by Bianca D’Arc
His unit had his back. They’d neutralized the enemy on the beach and gave Jeff a clear run for the open door to the mess hall. No doubt, that was the route the man in black had used to get into the building. Jeff would be right behind him.
Jeff heard Casey’s report over the radio when the enemy soldier entered camera range in the hallway outside the ladies’ room. Jeff ran faster, even as he tried not to alert the bastard to his presence.
“He’s at the door,” Casey reported, and Jeff could hear the terror in her voice over the radio. Damn. “He’s opening the door to the ladies’ room. He’s going inside. We can’t see him, but he’s inside,” Casey’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Rose says he’ll be searching around for a minute or two before he finds the hidden door mechanism. I’m going quiet now, just in case.”
Jeff was at the door to the hallway. He opened it as quietly as he could then made his way rapidly down the hall to the door to the ladies’ room. He’d seen what the soldier was doing. He had a moment to prepare himself for the confrontation. After checking his weapons, he crashed through the door. Surprise would be his greatest asset in this fight.
“I know I objected to the idea of a camera in the ladies’ room, but Hal was right. We need some way to see what’s just outside this hidden door if we ever have to hide in here again,” Casey whispered to Rose. She was tense with nerves, but Casey was holding together remarkably well. “This door is locked, but it’s not the heavy security door Hal wants to install. He had to have that specially made and it’s not ready yet. This one is good, but if that guy out there finds it, he might be able to get in if he tries hard enough. It’ll take time, though.”
“He’s going to find it. I saw that much,” Rose told Casey.
“Shit,” Casey swore.
“But Jeff is coming. He saw it too. He knows what’s happening.” Rose tried to inject some confidence into her whispered words, but sensed she’d failed by Casey’s tense expression.
Rose knew what the man outside was doing. They still had a few minutes before he’d find the hidden door. Determined to defend them, should it be necessary, Rose opened every cupboard in the room and looked for something they could use, just in case Jeff ran late. The first slim cabinets held blankets and canned food, but on her third try, she struck pay dirt.
There were sticks—fighting sticks like martial artists used. There was also a handgun in a case. Casey slapped her forehead with one palm in the universal gesture of someone who’s forgotten something important.
“Hal taught me how to use this,” she whispered, taking the handgun from Rose and expertly checking the ammunition. “Do you mind?”
“Better you have it, since you know how,” Rose whispered back.
She took the longer of the two fighting sticks and positioned herself to one side of the hidden door. If the man she’d seen opened it before help could arrive, he would get a surprise. She would trip the guy up with the stick, if possible, and hopefully, Casey could shoot him.
All this time, Rose had been counting down in her mind the actions she’d seen the man take in the vision. If nothing changed, he should be finding the door mechanism in another twenty to thirty seconds. After that, it was just a matter of how long it took him to break in.
“Get ready. If he’s coming in, it’ll be soon,” Rose told Casey in the lowest tone she could manage. She held up one hand, counting down the time in her head. She listened hard for the snick of the door, but after thirty seconds, it hadn’t come, and she realized the future she’d seen in the vision had changed. “I don’t hear anything. Jeff must have stopped him,” she said, trying to hold the worry in check as much as she could.
Casey’s hands were steady, but her eyes were wide with nerves. “Thank heavens.”
“Don’t let your guard down. The future we saw changed, but I don’t know what it’s become. They could be fighting for their lives on the other side of this door, right now.”
“When this is all over, we’re putting in a peephole or something.”
Jeff crashed through the door from the hallway just as the intruder zeroed in on the shower head that would lead to the secret door. The man spun around, without triggering the hidden door, and launched himself at Jeff.
Jeff’s darts went wild and missed the man who moved more fluidly than anyone Jeff had ever seen. But he didn’t care. This guy was going down. Hard. He’d dared to go after the women—to go after Rose—and that could not be allowed to go unpunished.
The enemy spun a roundhouse kick out of nowhere, sending the dart gun flying across the room and numbing Jeff’s thumb and wrist. Hell, it could be broken, but he couldn’t think about that now. Not when he was closing in for a hand-to-hand contest with this big fucker who moved like a shadow.
Jeff let fly with the martial arts skills he’d perfected even before he’d joined the military. In the years since becoming a professional soldier, he’d only improved his form, and he’d learned every dirty street fighting trick in the book, as well. He pulled out all the stops as the fight engaged, moving faster than thought, faster than reflexes. This was pure adrenaline and instinct. Deadly dangerous instinct.
Hands and feet flew in a flurry of motion. Jeff was pushed to his limits when a flash of insight told him to zig when the enemy zagged, putting him in the perfect position. The soldier went down with an audible crunch, hitting his head hard on the tile floor. Damn. Jeff didn’t want to kill the guy. He just wanted to take the man out of the action, not crack his skull in the middle of the ladies’ room. For one thing, Casey would never forgive him for christening her décor in such a way.
He approached cautiously, making sure the enemy was down for the count before relaxing his guard even the tiniest bit. There was blood on the floor under the man’s head, and he didn’t move a muscle as Jeff first prodded him with a boot toe, then got close enough to disarm him. Only then, did Jeff make contact with his teammates over the radio.
Hal pushed through the ladies’ room door even before Jeff was finished checking in. Two more of the guys were right behind him. Hal took stock of the situation and began issuing orders.
“Zeke. Dan. Take the prisoner out of here. Put him on a table in the mess hall and have Rick take a look,” Hal said, moving around to block the hidden door should the prisoner somehow pop up and start fighting again.
Neither Hal nor Jeff relaxed until the others had left with the fallen man. Then, they sprung into action. Hal went over to the shower head to pop the door while Jeff went to stand to one side of the cabinet that masked the hidden entrance.
“We’re secure,” Jeff heard Hal tell Casey over the radio. “Coming in.”
Chapter Ten
Rose sagged in relief when the cabinet swung open and Jeff and Hal were on the other side. She put the long stick she’d been holding to one side and watched with relief as Casey threw herself into Hal’s arms. Hal intercepted the handgun, still in Casey’s hand, and kept it safe while his woman burst into tears of sheer joy and relief.
Rose felt the same, but she couldn’t be quite as demonstrative. Knowing the future had led her to learn control over showing too much of her emotions from a young age. She met Jeff’s gaze, and she felt tears gather in her eyes. Tears of relief that she refused to let fall, but she felt them, nonetheless. Jeff nodded. He understood. She could read it in his expression.
Hal ushered Casey out of the small room, and Rose followed, noting the bloodstain on the floor. Jeff touched her arm, and she turned to him.
“You fought him?” she asked. She had seen the man in her vision. He’d been a big brute. The idea that Jeff had gone up against him made a shiver race down her spine. Whether of fear or admiration, she wasn’t exactly sure.
“He went down harder than I wanted, but the guys are working on him now. We wanted at least one to question and maybe send back to carry the message,” he said in a low voice as they followed Hal and Casey out of the large ladies’ room.
“What message?” Rose wante
d to know.
“The message that intruders onto this island will be dealt with accordingly,” Hal said over his shoulder.
“We’re putting all the guys we knocked out into a raft and setting it adrift,” Jeff elaborated. “We’ll keep an eye on them from above with a high-flying drone, but basically, we want their people to pick them up, take them away, and never try a stunt like this again.”
“Why not take prisoners?” Rose wanted to know.
Hal cringed, shaking his head. “Too complicated. We’re on U.S. soil. If we take a bunch of prisoners, there would be a lot of explaining to do. A paper trail. Possibly an international incident. We can get away with questioning the one guy because we can do that quietly, among ourselves and a trusted few who regularly deal with top secret ops. But if we start filling up a prison somewhere with these guys, questions are going to be asked.”
Rose thought about it and realized he was right. “Are you sure you got them all?” She hadn’t really thought they would be able to knock out the men she’d seen in her vision with dart guns, but the guys had been adamant in not wanting to kill anybody on U.S. soil. Rose suspected there were legalities involved that she didn’t fully understand.
“Every last one but the guy who made it into the ladies’ room. I still don’t understand how he got past us,” Jeff admitted, sounding very concerned about that little lapse.
As well he should. But there was something she’d noticed in the quick vision of the man in the ladies’ room. Something she’d seen before and didn’t really understand, but knew just enough to say that it was unusual.
“Did you notice the way the guy was sniffing?” Rose asked Jeff as they walked past the mess hall.
She vaguely noted that most of the men were in there, clustered around one of the far tables, where a light was shining brightly down over someone who lay on the table. Jeff and Hal didn’t stop, however, heading farther down the main hall to the common room of the building that acted like a big living room for the unit.
“Yeah, that seemed odd,” Jeff replied, following Hal and Casey into the common room. Hal ushered Casey to one of the big couches along the far wall, but Jeff and Rose paused just inside the doors, giving the other couple an illusion of privacy for the moment.
“I’ve seen that before,” she told him. “I’m not sure what it means, but whenever I see someone do that in a vision, that person proves to have special skills when and if I actually see them.”
“Skills? Like what?”
Jeff was all business now, and Rose appreciated it. She might want to crawl into his arms the way Casey was doing with Hal, but not in public. She wasn’t used to displaying her emotions as freely as the other couple. Perhaps she never would be. She was glad Jeff was giving her a bit of space. Maybe later…in private…she would be able to fall apart a bit, but right now, there was still information to pass along. Sometimes, it felt like the message was the most important thing. The most imperative thing in the universe. This was one of those times.
“One time, I was sitting in a coffee shop with a good view of the street outside, and I foresaw a purse snatching that I didn’t have time to stop. The woman was preoccupied, bending low and sniffing around like that guy, earlier. She was looking for something, I thought. A criminal used her distraction to make a grab for her purse, only she was stronger than she looked, and she held onto the bag, using it to spin the jerk around and into a nearby tree.” She cringed at the memory of the way the assailant’s arm had bled after breaking against the hard bark. “He didn’t get her purse, but he did get arrested after being sent to the hospital. While he lay bleeding and unconscious by the tree, the woman went back to her sniffing as if what she’d done was nothing at all. A minute later, she smiled as she retrieved a hat from where it was stuck, and very well hidden, behind a mailbox. She brushed the hat off, rolled it up and stuck it in her bag before walking off without a second glance at the guy who’d tried to mug her. She was gone before the cops showed up. Someone in the coffee shop had called them after noticing the guy bleeding out the window.”
“Was she some kind of Mata Hari?” Jeff mused. “I’ve not met many, but there are some female operatives in the intelligence world who are reputed to have those kinds of skills.”
“She didn’t look like a spy. Just a woman searching for her hat,” Rose insisted. “Another time, there was a guy doing that sniffing thing. There wasn’t a vision involved. I actually just saw him back behind the store when I went out to dump the trash in the big bin. He stopped as soon as he saw me and took off running. I’ve never seen any human being run that fast, and I’ve never seen anybody hurdle an eight-foot fence in one leaping bound. What he did looked humanly impossible. There were others just like that, over the years, too.”
“So, you’re saying the sniffing guy from tonight might be more than he looks?” Jeff asked, his brows drawing together in concern.
She nodded. “You should warn whoever is watching him. If he has physical skills like those others I’ve seen in visions and in real life, then he could surprise you.”
Jeff put one hand on her shoulder and looked deep into her eyes. “Are you okay if I leave you here for a moment?”
“Yes.” She nodded again, swallowing hard against the emotion that demanded she hug him tight and never let go. She couldn’t do that. Not yet. Not while there was still work to do and messages to deliver. “Go tell them.”
Jeff didn’t come back to the common room for a good long while. Hal had followed Jeff out, leaving Casey and Rose alone in the big room.
“Hal insists the island is secure, but I can’t help but feel sort of creeped out after what happened,” Casey admitted.
“That’s understandable,” Rose said in a subdued voice. “I feel the same.”
“Would you…” Casey trailed off, then seemed to shake off her reticence and went on. “Would you see it if something else was going to happen tonight?”
Rose had to shake her head. “It doesn’t quite work that way. I see some events, but by no means all.”
“That’s a shame,” Casey said quickly, rubbing her arms as if she was cold, yet the room was at a comfortable temperature. It was nerves, Rose knew. She was feeling a bit shaky herself, still.
Jeff poked his head into the room for a moment and told them to sit tight. Rose saw a group of soldiers she’d never met before walking quickly down the main hallway behind him, heading for the mess hall. Most of the men were wearing gear that denoted them as MPs or Military Police, and there was at least one highly ranked officer with them. As they passed behind Jeff, Jeana appeared in the doorway, and he ushered her in then shut the door, leaving the three women alone.
“Jeana!” Casey said, rushing forward to give the doctor a nervous hug. “I thought you were supposed to stay at the base commander’s place tonight.”
“I would have,” Jeana said as Casey stepped back, “but Hal called the commander’s house and said something about a prisoner. Commander Kinkaid rushed right over, and he figured I might as well come back here with him. The whole place is on high alert, though they’re really good at stealth. You wouldn’t know it from outside, but every soldier on this base is on guard tonight. Kinkaid has a way with his people. They’d do just about anything for him.” Jeana sounded admiring of the base commander’s skill. “Tell me what happened?”
Casey launched into a description of events from which Rose stood back and only spoke when asked for her perspective. She was on edge. Something about the prisoner and the way he had been sniffing around had sent up a red flag in the back of her mind. She was glad she’d told Jeff about it, and she hoped he could get to the bottom of whatever it was. She didn’t think she’d get any answers tonight, but she hoped, in time, someone would tell her what the sniffing thing was all about. It felt significant.
After the flow of adrenaline that had kept her hyper aware for the past hours, Rose knew she was crashing hard. She wanted her bed. But, more than that, she wanted to see Jeff. T
o hold him in her arms and be certain he was whole and unharmed. She wanted him in her bed, holding her, all night long.
She drifted toward the doorway to the big hall while the other two women gravitated toward the sofas on the other side of the room. They were still talking about the events of the night, but Rose felt compelled to look out into the hall. She cracked the door open and immediately realized they were transporting the prisoner. He was bound to a gurney and handcuffed, his wrists and feet attached to the steel frame of the rolling stretcher, even as he thrashed and tried to break free.
He was like a wild man, and his eyes glowed with yellow fire as they met hers. She stood silent, shocked in the doorway, and he stilled.
“This isn’t over, Pythia,” he growled. She swore she heard a beast in his voice as he leveled her with his gaze. Could the man inspire fear with his voice alone? That would never do.
Not sure of what she was doing, but feeling compelled to do it, nonetheless, Rose stepped fully into the hallway. The men pushing the gurney slowed as time seemed to become sluggish. Jeff was near, and she met his gaze. He seemed to be watching with attentive eyes as she turned her attention back to the prisoner.
“It’s over for you,” she told him, not certain where her surety or bravado was coming from.
“I’d like to see them try to hold me,” he replied, his voice becoming even gruffer.
She held out one hand, not sure why she did so, but feeling she must. Words came to her, and it occurred to her that she was speaking them aloud, even if she didn’t fully understand what she was saying.
“I bind you to this form, until you allow the Light to purify your soul.”
Every eye in the place turned to her as she spoke, including all of Jeff’s co-workers and a few men she didn’t know, including the base commander. The moment she was done speaking, the man on the gurney let out an inhuman roar.
