Page 55 of Heart of Danger
They had no muscles, none. Building up muscles required time and desire and the men she worked with had neither. They lived entirely in their heads. Their bodies were an afterthought.
And they had no hormones, or at least none that she could detect, not that she was any kind of an expert.
They were the exact opposite of the man sitting across from her, who was huge, heavily muscled, fairly oozing testosterone and pheromones.
Everything about him was so fascinating. He was like some chimera, some wild mythical beast of the forest suddenly come to life. She could observe him for days, a little wary, as you should be with mythical creatures. He could disappear, he could leap on her…you had no idea what he could do.
The men she was used to had vague gazes, inward directed, trying to puzzle out the secrets of nature. This man seemed to know them already. His gaze was direct, knowing, hard. A man who lived in the real world. And that body. Wow. A body like that should be illegal. Or at least he should have the good taste to keep it away from susceptible women.
He leaned back slightly, big hands on the tabletop. They were incredibly fascinating, too. Rough-skinned, nicked, callused. With that long white ladder-like scar across the back of the right one.
He kept perfectly still. She’d never seen anyone, man or woman, who could keep as still as he could. As he listened to her, he moved only his eyes. It was like sitting across from some huge jungle cat crouching, stealthily awaiting its prey.
Her.
“Patient Nine.” It wasn’t a request.
She looked down at the table, as if there were some fact there, though of course there was nothing but a wooden surface. But she didn’t need a memo. Patient Nine was etched into her memory with acid.
“I first saw him, as I said, on Jan. 2.” She remembered it so well. She’d spent New Years’ Eve and New Years’ Day on her own. Going into work had been a relief because at least she’d hear human voices. “Patient Nine was physically in a bad way. As I said, he’d had numerous surgeries and though the wounds had all closed without infection, sometimes you could tell that he’d had surgery on top of surgeries.” She shuddered at the memory. There had been something…unsettling about seeing a man who’d been worked over so much. “He was restrained. His eyes were closed when I came into the room. I’d dedicated the morning to going through all the patient files, checking their paperwork and giving them a physical examination. Just getting a baseline, like I said. Then I went into each room to get a feel for them. Just a preliminary check. Patient Nine was unresponsive, as were most of them. I was taking his BP when all of a sudden his eyes opened wide and he grabbed my wrist, above the latex glove. It was…it was a shock.”
Open, aware eyes, deep and pained but fully human, fully alive. It had shocked her, she’d been so used to the dull, dazed eyes of the other patients, once human, now so lost.
This man wasn’t lost, not at all. He was tethered by the IV lines and he couldn’t speak but he was aware. Terribly aware.
“He spoke to me,” she whispered, remembering that electric moment. “He told me he was trapped. Some terrible wrong had been done. People he cared about had suffered. He needed…he needed something very badly. He wanted something to be done but I couldn’t understand…”
Catherine looked Mac straight in the eyes. His dark eyes were watching her intently, unblinking. “It was about ten minutes before I understood he wasn’t actually speaking. Not with his vocal cords. His mouth wasn’t moving. This was all done…mentally.” Her hands lifted, spread, dropped helplessly back on the table. “Or telepathically, psychically. Orsomething.I have no idea how he was talking to me. It had never happened to me before.”
He didn’t question any of this. “Was he using words? In…your mind?”
She shook her head sharply. “Some words. It was hard to tell, a lot of it was a jumble. But I got the heart of his message. Images, mostly. A building, in the snow. Voices shouting. Men pouring out of hidden recesses, armed, attacking other men. Funny-looking guns. Shots being fired. An explosion and a fire so hot the snow melted almost instantly. Men with some kind of luminous stripe on their helmets, going down.”
Mac’s eyes grew even darker. She could feel his attention sharpen to a point.
“You have to understand that this had never happened to me—I’d never seen so clearly before. Usually all I get are feelings. This time I saw the images and felt the emotions at the same time. Danger, like a knife cutting through me. Some deep sense of betrayal, something dark, something that cut off my oxygen. Over it all…” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Over it all was your face.”
He didn’t move, didn’t betray any emotion, but Catherine felt his surprise like a whip. “Myface? You sure?”
She nodded and swallowed heavily. In the vision given her by Patient Nine, the entire right side of Mac’s face had been black with burns, raw red skin showing underneath the charred skin. Horrible burns, out of a nightmare, now just scars. “Yours. And the emotions connected to it were pain and sorrow. His. Patient Nine’s.” She searched his eyes. “This is making sense to you, right? The burning building, the firefight and the massive fire afterward? Betrayal?”
He nodded slowly. “That’s all you got?”
“That day, yes. That, and an overwhelming sense that no one should know. It felt…imperative that we keep this a secret.” She remembered staggering back, nearly faint from the intensity of what had been blasted at her. Feeling naked and bare, as if her skin had been flayed. Wondering if she’d had a psychotic episode, or maybe even some type of seizure. “The next day I wasn’t taken by surprise. I was also very aware that the sessions are recorded. The sense that this was a secret—that people would die if it weren’t kept a secret—was very strong, almost crippling. It was one step short of full-blown paranoia, and I tolerated it because it felt so very real. Back in my office, I ran the tape of our session to confirm that from the outside, no one could tell anything had happened. A patient had grasped my arm, that was all. Advanced dementia patients have lost all fine motor skills. Unless they are sedated, some flail wildly. There was nothing on that tape that could have raised eyebrows.”
Mac was so still he could have been a statue. “And the next day?”
The next day she broke with protocol and started the process that led step by dangerous step to this hidden place and to this moment. “The next day I turned my back to the camera and took my right glove off and held Patient Nine’s hand,” she said softly.
He understood, pursed his lips and blew out a silent whistle. “I take it both those things were no nos.”
“Absolute no nos,” she agreed. “Being kicked out and blackballed forever no nos.” She closed her eyes for a moment. Even in retrospect what happened next was overpowering.
“Lose your job, security called, your things packed in a box no no?” he persisted.
“Yeah. All that good stuff.”
“It was brave of you to do that, then.”
