Athena Force 7-12

by Carla Cassidy, Evelyn Vaughn, Harper Allen, Ruth Wind, Cindy Dees

  “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. “Take 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.

  Asher stared at her. Dawn bore his scrutiny with outward coolness.

  “See anything that interests you, big guy?” she asked flippantly. She could afford the offhand attitude, she thought: a quick glance had shown her that there was nothing about the smoothly unblemished area of skin just below the curve of her bra to arouse his suspicions. The healing had run its course and whatever his speculations had been, the man standing in front of her would never be able to prove them. Not how I’d planned this evening to end, she thought in resignation, but better than it could have. I’m still in place as Sir William’s trusted assistant and the next time I lay my hands on his notes I won’t let anything or anyone stand in the way of my delivering them to Lab 33.

  In fact, she was in a better position than she’d previously been, she told herself in satisfaction, because if Asher’s stricken expression was anything to go by, Mr. SAS’s faith in his own sanity was badly shaken. She couldn’t resist shaking him up a little more.

  “Where’d the magic bullet enter me, Ash?” She looked down at herself curiously, at the same time nudging the bottom edge of her bra slightly upward over the swell of her left breast. “Here? Or was it higher?” She bit her lip innocently. “Hey, I know—maybe I jerked your gun just as you fired and your bullet went a little lower, like about here.” Negligently she slid a thumb under the narrow black strip of panty that traversed her hip and gave it a tiny tug southward. She looked up at him. “Or perhaps that’s only the way it happens in your dreams, sweetie. It kind of sounds to me like you have a problem shooting your gun off before you’re ready—”

  “How the hell did you do it, Swanson—a bulletproof vest?” Under his tan Asher’s hard features were gray, and even before he finished the question he was shaking his head in negation. “I’m not thinking straight. Your sweater was soaked with blood, the same blood that was pouring from you on your way back here, so you couldn’t have been wearing a vest. But there’s not a damn mark on you, so…”

  “So you’ve got the wrong girl?” Dawn suggested. “I know how disappointing this must be for you, Ash, I really do. Right from the start you’ve been so hot to pin something—anything—on me, and tonight you must have thought you’d actually caught me red-handed. Darn it all, I almost wish I was standing here with my life ebbing away, just to make you feel better about all this.” She turned slightly away from him and bent to pick up her robe. “Oh, well, qué será, será, as they—”

  “Your back!” At the shock in his tone alarm bells went off in her mind and she spun around to face him, at the same time clumsily trying to force her arms into the sleeves of the robe. Asher grabbed the garment from her with one hand, his other gripping her upper arm. “Dammit, Swanson—the flesh is raw! It looks like—”

  He froze, his disbelieving focus on her. “It looks like an exit wound,” he said slowly. “Except it can’t be, because there isn’t an entrance wound.”

  Well, there was, but since it was the smaller by far of the two, it healed up a whole lot faster, Dawn thought hollowly. How could she have overlooked something so basic? she wondered, furious with herself. And how was she going to explain her way out of this?

  Never apologize, never explain. For once she didn’t care that the maxim had been a favorite of Lee Craig’s, it was worth a try. She wrenched her arm from Asher’s grasp, tore the robe out of his hand and leveled a flat stare at him as she put it on and cinched it around her waist once more. “You’re losing it, Captain. I guess that’s not surprising, given your last mission, but either find some other way to work out the guilt that’s obviously eating you up or put your past as the Wolf of Bah’lein behind you and forget about it. Just don’t use me as—”

  “Who told you about that?” At her mention of the nickname, a visible shock had run through him, as if she’d just thrown a switch that had sent an unendurable current through his body. He recovered immediately, but it was clear he was still more shaken than he wanted her to know. “Don’t tell me.” His words were clipped. “My bloody uncle, right?”

  “Your bloody uncle who used his considerable pull to get you this baby-sitting job.” Her ploy was working, Dawn thought in relief. She’d lobbed the verbal equivalent of a han
d grenade at Asher, and the shrapnel from its blast had temporarily blinded him to his issues with her. She was under no illusions she’d thrown him off for long, but all she needed was a few more minutes while her back healed. She pressed her advantage. “Oops, I guess I wasn’t supposed to let that one slip, either. Sir William seemed to think you’d be a little peeved he’d had to intercede to get your ass out of the sling you’d put it in, so he didn’t tell you that you were part of the deal he cut. Sweet old guy, isn’t he?”

  “He’s a meddling bastard who knows damn well that what happened in Bah’lein and whatever my role might have been, the whole subject’s been ruled off-limits by an international court of law until Al-Jihr’s trial.” Asher’s jaw tightened. “Which is why this discussion between you and me is closed as of now, Swanson, even if you did bring it up as a smokescreen. I’m phoning down to the infirmary. I’ll let a doctor make the decision as to whether I throw you into a cell tonight after I arrest you, or cuff you to a gurney and—”

  “God, we’re back to that again,” she said in a bored tone. Walking to the bed, she shrugged off her robe and sat back against the pillows. She waved a hand at the phone on the adjacent night table. “If you’re so determined to shoot what’s left of your military career down in flames, go right ahead. Better yet, I’ll dial the infirmary’s extension for you.”

  Forestalling his move toward the phone, she flipped onto her stomach and reached for the receiver. Idly raising her legs and crossing them at the ankles, she punched in the number that connected the room telephones with the facility’s emergency clinic.

  “It’s ringing.” She hummed a bar of “Rule Britannia” under her breath and frowned at her left index finger. “Broke a nail tonight, I can’t imagine how. Oh, wait, someone’s picking up.” With exaggerated courtesy she held the phone out to him. He snatched it from her and slammed it back onto the cradle.

  “Right.” He exhaled sharply. “I’ve seen what I was supposed to see—the exit wound’s gone.”

  “The imaginary exit wound?” She pretended to stifle a yawn. “If you don’t need to use the phone, Asher, I wish you’d let me get some sleep. I’m due to be in the lab in a few hours, and I’d really like—”

  “Not this soldier, love.” Despite the endearment, his tone was hard. “The details of my last mission are classified, as I just said. But there’s no harm in telling you something about the one previous to it, although you don’t need to know specific names and locations. We were sent in to rescue hostages from an embassy that had been taken over. I volunteered to exchange places with the pregnant wife of a civil servant, and the rebels jumped at the opportunity to take a real live SAS officer as prisoner. I was kept in a cage for three months, beaten and tortured daily, and every time I fell asleep my captors would wake me up to tell me I could walk out a free man if only I’d let them videotape me denouncing my side and labeling my country and yours as evil forces. I walked out a free man, all right. I caught one of the bastards off guard one day, killed him with my bare hands, and used the gun I took off him to eliminate the others. But I never let myself be brainwashed into saying something I knew wasn’t true, and I’m not going to now.”

  Abruptly he sat on the edge of the bed. Still lying on her stomach, Dawn felt his hand spread wide on her back and she tensed, ready to take whatever action was needed. “I know what I saw,” he said with ominous softness. “I don’t give a damn if it doesn’t make sense. How about we play a variation on the game of Truth or Dare we were playing the other night when I caught you skulking around the grounds after dark?”

  “What kind of variation did you have in mind?” She hoped the terseness of her reply would conceal the anger building in her. The man had no idea how dangerous his implacability could prove to be. If Aldrich ever guessed that the SAS commander he’d once ordered her to kill now knew she wasn’t an ordinary woman, the head of Lab 33 would renew his order—and this time he would expect her to unquestioningly carry it out.

  “More truth.” Asher still had his hand on her. “You know I don’t dare take something so fantastic to my superiors, so why not, Swanson? For example, my first question would be, how did you do it? How did you receive a bullet point-blank to your chest no more than fifteen minutes ago and not only survive, but show no signs of a wound now?”

  For one reckless moment she was tempted to tell him. It had worked before, Dawn thought swiftly—she’d divulged her profession to him, and he’d found her assertions so fantastic he’d assumed she was spinning a tall tale. But then he hadn’t had the evidence of his own eyes to corroborate her story.

  Now he did. And she had the feeling that no matter how incredible Des Asher might find her insistence that she was genetically capable of regenerating after being shot, some part of him would believe her. The risk factor was unacceptable…so she had to come up with another course of action that would derail his suspicions of her.

  They were on her bed. She was already half-undressed and he was already touching her. It wasn’t rocket science, she thought edgily.

  She was going to have to seduce Mr. SAS.

  Chapter 12

  Status: five days and counting

  Time: 1321 hours

  It had been four and a half days now, Dawn fumed as she loaded her tray in the cafeteria line, four and a half freakin’ days since her failed attempt to steal Sir William’s notes and the humiliating aftermath of that failure. She stacked a carton of milk precariously on top of a brimming glass of tomato juice, jammed two oatmeal-and-raisin cookies beside the slice of peach pie she’d already selected, and pushed her way back along the line to grab a second sandwich. She was burning off calories faster than she could supply them, she thought grimly, but it wasn’t action that was taking its toll of her energy, it was frustration.

  Mr. SAS had proved impossible to seduce. She’d given it her best shot, but unfortunately her best shot hadn’t consisted of much more than a husky sigh and a languid stretch to unfasten her bra, because as soon as he’d realized she had no intention of answering his questions he’d abruptly stood up from her bed.

  “Sorry, love, but you’ve screwed me over enough for one evening,” he’d said. “Normally I’m as willing as the next man to take advantage of the opportunity for a quick shag, but this is just a little too cold and calculated even for me. I liked you better when you were trying to kick the hell out of me. At least then your emotions were honest.”

  He’d started to open the door to the hallway, but suddenly he’d halted. He’d turned back to face her, his eyes sharp. “Bloody hell, there’s a link, isn’t there—a link between what I saw happen to you tonight and the research you were trying to steal. You must want to get your hands on those notes pretty badly to have taken a bullet for them, am I right?”

  From her prone position on the bed she’d given him a flat stare, not bothering to hide her fury. “Since it’s just you and me right now, yeah, Ash, I’ll admit it. I want those notes. I’m going to get them. You got in my way tonight, but that won’t happen again.”

  “Don’t be so sure.” There had been the same coldness in his eyes as she knew was in hers. “From now on one of my people will be watching you twenty-four/seven. Your phone calls will be monitored. You’re never going to be alone with Sir William again, no matter how much he objects. After a while, whoever you’re working for will get tired of waiting for results, and he or she is probably going to blame their agent-in-place. If I were in your shoes, I’d start making plans for that eventuality.” He’d hesitated. Then he’d shrugged. “The rules have changed, Swanson. In the future if I catch you in a restricted area, I’m going to have to treat you like any other intruder, so conversations like the one we had a few nights ago are a thing of the past. But before we close all communications between us, I want to make two things clear. One is that I knew my uncle pulled strings to get me this posting.”

  She’d been momentarily startled out of her anger. “You knew? But then why—”

  “W
hy did I accept? Why did I let him think he’d put one over on me, why didn’t I cut him out of my life when I found out what he’d done?” Asher shook his head. “He did the wrong thing, but he did it for all the right reasons. He did it because he cared. I threw that into the equation, and I realized that although I hated what he’d done, I couldn’t hate him. He’s family. For better or for worse, he’s a part of me.”

  She’d felt oddly unsettled by his words and she’d covered her discomfiture with a sharp laugh. “Lordy, Captain Asher, I do believe you’ve brought a tiny tear to my eye. Who would have guessed the Wolf of Bah’lein was such a softie at heart?”

  She’d regretted the unpleasant gibe as soon as she’d uttered it, but it was too late to take it back. Asher’s expression became granitelike and his tone was equally hard as he answered her.

  “You said it yourself—it’s just you and me here right now, so I’ll break every rule in the book and set the record straight this once. I didn’t do what they say I did, but I hold myself responsible for not guessing what that evil bastard Al-Jihr was planning in time to stop him. There’s definitely blood on my hands…even if it’s as invisible as the wounds on you.” He looked suddenly weary. “As for any tears in your eye, love, I don’t flatter myself that I put them there. It was obvious as soon as I walked in that you’d been crying your heart out.”

  Her control snapping, she’d jumped from the bed, but even as she’d sprung toward him he’d closed the door behind him, leaving her alone in her room. Within minutes she’d heard the heavy tread of booted feet take up a position just outside her room, and early the next morning she’d heard another guard coming to take the place of the first one.