Page 72 of Heart of Danger
She wasn’t asleep now, she was screaming her head off. It was a good thing all the rooms in Haven were sound-proofed.
Mac snapped his fingers and the room lights came up, on dim. She was terrified, no sense in making her feel she was under a spotlight. He gave a swift look around the room just to make sure there weren’t any hidden dangers, but the room as empty as it had been when he fell asleep. There wasn’t a man alive who could sneak into his room undetected. Not even Nick or Jon.
No external threat. He established that in a second. Now he could deal with Catherine. Placing the Glock back on the bedside table, he pulled her gently into his arms, holding her as tightly as he dared.
The screaming had stopped but she was making frightening noises in her throat, harsh cut-off sobs that were almost worse than the screaming, as if she didn’t dare scream any longer, as if she were too scared to scream.
She was panting, shaking wildly, bone white down to her lips. Taking in air in great gulping sobs, muscles rigid as wood as he held her. He had a hand over her back and could feel her heart beating wildly like an animal facing down a predator. Like an animal facing death.
It hurt him somewhere deep inside, a place he’d never felt before. It hurt so badly, seeing, hearing,feelingher panic.
He hugged her more tightly, letting his body absorb her shudders, trying to offer the comfort of his body, like you’d comfort a terrified child or animal. She seemed beyond words but he tried anyway.
“Shhh.” He rocked with her in his arms. “It was a dream, honey. A nightmare. A doozy by the look of it. But just a dream. Nothing can hurt you, you’re safe now?—”
Catherine pushed at his chest, hard and he let go of her in surprise, instinctively. It was the push of a woman who was saying ‘no’. The instant his arms loosened she shot out of bed, rushing frantically to find her clothes, pulling on her jeans, shuffling sockless into her boots. All the while shaking and shivering as if just pulled out of freezing water.
“Honey,” Mac said carefully. Everything he knew about her was that she was sane and stable. Her emotions were steady, tinged with a little sadness. But this had all the hallmarks of an emotional breakdown, a psychotic episode. “Tell me?—”
“No time.” Her teeth were chattering. “No time.” She looked up, eyes wild, searching for her shirt and sweater, but only for a second, snatching up his huge tee and throwing it over her head. It billowed and settled on her slender shoulders making her look like a fragile teenager. “Where do you guys meet?”
Mac was already dressed. Whatever it was that had happened, whatever she needed, he wanted to help her and he couldn’t do that with his naked ass hanging out.
That threw him. “What?”
She put her hands on her head and twirled around, as if unable to contain her agitation. “Where do you guys meet, do you have a meeting room with communications. Some kind of headquarters?”
“Of course. Three floors down. Do you want me to take you there?”
She was already at the door, standing in front of it, practically dancing in place, searching for the door release button, missing it in her anxiety. “Let’s go, let’s go,” she chanted under her breath. “Get your men. Do you have anyone else besides Nick and Jon?”
He shook his head no and tapped on his ear, glad he’d thought to put in the comms.
“Yeah,” he said when Nick answered. He’d been asleep but Nick woke in a second, fully operational. They all did. “HQ, two minutes. Tell Jon. Slingshot.” Their code for an emergency.
He touched the right spot on the wall and the door slid open. Catherine shot out into the hall looking wildly right and left. A vein was pulsing visibly in her throat. “What direction?”
“Right. Elevator at the end of the corridor.”
She took off, running. Mac easily kept pace. From ten feet out, he waved and the elevator doors opened. Without breaking her pace, she ran inside. He followed her in, calmly punched in the floor and turned to her.
She was shaking, arms wrapped around herself as if to keep herself warm. It hurt him to see her like that. He stepped to her, wrapped his arms around her, rested his cheek against the top of her head.
“It’s okay,” he murmured, rocking her a little because she needed movement to dissipate some of the anxious tension wracking her. He knew the mechanism well. The body is screaming for action but you don’t know what action to take, so the body just hums with tension. “It’ll be okay.”
“No,” she whispered into his shoulder, though the shudders had subsided some. “I don’t know if it will.” Catherine pulled her head back to look him in the face and he winced at her expression. She was white-faced and hurting. Tears welled in her eyes and as he watched, one slipped over and slid down her cheek, like a drop of water over marble. “We have to move so fast. It will be so hard.”
Mac didn’t make the mistake of smiling. Whatever had spooked her was terrifying her and was real. He wiped the tear with the pad of his thumb and bent to kiss her cold mouth. “We can do hard, honey. We specialize in it. We’ve been doing hard for a long time.”
A soft ping and the doors opened. Mac took Catherine’s elbow and walked fast to their HQ, Catherine running to keep up. Two people across the great atrium looked at them, frowning at the speed, then looked away.
Nick and Jon crowded into HQ right behind them. Catherine looked around, noting the monitors and chairs. The vast amount of high-tech Jon and Nick had installed that allowed them to have eyes and ears almost anywhere in the world was visible. The servers were a mile away, in a secure air-conditioned bunker. They could fly to the moon with the computing power they had.
“Sit. Please.” Catherine’s voice was high, vibrating with tension. Nick and Jon looked at each other, shrugged and sat. She gestured at him so Mac sat too. They settled in, comfortable with the situation. This was a briefing. They’d been briefed all their adult lives and Mac knew that they all had their minds open, ready to hear what Catherine was going to say.
It was still a blow.
“Patient Nine is Colonel Lucius Ward, no question.” she said baldly. Mac shifted slightly in his seat, shooting glances at Nick and Jon. They’d suspected, but this was the confirmation. She met his eyes then Nick’s and Jon’s, in turn. Mac had never seen a woman so beautiful, utterly concentrated on her task, a modern-day Joan of Arc. Her trembling started to subside as she spoke, intent on her mission.
