air? Was she still in Dream mode?

Well, that she could answer. There was very little sensory input in her Dreams, her projections. Even when her spirit hovered over that facility in what must have been the Free Republic of Mongolia, an ice-bound facility on fire, she’d felt neither heat nor cold.

But now she felt it all. The cold as she came up to find herself in a strange type of car with the door open and Nick—
Nick!
—bending over her. The touch of his hand to her face, his fingertips rough, the touch soft.
A kiss!
A kiss she actually felt and not the thousand kisses she’d dreamed of over the years until she forced herself to stop. Those had been Nick’s lips on hers, no question.

This wasn’t a dream, this was real.

And this wasn’t the Nick she remembered, not at all. That Nick had been like a young panther. A man, yet with traces of the boy in him. This dangerous-looking Nick had no boy in him at all. He was hard, scarred, bulked up even more. His face was harsh, lean, the skin weather-beaten, pale lines fanning out from his eyes. She knew he was thirty-three, but he looked older.

They were driving at an impossible speed, though she felt safe in Nick’s hands. He clearly knew what he was doing. And though the vehicle they were in was odd, it seemed to respond well and hug the road tightly even though they must have been going well over a hundred miles an hour.

Anything she had to say would have to wait, because Nick needed all his attention to drive.

He said he was taking her home. Where no one would find her.

Where was home? North, clearly. They were up on the freeway, heading north. Elle didn’t really care where they were going, as long as they were leaving danger behind.

She tried to think about the situation, about the warning Sophie had given, about the tracking device, but it was no good. She was exhausted. Completely depleted. She couldn’t reason in any way. All she could do was live each second exactly as it came up, with no past and no future.

It was frightening as hell to be in this state. She’d been yanked back just as the men in black on the street had stopped at her door at the motel. She’d seen Nick, but there were no emotions in her Dream states. She’d simply recognized him, somehow known he was there for her. He followed the men into the lobby, down the corridor, and then it was all mostly a blur.

Except for one thing. When Nick stepped into her room, there were four corpses in the corridor.

She’d seen that very clearly. He’d dispatched the men coldly and mechanically, like a surgeon excises a cancer. She’d never seen anyone move like that—blinding speed and power and violence, and at the end, four dead bodies.

She shivered.

Nick flicked a glance at her but said nothing. He reached for a button on the strange-looking console and the air in the cabin warmed up even more.

They sped in the night. There was very little traffic. The few cars on the road seemed to be standing still as Nick flew past them.

Elle looked out the window and thought she recognized a few landmarks. What difference did it make? They were going where Nick wanted to take her.

He swooped down from the interstate on an exit ramp. They’d passed the signs too fast for her to make out exactly where they were. He threaded a fast, complex route through a number of side streets until they reached what looked like a dead industrial park.

At the end of a trash-strewn street was a gate and Nick headed straight for it at top speed. Elle barely had time to gasp as the gates slid open just in time for them to sail through. She turned in her seat. Behind them, the gates were closing fast. Everything about the place spelled abandonment, but those gates had worked perfectly. Nick stopped the car and tapped a point on the console.

“On site,” he murmured and she looked at him, startled.

“Roger that,” said a disembodied voice, deep and loud and clear. “Incoming, ETA five minutes.”

Nick looked over at her and ran the back of his index finger over her cheek. “Hang in there, honey. We’ll be home soon.”

She was a fool, because just the sight of him in the penumbra, face strong and sober, voice tinged with tenderness, nearly undid her. This was so dangerous. He’d brought her to her knees ten years ago. It had taken years to recover.

Granted, she wasn’t the naïve and needy young girl she’d been then, but he still had the power to affect her deeply. If someone had asked her, she’d have sworn that Nick Ross was dead to her and yet here she was, shivering and susceptible all over again, melting at his touch.

Never again.

She stiffened, pulled back.

She’d projected twice in one day. She’d been pursued by men who had taken many of her friends prisoner. She was lucky to be alive. She had Nick to thank for that, but that didn’t mean she owed him anything but gratitude.

Certainly not love.

When she pulled back, Nick’s face turned blank and his hand dropped. His voice was brisk and businesslike. “I need to get the hovercar under cover. Can you stand?”

Stupid question. Or maybe not so stupid.

Elle pushed down on the floor with her legs. They didn’t tremble. Okay. Good to go.

“Yes, I can.”

“Good girl.” In a second he was at her door and helping her down. Elle moved slowly. She wanted to make sure she’d been right about being able to stand. The idea of fainting was too awful to contemplate. She wasn’t weak and needy. She wasn’t the Elle he’d left. She was strong.

It was just that it had been a very bad day.

Her legs held, thank God. Nick handed her her purse. “Look up.”

A wind had suddenly blown up and she wondered if she heard right. “What?”

“Look up.” Nick put a finger under her chin and tilted her head back. “Our ride’s here.”

Oh my God. A helicopter!
Coming down almost right on top of her, and she hadn’t heard a thing! The helicopter was barely discernible in the gloom and the cockpit was dark. Instead of the deafening roar of helicopters in the movies, it barely made a low buzzing sound as it veered off a few feet and neatly landed, like a cat after a jump.

“Come on!” Nick practically picked her up and hustled her over.

The helicopter looked eerie—made of some sleek dark matte substance with no apparent windows. Just as she determined that there was no way in, a door slid open showing a dimly lit interior. Four steps unfolded from the side.

Elle walked up into the cabin and sat down in one of the seats. Through the open door she could see Nick driving the odd car into what looked like a warehouse and then running back. He leaped into the body of the helicopter without using the steps, shouting “Go-Go-GO!”

The steps retracted, the door closed, and the helicopter lifted off abruptly, leaving Elle’s stomach behind. It was utterly quiet inside the body of the helicopter. In every film she’d ever seen, people wore headphones to mask the noise, but inside it was like a cathedral.

There was no way to see outside the helicopter. There were, though, four big monitors showing what looked like the view outside—the brightly lit interstate off to the right, and infrared images, thermal images, and GPS coordinates on a moving map.

They were continuing their way north, the destination a blue cross to the northeast. Elle couldn’t make out where they were heading.