Page 49 of Heart of Danger
He loomed over her. He often used his size to intimate the enemy. He’d never done it with a woman but there was always a first time for everything. He leaned back in close, resting the knuckles of his left hand on the side of the bed, staring her right in the eyes.
In the light of the lamp her eyes were pure silver, reflecting light rather than absorbing it. She stared into his eyes then looked away, silver darts that gleamed. Even without makeup her eyes were gorgeous—huge, with lashes so long they should have weighed down her eyelids. That silver sheen so bright…
Mac shook himself. Man, whatever she’d used on him, it was potent stuff. He’d never gone into a little fugue about the eye color of a suspect he was interrogating.
“What did you just do to me?” His voice was low and deadly. He didn’t have to project that, he felt deadly in every cell of his body.
He leaned over further and rested the knuckles of his right hand on the other side of her hips, careful not to touch her anywhere. She was caged in by him now. He knew he filled her line of vision. She wouldn’t be seeing anything now but 240 pounds of strong, angry male bearing in on her.
Her back was pressed tightly against the headboard and her heartbeat fluttered in the artery of her neck. She was breathing shallowly.
She was scared. Good. Because she had access to a kind of weaponry he had no defense against. A weapon that could fell him as surely as a stungun or a .50 cal.
And she was bearing a deadly message—to go rescue Lucius. He, Nick and Jon were the protectors of their community. If they got killed because they walked into a trap who would defend Stella, Bridget, Red, little Mac? All the rest of them?
“Okay. You’re going to get one chance at this, because if I get the feeling at any time that you’re lying, I’m going to handcuff you, take you down to the infirmary and shoot you up with so much Lethe you’ll wake up in a week. And if you piss me off too much, you won’t wake up in a motel room. You’ll wake up in the snow, three miles from the nearest road. Nod if you understand me.”
Her head jerked down, then up.
“Nod if you believe me.”
Her head jerked again.
“Good.” She’d better believe him because he was speaking God’s honest truth. Mac was good at interrogation, at intimidation.
But this was something entirely new. He wasn’t used to interrogating when he felt his entire existence was under threat.
It wasn’t his life that was in jeopardy. He was used to life-threatening situations and was fully prepared to die in the line of duty. But this—this was something he didn’t understand and it scared the shit out of him. This was an annihilation of his entire being, everything that he was, yet leaving his body intact. “Now let’s start from the top because you’ve been lying to us since I grabbed your sorry ass out of a snowstorm.”
“No,” she whispered. “I haven’t.”
Shit. How could she look so beautiful, even now? Pale and scared of him.
Mac was used to attractive women looking scared of him. He had scary looks, he always had. He shot up when he was twelve, the size of a man with a man’s ability to fight. If his childhood had taught him anything, it was how to fight. He’d had don’t-fuck-with-me vibes all his life.
Women saw what they wanted to see and in him they saw threat, and not in an attractive package. He could have worked around that if he’d been rich because the accoutrements of wealth were as powerful a draw as good looks. Fancy clothes, fancy cars, that groomed spa look…women responded to that powerfully.
But even if he had the money, which he didn’t, he had Spartan tastes. So what women saw was what they got. And what they saw was a guy who could keep it up for a good long while. If they closed their eyes, they wouldn’t have to look at him.
That’s what they got and that’s what they did.
And fuck him if this woman wasn’t looking at him in an entirely new way.
All of a sudden, the fear was gone. He had no idea how that happened. But it was unmistakable. No fear. No dread. No disgust.
Her eyes had turned soft. There was even some color back in her face.
Fuck this.
“Go over it again.” His jaw clenched so hard it was a miracle he wasn’t cracking teeth. And they didn’t have a dentist at Haven yet. “Tell me again how you happened to be on the road up to us. It’s a disused road and there was a roadblock. It was snowing. You were crazy to try to make your way up there in the snow, in the dark. You knew something.”
Her eyes widened. “I told you. Patient Nine was desperate to contact you. He told me I’d find you somewhere on that road. But I went up the wrong road, backtracked, went up another road and got caught in bad weather. Then my car died and you know the rest.”
He narrowed his eyes and put his face closer. This woman could be a world-class liar. But even the best liars in the world had tells. Tiny ones, but he was an observant man. He wasn’t going to let the slightest sign escape him.
“You’re a doctor. You have a top-level job at a big research lab. And you want me to believe that you would drop everything and go on a wild goose chase on the say so of a man you yourself diagnosed as demented?”
Her eyes searched his making little silver darts like small bolts of lightning. “It’s the truth,” she whispered. “I told you the truth.”
