by Cindy Dees
One materialized beside him and Gray sank onto it, stretching his legs out casually. The ball was firmly in Proctor’s court and he waited patiently for the return volley.
“Why do you want to kill Echelon?” Proctor finally got out.
As he’d suspected, the guy knew exactly what the program was. Gray shrugged. “I happen to think the U.S. Constitution isn’t broken. It guarantees the right to privacy for all citizens.”
The men around him nodded. Also as he’d suspected. It was a refrain Proctor had sung to these men already.
“What do you propose we do about it?” Proctor asked cautiously.
“The logical course seems to be to gather evidence and expose the program to the public. Of course, the challenge will be to avoid being silenced by Uncle Sam before you tell all.”
A few grunts of agreement around him told him he was on the same logic track Proctor was on.
“What can you do for me, Mr. Pierce?”
Gray shrugged. “I’m an insider. I’ve got security and identification credentials. I can get inside Shady Grove. You tell me what you need.”
Proctor leaned back, studying him intently. Not ready to show his hand to a stranger, huh? Cautious man.
Gray leaned back as well. “Of course, I don’t expect you to tell me what you need right now. You have no idea who I am, after all. You’ll want to do your homework on me. Check out my employment record and the like. Take your time. And be careful, by the way. The National Security Agency tracks down hackers aggressively.”
Proctor made a face like that wasn’t going to be any problem. Duly noted. The guy had a top-notch hacker working for him.
Gray continued, “When you know I’m for real, and you figure out how you plan to use me, give me a call.”
He reached into his back pocket, pulled out his wallet and fished out a business card. He scrawled the house phone number in Spruce Hollow on the back of it and flipped it across the space between him and Proctor. It fluttered to the man’s feet. Proctor’s black, snake-like gaze didn’t so much as flicker downward toward the card. Creepy dude.
Gray stood. “It’s been nice talking with you, Wendall.”
Consternation rippled through the room. Apparently, one did not get up and walk out on the great man without permission. Government agents did.
Two burly men stepped forward as if to detain him. Gray ignored them and made eye contact with Proctor. “Surely you know I’m not dumb enough to walk into a place like this without a dead man’s switch.”
Proctor scowled and made a hand gesture to his thugs. They fell back from Gray.
He turned on his heel and walked out of the room, his shoulder blades itching the whole way. When he stepped out into the sunshine, Sam was just rounding the corner of one of the far buildings with a small child in tow. Abject relief that she was safe and moving around freely roared through him. A powerful need to get her out of here as fast as possible spurred him forward.
“Who have we got here?” he asked Sam while he smiled at the little girl.
“This is my friend, Molly.”
Gray’s heart broke as he gazed at the child. His own kids had been about this age when their lives were stolen from them.
Sam, thankfully, filled in the gap as his throat closed up. “We were out looking at the farm. Did you know they have pigs here?”
“And they stink,” Molly added earnestly.
He managed a lopsided smile, but it cost him every ounce of self-control he had.
“Sam says us redheads are ’mazin’. Did you know God painted my hair orange special to match the mountains?”
“He did, indeed,” Gray affirmed solemnly. And then an errant thought popped into his head. If he and Sam ever had a daughter, this is what she’d look like. A sudden, fierce need to have another child ripped through him, nearly bringing him to his knees.
“You okay?” Sam murmured.
Ever perceptive, his eagle-eyed Sam. “Yeah. Sure,” he mumbled. He couldn’t see her gaze on him, but he felt her intense regard. She wasn’t fooled for a minute that he was all right.
“Ready to go?” she asked him.
“Yes.”
“Skip to my car with me?” she asked Molly gaily.
The pair skipped along ahead of him, swinging their clasped hands between them. Their exuberance almost did him in.
Thankfully, one of the guards stepped forward to take charge of the child as Gray started the Bronco and guided it to the front gate. Sam rolled down the window and waved wildly to Molly as they pulled out.
“So how’d it go?” she asked him as she rolled up the window and he accelerated away from the compound.
“Like I want to check this car for bugs before I answer you.”
On cue, her voice climbed back into the beach-bunny register. “Wow. Cool. Spy stuff. Such a turn-on!”
He grinned over at her and rolled his eyes. “Hold that thought, babycakes.”
It was her turn to take her shades off long enough to roll her eyes at him. He grinned and headed for home. All in all, it had been an interesting encounter. Proctor was definitely out to destroy Echelon. Now he and Sam just had to figure out how and then stop the guy.
Chapter 10
Sam watched a classic Hitchcock movie that ended at nearly 3:00 a.m. Gray had been quiet since their return from the Proctor compound and hadn’t actually wanted to talk much about his conversation with Wendall Proctor. From what she gathered, though, Gray had dangled the bait, and now they just had to wait for the man to take it. But it was more than that making Gray quiet. He’d gone ghostly pale at the sight of Molly and had all but fallen into a catatonic state.
Not that she blamed the guy. To have lost all three of his children at about that age—heck, she’d never been a parent and she could hardly contemplate it. Echoes of Gray’s terrible screams on that 911 call resonated in her ears.
She blinked and looked around the living room. A faint echo of that horrible, gasping grief resonated around her right now, in fact. Oh, God. That was because the sound was real! And it was coming from Gray’s bedroom. She raced down the short hall and burst into his room, prepared to do battle with whoever was attacking him.
He was curled into a fetal position under the covers clutching a pillow against his chest.
A raw keening sound slipped out of his throat. Three guesses what he was dreaming about, and the first two didn’t count. She stepped forward and touched his shoulder.
“Gray, honey, wake up. You’re having a bad dream.” Although calling what haunted his nightmares a bad dream was rather like calling the Grand Canyon a small hole in the ground.
Gray jolted upright, flailing violently to free himself of the comforter.
“Easy there, Sparky. It was just a dream.”
He rasped, “Not just a dream.”
Yup, he’d been dreaming about the murders. The ones she wasn’t supposed to know about. “What, then?” she asked gently. “Tell me about it.”
He shook his head and his entire body shuddered. She couldn’t help it. She stepped to the edge of the bed and pulled him close. He grasped her waist as if she was a lifeline in a terrible storm and he was lost at sea. She wrapped her arms around his head and hung on tight, hurting for this man like no one she’d ever known before.
After a minute, it dawned on her that the shaking racking him was Gray sobbing silently. She was humbled by him sharing his private grief like this. His suffering called to her at the deepest level of her being. A need to take his pain into herself, to share it and heal it, filled her.
When the tension finally left his body a long time later, she murmured, “Scoot over.” She slipped into the bed beside him without ever letting him go and plastered her entire body against his from forehead to ankle. She let go with one hand long enough to draw the fluffy comforter up over both of them. Gradual warmth cocooned them.
She didn’t bother asking him to tell her what was wrong. This pain went far beyond words to express.
How long they lay there, hanging on to one another for dear life, she had no idea. But very slowly, she felt Gray become aware of her. Recognize her. The tenor of their embrace changed to one of gratitude and then to a hug born of desperation.
“I can’t do it,” he rasped. “Can’t make it twenty-six more days.”
Huh? She didn’t know how he went on living, either. She doubted she would have the strength in the same situation. Soberly, she replied, “Nothing can make it better. But other things can fill in some of the empty spaces in your life. New things. Different things.” She added fiercely, both in conviction and desperation of her own for her words to be true, “Happiness is possible.”
She had to be right. If she was wrong, then there was no hope for this wonderful man, and she refused to believe that.
“How?” The single word sounded torn from the bottom of his soul.
Like she knew the answer to that one. She was no shrink. Heck, she’d messed up her own life by the numbers, and no one she’d loved had been horribly murdered. Completely out of answers and at a loss for words to make his pain better, she did the next best thing. She lifted her chin and kissed him.
He kissed her back with terrible desperation. She shoved her hands under his T-shirt to get to skin. Warm, living, human flesh. It was as much to reassure herself that he was alive as anything else.
He reciprocated, all but tearing her tank top off and stripping away her flannel jammie bottoms with equal violence. In moments, they were both naked, body to body, an affirmation of their mutual humanity and mutual survival.
Their legs tangled together, Gray surged up over her, all but inhaling her darkly.
She opened her soul to him and gave him every bit of herself—her joy, her laughter, her toughness, even her sorrow. And he took it all, sometimes gently, and sometimes roughly, his hands and mouth moving across her skin without finesse. Tonight wasn’t about skilled lovemaking. It was about finding a way to go on for one more day. One more hour. Maybe even one more minute. It was raw and painful and ugly.
He whispered no endearments, said nothing to indicate he was even aware of her identity. He merely fed on her soul and took everything she offered and more. And she let him. Oh, how she let him. If she had more to give him, more strength to hold him close, more fierce desire to pour out to him, she’d have done it.
He handled her with a near violence that would have frightened her if it had come from any other man. But she opened her heart and her body to him without reservation and drew him into her both physically and emotionally. The abyss within him sucked her down into its sad, despairing embrace, and she let it. If this was what he needed, so be it. She could forego casual pleasure in the name of exposing the demons within Gray.
He made an angry sound, and she couldn’t tell if it was directed at her or him. Probably it was directed at both of them. She gripped him tightly, forcing him to acknowledge the physical reality of their sex. She rocked her hips against his, demanding his attention in the most primal of ways.
Thankfully, instinct took over. He moved within her, bitterly, roughly, at first. She absorbed his darkness gladly, hoping to lighten his emotional load for a few minutes. Nature found its rhythm, though, and her body accommodated itself to the invasion. The slide of flesh on flesh became slick. Deeply pleasurable. A different intensity began to build between them.
And finally, finally, the act itself took him over, clearly erasing all thought. All memory. His violent eyes glazed over and a faint sound of pleasure escaped his throat. Overjoyed, she surged beneath him, urging him to find more pleasure, driving him toward release, begging him to lose himself in her.
He planted his elbows on either side of her head and, staring down at her, he hammered into her over and over, faster and faster. His eyes drifted closed. His thrusts took on an element of finesse, as if he were savoring the sensations between them. She continued to stare at him, drinking in the sight of the infinitesimally small smile that passed across his face. She’d done it. She’d broken through to his private hell.
And then the pace changed. Increased in intensity once more. But this time it wasn’t angry or desperate. This time he raced pell-mell toward the pleasurable release she offered him. The moment overwhelmed her, and her body broke on an orgasm of such shattering power she thought she might pass out. She cried out her release and Gray’s shout joined hers as their bodies and hearts exploded together.
His body relaxed against hers. Heavy. But she reveled in his weight. Eventually, he propped himself back up on his elbows to stare down at her. Normally, she’d make some flippant comment about how great the sex had been. But this time, with this man, she had no idea what to say. There were no words. They’d just been to hell and back together. Literally.
He broke the silence. “Are you all right?”
She smiled a little. “I’m fine. Better than fine. How about you?”
“I don’t know. I feel good right now. But I’m waiting for the guilt to hit.”
“Guilt’s a choice. Choose not to go there.”
He laughed shortly and without humor. “You say that like I’ve got control of my thoughts.”
She wriggled her arms up to place a hand on either side of his face. “You have more self-control than any human being I’ve ever met. You’re alive. And for the record, I came to your bed voluntarily. I’m the one who started this. There’s nothing at all for you to feel guilty about.”
“But—”
She shook her head, cutting him off. “Life is for the living, Gray. You’re breathing. Walking and talking. You’re supposed to live.”
* * *
Gray stared down at Sam in shock. She said that almost like she knew...
But then the message of her words penetrated his sex-fogged mind. Was she right? Was it that simple? His heart wished it was so. But his head wanted to reject the notion. Just live, huh? God, that sounded so easy. So terribly simple.
More sex with Sam? He could definitely go for that. But at what cost to his soul? At the moment, that price was not making itself known to him. But he knew himself well enough to know the reckoning would come.
“What were you dreaming about?” Sam asked, startling him out of his grim thoughts.
“Excuse me?” he mumbled, trying frantically to buy time. Time to come up with a plausible lie to tell her. He rolled to his back beside her and stared up at the ceiling in the dark. Except Sam and her eagle eyes would see right through any lie he tried to foist off on her.
“When I first came in here and woke you up. What were you dreaming about?” she persisted.
A flash of his nightmare came back—blond children, bloody and crumpled on the floor, their throats gaping open obscenely. Funny how that hadn’t been the part that freaked him out. It was when the gory images he was so familiar with faded into a laughing redheaded child skipping toward him that he’d lost it. If he didn’t remember his own children, who would? He was the last and only keeper of their memories. If he failed them, then the kids would be well and truly gone.
Nausea rolled through him. Sam had erased their memories effortlessly with sex.
And he’d let her.
Oh, God. He’d let her.
“Go ahead and say it,” Sam murmured in resignation beside him.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Tell me what we just did can’t happen again. That for whatever fill-in-the-blank professional or psychological reason, you can’t let yourself experience happiness like that again.”
He cursed mentally. For all the world, it sounded like she knew. Why else would she make a remark like that? Cautiously, he asked, “Why do you say that?”
“Because I know you. You’re bound and determined to deny yourself happiness at all costs.”
He turned his head to stare at her. She was right. Why should he be happy when Emily and the kids would never know happiness again? They’d all been robbed of a lifetime’s happiness. In some ways, he was nearly as dead as th
ey were. A dead man walking.
Sam sat up beside him, hugging her knees. Her body was sleek and sexy and he wanted her fiercely, even though he’d just had her. He shouldn’t look. Shouldn’t lust. But damned if he didn’t do both.
She spoke carefully. “You’re as much a victim as the real victim if you let a tragedy rob you of your life, too.”
She did know. Why else would she say something like that? Horror rolled through him. The only way he dealt with the rest of the world was by knowing that they didn’t have any idea his terrible secret existed. That he was the only one carrying the burden. But if she knew, how was he supposed to keep up even a thin facade of normalcy with her?
“What have you done?” he asked in icy rage.
“I haven’t done anything,” she declared. “I’m just saying that I think you have a subconscious death wish.”
He snorted. There was nothing subconscious about it. Twenty-six days remained in his current bargain with himself. Twenty-six days until he had permission to kill himself and end this agonizing travesty of a life.
“Don’t snort at me,” she snapped. “I’m right and you know it.”
“Of course you’re right. I freely admit it. I want to die.”
She wilted like a balloon that had just had all the air let out of it.
Furious with her, he bit out, “What? You thought one night of mind-blowing sex with you would make everything in my life okay? You have no idea what I’ve been through. Nothing—no one—will ever make it better, and certainly not you.”
She flinched at each hurtful word he flung at her, going even paler than her usual porcelain self. But stunningly, she said nothing. Where was the mouthy, tough chick that let nobody push her around, thank-you-very-much? She was supposed to get pissed off. Lash out at him. Tell him to go to hell.
But no. She just sat there, all curled into a tight little ball, and absorbed his anger and accusations as if she deserved them all.
His fury climbed out of all proportion to the moment until the truth finally hit him. He wasn’t mad at her. He was enraged at himself.
