Athena Force 9: Payback

by Harper Allen

  “Nothing fancy, but it gets the job done,” Asher said, his voice hoarse with anger. “Although I wouldn’t want you to think that exotic crap you go in for is beyond me, you sorry son of a bitch, so before I finish this off by unsportingly pulling my gun on you, I’ll give you a demonstration.”

  The words were still leaving his lips as he pivoted so that he was no longer facing her, but turned side-on toward her. At the same time he drew one booted foot close to his body, his palms now rigidly flat and held close to his chest. The leg he had drawn up shot out like a piston just as Dawn found stability. As it blurred toward her she stiff-armed it aside and lunged at him.

  Now I’m mad, she told herself. My lip’s split wide-open, I nearly fell on my keister like a kid trying on her first pair of skates, and to add insult to injury, he has the nerve to let me know that he’s held off using his gun because it’s not sporting! The man’s un-freakin’-believable!

  She drove her first punch directly into his solar plexus, her second and third finding the same target. As Asher doubled over, her gloved fists moved upward, one blow glancing jarringly off his right cheekbone. But by then he had her rhythm. Blood streaming from a cut over his eye, he waded in toward her and wrapped one heavily muscled arm around her shoulders, dragging her close to him as if they were engaged in some deadly and antagonistic kind of dance.

  “Tea party’s over, mate,” he ground out. His mouth was only inches from her ear, and his breath felt warm against her skin. Dawn let herself go limp, felt his hold relax, and then brought her knee up in a deliberately unsporting move. Her aim was true but he twisted at the last moment, and her kneecap jarred achingly against his thighbone. Asher’s one-armed bear hug became crushing, his free hand going swiftly to the Sig Sauer strapped to his hip. “Like I said before, you’re under military arrest, not civilian, so don’t hold your breath waiting for me to read you your bloody rights. All I have to tell you is this gun’s pointed straight at you and my finger’s on the trigger, so put your hands on your head and slowly—”

  He hadn’t needed to spell it out for her, Dawn thought angrily. She could feel the muzzle of his Sig jammed into her rib cage and if she flicked her glance downward she could even see it, his finger on the trigger as he’d promised. She could see his watch, too, the dial worn on the inside of his wrist, the little hand pointing at two, the big hand almost straight up, the sweep hand counting the few seconds remaining until—

  Until her mission could be considered officially blown. The sweep hand’s countdown was at ten…nine…eight…Exploding into action, she made a grab for the gun, felt her gloved hand wrap around the crosshatched grip and began to wrest it away from Asher.

  At the six-second mark it went off and a nine-millimeter parabellum slug tore through the outer wall of her heart.

  Chapter 11

  Status: nine days and counting

  Time: 0159 hours

  Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion, even to the passage of the bullet through her body, Dawn thought dazedly. She could feel it continue on its way, knew it had missed her spine by a hairbreadth, felt it punch through her back. Then it was out of her but still moving. Two wings of velvet briefly enveloped her and fell away—Sir William’s heavy draperies, she guessed, billowing out at the sides in reaction to the force of the projectile that had slammed through the center of them. At the same time she heard the icy sound of glass shattering as the window she hadn’t been able to open earlier was blown out. She looked down at herself. She could see perfectly now, she realized, which meant that the light-stick had finally sputtered and died, giving her this final split second of darkness.

  This is the experiment Aldrich always wanted to conduct, the one experiment Uncle Lee threatened to kill him over if he ever tried to carry it out on me, she thought, seeing the dark stain spreading rapidly across her shredded sweater and the thick globules dropping to the floor, some of them spattering the edges of the sheaf of papers that had fallen from the waistband of her pants when she’d been shot. Peters wanted to know if I could survive a bullet to the heart. In a moment I’ll have the answer to his question.

  “Dammit, man, it didn’t have to end this way!” Asher’s expression was appalled, his tone stricken. “What the hell were you thinking, going for my gun when I told you—”

  She could feel it deep inside her. The process had already begun, her tissues beginning to knit themselves perfectly together again. The answer to Aldrich Peters’s question was yes. Lab 33’s lab rat could survive a shot to the heart. But could Lab 33’s lab rat escape the trap she was in…the trap that was about to spring shut right about—

  Now! Dawn ordered herself sharply.

  Even as she wrenched off the goggles and threw herself backward, time began speeding up again, fast-forwarding so rapidly that everything seemed to occur at once. The study was suddenly flooded with light. She had a freeze-frame’s glimpse of Asher’s drawn features, thought she saw a flicker of shock pass over them, and then she was falling through the cool night air, her arms outstretched and her body limp. She hit the ground with a jarring thud, but knew immediately that her lack of rigidity had saved her from any broken bones.

  She’d taken the fast way down, she thought grimly. Mr. SAS was going to have to take the stairs. Her contingency plan could still be put into operation…if her mobility returned in time.

  It was a pretty big if. She heard shouts, then the Klaxon-like bursts of an alarm. The military contingent of the facility had obviously gone to code red at the sound of a gunshot and any minute now they would be converging on this area. Sir William’s velvet drapes were hanging on the outside of the now-destroyed window, and while Asher was racing down the hall and taking the stairs three at a time to get to the body of the intruder he’d thought he’d killed, she had no doubt he would be barking out orders to whomever he passed.

  She couldn’t wait any longer. Awkwardly she got to her feet, grimacing at the blade of pain that thrust through her but ignoring its warning. Yeah, I know I’m not healed yet, okay? Under the circumstances, Dawn thought light-headedly, it seemed eminently reasonable to have a dialogue with her own body; after all, she was going to be asking a lot of it in the next few minutes. But I don’t have a choice here. You want to end up with me being the poster girl for a bunch of curious scientists, monitors shoved up my wazoo and so many tubes coming out of me that I look like an octopus, go ahead and wimp out. If you don’t want that, you’re going to have to get me to my room, and pronto, dammit.

  Her pep talk had the desired effect. Putting one foot clumsily in front of the other, she prodded herself into a stumbling run, clutching the edges of her destroyed sweater together to slow the telltale trail of blood she was leaving as she headed for the building she’d just left so precipitously. Veering drunkenly toward the nearest entrance, she suddenly realized what she was doing and hastily ducked back into the shadows.

  Asher burst out of the building, his boots hitting the path so violently that gravel sprayed up behind him as he tore by her hiding place. With less speed than he’d exhibited, she forced herself to sprint up the same path, slipping in between the doors he’d just exited before they had a chance to swing shut.

  Right in front of her were the stairs that led to the staff’s rooms, Sir William’s among them. Carpeted in a utilitarian beige, they appeared to rise ahead of her like the various base camps of an Everest ascent.

  “And me without my Sherpa guide,” she muttered, exhaustion rolling over her like a fog. “Maybe I should take the elevator instead.”

  But there was too much of a risk that it wasn’t working properly after the power outage. It would take time to get all systems back online, and although the elevators would be a high priority since a few of the scientists and technicians were wheelchair-bound, the odds were good that Asher’s people were working first on the security features that had gone down…like the hall video monitors.

  As the thought occurred to her, Dawn glanced in alarm at t
he camera situated above her. It was still dead, the red light that would have been glowing if it was operational not yet showing, but the mere sight of it served as a stimulus to get her up the stairs. With the balaclava still obscuring her features, she wouldn’t be recognizable on camera…but the fact that her masked figure had entered Dawn Swanson’s room would damn her just as thoroughly.

  “Talking about systems coming back online, it feels like mine are beginning to return to normal,” she said under her breath as she entered the hallway that ran by Sir William’s rooms. As she’d expected, Asher’s departure from the study hadn’t been so hasty that he’d overlooked locking the door behind him, and for the first time since the fiasco that had resulted in her obtaining and then losing Sir William’s notes, the full impact of her failure hit her.

  She’d committed the cardinal sin of her profession, she thought bleakly as she turned down the corridor that led to her room. She’d let her emotions take over at the expense of the mission. There’d been a point during her fight with Asher when she could have turned tail and run, but since the day she’d arrived there had been a personal edge to their infrequent interactions, and tonight had been no different.

  “Face it, O’Shaughnessy, you wanted to whip his ass,” she berated herself. She let herself into her room and went immediately to the window, taking care not to turn on the light. Searchlights crisscrossed the grounds and the voice of Lieutenant Keifer was clearly audible as he directed a group of soldiers to search the area nearer the gates. “Instead, you got blown away by Mr. SAS, and in the process you not only screwed up this assignment, you insured Sir William’s notes will be kept under even tighter security after tonight. With your anticipated life span now down to a week and two days, you’ve put yourself back at square one.”

  No one likes screwing up on a job, Dawnie, but sometimes it happens. When it does, the best plan of action you can have is to make it to safety, regroup your resources, and figure out how you’re going to fix your mistake.

  “More pearls of wisdom from a dead man,” Dawn said bitterly, turning from the window and entering the bathroom. She stripped off her pants, the balaclava and the ruined top, bundled them into a blood-soaked ball and a moment later had tossed them into the air shaft with the rest of her clandestine possessions, including the gun she’d liberated from Reese and had decided not to take with her tonight—another mistake that Lee Craig would probably have a handy bromide for if he were alive, she thought dismissively.

  Clad only in a plain black bra and pants, she paused in front of the mirror. Yessir, step right up and see the amazing regenerating woman. Lightly she touched the edges of flesh and skin that had been torn apart less than five minutes ago and were now almost knit together, before twisting the washbasin’s taps on full blast and running hot water over a washcloth. The water swirling in the sink ran crimson, then pink and finally clear as she automatically scrubbed the drying blood away, her attention still on her reflection. Break her bones and she’ll bounce back. Shoot her full of holes and she heals right up. Is she a freak, a lab rat, a monster? Why, she’s all of those things, ladies and gentlemen, and a fool besides, because the one part of her that won’t heal is her heart—not the organ but the feelings she once had for the man who lied to her all her life. Come on, folks, let’s give the little lady a big round of—

  “Shut up!” The washcloth fell unheeded as Dawn grasped the edges of the sink and brought her face to within inches of the mirror. “Shut up, shut up, shut up! I have healed! I’m perfectly fine! Sure, I loved you, you bastard—I loved you so much I used to pretend you weren’t my uncle but my real father! I loved you and I believed your lies and I thought—I thought—”

  The woman in the mirror opened her mouth in a silent rictus of grief. Her gold-green eyes were red rimmed and her face was wet with tears. Behind her there seemed to be a ghostly image—an image of a man, no longer young, with lines of experience and regret on his face and shadows of pain under his eyes. Dawn reached out and touched the ghostly reflection.

  “I thought you loved me, Uncle Lee.” Her whisper was agonized. “But that was just part of the lie, wasn’t it? Because even if I could somehow overlook everything else you were and did, I can’t overlook the fact that you killed my mother, Rainy Miller. Her death at your hands has to mean that you never felt anything at all for me, and knowing that has been tearing me apart, despite what I told Kayla Ryan…and despite what I’ve tried to tell myself.”

  She let her hand fall away from the reflection. Her anguish hardened. “Don’t come back anymore, Lee. Your little lab rat doesn’t need you. Stay dead and stop haunting me, and maybe then I’ll be able to heal, you bastard.”

  Gripping the sides of the sink, she let her head hang between her braced arms for a moment. When she looked up once more, there was no one reflected in the mirror but herself. She firmed her lips to a straight line, swiped the back of her hand across her tear-marked face and began to reach for the drab robe hanging on the back of the door.

  “Exit O’Shaughnessy, enter Swanson,” she muttered. “God, couldn’t Carter have given her better taste in clothes, or at least—”

  “Open the door!”

  The shouted command coming from the hall outside her room was accompanied by a violent pounding. Dawn spun around. Only when she was facing the door did she notice she was holding a wickedly jagged shard of glass in her hand, the remains of the water glass she’d instinctively grabbed and smashed to use as a weapon.

  “I know you’re in there, Swanson. If you don’t open this door immediately I’m breaking it down!”

  The voice belonged to Des Asher. So, presumably, did the boot that crashed into the door a second later, rocking it on its hinges. He was the last person on earth she felt like confronting right now, she thought in trepidation, the last person she could afford to confront while the bullet hole he’d put in her was still healing; but a more important issue was, why was he here at all? There was a full-scale manhunt going on outside this building, a manhunt he himself had ordered, and with all his faults Asher wasn’t the type to let a subordinate shoulder his responsibilities for him.

  “Last chance, Swanson.” She frowned. Beneath the grimness of his tone was an undercurrent of fear, but what did Des Asher have to fear from the Swanson chick, as far as he knew? Her question was answered right away. “If you’re okay, open the door and let me see for myself, because there’s a blood trail leading to this floor and I think it came from you.”

  Damn. She’d been sure she’d stopped bleeding before she’d reached the top of the stairs, but apparently a drop or two had escaped her notice. Had she missed anything else? Tossing her impromptu weapon into the sink and shrugging into her robe, Dawn quickly checked herself in the mirror. The wound at the top of her ribs hadn’t completely healed, but in a few minutes it would have. Aside from that, there were no visible marks on her face or body from the fight, since she was physically incapable of sustaining bruises or abrasions. She peered closer, using her fingernail to scrape a minuscule fleck of crimson from her collarbone before giving her reflection a humorless smile. Maybe a confrontation with Mr. SAS was exactly what she needed to get herself back on track. Anger would focus her, remind her of who she was and what she was here for. It would be a welcome substitute for the weepy doldrums into which she’d so ridiculously fallen a few minutes ago. Anger would be a release, dammit.

  She cinched the robe around her waist as she strode to the door. At the very moment she judged that the man on the other side was bracing himself to break it down, she flung it wide open. She gave him a quizzical glance.

  “Take a look at yourself in the mirror. It may provide an answer as to where the blood trail’s coming from,” she said without preamble. “What’s going on outside and why was the power down a while ago? Are you here to give me the all-clear?”

  Asher stepped into the room and slammed the door shut behind him. One eye was swollen nearly shut, but the other scanned her swiftly. “Ta
ke off the robe, Swanson. For God’s sake, I know it was you I shot in my uncle’s study. No one else has eyes that color. How you survived the free fall I’ll never know, but…” His voice trailed off. Doubt crept into his eyes.

  She widened her gaze. “O-kaay,” she drawled sardonically. “And I’m supposed to have stabbed Colonel Mustard in the drawing room with a knife, right?” She pulled the robe closer around her, all too aware of the tight sensation near the top of her ribs that signaled the healing process was still going on. “Sorry, Asher, but this girl’s not in the mood tonight.”

  She had to stall him a little longer. She was now almost positive the healing was complete, but she didn’t want to take the chance of him witnessing the final seconds of regeneration, especially since the memory of Kayla’s stunned reaction months ago still stung. She shrugged dismissively at him.

  “I don’t have the first freakin’ idea what you’re talking about. You shot me? I fell? Is that what you told the guards outside combing the grounds?” Her gaze narrowed as the flaw in her reasoning struck her. “You didn’t, did you? Because if you had told them I was the intruder you caught in Sir William’s study, they wouldn’t be out there looking under bushes, they’d be here and I’d be staring down the barrels of a couple dozen guns.” She gave him a slow smile. “Why, Ash, honey—you really do care…or else you think there’s just a teeny chance you could be wrong and you’d be making a fool of yourself in front of—”

  His voice was hoarse. “This isn’t possible. I looked straight into your eyes right after I shot you! It has to be your blood on those research papers I found on the floor. You have to be wounded, for God’s sake!”

  Before she knew what he intended, he had closed the distance between them with a single stride, grasped the lapels of her robe, and wrenched the garment violently open. The belt around her waist gave way and the robe slipped from her shoulders to fall in a heap around her ankles.