Dangerous Illusion

by Melissa James

  Beth’s face was rosy with the flush of sweet shyness. Yeah, she was thinking about it, about being alone in his place, and her words a few minutes before—and his. Tonight, I promise. Long nights alone in his house, loving her body, her loving his—

  Fifty-five seconds.

  He cocked his head. “Close your eyes, pal,” he whispered to Danny, and the ecstatic kid didn’t even question the command. He stepped over Heidi’s sprawled body. “Don’t look, Beth. This way.”

  But he saw that Beth did look down at Heidi again, a quick, helpless glance, longing to help. She shuddered as she stepped over the body. Guilt speared through McCall as he led the way through the labyrinth of security measures. No matter how he justified it, some things couldn’t be justified. Terrorizing an innocent woman to prove her innocence when she’d already been through the mill more than once, ranked right up there.

  His life thus far may not have led to his being able to trust many people—not even the woman who’d just given him a precious piece of her trust—but the word lowlife resonated in his mind. A tired reproach for the man of phantoms, lies and shadows…but tonight, it seemed to take on a whole new meaning.

  “Hurry,” he whispered, continually looking left and right to keep up the pretense of urgency. “I’m on official watch tonight, but my relief will come any minute.” They reached the side door that led to the hangar. “I’ve disabled the security system, but it has automatic reversion within ten minutes. We have to be on the plane within two minutes, Beth.”

  She nodded and increased her pace.

  They made it halfway down the path to the hangar before Panther led the “attack” on them, swift and stealthy, a sneak attack worthy of his code name. With military precision, he hit the puppy with a—

  Danny cried out, “Bark!”

  McCall dropped to the ground, put Danny and the unconscious pup down, and got out his tranquilizer gun, checking that Beth, too, had dropped out of range. “Shh, pal, it’s okay—it’s just a sleeping shot. Bark will wake up in a few hours, good as new. These aren’t bad guys…they don’t want us to go is all. They’ll try to put us to sleep and take us back to bed.”

  “How do you know what they are?” Beth whispered fiercely.

  “These are specialist darts, used when our search teams need to immobilize witnesses without killing them.” He gave her a savage grin. “I worked with our team doctor to create them. I was his star guinea pig.”

  She gasped, her lovely eyes running over him as if to check for damage. A warm shiver ran through him at the intimate look. Had anyone looked at him like that, with such caring?

  Another shot came whizzing through the darkness. The operative responded by diving out of range, taking Beth down with him. “We have the advantage—they don’t want to hurt us,” he whispered in her ear. “Use your backpack as cover and run like hell, keeping low and your arms swinging. It’s harder to hit a moving target, and chances are they’ll hit the backpack. I’ll keep Danny covered.” When she nodded tensely he whispered, “Run.”

  The terrifying whiz of darts flying past chased them all the way into the hangar. McCall felt savage gratitude when some darts hit the backpacks. Beth was too smart—and given their track record and her obsessive self-reliance, she’d be looking for holes in the plan before long. Any reason to run…

  He swore with a viciousness that wasn’t feigned when the hangar door was locked. “I opened this!” With another curse, he muttered, “Quick, Beth, get my gun from my coat and shoot out the lock. Can you do it?” He dodged another dart that flew past his ear as he spoke. Oh, yeah, he’d have words with Panther when they met again. His sense of perfectionism had gone too far this time.

  Beth didn’t hesitate. Even dancing with the need to evade the darts, she grabbed the Glock, fixed the silencer and took out the lock with one clean shot. “Do you want the big doors done while you put Danny in, or do I cover you?”

  “Cover, then shoot the doors and throw them out fast,” he replied, treating her as an operative without thinking about it. “Can you jump up into the plane while it’s moving?”

  “I can try. Go!” she cried, turning to where Panther and two other operatives were still firing darts. They hit the door and wall beside her crouched form with tiny, sickening thuds. He had to physically squelch the fierce desire to cover her with his body. Trusting Panther to follow procedure as he’d always done, McCall tucked Danny into the back passenger seat of the Partenavia P68 Turbo, which could reach speeds of 322 kilometers an hour. Nothing else in this hangar would catch up fast. He threw himself into the cockpit. “Beth!” he yelled. She heard the plane fire up, grabbed a massive toolbox and pushed it against the door. She ran to the massive double doors and within moments, shot the locks one after the other, blast, blast, blast. No hesitation, no fear—not one miss.

  Pilot, speedboat racer, a shot to qualify for the Olympics, and, even burdened with a small child, she’d eluded capture from both the bad guys and the best of the best for years.

  Even now, she threw the doors open, shooting with a steady hand as she did so, not thrown back by the force of the shots, not fazed by the darts still coming at her thick and fast. She dodged them with the smoothness of a pro, sprinting for the plane like Cathy Freeman heading for gold. Using the handle of the open passenger door as ballast, she swung up and into the cockpit beside him with barely a hitch in her breathing.

  Well, damn, if she isn’t someone’s operative now, Anson will do his best to recruit her as soon as she’s free.

  Just as he would have done, if it were anyone but the woman he’d step in front of a bullet for. And every protective urge screamed at him to stop that happening.

  Every selfish urge. Face facts, McCall. Yeah, the kid who couldn’t remember having anyone all his own to love him, finally had a shot at being loved…my Brendan, she’d said…and he wanted to grab at it with both fists and hang on like grim death. He wanted to keep Beth and Danny all to himself—

  “Brendan!”

  McCall looked at the closing doors and swore. Stupid jerk! Panther was losing it. Perfection in execution had its limits, and attacking them when they needed to get out fast was bordering on insane! With a muttered curse, he snapped, “Can you fly this?”

  She ran her gaze over the console. “Doesn’t look hard.”

  “Then get this out of the hangar and onto the runway any way you can. Don’t run anyone down or shoot unless you have to.”

  He dived out of the cockpit and landed on Panther, more than ready to make this real.

  The man in the ski mask and dark clothes wasn’t Panther.

  He’d sparred with Panther enough in training sessions to know. The taut, lean fury that was Panther wasn’t fighting him now—this guy was a wall of muscle, and he wasn’t mock fighting, he was trying to bloody kill him. Whoever he was, he was a street-fighting expert. Each punch and kick changed direction, into a different method, from karate to kickboxing to drunken boxing and starting over—all planned to get him off balance.

  Too damn bad for him that he faced a former SEAL and street fighter himself. The rhythm was too familiar, and McCall blocked each blow and kick with the ease of coming home.

  The moving plane created a deeper shadow over their wrestling bodies as Ski Mask pinned him down.

  Three seconds. One, two—he used both feet to launch up, sending Ski Mask flying over his head and straight into the moving wheels from behind. The man grunted, collapsed for all of two seconds, then came back for more.

  Rough as diamonds, smooth as silk. This guy was in the game somewhere, not just a hired mercenary. Not Falcone’s man, then.

  The Nighthawk rogue. No one else could get through the military precision of the security arrangements—

  Except that I turned them off.

  Ten minutes. That was all. Ten damn minutes. No way was it enough time to let an outsider in here, with a fifty-acre shield all around. The satellite was still in full force, tracking every movement—Wildman
’s team needed it to follow them. If this guy had come in from outside, he’d have been seen. Unless he’d been—no, how could he have been here the whole time?

  He could have if he’d been seen as one of my team, absolute and unquestioned. And, damn it, I ordered Panther’s team to back off from this point and shoot wild only. This guy’s using my own plan against me.

  Either he was one of the team, or he was someone he trained in breaking through a security system this complete. Someone who knew the way his mind worked, and waited for his chance. Sliding into McCall’s plans, smooth as silk, to frustrate them.

  Even as his mind worked through the possibilities, he kept fighting. It was second nature to him, the fight mode. He’d been in his first fistfight at five years old, with his goody-goody cousin Stephen, who’d started the thing; yet he, Brendan, had not only been blamed, but forced to apologize by his mother. She’d stood grimly over him as he’d stuttered out the words to his smirking cousin, and his shocked, self-righteous aunt, who’d sworn, “My Stephen would never stoop to fighting!”

  “Oh, Brendan would,” Mom had replied grimly. “And he will apologize.” Later, she’d had harsher words for him, when he wouldn’t back down. Show me you can be better than this in front of my family! Show Mommy that you’re not a gutter rat like your father. Show me you have some manners, some conscience, Brendan!

  He’d done it—groveled for Mom’s sake—but Stephen hadn’t smirked later. It took him three years, but he’d made Stephen swallow that damn smirk—and that time, he didn’t back down.

  That had been the final straw as far as Mom was concerned. Tired of a husband who did little but drink and fight, she’d wanted better for herself…and her daughter. She’d wanted no traces of Jack McCall in her life—and that included his son.

  A bitter life lesson he’d never forgotten. He’d never apologized since for self-defense, or even for attack. Never. The only apology he’d ever made since he was five had gotten him nowhere. I’m sorry I was such a bad boy, Mommy. I’ll be better. I won’t fight again, I promise—not with Stephen or anyone. Please take me with you! Don’t leave me with Dad…

  Even as he relived the humiliation, he fought his adversary with ruthless efficiency, and no emotion. Slam. Cut. Block. Kick. Fall, roll, launch onto feet firmly planted apart, ready for more. And, finally, the opening—and an open-palmed hand pushed upward, under Ski Mask’s chin. And since they needed him alive to trace him backward to his source, or to identify him, and eliminate him from the Nighthawk team, it was a hit with surgical precision, aimed to disable not kill.

  McCall heard Ski Mask’s teeth crash together, saw his jaw displace—yeah, he wouldn’t be talking to his boss for a while—then his eyes rolled back in his head, and he crumpled.

  Using the Nighthawk standard-issue plastic cuffs, he put the guy’s feet together—Panther could finish this job. He could take the mask off, identify this creep, even take the kudos, for all he cared. Into the two-way, he snapped, “Panther, team attack, collect hostile witness inside hangar, stat!” And then he bolted from the hangar to catch up to the plane, heading steadily toward the runway to the ugly melody of missed shots.

  He had more important things on his mind right now than identifying this jerk. He had a bride to marry, a sweet and timid six-year-old son to reassure. Because if he could make her agree to his idea, that’s what they’d be from this day forward: his wife, and his son. For the first time in his life he could become part of a real family, and it made his heart pound and sweat break out over his body, far worse than any danger he’d ever faced in the SEALs. What the hell did he know about making others happy? What if he blew it? What if he went on a mission and didn’t come back? Would he leave them to grieve or worse, would they feel relieved that someone like him wasn’t in their lives anymore, just like his mom had? And the real biggie, what if he asked her today and she laughed at his presumption? In his world of constant impossible situations, this was the biggest risk he’d ever taken, because it had the potential to be the biggest no-win of them all.

  Chapter 17

  F or the first time since McCall walked into her studio last week—had it only been a week?—Beth felt at peace. McCall had brought her here to his own small property, the haven he’d shown no one before. He’d let her into his life.

  She wasn’t a fool. She knew the reason he’d brought her. She could almost hear the words he’d use: If I let her into my life, she’ll let me into hers. If I become the Brendan she loved, she might become Delia again, and give me her secrets.

  He knew her too well. He’d seen that she’d long since tired of carrying her burdens alone. He’d gone right into her soul to the lonely woman beneath, aching to share her secrets with someone—no, with him.

  She couldn’t fight the need anymore—the absolute imperative urge to give him…everything. Her body, her secrets—and her heart. It was coming. Now they were alone, and safe—for now—from Falcone’s men, she could finally give back to him…

  She sat on the porch swing of the sun-soaked veranda of McCall’s rambling old farmhouse, watching Brendan play with an ecstatic Danny. They’d let the football drop almost an hour ago, after spending what seemed hours teaching her son how to improve his ball skills. He’d also shown Danny how to let go of his fear of being hurt and dive “into the ruck”—a term that mystified her, and made her terrified that Danny would break his neck.

  But Danny was safe, and now on Brendan’s shoulders, exploring the flora and fauna unique to Australia, in the free forty acres around the house. Surrounding that was a buffer zone—the security measures he’d put in place for them. And some of those measures were courtesy, she was sure, of the next-door neighbors he’d introduced when they’d arrived here just after sunrise—Mitch and Lissa McCluskey, and their four children, Matt, Luke, Jenny and new, adorable, curly-haired baby Natalie.

  Beth knew the McCluskey parents for fellow spies within minutes, with all the unspoken-speak between the three of them. The kind of silent talk she’d had with Donna.

  Had McCall felt as locked out watching her and Donna, as she had, watching him communicate with the McCluskeys? Even knowing that the communications or orders pertained to her safety, she’d resented it, hated being so shut out with him. Turnabout didn’t feel like fair play. She wanted to know, to be a part of everything he was—to walk into McCall’s world.

  Then let him into yours. Trust him!

  Crunch time. All her fears and her obsessive need to keep Danny safe from everything and everyone boiled down to this day, this hour, this moment. Putting her life, and that of her beloved child, in McCall’s hands instead of clutching them to her chest.

  She had two choices now. To admit that she was human, and her support systems were now exhausted, and tell him her whole, crazy story…or run again. Walking through the underbelly of life, living a half life, existing in the shadow-world of terror.

  Was there an option, really? And if there were, would she want to take it?

  Danny made frantic hand gestures until she looked at her son. “Mummy, look, a kangaroo and her baby,” he mouthed to her, his eyes alight as he pointed downward from McCall’s shoulder.

  Decision made, she smiled and got to her feet. Goodbye independence; she didn’t want it anymore. She wanted her time in the sun with her son…and McCall. Brendan. It was Brendan she wanted to share her life with now. It was Brendan who’d brought her to life ten years ago with a smile; and if it had been McCall, her dark sentinel, who’d brought her back to life again within a day, after years of trusting no one, she had to accept the entire man, murky past and uncertain future.

  Approaching with gentle steps, she saw the Grey kangaroo, a baby in her pouch, standing with a nervous tension about fifteen feet from Danny and McCall. “The baby’s called a joey.” She spoke in an undertone to not scare the wild creatures. She couldn’t help smiling at the picture they made, the big Gypsy of a man, no longer so dark and remote with the tender smile on his face as he h
eld her bouncing-with-excitement little boy on his shoulders, Danny’s puppy frolicking at his booted heels.

  Her men. Her family. She hoped.

  Danny’s eyes grew round. “Joey?” He peered down at McCall. “You weren’t joking, Brendan? The baby kangaroos really got named after the guy on Friends?”

  Beth choked on laughter as McCall’s twinkling eyes met hers. “Well, sort of, pal,” he replied, his voice rich with shared amusement, and the smile resonated inside her soul. “They—”

  “Liked Friends so much they named baby kangaroos after them,” Beth put in, smiling. “The mothers and fathers have names, but the poor babies didn’t. It wasn’t fair to them.”

  Danny’s eyes turned round with awe. “Wow. The guy on Friends—did he come out to do a show about it or anything?”

  At that McCall put Danny down, chuckling outright, and the startled mother kangaroo turned on her thick tail and bounded away, Bark hot on their trail. “I don’t know, pal.” Again, his gaze sought Beth’s, shimmering like dappled sunlight coming through the forest. She caught her breath at the sheer beauty of his expression.

  Caught in a net she didn’t want to escape from. The latent heat came to life, radiating like raw power from within as his gaze locked with hers for that one moment.

  She bit a corner of her lip, and smiled. Personal. Intimate. Welcoming. A look he didn’t have to read—it was all there for him to see, the need, the yearning.

  “Hey, Danny-boy, I think you’d better grab Bark before he falls into the McCluskeys’ waterhole. I can see Jenny, Matt and Luke there, too—looks like they’re trying to catch tadpoles, if you feel like playing for a while.”

  “Oh! Tadpoles!” Danny’s eyes were enormous now as he lifted his face to Beth’s. “Can I, Mummy? Can I?”

  Her heart squeezed tight, then faltered to rhythm again. Poor baby. It was time for him to believe in fairy tales and his right to play. “Of course, sweetie.”