Karina Cooper - [Dark Mission 05]

by One for the Wicked

  Kayleigh frowned. “Where’s your shirt— Ouch!” His gaze flicked to her face, eyelids tightening, but he didn’t let her arm go. His fingertips skated over her abraded wrist. The skin, cracked and crusted, burned. “That’s not broken, either.” But oh, it hurt enough to make her flinch deeply.

  “All right.” Gingerly, he pulled her sleeve back down. Wait, not her sleeve. Kayleigh blinked dumbly at the navy blue fabric.

  “Oh.” She wore his shirt.

  “Are you still cold?”

  It hung on her, somewhat damp still but warmer than her suit jacket and smelling of rain, earth.

  Him.

  She resisted the urge to raise her arm to her nose, instead forcing an elbow under her. It grated on rocky ground, cushioned only faintly by her discarded blazer. Underneath the shirt, she could feel the clinging fabric of silk—now ruined beyond repair.

  Shawn’s hands slid under her shoulders, helped her upright. His arms framed her shoulders, his chest level with her face as he steadied her.

  The contours under that thin light drew her gaze like nothing else.

  The man had a warrior’s body, she’d give him that. As rough and edged as any of the lethal agents in her father’s stable. A sprinkling of dark hair trailed to a point at abdominal muscles she suddenly ached to run her fingers down. See if they rippled under her touch, see if her nails would leave an imprint.

  She shivered. Virile masculinity sounded much less sarcastic in her malfunctioning thoughts.

  “The rain stopped,” he said over her head, and she heard it in stereo: grim and deep, richly resonant through his chest. Another shiver forced her teeth together. “But everything’s still damp. Sorry about that.”

  “I’m fine.” She forced the words out, forced her back to straighten, when all she wanted to do was reach out, lay her head against that strong chest. Shock settled somewhere in her bones, nestled in the hole in her gut and crackled.

  Shawn’s grip eased at her shoulders.

  This time, when he caught her arm in that implacable grip, she swallowed the ache in her throat. He made short work of the handcuffs, but at least he pulled the long sleeves down between the metal and her skin as they clicked closed.

  She closed her eyes. “At least tell me what happened.”

  The fingers at her wrist tightened. She winced, but he was already letting go when she looked up, withdrawing across the narrow band of light. “You tell me.”

  Oh, God. She didn’t have the energy for this. “I don’t know who that man was,” she said wearily, “but I’d guess one of my father’s agents.”

  “You’d guess.” He glared at the ground between them, shallow divots and scoring picked out in stark contrast by the light.

  “Shawn, I’m his daughter, not his personal omniscient keeper.”

  “Don’t you work at that lab project?”

  She raised both hands to scrub one across her face. “He wasn’t a Salem subject,” she said through her fingers. “I know them all by face and name, and I didn’t know him.” Muffled as it was, it probably sounded like she lacked conviction, but she didn’t care. Exhaustion ruled her body. Her mouth. “I should have just let him shoot you,” she finished, bone-dry despite her rain-damp chill.

  His eyes lifted, gaze still so damned hard, she didn’t know if soft would ever apply to a man like him. “Why didn’t you?”

  “Come on!” She flung out her fingers, cuffs rattling. “Haven’t we been over this?”

  “He was right there, Kayleigh, you could have gone home.”

  “Don’t you think I know that?”

  “Then what? What were you thinking?”

  She stilled. As the ruins sucked away his voice, plucked it from the ground between them and tossed it wildly, she tried to search his face, his eyes, and found . . . something painful.

  Something angry.

  At her?

  She could have gone home, sure. But she’d seen Shawn come over that ledge, ready to fight for her. To save her from what he thought was a threat, and she’d meant it when she said she didn’t want him dead.

  The agent would have killed him. That’s what missionaries did.

  That couldn’t be the issue. Did he want to be rid of her?

  Well, of course he would. “Did I make the wrong choice?” she asked, her own voice softer. When he looked away, she shifted, pulled herself to her knees, and braced one hand on the ground, the other pulled taut against the chain. “Shawn?”

  “I don’t know.” The words lashed. Shawn shoved himself to his feet, took two steps away until the dark swallowed all but the fierce glitter in his eyes, the penlight reflected back in obsidian and steel. “You swear you don’t take people off the street, and I know it’s a lie—”

  “It’s not.”

  His shoulders went rigid. “Don’t.” A lethal growl. “I saw her, Doctor. I’ve seen the evidence.”

  Kayleigh flinched at the return to an honorific she was beginning to despise on his lips. “You’re not making any sense.”

  “I’m not making any sense? Me?” He laughed, a crack of sound that flung shards of too many conflicting emotions through her chest. She hunched, but there was no protection from the bitter fury he threw at her. “That was one of my friends back there! My people, my friend. Last I knew, the Mission had her, and here she is. Working for you!”

  No. The magnitude of his accusation slapped her in the face, curled like fire in her belly, and brought tears of pain to her eyes.

  She blinked them back. Her ulcer, the stress it came from, didn’t matter. Not right now. “Impossible. We don’t kidnap people and press them into service. Church agents are trained from childhood. It’s—” Safer that way. Children adapted better.

  Now he took a step back toward her, fists outlined at his sides. Clenched hard. “You still deny it?”

  She pressed her own to her stomach. “Of course I do! Damn it, Shawn, I know where my people come from!”

  “Innocents,” he spat.

  “Missionaries.” When he only turned away with a rough snort of contempt, she leaped to her feet, ignored the throbbing warning in her body to reach out and seize his bare arm in both of her hands. “Listen to me!” The chain lashed at his skin; he didn’t flinch.

  Every muscle in his body went still, a taut, vibrating statue. Vividly hot to the touch.

  Kayleigh stared at the silhouette of his profile. A nerve ticked over his temple, and the pulse beneath her palms thrummed hard. A rapid, angry staccato.

  Bad move. She let go. Her fingertips tingled as if she’d pressed them into an electrical outlet. “Listen to me,” she tried again, quieter this time. Cautiously. “The Salem genome—” When his shoulder jerked, she hastily amended the language. “The witchcraft DNA has been in house for a very, very long time, okay? The missionaries have a yearly physical, and we get genetic material from that. The two combined create the viable strain we use for our subjects.” Mostly viable, anyway.

  He stared at the ground.

  “We haven’t even made a new generation of actual subjects in, God, decades. Not while it’s so unstable. We don’t take people off the street,” she told him fervently. “We never have.”

  His shoulders squared as he turned, lips flat and twisted into an angry sneer as he caught her upper arms. He dragged her close, until she couldn’t possibly mistake a single furious syllable. “Pretty speech, Dr. Lauderdale, but you forget one very important thing.”

  Her smile was flat. Wan. “Just one?”

  He wasn’t amused. Not even a little. “I’ve seen the truth. All your official bullshit and party line won’t make that go away. Your father—”

  Kayleigh didn’t know where she found the strength. The energy. All she knew was the words “your father” crossed his lips and she shoved with all her might, tore herself out of his grasp as she snarled, “I am not my father.”

  He found his footing faster than she’d like, straightened, and yelled over her. “Then stop making excuses a
nd own up to your bullshit!”

  The tears she struggled to hold back burned, just a notch under the bile swimming in her stomach. Hammering at her ulcer.

  Her sanity.

  Nobody has to answer for anything now.

  Parker Adams’s accusation rang through her memory, unwanted and unwelcome and so sharp, it drowned out the rumble of Shawn’s own, too similar allegations.

  Not for crimes committed against innocent people on the streets . . .

  They weren’t right. They couldn’t be.

  She raised her hands to her face, dug her knuckles into her eyes. “Stop it.”

  “Open your eyes and see the truth, Kayleigh!”

  You have no idea what your father’s been up to, do you?

  Her fingers jabbed into her forehead, drilled into the ache building over her eyebrows. “Stop.”

  Shawn’s hand closed over her arm, just over her elbow. Warm, solid. “What you do is bad enough,” he said tightly. “You’re playing God up in your lab like lives don’t matter.” She jerked. “What he does—”

  Open your eyes, sweetheart. Your father is butchering people.

  “No!” She wrenched at his grip, slammed an elbow into his ribs before she realized the trajectory of her swing. He grunted with the impact, but he didn’t move. Didn’t stagger this time.

  Kayleigh stumbled back, hands raised in mingled apology and frustration as tears spilled over her lashes.

  She hated crying. Hated it. And he brought her to it every time.

  Shawn didn’t close the distance. “Stop taking potshots at me because you don’t like the truth. The sooner you realize your part in this, the sooner you can—” The words cut out, his mouth twisting. The silence filling in for the worthless platitude crackled.

  Through her tears, Kayleigh laughed bitterly. “The sooner I can what? Get on with my life?”

  His expression, narrowed and suddenly so cautious, said it all.

  There was no getting on from this.

  The faint haze trapped in the penlight warned her that she’d reached her limit; a corona clung to Shawn’s skin, so close it was as if he were dusted by gold.

  Teeth clenched, she straightened under her own power. Tucked her bound hands against her chest. “I’m sorry,” she managed to force out, a semblance of calm. The thinnest veneer of civility. “I didn’t mean to hit you. I didn’t mean to make the wrong choice. I’m sorry that your parents were killed, God, I’m so—”

  “Don’t.”

  She couldn’t stop, shaking her head over and over. “I’m sorry that agent turned against you—”

  “Her name is Amanda.” He scraped a dirty hand through his hair, leaving the curling ends sticking up in its wake. “She’s a witch. You turned her against us.”

  A vein threatened to explode in her forehead. “Not,” she said between her teeth, “me.”

  “Then your father!” The explosive accusation bit hard, but not nearly as much as his snarled, “What the fuck is the difference?”

  Full circle, and it drew blood.

  All at once, the fight drained from her weary body. The damp chill on her cheeks told her that her tears fell unchecked now, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. To wipe them away. As she turned, fists clenched over the chain binding her hands together, Kayleigh’s shoulders rounded against the hole growing in her chest.

  Her gut.

  For a long moment, the silence twanged, tight as a coiled spring. Then, roughly, he muttered, “Shit.”

  Alarm flickered a moment too late. Rock crunched, a hand seized her shoulder, and before she could fight him off, Shawn turned her. Pulled her into his arms.

  She stiffened. “Don’t touch—”

  He ignored it, tucked her hard against his chest and smoothed one broad hand over her back. “I’m sorry,” he said, the sound both a murmur in his low voice and a rumble through his chest beneath her ear.

  It was a day for sorry.

  Kayleigh wanted to push away. Wanted to punch him in his handsome, rugged, stupid face and call him every name in the book, but her tears wouldn’t stop. Even if it was his fault, having somebody hold her, somebody comfort her, was worth it. At least for now.

  Her fingers curled against his chest. His warm, bare skin.

  When she didn’t shove him away, something in Shawn’s rigid body eased. As if it melted away, she felt his muscles give, his shoulders protectively hunch around her as he gathered her into his arms and buried his face into her hair like he needed it, too.

  Like she mattered.

  A pretty lie.

  It’d do. For now.

  Kayleigh allowed herself to be comforted. To absorb the heat of his body and the whispered apologies he breathed into her hair and to think, just for a second, that it was enough.

  She wasn’t her father. But didn’t she want to be?

  One callused hand curled around her nape.

  She shuddered. Raising her head, she scraped her borrowed sleeve over her eyes and met his. Close enough to see each individual eyelash in a thick, short fan of them, close enough to wonder if the gold dust she saw in his dark brown irises was really there, or just a figment of her eyesight’s deterioration.

  Heat simmered there. The heat of his anger, she recognized that much.

  The rest she remembered from that moment in her car. The glint of barely restrained need. The heat of his body against hers, his throaty encouragement.

  It echoed in her own skin, cradled against his. Another shiver shuddered up her spine. His fingers tightened at her back. “Are you cold?”

  “Always,” she whispered, shocked at her own raw honesty. “Shawn—”

  His gaze darkened. “I can’t keep apologizing to you.”

  She didn’t want apologies. Not now. His mouth was inches away, lips soft and firm all at once, bracketed with all the things he carried with him: anger, aggression, vengeance.

  Lights flickered at the corners of her vision.

  He could end her. As easily as breathing, he could tear her apart. And even as she thought it, her vision flashed double.

  He could heal her.

  The alien thought terrified her. Hers and not hers. Again, with the pressure in her head. The weight in the air.

  Her fingernails dug into the contoured lines of his chest. He sucked in a breath, nostrils flaring.

  “Kayleigh, there’s too much we don’t—”

  “Please.” The word shocked her almost as much as the continued streak of honesty appalled her. Please? How many times would she ask this man to kiss her?

  His arms tightened. Nestled against her, hips firm against hers, she knew how much his body had tuned in. The hard ridge under his stiff jeans zipper settled so achingly close.

  So very much not what she needed right now.

  Or was it?

  Slow. Maybe she’d just start slow. She tipped her face up, thrilled when his thumb dug into the sensitive point behind her ear, cradling her head.

  His lashes lowered, sparking a faint shimmer in her compromised sight. His mouth hovered scant millimeters from hers. So close, she could feel his breath. Drowned in the anticipation of his kiss.

  She braced her hands against his shoulders. “Kiss me, Shawn.”

  “Kayleigh . . .” He closed his eyes.

  His lips brushed hers, a feathered caress barely more than a breath.

  Something aching and needy uncurled within her. Something hot and oddly welcoming.

  He stilled. Opened them again, features drawn tight. “No.”

  Her gut kicked.

  “No kissing. No unnecessary touching.” Slowly, jaw thrust forward as if it hurt him to do it, Shawn let go, eased his body away from hers. The shock of cold air slipped into the space where his heat had been, curled in and froze her shaking core.

  She clasped her hands to her chest, suddenly afraid that he’d see the ragged hole there. Shame burned.

  “We’ve been here before.”

  She turned away. Disappointmen
t warred with rampant relief. Pride and regret.

  Always, regret.

  “You’re right, of course,” she forced herself to say, ignoring the hollow pit in her gut. It hurt. The whole damned thing hurt. “I think I’m in shock.”

  “Shock.” He repeated the word on a low rumble.

  “Maybe a concussion,” she continued with a frown. Her gaze skated over the narrow band of rock and debris picked out by the penlight. Where to go? What to do?

  How could she hide?

  “Okay, we’ll go with that.”

  Her cheeks burned. Desperate to clear the last five minutes from her memory, she swung around, glared hotly at him when she realized he watched her the way she might watch a jumping spider. “And just so we’re clear, you bas—”

  A feminine voice called, “There you are!” In one split second, a hand reached from the outskirts of the dark, settled on her arm, and ended her forced fury on a startled shriek.

  A shape loomed out of the ruins, and Shawn didn’t think. He didn’t breathe; he barely even considered his own ravaged body as he lunged past Kayleigh’s wide-eyed alarm and seized fistfuls of synth-leather.

  An impression of honey blond hair and a startled, “Oh shit!” turned into violent lethality as large, angry hands closed over his shoulders, ripped him away from the woman he’d seized.

  A fist plowed into Shawn’s face. He cursed savagely as the ruins flipped end over end. When the lights stopped flashing across his retinas—seconds too long—he rolled over, shoved himself to his feet, and threw himself at the broad, burly man closing in on him.

  Another punch, fist like a truck, swung wide. Shawn caught the man’s arm, teeth bared, and came in hard and low with an uppercut that felt as if he’d driven his fist into a brick wall.

  A hard grunt, an exhale of surprise and pain from his opponent pushed Shawn harder. Faster. Another gut punch, and an elbow came down on Shawn’s shoulder. He staggered.

  “Wait, stop!”