Page 22 of Heart of Danger
The soldiers had an enhanced aggression. Too enhanced. It overwhelmed their desire to complete the mission.
Clancy was breathing heavily and Lee wondered abstractly whether he was working his way up to a heart attack. After all, they were looking down at million of dollars in diamonds that were completely inaccessible.
“What was that?” Clancy rasped. “SL-58?”
“Yes,” Lee said.
“You get me SL-59. Damn quick.”
CHAPTERFIVE
MOUNT BLUE
He sat back,narrow-eyed. Still and unmoving. The man known as Mac. Huge, unsmiling, grim. Scarred. Armed and lethal.
She’d realized who he was from the moment he’d whipped off her hood, though Patient Number Nine had never given a physical description. That hadn’t mattered at all. What Mac looked like made no difference. It was just externals. What mattered washim. The essence of him and Nine had been incredibly clear on that. Strong, hard, unyielding. Fiercely loyal, honest, just. A hard man, a tough enemy. No better friend.
She’d been almost certain before but after touching him, all doubt evaporated. Everything Nine had communicated about Mac had been clear in the man she touched. She’d recognized it all instantly, like hearing the exact same chord of music heard the previous day. If he’d been a color, it would have been the exact same hue.
There was violence in him too, though, and again she questioned her sanity in tracking this man down. She’d been compelled, that was true. But maybe she could have stopped herself somehow. Locked herself in her house and thrown the key out the window. Gone to the airport and taken the first flight out of the country, one way. Got herself arrested.
No. Her shoulders slumped just a little then she straightened them. There was no force on earth that could have stopped her in her quest. She’d almost died in the car and maybe she’d die here, in this quiet room somewhere, she had no idea where. But nothing could have kept her away. Even now the echoes of the compulsion she felt stirred in her blood.
The man’s huge hands uncurled, the movement you’d make before reaching for something. Possibly that big black gun strapped to his right thigh.
The violence in the man sitting across from her was very real. She knew that loyalty burned bright in him but it wasn’t loyalty toher. She’d felt strongly the battle he waged against the loyalty he felt to Nine. Two strong-willed men made of granite and she was right in the middle.
She watched him carefully but she knew that if he decided to move against her she could never be fast enough, strong enough to prevail. He could crush her head with one blow of those enormous hands.
What she’d felt under the grief, like a fiery pit in the abyss, was war.
“It’s pointless insisting you’re not Mac,” she said quietly.
“Ah!” The noise came from deep in his chest, his huge hand lifted and swept the air. She recognized it as a gesture of frustration one second too late.
She flinched, bringing her arm up to shield her head. It was irresistible, unstoppable. Her heart had pumped out the blood in one liquid flash as her body flooded with panic. By the time she recognized that he’d punched nothing but air, she was hunkered down in the chair, instinctively trying to present as small a target as possible.
He growled. There was no other word for it. A low sound of disgust deep in that barrel chest.
She straightened slowly, trying to find enough air to saysorry.Heart still pounding from the aftermath of blinding terror.
“I’m not going to hit you. I don’t hurt women.” He said each word clearly and they fell like rocks from his mouth, as if each one hurt.
And in a flash, Catherine understood. She had no idea whether the understanding came from some deep-seated emotion in him she’d felt on touching him and hadn’t had time to analyze or whether it came from old-fashioned insight, but she’d touched some hidden nerve in him. Crossed an invisible, but very real line.
Still…he looked so incredibly frightening. His size alone was enough to make you shrink back. Coupled with his scarred face and the smashed nose, he looked like someone you’d be terrified to meet in a dark alley.
Most people would instinctively react to him in fear, drawing back without knowing anything about him. Because though there’d been violence—dark swirls of it—and he’d killed, the violence was controlled by iron clamps. He wasn’t a man to lose control. He wasn’t a man to hurt the weak.
Not in any way.
“I know that,” she said gently, straightening up. She felt more than saw him relax a tiny bit. “I’m sorry I flinched. It was an instinctive reaction. I should have known better. You haven’t hurt me up to now and…” she looked down at the tabletop, wondering if she could say it. She looked up, into hard dark eyes. “When I touched you, I felt it, that you don’t hurt women or children. Felt it very strongly. So I really don’t have an excuse.” She blew out a breath, opened her hand, the hand that had touched him. “None at all.”
When she’d touched him, he’d been so easy to read. Unlike most people he didn’t have layer upon layer of self serving nonsense, of hypocrisy, of self indulgence and a total and utter lack of self knowledge. He knew himself, inside out. His emotions had been clean, clear, even pure, even the dark ones. Nothing sick or psychotic at all.
She hoped. Catherine was flying on nothing but a wing and a prayer here. The gift she’d fought all her life and that had reared up and bit her in the backside with Patient Nine was still a mystery to her.
Could she trust it?
