Page 26 of Heart of Danger
“Mac?” Jon asked. “You think?—”
Mac shook his head sharply. He didn’t know. The betrayal had been bad enough. The idea that Lucius might have been betrayed himself, might be in serious danger…
“It depends on the woman.” Nick seemed to be the only one who could think clearly about this. He turned to Mac. “Looker like that, I think you should interrogate her more fully.” And then, to Mac’s astonishment, Nick grinned. It lasted just a second and then Nick’s features rearranged themselves into his usual stony façade but it had been there.
Jon picked up on it. “Yeah man. Interrogate her. Get to the bottom of this. The front, too.” He waggled his eyebrows. “Hands on interrogation, if you get my drift.”
“Idiots,” Mac growled. But he’d had a punch to the chest at the thought of putting his hands on her, damn it. That mass of shiny hair, the silver grey eyes and vulnerable expression blossomed in his head and something stirred throughout his body. Stirred south of the border too, damn it. He nearly had a chubby at the thought.
That shocked him. He was a focused man, all business, all the time. Sex had its place, a narrow, enclosed space, usually bar to bed, couple of hours max. Then back to business.
The woman was fucking with his head. He’d thought of her all night, damn it, and not in a strategic way. Nope. Not focusing on her story, pulling it this way and that looking for holes which he would have done with anyone else.
All night he’d stared at the ceiling, wide-eyed, remembering that burst of heat rushing through his veins at her touch. He’d never taken drugs. His entire childhood had been spent around people who retreated into drugs to wipe out their reality. He was 38 and he was sure that most of the people he’d known as a child were either dead or wished they were. They’d been dead kids walking and their eyes had reflected that.
So no, drugs had held no appeal. He didn’t want to die, he wanted to live, fiercely. He always had.
But one kid had explained to him the rush of heroin as it hit the system. The kid rented his ass out on a nightly basis to get it and hated himself 23/7. That one hour of heroin was worth it—worth the pain and degradation. Worth being treated like butcher’s meat. Worth being beaten and abused every night. He’d said that when the drug entered him, all the bad things went away and it was like being in heaven, if heaven existed.
Well fuck it if that wasn’t a pretty good explanation of what had happened when Dr. Catherine Young touched him. A rush. A rush like nothing he’d ever felt before. Like having his heart stroked by gentle hands. Like having his mind invaded by an angel.
He wanted to snort. Angels. There were no angels in this world and there was no other world. Angels didn’t exist, and no one had stroked his heart. Not that he had one, anyway.
Damned if he understood what had happened, though.Somethinghad. Something huge and scary.
And then she’d pulled this stuff on him out of thin air. How had she done it? Maybe it was like those magicians on stage who pulled up a member of the audience and asked them to think of a number and write it down. He’d always suspected those acts to be pure bluffs and the members of the audience part of the act.
But what Catherine Young had said had been, terrifyingly, the pure truth. She’d read him. Nailed him, like a butterfly to the board.
Mac wasn’t used to being seen, understood. He was used to being obeyed. The men under him in Ghost Ops knew damn all about him and that was the way he liked it. The only person to have a slight insight into him had been Lucius and already that had made him uncomfortable.
Even now, even in exile, Nick and Jon and the rest of the small community they seemed to be building knew him as a tough, strong leader with no chinks in his armor, nothing there to hang onto but a big hard shiny surface.
So being understood like that—it was scary. Even scarier was that he’d liked it, for that short burst of time in which she’d touched him. Before his head could catch up to what she was doing.
It had been like a shot of heroin to his system and like any addict, now he craved it. He’d spent the night thinking of it—thinking ofher. Remembering that soft touch, the rush of warmth spreading in an instant from her hand to his entire body, zinging through his veins.
She’d…glowed, while touching him. Like some unearthly creature. As if there were a thousand-watt lamp inside her beaming light and warmth. In that instant, she’d been impossibly beautiful, the most beautiful woman in the world. Some enchantress from another planet, too delicate and beautiful for this one.
That hadn’t lasted. When she’d broken the connection, it was as if something had broken inside her. That pale skin no longer glowing but ashen. Shadows under those beautiful eyes. Nostrils pinched and pale.
That had kept him awake too, because the glowing fairy princess from Planet Zog had been fascinating but the vulnerable, fragile woman who’d sprinkled fairy dust over him and paid a price for it nearly broke his heart.
He’d had to fist his hands to keep from putting his arms around her. He, Mac McEnroe, balls-to-the-wall tough guy who could and had watched enemies die by his hand without blinking, had been about to put his arms around a potential enemy. A completely unknown entity, who had somehow found them in their hideout. Someone who could put his community in jeopardy.
This was a woman to stay away from. To be avoided at all costs.
“Okay,” he said. Putting on his war face, making his voice cool. “I’m going to see what else I can get out of her.”
Nick gave a curt nod, turned away and continued his study of the Hawk.
Jon grinned and made kissy noises.
Mac flipped him the bird and walked out.
CHAPTERSIX
SAN FRANCISCO—HEADQUARTERS, ARKA PHARMACEUTICALS
