Though he was moving at top speed, taking insane risks, he always kept an eye on the drone monitor. He was two streets down when he saw the lights in the lobby of the motel dim and a figure with a flame red head appear in the doorway. The thermal image cooled as the man pulled his headgear back on. When he gestured, three ghost images crossed the street.
Fuck-fuck-fuck! They were honing in for the kill!
Not if he had anything to say about it.
By the time they entered the lobby, Nick was at the corner of the cross street. The hell with security. He braked hard and abandoned the hovercar where it was. Who cared if anyone saw it? The only important thing now was Elle, Elle, Elle. The thought that he’d lost her for ten years and that he might find her now, dead body already cooling, made him break out in a sweat.
His heart was pounding, which was a good thing and a bad thing. A good thing because it meant more blood to the extremities together with a decent dose of adrenaline which would speed up his already-fast reflexes and shut down pain for a while if he got shot.
A bad thing because above 120–125 beats per minute fine-motor skills began to degrade. He was going to shoot to kill, and he wanted to hit what he was aiming at.
The only way to slow his heart rate down was to breathe deeply and force it down. He and Mac and Jon had trained for this, though what they did you couldn’t train to do, you had to be born to do. Training only took natural abilities up a notch.
So he spared a second, two, for deep breaths and a conscious tamping down of his body’s fight readiness.
Then he ran.
Just as he took off, he could hear a murmur from the open door of the hovercar. Jon’s voice. Well, whatever it was Jon had to say could wait because Elle had about a minute left to live.
Afterward, he couldn’t remember closing the distance between the hovercar and the lobby of the motel. He jumped out of the hovercar and then a second later he was wrenching open the door of the lobby, barely casting a glance at the body of the night clerk whose legs he could see sticking out from behind the counter.
He didn’t need to know where Elle was. All he had to do was follow the last of the men, who was at the end of a corridor, turning right. Everything in Nick screamed to run full tilt into them and mow them down, but though there was no contest between him and four other men—no matter how good, no matter how well trained—he had no idea where Elle was. Once he was in combat mode his senses narrowed; he couldn’t take the fuckers down and at the same time ensure that Elle wouldn’t get caught in the crossfire.
Nick sprinted silently to the corner and caught the last guy around the neck in a chokehold, yanking him back into the main corridor. The stunner made a light buzzing sound so he pulled his Glock 32 with the silencer, rated at two decibels, less noise than an exhale. He nudged the ballistic mask up with the muzzle, shot the man right between the eyes, and eased him quickly down to the dirty carpet.
One down.
He peeked around the corner and saw three men congregated at a door. They’d found Elle’s room. Elle was behind that door. They wanted to hurt her, maybe kill her—and that wasn’t going to happen. Not even if there were a hundred of the fuckers.
The man with the windbreaker, clearly the leader, had grabbed a key card and waved it in front of a monitor set in the wall to the side of the door. In a second, the door to Elle’s room would swing open. The card didn’t take immediately and windbreaker guy waved it again. Nick could hear the faint click of the lock disengaging and watched as the guy at the door brought his stunner up.
They were covered in LocTite, head to toe. Nick’s stunner couldn’t stun through the suit designed to dissipate beams; and his Glock, powerful as it was, would break a bone or two but wouldn’t penetrate. Nick wanted these fuckers dead.
It would have to be done the old-fashioned way. By hand.
Nick was good at combat strategy. In an instant, the whole thing was planned to the second; he didn’t have to think at all. It was like a geometric equation, moves calculated and precise.
He ran full tilt into the corridor, a swarming mass of muscle and deadly intent. Planting his right hand on the wall next to the last guy, he pivoted, lifting his body, putting his entire weight behind the kick to the head. The man fell like a bull in the slaughterhouse, but Nick was already at fuckhead number two, dropping to the ground, scissoring his legs between the man’s legs, throwing his entire weight into his elbow, which he drove straight into the middle of the man’s face. Bone crunched and blood sprayed. The leader had turned around, aiming his stunner at the ground but Nick wasn’t there anymore; Nick was aiming a kick at the solar plexus, something the LocTite couldn’t protect against.
The man fell, temporarily paralyzed, without breath, and that was fine because it allowed Nick to finish all three of them off properly with three hard head-twists. He lifted each head slightly to make sure that the spinal column had been severed from the brainstem, because he wanted these fuckers to stay dead.
The instant he finished off the third, he ran into the room and his head nearly exploded with panic when he saw it was empty.
She wasn’t there! Elle wasn’t there!
Where the hell could she be?
The dead guys thought she was here, so he’d assumed . . .
Had she escaped? There was one window that gave out into a courtyard, but it had been painted over a billion times; and if it had once been designed to be opened, that day had long since passed.
He pulled with all his strength, then desisted. If he couldn’t open it, Elle couldn’t either.
Oh God, oh God. If she’d escaped, how could he find her, how could he protect her if he didn’t know where she was?
Think!
Not on the bed, not out the window, maybe the closet? Nick yanked open the plywood door and stared inside at the tiny space full of empty misshapen wire hangers.
Not there . . .
And that was when he saw her. Lying faceup on the floor, one arm outstretched, pale as ice. Unmoving, unbreathing.
His heart stopped. Simply stopped for a long horrible second.
He was too late.
Somehow they’d killed her.
He hadn’t been able to save her.
All his life, all he’d ever wanted was to keep Elle safe. And now he’d found her after all these years and she was dead.
He took a shaky step forward then sank to his knees . . . to be near her, and because his legs simply wouldn’t hold him up. He felt hollowed out, totally, completely empty. Incapable of thought or action. Merely a bag of skin holding in guts and bones.
He wanted to gather her in his arms, but his body wouldn’t obey him. He gave the order but nothing happened. His entire body was lax, as if it had simply given up. As if it had died but hadn’t told him yet.
But he wanted to be closer to Elle, so he did the only thing he could think of—he toppled forward onto her, hoping that his limbs would recover and that he could gather her in his arms and weep over her.
She was cold, so very cold and still, rocking gently when his full weight fell on her, but not gasping or jolting.
His face was cold. That was the way he understood that tears were tracking down his cheeks. He didn’t wipe his face—he couldn’t. All he could do was watch the tears as they plopped on her neck.
One large teardrop had fallen on the pale skin just above the collarbone. It quivered, stilled, quivered, stilled.
Her heart was—it was beating! He shifted his head so his ear was right over her heart and . . . there it was! The faintest of heartbeats, thready and faint but regular. His head moved up and down gently on her chest. Her chest was moving—she was breathing. She was alive!
She wasn’t conscious, her eyes were unmoving behind her lids and her breathing was shallow, but by God she was breathing and she was alive.
A bolt of energy shot through him. Now that he knew Elle was alive, he could do anything. Strength returned to him in a hot rush. Nick gathered Elle’s li
mp body up in his arms and stood up. He studied her face hungrily, wanting to understand what the past ten years had been for her.
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.”
Was 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.
I Dream of Danger Page 17
