Page 75 of Heart of Danger
“No,” Nick and Jon said together, horrified.
“Fuckno,” Mac said.
CHAPTERTHIRTEEN
ARKA LABS
His strength was ebbing,the cold fingers of death reaching deep into his heart and squeezing. The fingers had reached for him often, he was used to their icy touches, the feeling of falling, falling…
He’d resisted up until now even though he had almost lost all sense of himself. Who he was, what he was—a blank. Lost. He sometimes tried to recall something of who he he’d been but everything always danced just out of his reach. There was no language left, only images, growing more and more faded.
Men. Hard-faced, dressed in black. One, taller than the rest, bearing the scars of burns. He’d seen those burns, seen him on fire. The men…they were somehow his. Somehow…him. He didn’t know who they were or where they were. He had no names, just the faces floating in and out of memory, always just beyond reach.
Pain had blasted so much out of him. He had the faintest recollection of resisting when he’d started this new existence. When he’d lost the man he’d been and became Patient Nine. He’d fought…hadn’t he?
Images came. White coated men with syringes and worse…Liquid that burned his veins. Waking up over and over again with new stitches, with lost memories, ever weaker. They wanted something from him and he wouldn’t—couldn’t—give it. There had been anger, more needles, more surgeries.
Now they left him alone. It had been days since he’d seen anyone except—except The Man. He had no name for the man but if he concentrated hard, he could see him, as if in a fog. Tall, thin. Dark skin, thin nose, clever, slanted black eyes. The needles came from him.
The man disappeared and though he clutched at the image it was gone. It was all gone, everything.
It was the end. He accepted it, almost welcomed it.
He’d made one last effort, reaching out, touching...someone. Someone familiar. A…woman? Soft voice, long dark hair, very pretty. Yes, a woman. She wasn’t here but…she was. He’d heard her voice, in his head. When she came and touched him, warmth spread through him, the first warmth he’d felt in…
It was gone. Some time in his life he’d known warmth, physical warmth, the sun on his skin. But he didn’t know when, he didn’t even know if the faint memory was true. Maybe he’d spent his entire life here, half naked, with needles and probes and liquid fire in his veins.
No.
No, there had been a time…before. Again, hard-faced men appeared briefly in front of him, then disappeared.
He’d called out. He had. He’d called out so hard he had lost consciousness, with no idea whatsoever of how long.
He’d called because he was dying. Someone was going to make him die, soon. So he’d reached out and someone had been there. Softness and warmth. The woman.
But there was no woman, there was only an empty room filled with beeping machines and bright lights that never let him sleep.
Sleep…soon he would sleep. Soon he’d sleep forever.
MOUNT BLUE
It wasn’t a funny situation, but Catherine had to stifle the urge to laugh.
All three men looked horrified, and Mac looked both horrified and angry. An angry Mac was formidable. If she didn’t know him so well, knew him down to his bones, she’d be frightened.
His face was dark, the scarred parts pulled tight with tension, eyes narrowed. He seemed even huger, broad shoulders blocking the rest of the room from her sight, enormous hands opening and closing as if ready to do battle.
He was.
With himself.
Catherine looked him in the eyes, then at Nick and at Jon.
What a revelation the two men had been when she’d looked inside their souls. Nick, with his lost love, yearning for her, knowing he would never see her again, sick with worry that she might be in trouble. No one would ever know looking at that cold closed façade he faced the world with that he had all those emotions inside. That he had all that love inside.
And Jon—burning with rage at the treachery that had undermined his life. She hadn’t understood who or what had betrayed him as a boy but it went beyond the betrayal as a man. No, this was something in the past and colored his every emotion. And again, who would have thought all that rage and pain swirled under the cool dude exterior.
Three large, strong men, warriors, trained to kill, standing right in front of her and looking enraged and determined to block her from going with them into Arka to rescue their former leader.
