Page 16 of Heart of Danger
This was a new world, far away from her lab, far from the reassuring pilasters of science holding up her world. This was—something else. The fact that she was here—had beenpropelledhere by forces beyond her control—was a function of pure instinct, proof that in this new world she had to trust her instincts because they were all she had.
Instinct told her to eat and drink and she did.
The instant she drained the last of that amazing juice, feeling a billion vitamins coursing through her system, the door whooshed open again and she turned to watch the big man in black enter the room.
He walked over to the other chair and sat down.
For the first time, Catherine noticed how he moved. He was huge, but moved with enormous grace, like an athlete. He obviously was an athlete, among other things. He had the body of an outsized linebacker, bulging muscles evident even under the clothes. He’d pulled up the sleeves of his sweater, showing strong forearms with highly raised veins. His body had increased the veins to pump more oxygen into the muscles. An automatic bodily response that couldn’t be faked and that spoke of hours and hours of working out.
Or fighting. Because he was a warrior, not an athlete. His face, his eyes, his entire body told her that.
He sat down in front of her and looked at her, dark eyes unblinking.
There was a slight abatement of the heavy waves of suspicion that had enveloped him like smoke. Though he was far from welcoming or even trusting, there wasn’t overt hostility.
“Thank you for the food,” she said politely.
He dipped his head. “You’re welcome.” The deep low voice reverberated in the room.
“I was hungrier than I thought.”
Maybe she could trick him, and he’d answerI noticed.She was absolutely positive there was a camera in the room, though it was invisible. Nowadays vidcams were in patches slapped on lightbulbs and doorknobs and windowsills. They’d have watched her every move, certainly she was being watched right now.
But she underestimated him. He didn’t so much as flicker an eyelash.
Okay. Try another tack. “I’m surprised you fed me.”
His eyes narrowed. “I don’t want to starve you to death. All I want is for you to be gone.”
“I understand that.” Catherine leaned forward on her forearms. “I also understand that I’m eventually going to end up several hundred miles from here with a headache and no memory whatsoever of the past 24 hours or maybe even 48 hours, depending on the dose of Lethe. You forget my company invented it. In house we call the pills MIB. For Men in Black. Only it’s not a light that shines in your eyes, it’s drops in a glass. So I’d like to thank you for not MIBBING the carrot and apple juice because I have some more things to say before you do.”
Aha!Anyone less adept than she was at reading body language would have missed it because he didn’t move a muscle except for an involuntary twitch of the sternocleidomastoid muscle on his right jaw. Not all the training in the world could stop fast twitch muscles taken by surprise. Still, he was very very good.
She was better.
“Patient Nine didn’t say so in so many words—” actually he hadn’t said it in any words, “but I think that there are several of you here. Two, maybe three others. Like you. Somehow friends of his?”
Again, he didn’t move a muscle, but a coldness crept over his features.
“Not friends of his?”
Silence.
“Look.” She bit her lips. “Before you knock me out, I want to know that somehow I got this message across. In the way it was given to me. I—” She hesitated. Stilled her trembling hands under the table. Tried to calm her fast-beating heart. “I came here at some personal risk. Because a patient of mine, a man who is deathly ill, could find no rest until I promised him I would make every effort to find—”You, she thought. Findyou. “This man, this Tom McEnroe. Mac. To give him that object I gave you, the tiny metal hawk and to tell him Code Delta. You can believe me or not believe me. But I am telling the truth. And I think your friend—at least he considers himself your friend—is in danger. I have no idea if any of this means anything to you. I hope this makes sense, because otherwise I have just made a huge mistake.”
Calmer now, having done all she could do, she placed her hands on the table, as if laying cards down. And she had. She’d laid it all out for him, for this tall, deadly-looking man. She’d done her best and possibly risked her life.
The rest was up to him.
“Tell her the truth, Mac,”Jon’s voice said in his ear. “I think the time for games is over.”
“Yeah,” Nick echoed, ever laconic.
Mac sat, eyes narrowed, looking at the woman carefully. She sat completely still under his gaze. He got no read off her, none at all. She could be telling the truth, she could have been sent by their traitorous former commander, Lucius Ward, to trap him. She could have been sent by goddamned Martians for all he could tell.
Shit. He’d been trained in interrogation techniques. They all had. He didn’t like torture, not for intel. If he had to off someone, he just did it without drawing it out. Pain wasn’t always useful if you wanted the truth. Most everyone would say anything, anything at all, certainly what the interrogator wanted to hear, just to make pain stop, go away. But he’d interrogated his share of shit heads and had made them talk and pain had been involved.
Men like Mac or Jon or Nick wouldn’t talk at all, under any conditions. They’d been trained to resist torture but beyond the resistance training, they were unbreakable. They’d been selected and tested for that trait then hardened, like hardening steel. And most of the time they had a discreet suicide method on them.
