Page 10 of Heart of Danger
“No.” he leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. “Should I?”
“I have no idea.” She closed her hand over the Hawk and held it casually. Not knowing that the little metal pin represented blood, sweat and tears on a vast scale and was the symbol of a man Mac, Jon and Nick had loved like a father. A man who’d betrayed them. Who’d led them into a trap of fire, sacrificed them as casually as you’d swat at flies. For money.
She sighed. “He was trembling when he gave it to me, as if it were something that meant a great deal to him. But he was trembling anyway. The more we communicated, the more motor control he lost.” She raised her eyes to his. “Even more important than the badge, though, it seems, was to find this Tom McEnroe and give him a message.”
“And what message would that be?” Mac asked, his voice casual, though his heart had begun a low, deep thumping inside his chest. This was way beyond what he had bargained for.
The three of them had simply assumed Lucius had disappeared with his money to some Caribbean island or some enclave in southeast Asia or a non extradition country in South America. If there was one man in the world who knew how to disappear, it would be Lucius Ward. He was a master of the art.
They’d bitterly speculated how he would be in some tropical paradise, a rich man, while they lived as outlaws.
And then it turned out he was in some lab only a hundred miles from here? Hurt and sick? For a moment, Mac battled with himself. The idea of the boss hurt and sick and alone was impossible to bear. He could hardly sit in the same place with the thought and his hands literally itched to get going, go get the Colonel who was…
The man who had betrayed them. Mac had to keep reminding himself of that. The Colonel had betrayed them, led them into a trap, left them to die.
She opened her hand and studied the small badge, thoughtfully, as if answers could be found in it.
“He said—he said he didn’t betray his men.” She lifted her head and Mac saw pain and sorrow in those huge gray eyes. “He said I had to find this Mac fast. He said when I found him to tell himCode Delta.I don’t know what that means.”
But Mac did.
Danger.
The huge mankicked back his chair and stood up. Catherine’s heart rate jumped. On the one hand, he wasn’t giving off danger vibes. Or rather, though he looked dangerous, very dangerous, he didn’t seem out of control, and he hadn’t threatened her directly.
Most violent men had their temper on a short leash. It took very little to set them off, and anything could do it. A wrong word, a wrong look.
Catherine had dated a man once. They’d met in a bookshop, reaching for the same book. They’d had coffee in the store and he asked her out to dinner the next night. Catherine was wary of men, but he’d seemed so nice—soft-spoken, funny and smart. They hadn’t touched but she’d liked him. They’d had a great meal. Back in his car, she’d decided she’d let him kiss her and would accept another dinner invitation. And maybe on the weekend she’d invite him over for lunch.
Nice and slow. The way she liked it.
And he’d leaned over, fisted his hands in her hair and kissed her hard, aggressively, opening her jaw with his other hand and thrusting with his tongue. He took her completely by surprise and she resisted.
He liked that. Oh yeah, he liked that. A lot.
And what was inside him under that nice bland exterior rushed like shards of glass over her skin. Swirls of violence filled her head, red-tinted and hot. Sickness pulsed through her in nauseating waves, nearly overwhelming her. It had been there, all along, and she hadn’t seen it because she hadn’t touched him. She recognized at his kiss that violence filled him, as if his skin was a sack full to the brim with it. All it took was the slightest abrasion and the skin broke and aggression and violence came geysering out.
That wasn’t the impression she was getting here, though granted, she wasn’t touching him. What she got was impenetrable granite. Massive self control. What was under it was invisible to her. It might be violence, it might not, but whatever it was, it wasn’t going to come geysering out. It wasn’t going to come out at all.
She met his eyes. Women tended to look people in the eye, but some men interpreted that as aggression, as lack of respect, and responded accordingly. She didn’t get the sense in any way that this man was out of control. On the contrary. Every single line of his big body remained still, clearly leashed to his will.
Even though he was armed to the teeth.
There was a big black gun strapped to his right thigh, a smaller one in a shoulder holster and a big black knife in a sheath on his other thigh. He didn’t need them. His entire body was a weapon. There was power in every long line of him. Leashed, potent, unmistakable.
His winterwear was some kind of high tech stuff—thin, black non- reflective material and it showcased his body, one of the strongest bodies she’d ever seen. Extra-wide shoulders tapering down to a lean waist, long powerful thighs, long arms and massive hands at the end of them.
This was truly a formidable man and he’d glowered at her during the entire interrogation. Fierce, dark eyes fixed on hers, as if waiting to catch her out in a lie. Well, she was too steeped in neurolinguistics to make any mistakes in eye displacement even if shewerelying. She knew precisely the body language necessary to convey truthfulness. If she wanted to lie, only an fMRI would show it because she couldn’t force her brain to light up specific areas.
She wasn’t lying so it wasn’t an issue, but the quality of the man’s attention was such that she was certain he’d unmask untruths coming from anyone he cared to unmask.
His entire body language was still, but wary. He didn’t trust her, not an inch. Had she made any kind of aggressive or even evasive move, there was no doubt he’d have snake-fast reflexes. So she stayed still, too.
But now she’d fulfilled the mission a sick man had sent her on, one she’d been helpless to refuse. It was done, for better or worse. The tension was seeping out of her and she had to force herself to stay upright in the chair and not slump with fatigue. It had the disadvantage of being an amazingly comfortable chair, so maybe he didn’t do interrogations on a regular basis in this room.
Most interrogations took place in uncomfortable environments.
She didn’t look around but she’d observed enough to know that it was a comfortable room, pleasant even. Interrogation rooms weren’t supposed to be pleasant, they were supposed to be austere and forbidding. Sort of like a jail cell, where you went if you lied.
