Dangerous To Love

by Toni Anderson, Barbara Freethy, Dee Davis, Leslie A. Kelly, Cynthia Eden, J. Kenner, Meli Raine, Gwen Hernandez, Pamela Clare, Rachel Grant

  “Good,” he said, not at all surprised that she’d already forwarded the image. He may not remember his past with his wife, but he knew her now. And he knew that she was a rock solid agent.

  “Back to the office?”

  He shook his head. “Let’s work from home. I want to get settled.” He watched her face as he spoke, both relieved and thrilled when her initial confusion shifted to understanding and, thank God, delight.

  “You’re moving in.” Her bright smile rivaled the California sun.

  “It’s traditional to live with one’s wife.” He hesitated, hoping he hadn’t assumed too much. “If that’s okay?”

  “Don’t be an ass.” Her eyes danced. “I’d kiss you right now, but I don’t want to be unprofessional.”

  He glanced over his shoulder, noting that the two uniformed officers were returning to their car.

  “I’ll happily take a rain check.” He indicated the bike. “I’ll drop you off at home, then go leave the bike at Liam’s, grab my tiny duffel of personal possessions, and catch a rideshare back to your place.”

  “Better idea. I’ll get a ride with the officers, and you meet me at the house with your stuff. It’ll save time. Liam’s that way,” she said, pointing vaguely toward the coast, then turning and indicating the opposite direction. “And that’s us.”

  “Fair enough.” He ran his finger along the line of her jaw. “I know you’re going to want to work when I get there, so I’m telling you right now—I get an hour. Free and clear. And entire hour at my complete discretion.”

  “Is that right? And what happens in that hour, Mr. Walker?”

  “Well, last night I studied your body and learned so many ways to satisfy it. Considering my memory problems, I thought I should see just how well I recall exactly what you like…”

  Chapter Nineteen

  As my two cop chauffeurs argue about the thematic similarities in Marvel and Star Wars films, I lose myself in more immediate concerns. Specifically, Cerise and the Face and the mystery of what Mason is supposed to remember. Important enough to attack me on the street, but even such a bold move can’t produce results. Not when the information is locked away tight, with no way to get it out.

  No way that’s safe, anyway.

  I frown, thinking about what Seagrave told me. That trying to prime the pump by telling Mason what he’s done in the past could permanently injure him. And then my frown deepens as I wonder how in the name of hell I’m supposed to explain getting pregnant.

  The patrol car pulls to a stop in front of my house, and I hop out, thanking them for both the ride and the entertaining film discussion. The driver chuckles, and I wave as the car pulls away from the curb.

  Instead of going inside, I head to the detached garage that sits at the end of our long driveway. Having lived alone for a while, I’ve gotten in the habit of eating out or ordering in. Mason was the cook in our family. I was the one who would make a meal of cheese and Ritz crackers if that was the quickest thing to grab.

  Tonight, I want to make dinner together. Which is why I get in the car, back out carefully, making sure our neighbor’s little girl hasn’t left her trike halfway in our driveway, and head down the road to the nearby Ralph’s.

  Since I’m not a whiz in the kitchen, it takes me a while to navigate the store, which is frustrating as I want to beat Mason back so that I’m there when he arrives. Soon enough, though, I’m clutching two canvas bags with steaks, potatoes, fresh broccoli, and a rather pricey bottle of wine. Plus vanilla ice cream and Chips Ahoy cookies, a sentimental favorite from our early days.

  I put the bags on the floorboard, amazed to realize I’m humming. I don’t think I’ve randomly started humming since Mason went away. And this new sense of peace and happiness only drives home how much I missed him. And at the same time, it reminds of how far we still have to go.

  With a frown, I silence my tuneless singing. What if he never remembers? What if this is our new beginning and we’re really starting all over again, with no history because he doesn’t remember and I’m not allowed to tell him?

  I have boxes of souvenirs and thousands of digital photos. And I hate thinking that I won’t be able to share those with him—or with our child.

  I let out a shaky breath, then drive home in a more somber mood. I ignore the garage and park in the driveway, then cross the lawn with my two bags held in my hands.

  My mind is on Mason, and my first thought when I see someone moving on the front porch is that Mason beat me home.

  But that thought lasts less than a second, and with my next breath, I drop my bags and reach for the weapon I have holstered under my jacket. Because that’s not Mason—it’s the Face.

  The groceries cost me time, though, and he has his weapon out before I do, and this time it’s a gun, not a knife. I hear the blast at the same time I feel the sting in my chest, right above my breast.

  I gasp, my body reeling, then look down, expecting to see a messy bullet wound. Instead, I see the feathered end of a tiny dart.

  A tranquilizer gun?

  Oh, dear God. The baby…

  Cold panic fills me, and I force it under, determined to rely on my training. I turn toward my car, intending to lock myself inside, get my backup weapon, and signal the SSA. Then I’ll defend that small space until Mason or someone on the team arrives to shut this fucker down.

  Except I can’t manage. My brain is trying to operate my legs, but they’re not cooperating. In my mind, I’m sprinting. In reality, I’m collapsing onto the thick turf of my front lawn.

  I’m face down, unable to see anything, unable to do anything. And then I’m being flipped over, a terrifying and odd sensation, as I can’t even feel any hands on me. But I can see, and the afternoon sky comes into view above me, blocked only by the ugly visage of the Face looking down on me. A round face with a bulbous nose and rheumy eyes. There’s dirt in the crevices of his skin, and I can smell his breath, like rotten fish and onions. He’s the stuff of nightmares, and I don’t know what he wants with me. Or, for that matter, what he wants with Mason.

  Tell him he needs to remember.

  He needs to give back what he took.

  That’s what the Face had said at the club, and it’s what he says again now. I want to scream that I don’t understand; that I don’t know what he’s talking about and neither does Mason. But I can’t scream. My throat doesn’t work, and even my breathing is slow and laborious.

  Am I dying?

  “Tell him,” the Face whispers before leaning over and doing something on my left. Touching me? I don’t know. I can’t feel him and I can’t move my head to see. “Tell him to look and to see,” he adds right before he straightens and stands.

  That’s when I hear the squeal of brakes, then Mason’s voice calling my name as footsteps pound. The Face is standing above me, one foot on either side of my waist.

  I can’t see Mason, but I know he’s there and relief flows through me like wine. He’ll catch this bastard. Quince will work his magic with a lie detector, pharmaceuticals, and his other tricks of the trade to get some answers. Everything will be okay.

  I just have to hang on long enough.

  I have to fight the black that’s seeping in around the corners of the world.

  “Denny!” Mason shouts again from somewhere off to my left. And then I hear his hard, raw cry of “No,” and I watch as the Face jabs a needle into his own neck, then smiles down at me.

  But I don’t see anything else, because the black has taken me. And the last thing I hear is Mason’s anguished cry as he calls my name again and again and again.

  Chapter Twenty

  A tranquilizer? That’s it. You’re sure?

  We’re still running tests, but so far the lab results are showing only the tranquilizer in her blood stream. And you can see she’s already coming to.

  Am I? I recognize Mason and Seagrave’s voices, but I’m still a little fuzzy on their meaning. Somebody knocked me out. That much seems clear enough.
And—

  The Face. And the groceries. And—

  Why the hell did he knock her out in the first place? So that she couldn’t watch when he killed himself? And what the fuck with the phone?

  I blink, the world flashing in and out like someone opening and shutting blinds. What do they mean by killed himself? And what phone?

  I open my mouth, then whisper, “Mason.”

  Or maybe I don’t say anything at all, because no one seems to hear me.

  Mason, please. We’re working on it.

  I want the SSA working on this, too. They’re her team now. They deserve to be in the loop.

  I’ve already talked with Mr. Stark and Mr. Hunter. An SSA team is being fully briefed.

  Relief warms me. I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m glad my friends are working on it, too.

  Look.

  That’s Mason’s voice, and he’s close. So close.

  “Denny? Denny, it’s me. Can you wake up?”

  I want to tell him that I am awake. Before, it felt like I was dreaming, but I’m awake now. I just feel so heavy. Even my eyelids are so, so heavy.

  “Give her a moment,” Seagrave says. “It’ll take her some time to swim up out of it.”

  He’s right, and it’s a good metaphor. It’s as if I’m kicking toward the surface, and I actually gasp as I break through into reality, my eyes fluttering open to find Mason’s eyes fixed on me, first full of worry and then shifting to relief.

  “Thank God,” he says, clutching my hand.

  “The Face. He hit me with a tranquilizer?”

  “He did.” Seagrave rolls his chair beside Mason. “Welcome back.”

  “Just a tranquilizer. Is it safe?” I think of the baby. Please, please, don’t let anything hurt the baby.

  “Just a tranquilizer,” Seagrave says.

  I nod, reassured. I know enough about weapons to not be too worried about a tranquilizer dart. “But why? Did he just want to make a clean getaway after he left the message?”

  Mason and Seagrave look at each other. “What message?” Mason asks.

  “Same as before,” I tell them. “That you have to remember. You have to give back what you took.”

  Again, they share a look.

  “Don’t keep me in the dark,” I say. My strength is flowing back, the grogginess leaving me. I push myself up until I’m sitting in the hospital bed. Then I look around, for the first time noticing that I’m in Mason’s old quarters.

  Seagrave nods his head. Just a tiny tilt, but it’s enough. Mason focuses on me and says, “There are two things you should know. First, the Face is dead.”

  “What? Was he trying to escape? Because we needed to talk—”

  “Suicide,” Mason says. “He injected himself with cyanide.”

  My mouth drops open, and for a moment I’m dumbstruck. “Why would he do that?”

  “One of many questions,” Seagrave says, and I look between him and Mason, waiting for him to tell me the rest of the questions. And the answers.

  After a moment, Mason lifts a shoulder, looking positively helpless. “He left you a phone. Right in your hand. A smart phone with absolutely nothing on it.”

  “Oh.” I try to process that but it makes no sense. “You tried re-dial? You checked the emails?”

  The both just stare at me. Of course they did.

  “It’s here?” I ask.

  Mason points to the side table where what looks like a burner smart phone sits next to a pink plastic jug filled with ice water.

  “Can I look?”

  He raises a brow, but doesn’t protest. I understand I’m being ridiculous; I won’t see a thing they didn’t. But that knowledge doesn’t curtail the urge, and as soon as he puts the phone in my hand, I sigh.

  Then I yelp, because the device chirps in my hand.

  “What did you do?” Mason says, and I shake my head.

  “Nothing. I—look. It’s a text message.”

  They gather close and we read the message together.

  The first part is a string of chemical symbols that my poor science can’t decipher. I don’t need to, though. It’s clear enough from the words that follow:

  It’s in her blood.

  72h incubation period.

  Give us the encryption key.

  We’ll make her the antidote.

  Reply when you have the key.

  My blood.

  My blood, my baby. Oh, dear God.

  I tell myself it’s okay. Maybe this is just a threat. A scare tactic. The SOC team said there was only tranquilizer in my blood, after all.

  But I know that’s not true. Whatever the toxin is, it’s there. The medtechs just weren’t looking for it.

  Still, so long as I get the antidote in time, the baby and I will be fine.

  That’s what I tell myself, anyway.

  But I don’t really know if that’s true.

  And with the location of the encryption key buried in Mason’s head, I don’t think I’ll ever find out.

  * * *

  “He shouldn’t be doing this,” I say, looking into the conference room through the one-way glass window. Fear burns through me—for myself, for my baby, for Mason.

  “He doesn’t have a choice,” Quince says, putting a hand on my shoulder to stop me from pacing.

  “There’s always a choice.”

  “And he’s made his,” Liam says.

  I turn, looking at my friends through tear-filled eyes. “What if it breaks him?”

  Neither man answers. They don’t have too. Mason loves me. And if the only way to pull the location of this encryption key out of his head is by forcing his memories, then that’s what he’s going to do. Even though the risk is high. Even though he may forget everything. Or worse.

  I think about what Mason has told me. About the videos of other agents who’d been forced to face their hidden memories too early. Men who’d snapped completely.

  Please, please don’t let that happen to Mason.

  On the other side of the conference room, Mason sits in one of the rolling chairs. He’s wearing a T-shirt, and a variety of monitoring bands surround his chest and head, all hooked to an array of monitors and a computer that sits in front of Dr. Tam.

  Mason’s arms are strapped down, and he looks like a prisoner. Someone in for interrogation. And that illusion is bolstered by the two IV drips going into his veins. One drip contains a fast-acting sedative so the doctor can knock him out if he starts to tip over into the danger zone. The other contains a serotonin-like compound that is supposed to keep him calm as he moves through the memory stimulation process.

  “Happy thoughts,” Dr. Tam had said, with an ironic half-smile. “Think of it as forced happy thoughts.”

  Not exactly a high-level medical explanation, but I understood what she meant. The amnesia had been induced by some sort of horrific trauma. To pull out the buried memories, Mason had to find his way around that trauma. And that meant not sliding back into the mental state that had surrounded the trauma and instead creating a “happy” back door.

  All good in theory. In practice, it sounded pretty damn dicey.

  “I can’t lose him all over again,” I say.

  Liam moves to stand beside me at the window. “That’s why he’s doing it. Because he can’t live without you, either. And that’s going to happen if we don’t get the antidote.”

  I wipe away a tear and nod. Seventy-two hours. That’s the window to get me the antidote. After that, there’s no cure, and I’ll be dead within a week.

  That’s what the medical team tells me, anyway. All things considered, I don’t have any reason to doubt them.

  It’s more than just me, of course. The toxin in my blood is something never seen before. It’s a national security threat. And even if I were completely healthy, I know that Mason would still be sitting in that chair, ready to sacrifice himself to save the world.

  Inside the room, Dr. Tam starts to talk to Mason, her voice calm and level. Since she does
n’t actually know what he experienced, she’s hypnotized him in the hopes of pulling out those hidden memories more easily. I just hope the memories don’t turn out to be dangerous.

  She’s been fully briefed by Colonel Seagrave, and she starts to describe the mission, the details of which I’ve never known. Nor have Quince or Liam or any of the Stark team, and I’m grateful to Seagrave for giving everyone clearance. I need my friends’ support. And their help.

  The job was to infiltrate an international mercenary group known as La Guerre Rouge in order to relay back information about its various activities, especially arms and drug trafficking. The insertion was a success, and Mason was able to gain the trust of one of the group’s high-ranking commanders who eventually tasked Mason with a secret project that was deep in development.

  All of that, the SOC knew from Mason’s infrequent reports and dead drops. And as Dr. Tam talks Mason through all of that, his vitals stay normal.

  I look at Liam and Quince, trying to hold back my optimism. Because surely this means it’s going to be okay. Surely it will turn out that we could have done this straightaway, and that Mason had been left in the dark out of an overabundance of caution.

  As I watch, Dr. Tam leads him down the path of memory, and Mason describes the day to day of his job. The horrific things he witnessed, even participated in, in order to establish his cover. I understand the work and what it entails, so I’m not shocked. But I also know that too much living in the underworld can taint a man’s blood, and I don’t want Mason to go back. Not after this.

  I look at Quince, wanting to ask him if he thinks Ryan would recruit Mason into the SSA. But I stop myself from asking. Right now, we just need to get through today.

  Finally, Dr. Tam leads Mason up to his last communication. He’d discovered something truly horrific in the works, and he’d signaled that he’d be sending more details. But the details never came. Instead, Jack Sawyer woke up in Victorville.

  “Let’s start with the truck and work backwards. You remember being thrown out of the truck?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you remember being put in the truck?”