by Rebecca York
She had just stuck a package of steak into the fridge when she thought she detected a noise from the back of the house. Shutting off the water, she strained her ears, trying to determine if she’d really heard anything or if her overactive imagination was playing tricks
At first there was nothing more. Then a new sound drifted toward her, a scuffling noise followed by a loud thump like a body hitting the floor.
Was someone in the house? Who?
Had a security detail brought Hunter over and neglected to tell her? Was he feeling some ill effects from the medical exam this afternoon? Did he need help?
Turning, she hurried through the dining room and toward the back of the house. It took only seconds to gain the unlit hall, where she was forced to come to a halt as she confronted the three closed doors. She’d left her own door open, she thought. Now it was shut.
But they wouldn’t have put him in there—unless they were playing a nasty joke, she decided, as she reached for the doorknob on the right.
Her hand froze as she heard a guttural exclamation from behind the door. Pulling it open, she saw the figure of a man standing in the middle of the darkened room, swaying on his feet as he faced the open sliding glass door.
“Hunter?”
He whirled, and she registered that it was him—dressed in the same clothes he’d been wearing earlier—even as he closed the distance between them in a few menacing strides.
She knew, then, that she’d been a fool not to fear him. He had put Beckton in the hospital. Now there was only coldness in his eyes as he looked at her.
He reached her before she could run and threw his weight roughly against her shoulder.
“Don’t—” she managed as he backed her against the wall. She struck it with a thud that made the breath whoosh out of her lungs.
Chapter Five
In the moments before his hands closed around her flesh, he realized who she was. Stopping the forward motion of his body, he was able to keep from slamming her into the wall with the force he’d intended. Still, he heard the breath hiss painfully out of her lungs.
It was Kathryn Kelley. The woman with the soft voice and the kind eyes that promised too much. The woman who had come into the locker room and made him vulnerable so the security force could grab him.
In the medical center she’d said she was sorry. They had talked. And she’d made him believe her—again. Now here she was for the second time in the same day. And he’d come very close to killing her as she stepped into the room.
Perhaps his encounters with her were part of some new test, he reasoned. More dangerous than all the others Swinton and Beckton’s staffs had devised. There had been many physical tests. Appraisals of his fighting skills. And scenarios he might encounter when they sent him to the country called Gravan.
Only seconds had passed as his hand shifted over Kathryn Kelley’s mouth while he held her in place with the weight of his body against hers. But he had to decide quickly, he realized, as his eyes flicked to the sliding glass door.
Two minutes ago, an intruder had come through that door. A man wearing a black hood over his face, thick clothing, and carrying a gun that was now somewhere on the floor.
How did Kathryn Kelley fit into this scenario? Who had sent her? She had said she wanted to help him. But it was dangerous to trust the words—or the look in her eyes. Or the vague memories from before Stratford Creek.
He could kill her easily, he knew, as he contemplated the slender column of her neck. Beckton and his team had taught him the skills he would need to kill with speed and efficiency—although they hadn’t yet put him to the test. Perhaps they wanted to find out if he would do it now. Or perhaps it was part of a different plan. An unofficial plan. Like the time the trail markers had been switched in the woods, and he’d almost tumbled off a cliff.
He didn’t know who had devised this scenario. He only knew the thought of killing Kathryn Kelley brought a wave of almost physical sickness. He wouldn’t terminate her unless it was the only option. Systematically he began to search along her body, feeling for the telltale bulge of a gun or the outline of a knife.
He heard her make a strangled sound as his hand paused to explore the rounded swell of a soft breast and the edge of her undergarment where she might have tucked a small weapon.
A routine search. But nothing with her had been routine. Not the things they’d talked about—or the strange surge of unexpected heat that coursed through him as his hands learned her shape. He had thought about her body. He had wanted to touch her. Imagined it in vivid detail. Closing his eyes, he inhaled her scent, let the warmth of her flow through him.
He blinked. What was wrong with him? Every time he encountered this woman, she reached him in strange, unexpected ways. And the images of her in his head—images from before Stratford Creek—grew more tantalizing. More real. He grimaced, torn between hopes and fears he had never known before.
With a jerky motion, he pulled his hips away from hers as his hand moved on, along her ribs, to her waist where he found a rectangle of plastic nestled against soft flesh. An alarm. With a growl, he yanked it free.
“No.” She spoke the syllable against the fingers that pressed over her mouth, sending a vivid communication along his nerve endings.
Ignoring her protest and his physical reaction, he tossed the device onto the bed, where she couldn’t reach it. Had Emerson issued it? Or was she working for someone else?
He made an angry sound. He had told her someone wanted to stop Project Sandstorm. That had been a mistake. Would it also be a mistake to take his hand away from her mouth? Would she scream at the top of her lungs?
As his mind made rapid evaluations, his searching hand began to move again, continued down her body, lingering at all the places where a weapon might be concealed. Flare of hip, silky skin of thigh, delicate structure of knee. The touch of her flesh scalded his fingertips so that by the time he finished, his heart was pounding, and he was struggling to breathe normally.
So was she. Did she feel what he did—the strange combination of weakness and strength that swirled within him when he touched her? Or was she only afraid of what he might do to her?
What he or anybody else felt had never been of much concern to him. Tonight, feelings overwhelmed him. All his training urged caution. Yet there was no way of knowing where caution lay.
Kill her. Let her run to whoever had sent her. Or hold her within reach and ask his own questions—the way she had questioned him this afternoon.
He had never felt less sure. The right course of action escaped him, but he knew on some deep, instinctive level that he wanted to keep her close by his side. The scene in the locker room flashed into his mind again. Then her apology in the medical center. No one had ever made excuses for their behavior to him before.
But what did her words really mean? What would she say when he was the one in control?
Before he could change his mind, he dragged her toward the sliding glass doors. When she tried to struggle, he brought his lips close to her ear and growled, “If you do not want to get hurt, be still.”
She obeyed at once, although he knew she could simply be waiting for a better chance to get away. Or to kill him. They had warned him women could be trained to kill. Perhaps she was only looking for the right opportunity to turn the tables.
Taking the chance that he knew more of physical combat than she did, he lifted her over the threshold and carried her into the area behind the house, where trees had grown up. Beeches, maples, and wild cherries made a thick screen, hiding the two of them from view.
The branches were shivering in the wind, and dark clouds blocked out the sun, signaling the approach of a storm. If she screamed, the wind might hide the sound.
As soon as he was certain they were alone, he removed the hand from her mouth, tensing for her reaction.
Her eyes were wide and round as she focused all her attention on him. Her pale skin was as white as the chalk Beckton used on the blackboard. He
watched her suck in a ragged breath and let it out slowly. Nervously, her hand went to her hair, pushing it away from her face, then patting it into place.
His breath was almost as uneven as hers as he waited, knowing he was taking the greatest risk of his life.
###
Kathryn thought about running, but she forced herself to remain where she was, standing under the wind-tossed trees, facing the man who had slammed her against the wall, covered her mouth with his hand, searched her intimately. After each of their previous meetings, she’d convinced herself that she understood him—that he was a normal man forced into a diabolical experiment. As she cowered before him now, the criminal theory suddenly made a lot more sense. When she’d come into the bedroom, he had reacted with the instinctive ferocity of a cornered tiger. And she knew from the obdurate look in his eyes that if she made the wrong move, he was still poised for violence.
Yet as she faced him across three feet of dry leaves and the scraggly grass that grew under the trees, she could come up with an equally plausible theory. He had been normal and reasonable until Emerson and Swinton had wiped out his memory. Now he was simply reacting in the way he’d been trained. Unfortunately, that made the situation no less dangerous. She was his captive. At his mercy.
“Why did you take me out here?” she asked, trying to keep her tone even as she pressed her fingers against the rough bark of a tree trunk.
“So we could talk. There will be microphones or cameras in the house.”
“Mr. Emerson promised we would have privacy.”
“Do you believe everything he says?”
The only honest answer was, “No.”
“He might think he’s telling the truth. And someone else could be listening,” Hunter suggested.
“Who?”
He answered with his own question. “Are you working with the man who tried to kill me?”
Her head snapped up. “Somebody tried to kill you? Who? When?”
“A few minutes ago. He came in through the sliding door in my bedroom. He thought I was asleep. He was wrong.”
Hunter could be lying, but he had told her he never lied. She believed him. In fact, it reinforced her earlier hypothesis—that he was responding to danger the way he’d been taught to respond. Unfortunately, she had charged into the room at the wrong time. “Is that what I heard?” she managed. “You were fighting him off?”
“Yes. He dropped his gun on the floor. Are you working with him?” he repeated, watching her face carefully.
“No.”
His eyes told her he wanted to believe her. They also told her he hadn’t made up his mind.
“I wouldn’t lie to you, Hunter,” she said in as steady a voice as she could manage.
Once again, his face softened for a moment at the use of his name. Then his fierce expression was back in place, still challenging her. “Give me reasons to trust you. Why was I taken to the guest cottage and told to wait in the bedroom for further orders? What are you doing here with me?”
She couldn’t hide her shock. “They didn’t tell you anything?” she asked.
When he shook his head, she hastened to explain. “Dr. Kolb thought that if you and I spent some time together, I could teach you things you need to know.”
“What am I supposed to learn from you? Are you a weapons expert?”
She laughed, feeling a tiny glimmer of relief from her tension. “No. I’m a psychologist.”
“Why do you keep—coming to me?”
“I—” She swallowed. “I was hired to teach you socialization skills. Things you need to know to get along with other people. We would have started working together sooner, but some of the people here were against it.”
He made a snorting sound. “They pretend they are all united, but they all have their own—agendas.”
She nodded, surprised by his perceptiveness. Yet he continued to surprise her. For a man with no memories, he was functioning on a very sophisticated level.
“You asked me to pick a name. Why do you care about that?” he suddenly asked.
“Everyone has a name. You need the same things other people need.”
“Do I? What are those things?” he asked thoughtfully, as if he were considering the concept for the first time.
“People need to feel good about themselves. About their jobs. Their lives. They need to do things that make them happy. They need to love and be loved.”
“I am good at my job. I do not need the rest of it,” he answered, his tone blunt.
The denial—both the words and the staccato way he delivered them—tore at her. “What have they done to you?” she asked in a strangled voice.
He shrugged. She had come to hate that shrug.
But it wasn’t as disturbing as his face, which looked as bleak as it had been in the video—when he’d lain beside the water tank, half drowned. He’d reached out for help, and no one had come to him. Not this time. Gently, she laid her hand on his arm.
Around them, the wind roared, and she knew the storm would break any moment.
His muscles flexed, yet he didn’t pull away. He’d said he never lied. Maybe not about facts. Yet despite his rough denial, she was utterly convinced that he needed the same things other people needed. She was equally sure he had long ago given up trying to ask for them.
She might have held him and rocked him the way a mother rocks a child. But he wasn’t a child. He was a strong, dangerous man, trained in the craft of violence. And she needed to know more about him. Without breaking the physical contact, she went back to another topic he’d avoided earlier.
“Why won’t you tell me about your assignment? About Project Sandstorm?”
“I cannot.”
“You took an oath of silence?”
“No.”
“What, then?”
He dragged in a deep breath and let it out in a rush as he looked at her. “There are questions you should not ask me.”
“Why?”
“You said you are my friend. I want—” He stopped abruptly, and she understood that admitting he wanted anything from her was still too big a risk.
The knowledge made her throat ache. It seemed he had secrets, things that he didn’t want her to know because he thought she would think less of him. But that was good, she silently added. It meant he wasn’t as closed up as he pretended.
She wouldn’t ask about his secrets. Not yet. Not until he trusted her enough. “It’s not your fault,” she whispered.
“What?”
“All the bad things they’ve done to you.”
“It must be,” he said in a strangled voice.
“No.”
He turned his face away from her, and she sensed that he’d kept himself alive and sane in this place by hiding his doubts and fears, trusting no one. God, what an existence, she thought as she stared at the stiff, unyielding set of his shoulders.
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what?” he asked without looking at her.
There were no words to express all the things she wanted to tell him. Blindly she reached toward him with her arms, folding him close to her as if she could lock the horror of Stratford Creek away.
At first his body was rigid, then, as she ran her hands over the taut muscles of his back, he gave a little sigh and relaxed into the shelter of her arms.
She held him for long moments, feeling him let go of the wariness heartbeat by heartbeat. When he spoke, it was in a barely audible voice. “I saw two people like this. Outside in the woods. A man and a woman. Holding each other. Touching lips. It made me feel. . . strange to watch. I felt it again when I touched you.”
He lifted his face and stared down at her, a deeply intense expression on his face. A millimeter at a time, he lowered his head and brushed his mouth softly, experimentally against hers.
She didn’t move, couldn’t move. She could only stand there feeling the gentle pressure of his warm lips on hers, enjoying the contact on a level that went beyond the physical. S
he had told herself that he needed her. It seemed that in this place of evil, she needed him as well.
He raised his face a fraction, looking down at her as if he couldn’t believe she was clasping him to her.
She gave him a little smile. “He touched her hair,” he said, imitating the gesture, his fingers stroking through her tresses as he made a low sound of pleasure. “Your hair looks like fire. But it does not burn. It prickles. Not just on my fingers. Other places.”
She should pull away from him, she told herself. He probably didn’t understand that there were limits to this kind of interaction. Yet she couldn’t let go.
She had taken a job at Stratford Creek because she thought she’d be safe on a secure government installation. Every moment here had added new levels of turmoil to the chaos of her life. And it seemed the only person who had touched her on a human level was this man that everyone else treated like an outcast.
His fingers skimmed her face, the column of her neck, gently, so gently. “You are not afraid of me.” He said it in wonder.
“Should I be?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I could hurt you.”
“But you’ve shown me that you won’t,” she said with absolute conviction.
His lips came back to hers, the pressure harder, more insistent. There was no finesse to the kiss, only an unschooled urgency that was strangely exciting.
She kissed him back, her own lips parting to capture the taste of him more fully.
She heard him make a rough sound in his throat as his fingertips traced along the line of her neck and over her collarbone.
She sighed deeply. So did he.
“Good. That feels good,” he said in a thick voice. “Like the memory of—you.”
Yes, the memory, she thought. She still didn’t understand how she and this man who had named himself Hunter were tied together. Yet as they stood here touching and kissing, it was hard to doubt there was an unexplained link between them. Perhaps destiny had brought them together.
