Page 80 of Heart of Danger
To level 4.The thought was sad, growing fainter.To die.
She lost him and then she lost herself as she collapsed to the ground.
* * *
Christ!
Mac leaped and caught Catherine as she slumped to the ground. What the fuck just happened?
He had on night vision so she looked the palest possible green as he eased her down, possible scenarios running through his mind, each one more terrifying than the next.
Heart attack. Embolism. With all the mind stuff that was going on, an embolism made a lot of sense. Maybe Millon had some kind of trip wire system she had stumbled on…no. That one could be eliminated. She was in the middle of a safety perimeter they provided, if anyone was to activate a trip wire it would be the man on point. Him.
She was boneless, head tipped back over his arm, long white throat vulnerable and delicate. There was a vein throbbing so she was alive. He bowed his head for a second, a rush of something powerful moving through him so strong his entire body broke out in a sweat.
He’d thought she was dead. For one horrible, nausea-inducing second, he thought Catherine Young had died trying to rescue his commanding officer. All that warmth and gentleness gone. Gone from the world, gone from his life.
He’d never have it again, of that he was certain. With Catherine gone, Mac’s world would shrink to its usual grim contours, with himself at its cold center. His life would return to iron duty with nothing else. There was no question that he would ever have her warmth in his life, ever again. He hadn’t found it—hadn’t even suspected it existed—in his 38 years in this world and he knew beyond the faintest shadow of a doubt that with her gone, it would disappear from his life forever. He would be condemned to live out the rest of his existence in the icy cold confines of his heart.
Mac shuddered and looked down at the beautiful face of the woman who had changed his life.
They’d had so little time. Two days. Nothing, really. They were two days that had turned his existence upside down but 48 hours was nothing. For the very first time, he had looked forward to the future. He never had before. The future had been this endless…thing stretching out before him. The same as today only perhaps harder. No reason to want the future to arrive. When it did, it would be no different from today.
And yet, with Catherine, the future had looked—well, enticing. Better. Finer. Living with Catherine, sharing his life with her, maybe even forming a family…
He’d kicked the thought out of his head the instant it had formed but then it had returned and stuck, like a burr. Family. Families were for other people, not for him. What he knew of families was that they were violent places where people tore each other apart.
Except, maybe not the one he could found with Catherine.
It was crazy thinking, he knew that, but once there, the thought would not leave his mind. Not thought so much as images. A little dark-haired daughter with silvery eyes. That image stuck in his head, together with a crazy flutter in his chest. Creating a new human being, a small child, watching her grow up, protecting her…shit, talk about crazy thinking.
“What’s the matter with her?” Jon asked in his ear and he started. Jesus. He was on a mission, Catherine was down and here he was, spending time in his own head, mooning. What the fuck was the matter with him?
“I don’t know.” His voice sound hoarse in his own ears, his fingers clumsy as he fumbled for his Medepack.
“Mac. She’s coming round.” On his other side, Nick placed a hand on his shoulder. It was only then that Mac realized he was shaking. “She’s okay.”
Behind her eyelids, Catherine’s eyes moved back and forth, as if she was following something. Her gloved hand gripped his.
He tapped her cheek. If she’d been one of his men, he’d have slapped him but the thought of slapping Catherine made his system break out into another sweat.
“Honey.” Tap, tap. “Honey, wake up. Come on honey, open up your eyes, you can do it.”
Something in his voice must have been way off because Nick and Jon looked at each other, faces carefully blank. Mac didn’t give a fuck because there she was, his Catherine, back from wherever it was she had gone.
“Mac?” Her voice was raw, as if she hadn’t spoken in days. She struggled, trying to sit up and he helped her with an arm across her back. “What happened?”
“Fuck if I know.” Relief coursed through him. “You just dropped like a fucking stone. Scared the shit out of me. Don’t ever do anything like that again. Fuck.”
She gave a faint smile, looking at him, then Jon and Nick. “Your vocabulary deteriorates when you’re scared.”
“Fuck yeah.” But he was smiling too as he helped her stand. “So what the fuck happened?”
Catherine touched her head. “I hope you believe me when I say that I communicated with Lucius Ward. He’s being taken down to Level 4 where he thinks they are going to kill him soon. So apparently Level 4 exists. They gave him a drug that is extremely painful but which I think increased…whatever it is in him that can talk to me.” She looked at the three of them. “If he’s taken to level 4, I don’t know how to access it. He might be lost to us. We need to hurry.”
“You can walk?” Mac wanted her to stay right where she was though he knew she wouldn’t, not unless she couldn’t physically walk. If he had to, he could carry her.
“Oh yes. I’m fine.” She touched her head again, tilting it one way then the other, as if testing it out. “If I lost consciousness it was because of the…link with Lucius, not because of anything in me. We’re going to have to hurry. We have to get to him as fast as we can.”
