by Sydney Croft
Instead of separating a single thought from his mind and circulating it like a shield that guarded his true thoughts, as most psychics did, he could create entire scenes, histories, stories. He would then arrange them inside an imaginary force field surrounding his mind, where it effectively blocked all attempts to penetrate. Anyone sifting around inside his head came away with innocuous images of his childhood, some bogus college recollections and perverted depictions of his false sexual fetishes.
The ability made him the only ACRO agent capable of infiltrating Itor.
His true talent, though, the one ACRO and Itor hired him for and that complemented his talent for language, was his ability to use any mode of electrical connection to step inside another person, to see, briefly, through that person’s eyes.
Which was why, when he’d been speaking with “Derek” a few moments ago, he’d seen a few fleeting images of animals, a bedroom and the speaker’s foot. Had the guy looked in the mirror, Ryan might have recognized him. Then again, he’d not met every ACRO agent, not even close. And it was possible the guy wasn’t ACRO. He could be a free agent, or even someone from a U.S. government agency.
What he had learned, though, was that whoever’s eyes he’d been looking through had been resistant to his presence. Probably not on a conscious level, but the guy’s mind had definitely not wanted Ryan there, and the images had been disjointed, fuzzy and unremarkable.
He wished like hell he could contact ACRO and find out more, but communications with his agency had to remain limited and be carefully arranged with no deviations from standard operating procedure. Anything else could put his assignment—and his life—at risk.
Besides, his assignment wasn’t to assist any of the dozens of ACRO missions taking place around the world. His objective was to gather intelligence, and since he was the first to have gotten in—alive and as something other than a prisoner anyway—he had to let the small fish go and stay focused on the trophy tuna.
It was a mission that could potentially last for years, and one that could get him very dead after long hours of painful torture. No fucking way was he ever going to be tortured again.
So yeah, whoever that guy had been on the phone, if he was ACRO, he was on his own. Ryan had bought him some time with his false report to Andrew, but the dude had better keep his ass covered. The other Itor agent sent as backup hadn’t checked in, so the next time “Derek” called, Ryan would have to report the impersonation.
And Itor would descend on the target in force.
CHAPTER
Eight
WEDNESDAY MID-MORNING
Annika stalked into Dev’s office, her head pounding for a lot of reasons, but the raging hangover topped the list.
“Rough night?” Dev asked over the rim of his coffee cup, and she didn’t bother to ask how he knew. Anyone who considered his blindness a handicap underestimated him big-time.
“Rough is putting it mildly.”
After Creed had left her spitting mad at the shithole bar, she’d slammed nearly a dozen shots of tequila, flirted with as many guys, who couldn’t come close to comparing to Creed, and then when one got a little too friendly, she’d reacted badly enough to start a brawl. A brawl she’d also ended.
“I’ve been trying to get hold of you since last night. You haven’t answered my calls.” She tossed a key onto his desk. “And you changed your locks.”
He cocked an eyebrow and put down his cup. “You broke into my house ten times before I gave you a key, and you’re saying you couldn’t get in?”
She snorted. Yeah, she’d found ways into his supersecure fortress of a house, mostly by frying his security systems, but every time she broke in, he thanked her for finding a weakness and then fixed the problem so no one could gain entrance the same way again. His house was now impenetrable, and he knew it.
“I finally had to make an appointment to see you.”
“You made an appointment?”
“Well, no. But I thought about it.” For all of two seconds. Then she showed up at Dev’s office and stared at Marlena until the other woman huffed and buzzed her in.
The computer next to him beeped, and he ran his fingers over the touch pad before asking, “What happened last night that you needed to see me so badly?”
“Nothing much, really. Just some asshole totally dumped me in this dive. Left me alone like an idiot with a bunch of psycho strangers.”
Dev breathed a lengthy, tolerant sigh. “You were assisting CIA operatives on missions when you were nine, Annika. You were a world-class assassin at the age of fourteen. You can shock an entire room full of people into unconsciousness with a single touch. So I know you aren’t asking me to believe you were scared and helpless.”
She felt her cheeks heat, because yeah, that line wasn’t going to work and she shouldn’t have tried. Dev never let her get away with anything other than the truth. But the truth, beyond the fact that she’d simply not wanted to be alone, wasn’t something she wanted to share. They’d talked about her past, her childhood, the things she’d done in the name of national security and world peace. They discussed things she never opened up about to anyone, but her sex life had been largely ignored, probably because, ick, it would be like talking orgasms with a parent.
Not that she knew what a parent was, since the CIA couple who raised her from the age of two had gone through the motions to give her a pseudo-normal childhood, but had never succeeded. Not when the word love had never been spoken. And not when games like hide-and-seek were played with Tasers, and “family” camping trips turned out to be exercises in survival. And how many parents not only taught a six-year-old how to play poker, but how to slit a throat with the king of hearts?
“Why did you change the locks, Dev? What’s been going on with you lately?”
“It’s a private matter. I don’t want you involved.”
Private matter. Hurt winged through her. He’d locked her out of his house, and now out of whatever was going on with him. “Whatever it is, I can help. I want to help.”
“Out of the question. This is something I have to deal with on my own. The fewer people who are involved—”
“Who are they?” Jealousy lashed at her. Control had been drilled into her from an early age, but restraint had always been an issue, and she didn’t know how to handle an emotion she’d never experienced. “Why do you trust someone else but not me?”
Throwing back his head, he closed his eyes, and she knew why he’d been avoiding her. He didn’t want to have this conversation. “Annika, you have to let this go.” He dropped his head to spear her with a fierce stare despite his blindness. “Now.”
“Fine,” she snapped. “Then send me on an assignment. Get me out of your hair. Obviously, that’s what you want.”
Another tolerant sigh stirred the papers on his desk, fueling her anger. She wasn’t a goddamned child.
“You know the rules. Everyone takes downtime following a mission, and you need it.”
“How the hell do you know what I need? Well, you might know if you’d deigned to see me last night. You might know how the only guy I’ve ever slept with totally dissed me like I’m not good enough for him.” The sting of tears burned her eyes, which pissed her off more, because Creed wasn’t worth a single tear. It wasn’t like there was anything between them. She ground her teeth and clenched her fists in her lap. “Doesn’t matter. It was nothing but sex anyway.”
“Some asshole was using you for sex?”
We were using each other.
“It’s more complicated than—”
“You’re having sex?” he asked, as though what she’d said had only now sunk in.
“Dev. Hello…I’m not a kid anymore.”
A fact he’d apparently not confronted even when he’d learned about her private lessons with a Seducer when she turned eighteen. It had only made sense that she learn to kiss, to touch, to blow a guy’s mind as well as his dick, should the situation arise, if she was going to be a convincin
g agent. Since she hadn’t been able to have sex to gain the experience on her own, Seducer training filled in the gap.
Dev had acknowledged that fact with dignity, grace and only a little cursing…but when she went for her next lesson, the Seducer, Adam, had all but slammed the door in her face. To this day, he paled when he saw her, and she wondered what, exactly, Dev had said to the poor guy.
“What’s his name?” Dev demanded.
Annika almost smiled at the big brother act, because even though she didn’t have a brother, she imagined one might sound a little like Dev right now. Sure, she was upset at having been locked out of his life all of a sudden, but now she knew it wasn’t because he didn’t care about her.
“Do you tell me the names of everyone you sleep with?” The list would read like a phone book. She couldn’t count the number of times she’d gone to his house and had to hang out by herself until he finished with whoever he had in bed at the time.
He cursed, long and loud. “Look, I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be in a relationship right now.”
“What do you mean, ‘right now’?”
“You’re young—”
“I’m almost twenty-fucking-two!”
To his credit, he looked a little uncomfortable as he shifted in his seat. “Physically.”
“Oh, so, what? You’re saying I’m emotionally retarded?”
“I’m saying that you didn’t have a normal upbringing. You could be vulnerable to some bastard who doesn’t understand you.” He shot her a pointed look. “Or who wants you for one thing and you mistake it for something else.”
“Oh, God. You’re reading way too many chick magazines. Sex isn’t love. I get it.” And her mistaking sex for love was so not the problem here. The problem was that Creed was an arrogant asshole who thought he could tease her and then leave her high and dry. He’d rejected her, when all she’d wanted was sex. It wasn’t like she was asking for a damned commitment. What the hell was his problem?
“Just do me a favor and stay away from men for a while, okay? Especially the son of a bitch who took advantage of you.”
She wanted to tell him that Creed had done nothing of the sort, but a glance at her watch told her she was late for the martial arts class she taught on base to operatives, so instead she stood.
“Then send me on an assignment. Anywhere. Anything. I need to get away.” She needed to be needed. And since Dev clearly didn’t need her for whatever supersecret bullshit he was dealing with, a job would take her mind off things.
“Annika—”
“Please.”
Silence stretched, and then Dev gave a slow nod. “I’ll see what I can dig up.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me. I’m not doing you any favors. You need the break.” He sighed. “I can never say no to you.”
“You spoil me.” And she wasn’t so spoiled that she couldn’t see that. He’d always been good to her, even when she didn’t deserve it. “Dev?”
“Hmm?”
“Why didn’t you put me down?”
His eyebrows rose half an inch, probably matching hers. She’d been as surprised by the question as he was, because although she’d always wondered, she’d been afraid to ask.
“You were sixteen when you came here. A kid. I wasn’t going to kill a kid no matter how dangerous you were.”
He was such a softie. How he managed to run an operation like ACRO with a soft streak like that was beyond her. “You still didn’t need to keep trying to reel me in. You could have caged me in a dungeon and let me rot. Killed me on my eighteenth birthday. It would have been the smart thing to do.”
Especially after what she’d done to him and several other ACRO agents.
They’d kept her locked in a training cell, and after she’d seriously injured a couple of her handlers, they’d resorted to speaking with her through the comms system, and tranquilizing her for medical appointments. Dev came daily for weeks, trying to talk her down, but she hadn’t believed anything anyone said to her. Finally, she settled down, tricked them into thinking they’d won.
And when Dev came into her cell to talk to her face-to-face, she’d sent enough volts into him to knock him across the room. She’d escaped, had run out of the training building and into the main compound, where alarms were blaring and operatives were swarming. They’d surrounded her, dozens of them. She’d put up her electrical field so no one could touch her, and she could have gone through the crowd that way, except that something had held her immobile.
Later, she’d learned her capturer was a telekinetic named Dawn, but even without the invisible hold, Annika doubted she’d have moved.
The people circling her were just like Dev had described. She’d lived her life with the CIA believing she was unique, a weapon with no function except to kill. But to her right a man was bouncing balls of fire off his fingertips. To her left, a woman levitated a foot off the ground. The woman in front of her unzipped her black flight suit and stepped out of it…and instantly blended into the background like a chameleon.
Annika had stood there, openmouthed, gaping at the group, and when Dev pushed his way through the crowd, limping, his arm at an awkward angle and blood streaming from a gash in his scalp, she released the power she’d been holding. Dev had nodded at Dawn, and suddenly Annika was free.
Dev had held out his hand, and without a word, she’d taken it, allowed him to lead her to his office, where, after he’d been stitched up and his shoulder dislocation repaired, he’d explained again what ACRO was about, and how she would never be used the way the CIA had used her.
He’d rescued her that day, had saved her life when he’d had every right to take it. She owed him, and though she was angry at being shut out, she couldn’t be an outright jerk.
In fact, she should probably tell him that if he needed anything, she would be there for him—but then, he knew that.
And obviously it didn’t matter to him.
WEDNESDAY 6:30 P.M. MST
Deb was good for something, although if she’d been expecting anything from Ender in return, she’d have been sorely mistaken. Sore being the key word, because he’d suddenly felt the overwhelming urge to hang a shingle around himself that read Stud Services Inc. And he was damned tired of drinking water and Gatorade.
He’d had to endure Babs, the Weimaraner, staring at him with her head tilted and a look of You’re gonna get it, as he’d cooked right on Kira’s stove the two huge hamburgers with real freakin’ meat Deb had snuck him. And then he’d stuffed them into his mouth after he shoved them between the only bread Kira seemed to own, some sprouted wheat shit that almost made him vomit. But he needed the protein, and dammit, so did she.
“Don’t start with me,” he told the dog. “Because you have no idea what I’m dealing with. Oh, hell, you’re a female. Maybe you do.”
Babs stood and wagged her tail, and he groaned.
He’d been staying busy around the farm, keeping track of Kira and making sure nothing else was going on behind the scenes. Itor would never hit during the day anyway—too many people, too many tourists.
And, like clockwork, every four hours Kira would look at him, the desperation in her eyes hard for him to miss now that he knew exactly what it was all about.
He wondered why the hell it bothered him, the fact that he could’ve been any stud servicing her, that she just needed sex, not sex from him. No ties that bind forever had always been his motto. But ties that bind for a few hours, well, sure, those were the best kind.
The kind that almost took you out last night, asshole.
Maybe that was it. His ego had taken a nice hit, the bruise that ran across the front of his neck a painful, visual reminder, and he was doing everything in his power to live up to his boast, to prepare for when she whispered against him, Come on, Tommy. Take me, right now. I can’t wait.
Like a living, breathing dream, except his dick was so sore he was afraid, for the first time in his life, that it might a
ctually fall off from overuse. Talk about taking one for the proverbial team.
He’d survived wars. Bullets. And sex was going to be the thing to kill him.
And suddenly, he knew the reason why Dev sent him in alone on this one. Nothing to do with his hard heart and everything to do with his sex drive and his rejuvenative powers. But shit, Dev had underestimated this one, and so had everyone at ACRO. Not that they’d have had any way of knowing that Kira needed more than sex for survival. That was a nice little bomb she’d dropped in his lap last night. Mate or die.
He’d made sure she’d been mated with, all right. His pride stirred more than a little, because he had to admit he’d done a damned fine job of keeping her satisfied over the past twenty-four hours. Being an excedo did have its perks.
His meal had energized him slightly. He checked his watch, saw that early evening had come up more quickly than he’d realized. He had just enough time to make a quick sweep of the area before Kira needed him again. She’d pop a vein when she smelled the hamburger on him, and for the first time that day, he was actually looking forward to seeing her.
CHAPTER
Nine
WEDNESDAY 9 P.M. MST
It was Kira’s favorite time of the day. After sunset when the refuge volunteers had gone, and the exotic part of the sanctuary was alive with the sounds of nocturnal animals becoming active.
She made her rounds, checked the critters with health issues first. Inside the small building used to house animals under veterinary care, a severely malnourished black bear still struggled to survive, but the other dozen animals that had suffered at the hands of humans were doing well.
She only wished she could say the same. How could her life have gone bad so quickly? Yesterday she’d been happy. As content as she could be anyway, given that she was wanted in several states and had been entering into the seasonal cycle that made her life a living hell. Now, twenty-four hours later, she’d seen a man killed, had learned her farmhands had been slaughtered, had been taken hostage by a thug who wanted her to work for his secret thug agency, and then she’d practically forced said thug to have sex with her.
