by Stacy Gail
“It’s not a problem for you, is it?”
Yes. The word was so intense it sizzled on her tongue, but a lifetime of rigid control clamped down until she was almost sure she felt nothing. Except, of course, that arm-tingling thing. “I believe I told you to inform my team of your movements from here on in. Surprises are unacceptable in this operation.”
“Are you aware you talk like a field manual when you’re flustered?”
That stung. Her lack of social graces wasn’t exactly a newsflash, but with his attitude anyone would have found him impossible to deal with. “I’m not flustered. I don’t get flustered.”
“I fluster you.”
A wave of heat flooded up from her neck, but before she could try and calm those dangerous internal fires with her mantra to feel nothing, something inside her recognized this heat had a different feel to it. This was a euphoric giddiness rushing over her in a way that didn’t threaten to set the world on fire. If she didn’t know better, she’d think it was...
A blush.
Frantic, she put her free hand to her face in a lame attempt to cover it. “I’m a Savitch. I don’t get flustered, or bothered, or...anything. I don’t get anything.”
He brought the hand he held up to caress it with his lips. “That might well be true. Except I know better.”
That giddy heat got worse. There was an almost electrical hum of excitement coursing through her at the touch of his lips, and her heart came to a standstill for several beats. Part of her wanted the moment to last for the rest of her life, just as she’d wanted their kiss to last forever the night before—even when the pragmatic side of her knew forever wasn’t possible with this man.
If he ever found out what she really was, nothing would be possible with this man.
Hollowness overtook the giddy fever, and with a detachment she wished she could feel, Sara removed her hand from his. “Are you here because there’s a problem I need to know about?”
“As far as I know, everything’s quiet.”
“Then why are you here?”
“I’m not comfortable leaving my dad here on his own.”
“He’s not alone.” In a blink, her professional hackles stood at attention. If he wanted to gripe about how she ran things, she was happy to show him the error of his ways. “Marcel and two other Lynchpin agents have been onsite for this eight-hour shift. Three Lynchpin agents have been on duty at all times since he hired us.”
“I’m not criticizing, Sara.”
“That’s what it sounded like.”
“Then I need to do some serious work on my communication skills.” To her consternation, he caught her hand again to give it a squeeze. “I’m simply stating that except for a bunch of well-trained, well-armed strangers, my father doesn’t have any friends around to talk to. I didn’t want him to be lonely.”
“Lonely?” For some reason, that particular facet of caring for her client had never occurred to her. It had also never occurred to her that being in physical contact with another human being could make her brain short circuit. “I see.”
“You don’t sound like you do. Don’t you ever get lonely?”
“No.” Talk about a concept that had never occurred to her. From birth she’d known she was different, known that difference would set her apart from the rest of the world. Isolate her. This was something she simply understood, in the same way she understood the sky was up.
Being alone didn’t mean she was lonely. She wasn’t.
She was almost sure of it.
“No, huh?” The lift of his brows told her he wasn’t buying what she was selling, any more than she was. “Well, I get lonely, and that’s another reason why I came over tonight.”
“Ah.” At last the light went on. “You wanted to see your father.”
“I wanted to see you.”
Her dependable pulse fell flat on its proverbial face. More than anything she wanted to come back with something appropriately dazzling to let him know she’d been worth the trip. “Oh.”
She really needed to work on her dazzling skills.
“Not exactly the bowled-over response I was hoping for.” The grimace that crossed his face was too charming to be legal, while his dark eyes held her at his mercy when she had never been at the mercy of anyone in her life. “Do you remember when you said you weren’t my enemy? The same goes for me. I’m declaring a cease-fire, even though I can’t promise I won’t act like an ass again. But I just can’t manage being your enemy.”
“I’m glad to hear it.” She tried to feel nothing, but that mental trick was useless when her pulse was starting to pound in places she should never be aware of while on the job. “But let’s be honest. You’re not my friend.”
“I know I haven’t been acting like one. Let me prove how friendly I can be.”
“Gideon...”
“I can do better.”
She just bet he could. “You could become a distraction. For your father’s sake, I’m sure you wouldn’t want to become that, would you?”
“Damn, what a wicked turn of mind you have, claiming these are the only choices I’ve got.” A tension she recognized as breathless anticipation coiled inside her chest when he tilted his head closer to hers, his mouth only a few meager inches away. “It won’t compromise my father’s safety if you and I engage in civilized conversation, will it?”
His fingers laced with hers. It certainly seemed...friendly. “Probably not.”
“And there’s no line of defense you and your team have set up here that could be destroyed if you relaxed enough to smile at me, right?”
“My defenses aren’t that weak.”
“Hell no, they’re not.” His other hand slid up her arm, a light, non-threatening touch that nevertheless spawned an instant yearning for something more substantial. “Nothing about you is weak. I had no idea strength could be such a turn-on.”
Her heart spun like an out-of-control top at the admission. “Careful. Don’t make me sound like a Bulgarian weightlifter.”
“Oh, there’s no chance I could ever confuse the two. But I have to admit, you would have made a great Army grunt.”
That calmed her pulse like nothing else. “I thought you hated soldiers.”
“I don’t hate you.”
“You don’t know me.” And it would be devastating if he ever did.
“There’s one way to change that.” His nose nuzzled hers, and she was terrified he could hear the trembling of her breath. “Let me get to know you, Sara. Try to open up enough to get to know me. Unless you don’t want to.”
She would have laughed if she wasn’t certain it would come out sounding hysterical. “Aren’t you the one who said you don’t know yourself these days? How can I get to know you if you don’t know yourself?”
“I know what I want. No matter how dark things got for me, there’s always been one unshakeable constant, a bright spot in all that blackness.” His lips brushed hers, the merest whisper of sensation that filled her with such intense delight it was almost an anguish to bear. “I’ve never stopped thinking about you, Sara. Never. No matter what happened, no matter what hell I was dragged through, I have never stopped thinking about you. Even now I can’t stop. You’re like a drug I can’t kick. I don’t want to.”
Something buckled inside her, and though she was unfamiliar with it, she was still able to recognize it for what it was. Surrender. “Gideon, it’s—”
A chirrup on the walkie quickly followed by her name interrupted her. Like a dash of water thrown in the face, she realized where she was. With an inward curse aimed at herself, she stepped back from Gideon and reached for the device clipped to her belt. “Go for Sara.”
“This is Carter at the front gates, boss. This may be nothing, but we’ve had a car cruise by twice now—mid-seventies American-made two-tone coupe, windows up and tinted, so no ID on the occupants or how many there might be.”
Sara turned on her heel and headed for the front door, aware that Gideon was right beh
ind her. “Have Macbeth run the license plate and inform the police of the situation. They’re supposed to have a cruiser in the area keeping tabs on things.”
“I’ve already contacted the police, and there are no plates to report. The car’s unmarked.”
That didn’t sound good. “I’m on my way. Stay with your dad,” she added to Gideon, who had followed her out onto the veranda. “Marcel should still be onsite since I haven’t relieved him yet. Tell him I need him to stay with you and your father inside the safe room until I call with the all-clear.”
“Sara—”
He was cut off as the screech of the motion-detector alarms ripped through the night.
Chapter Eight
Swearing a silent blue streak, Gideon slammed the safe room’s steel door behind him, relieved to hear the solid click of the pneumatic bolt sliding into place to lock his father and the armed Lynchpin agent in. His confidence in his father’s safety was absolute. Nothing could get to him short of a nuclear bomb with all the layers of protection Sara had installed.
The one exposed now was Sara.
Chatter over the walkie-talkies had spoken of motion detectors going off in sector seven, so he rounded the house and ran past the garage, the new motion-sensitive floodlights glaring on as he ran past. Lynchpin had done a bang-up job in laying out the defensive net; a nine-acre grid had been lain out with the main house in the center. Sara had numbered each acre within the grid and made everyone memorize the layout like the no-nonsense professional she was. Sector seven meant the northwest corner of the property, and the furthest area from the road and main gate, which was the easiest access point to the house.
If he was the enemy, that’s exactly where he would have pinpointed his attack.
The Army had done a superior job in training both his mind and body, and Gideon’s survival mode kicked in without him being aware of it. The grid Sara had laid out only days ago was a fixed map in his mind, one he could practically see despite the blackness of the night around him. The scent of the mulberry trees dotting this part of the property was sweetly cloying, the air heavy with humidity and an expectation he could all but taste. Though it was now well after midnight, the sultry Texas heat lingered like an oppressive blanket over the land, and within seconds his jeans and light cotton shirt were sticking to his clammy skin. He never gave the nagging discomfort a thought as he hustled through the darkness, his hands feeling unbearably empty as he searched through the darkness for either a disturbance or Sara. What he wouldn’t have given to have a military-issue M-16 locked and loaded in his arms, and for a moment he thought back to the horrific day that had changed him forever. It had been such a nightmare, a trap no one could escape. One soldier going down in the middle of a dirt road in what had appeared to be a bombed-out and abandoned town, and as his cries echoed out, it brought more soldiers out to assist him. And he had fallen with them...
This wasn’t like that, he thought viciously, trying to focus as the sweat began its slick slide down his back. The screech of the perimeter alarm wasn’t like that soldier’s cries to lure them all out there to be killed. Nor had they been lured away from a defenseless Noah, who was the safest one of all with his own personal guard who looked like he ate trucks for breakfast. Lynchpin was as professional as they came, and Sara was a capable tactician, as good or better than any military-trained professional he’d seen in the field.
But he’d be damned if he would play possum this time.
His ears picked up the sound of rushing footsteps off to his right. On automatic he did what he’d been trained to do in the field to avoid friendly fire and crouched low, then marked a Lynchpin agent some thirty feet away, eyes trained on the perimeter.
“I’m Gideon Mandeville,” he identified clearly before his unexpected presence got him full of holes. Once the agent’s head jerked around and marked him, he held up both hands and trotted over. “Where’s Sara?”
“Sir, get back to the house now.” The man, bald and burly, had eyes popping with adrenaline and an expression that would have been perfect for a back-alley knife fight. “You have a safe room provided for you by Lynchpin. Use it.”
“My father’s the target, not me.”
“This doesn’t mean you can’t be hurt, or worse, in our way. Lynchpin cannot be held responsible for you if you ignore our directive and get into the line of—”
“Fire on the property. Repeat, fire on the property.” A chirrup and Sara’s steel-edged voice crackled over the walkie, and it stopped both men dead in their tracks. “Far northwest corner, sector seven. Two separate blazes.” There was another crackle. “Make that three. No, four.” Another chirrup. “I smell gasoline.”
“Shit.” The bald man grabbed up his walkie while Gideon got his bearings and thought he could just make out the faintest glow off to his left. “Copy, Sara. I’ve got a civilian with me, Mandeville’s son, but I’m coming in just as soon as I get him...hey, wait!”
Fixed on the location where Sara had to be, Gideon took off in an all-out sprint, ignoring her outraged orders for her agent to put a collar on him and drag him back to the house. She knew better than anyone that he was a civilian in name only; he’d bet his flat screen TV that he had more true combat experience than any of the rent-a-cops she had in the field. At the very least, he could avoid getting in her way while being there if she needed backup or God forbid, medical assistance. He didn’t question the single-minded drive that compelled him to blast through the night like an unguided missile. He only knew one thing—this time, he would move if someone needed him. And if Sara needed him, the last goddamned thing he’d do was lie still and do nothing.
For Sara, he would move mountains.
There was no doubt now that the darkness was slowly being eaten away by a hazy orange glow somewhere off in the brush. Without warning, a sound of shattering glass exploded behind him, no more than twenty feet. A billowing whoosh of dry, hot air enveloped him so that his clothes and hair fluttered as if in a sudden desert windstorm. His pulse jacked up into the stratosphere as everything primal built into his system recognized the greedy breath of fire while the fumes of gasoline stung the air. Blindly he ran forward, only to realize he was running toward another orange glow just through the trees, started no doubt by what had to be the fire bomber’s homemade weapon of choice, the Molotov cocktail. If he didn’t get his head up and scout out where he was, he was going to become a crispy critter, fast.
Sara.
She was here somewhere in all this mess, but damn it, where?
Shouts came from everywhere. The glow he’d seen through the brush quickly bloomed into a fire in front of him, with the new fire behind him eating up ground like it was a living, ravenous thing. To his right was the ten-foot-high chain-link fence running along the property’s back border, overgrown with brambles and kudzu, and to his left, the way he’d come. The smart thing would be to retreat, but in a flash he headed for the fence on a wave of tightly controlled rage. He knew the lay of the land better than anyone. A half-forgotten farm market road lay just beyond the fence, a crumbling lane where he’d once cut open his chin while learning how to ride a bike. Whoever was threatening his world was on the other side of this fence, and if he could just reach them he’d tear them apart with his bare hands...
Gideon topped the fence, glimpsing the hulking shadow of a car and two figures an instant before a flash of something in his direction brought his head up. Time slowed as his fury changed to horror when he spotted the flicker of a flaming bottle arcing through the night sky.
Right at him.
Fuck.
In less than a heartbeat, Gideon released his hold on the fence and kicked away, uncaring that the fall alone from that height could kill him if he fell wrong or on an exposed tree limb. With a sick wave of resignation, he knew he was done for. With luck, he could escape some of the splattering fuel, but not all of it. If only he’d topped the fence a fraction of a second sooner, he would have been able to fall on the other side of
the fence and maybe have been of some use, rather than be useless...again.
“No!”
For a second he thought he imagined Sara’s scream even as the crash of the broken bottle filled his universe at the same time he hit the ground. That all-too-familiar whoosh that was the devil’s own breath erupted over him even as he did his damnedest to roll away from the wave of liquid fire that had to be reaching out to him.
Only it wasn’t.
Rolling to escape flames, Gideon came to a stop only when he slammed up against a weedy sapling and could go no further. He waited for the insane agony of flesh burning to the bone, a scream bottled up inside his throat. Instead, his fierce grimace of anticipated hell on earth dissolved as a chaotic vortex of numb disbelief swallowed up his basic understanding of the world around him.
The liquid wave of yellow-orange fire had indeed reached out to consume him. But instead of splashing all over him, it hung suspended above him like a cresting wave that refused to fall.
Impossible.
For what seemed like an eternity, Gideon stared at the flames, still hellishly animated as they rippled, weightless, over him, close enough to dry the moisture from his eyes. Then the flames began to undulate through the air, snakelike and sinuous, in tandem with all the other fires now dotting the property, climbing on absolutely nothing as they reached up toward the night sky...
And Sara.
A harsh sound erupted from Gideon’s throat, but he never heard it as he stared at a vision that could not possibly be there. Sara couldn’t be hovering above the earth, glowing like a star with thin, starling-like wings of what appeared to be fire emanating from her back. It wasn’t possible there were six wings unfurling, three on each side, and it couldn’t be that the undulating ropes of fire were flowing into the dagger-sharp tips of the lowest set of fiery wings. It didn’t occur to him that somehow the fire was bending to her will, disappearing from the land to be absorbed into her to make her glow brighter and brighter. All that occurred to him was that at long last, he’d lost his mind.
