Page 41 of I Dream of Danger
Something she’d sworn she’d never do, something that in any other moment she’d rather die than think, came welling out.
From deep inside her, it came. Totally unstoppable, torn from her.
A call so strong it was a scream inside her head.
Help me, Nick.
Chapter
Seven
Mount Blue
Haven
Northern California
Nick Ross bolted up in bed on a gasp, heart drumming against his ribs, sweat popping out all over his body. Clapping his hands for the light, he threw back the covers and rushed for the door. Remembering at the last minute that he was naked.
In a fever of impatience, he turned back and hopped into the clothes he’d thrown onto a chair an hour ago. His usual—black jeans, black sweatshirt, black combat boots. Without bothering to lace his boots he raced outside.
Usually, he got a rush when he walked outside his door. He’d rather die than say it or even show it, but he loved Haven. He and his teammates were on the run from the US government, fugitives, outlaws. They’d built a secret city and somehow a community of misfits had gathered around them. He and Jon Ryan and Mac McEnroe didn’t even question it after a while. People came, always on the run from something bad, and the three soldiers protected them.
It was a mountain—a forgotten, hollowed-out silver mine that had been turned into a thriving community of runaways and outlaws. Like Hole in the Wall in the old West, only high-tech. The community was circular, built inside the mountain. Every time Nick stepped out from his quarters, he always paused along the balcony that ringed the huge open atrium below. His community, his people. Gave him a rush, every time.
Except now.
He’d pressed their emergency button, the one that had never been used up until now, connected to Jon and Mac’s rooms, before bolting out the door. Jon’s room was on his floor, Mac’s was two stories up. He ran straight to the end of the corridor and when he passed Jon’s door he bellowed, “Jon! Situation room, stat!” He banged his fist, hard, on the door then hit the stairs at a run. The elevator would be too slow. He took the stairs four at a time, and at the end simply vaulted over the banisters down to the floor below, then ran for the situation room.
The doors of the room were biomorphically programmed to open for him, Mac, or Jon, but it took two seconds to process and he had to stand there, three feet out, practically hopping in place, fear and panic prickling along his nervous system, until the door whooshed open.
He rushed inside and skidded to a stop, looking around wildly for something—anything—that could help.
Their situation room wouldn’t have been out of place in the New Pentagon. They had it all, including holographic monitors showing every inch of the security perimeter around Haven. If a jackrabbit shat in the woods, they knew about it. They were illegally linked into every overhead satellite, and at any given moment one or two of their almost invisible drones were dropping visual, IR, and thermal images onto their servers. That kind of intel would be considered a security breach serious enough to warrant a court-martial, but since the entire US military was gunning for them, and a court-martial had found them guilty of treason in absentia anyway, they figured why not. Their server farm, hidden in the mountain, was one of the largest in the world. They had serious crunching power at their disposal.
Not to mention serious firepower. The armory would do any military installation proud.
None of it helpful at the moment because what Nick really, really needed was?—
What?
Fuck.
He didn’t know what he needed but he needed it now.
The door whooshed open, Jon came in at a run. Wheeling to a stop, he checked the monitors. Which showed acres and acres of nighttime mountainside. Utterly peaceful, utterly normal, utterly calm. Sensors blinking green. “What the fuck, Nick?” Jon’s bright-blue eyes narrowed as he glared at him. His blond hair was tousled, shirt buttoned wrong, sweat pants hanging off his hips. He looked around again at the monitors, brought his gaze back. “I repeat—what the fuck?”
It took every ounce of his self-control, but Nick managed not to twirl around, hands on head, looking for something that could be an outside sign of what was going on inside. His heart was pounding, adrenalin running through his system, and he had nowhere to go with it. Nothing to hang this huge flaming ball of desperation on.
He tried to speak, but his throat was too tight. On the second try he got it, but what he wanted to say was so enormous his voice cracked. “She needs me. She’s in danger and I have to get to her now and I don’t know where she is and she fucking needs me.” Normally he would have been ashamed to death that his indrawn breath sounded like a sob, but right now he didn’t give a fuck. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but Elle.
Jon’s eyes narrowed further. “Who needs you? What are you talking about?”
All Nick could do was stand there and pant, fists clenched so hard the knuckles were white. Ready to fight Jon, ready to fight the world if it could help her, but it wouldn’t. He couldn’t help her until he knew where she was and what she needed.
“Elle,” he said simply, because with all the thoughts swirling in his head, that was the only thing that stood out. That made sense. Elle.
Elle. In danger. God! He couldn’t even stay in the same room with that thought.
