Page 61 of I Dream of Danger
Home.
A tension Nick had refused to acknowledge lifted from his shoulders. Elle was safe here. Everyone was safe here.
This was their refuge and the refuge of the family of misfits and talented outcasts they had gathered around them. He and Mac and Jon. Ward and Lundquist, Romero and Pelton. The entire Ghost Ops team had been sent to destroy a lab in Cambridge that was secretly weaponizing Yersinia pestis, bubonic plague. Only there was no secret project. A team of soldiers had been waiting for them to take them out. They’d been accused of high treason and had escaped on the way to a court-martial in Washington.
There was no way anyone could hold a Ghost Ops operator prisoner.
On the run from the entire US government and bitter about their betrayal at the hands of Ward, a man they all worshipped, Mac and Jon and Nick had found refuge on Mount Blue in northern California, inside an abandoned mine Mac had explored as a child. They holed up here, and damned if soon a community hadn’t congregated around them. The community was turning Haven into the most comfortable high-tech lair for people on the run the world had ever seen. They were becoming self-sufficient in everything—energy, internet, food, you name it.
The best thing was that the entire community was funded by two Latin America drug cartels. Jon, who had a personal crusade against drug dealers, though no one knew exactly why, had spent two years undercover in the Cartagena drug cartel, walking a tightwire, pretending to be an emissary from California’s dealers. He got enough intel to put three hundred men away forever, while burrowing deep into their finances. Whenever Haven needed anything, they just skimmed off the Caymans and Aruban bank accounts, leaving bread crumbs and footprints back to one kingpin after another, and enjoyed it greatly when some scumbag took the blame and got whacked.
One less fuckhead on this earth, Jon said. In the meantime, they all had black credit cards in false names with several million dollars behind them.
The platform stopped moving and they were inside the hangar. It was an immense space two hundred feet high. They kept all their vehicles and drones and the helo here.
Elle couldn’t get down out of the helo hooded so Nick simply picked her up by the waist and swung her out. She didn’t resist but as soon as her feet hit the ground, she stepped back, away from him.
Oh no you don’t, Nick thought.
These security measures were standard practice and necessary, he knew, though he regretted bitterly having to treat Elle like this.
The thing was, he and Mac and Jon had become the front line of defense for a community of vulnerable, talented people that trusted the three outlaw soldiers to keep them safe. The three of them took that trust seriously. Everyone who came was vetted. If they passed, they could stay. If they didn’t pass, they were given a big dose of Lethe, an amnesia drug, and left down in the valley without any memories of the hidden city inside Mount Blue.
Nick knew that if Elle somehow didn’t pass the test, he was going back into the world with her. He was hunted by the US government and there was a big bounty on his head. He’d take his chances. Elle was not leaving his side, ever again. And he was never leaving hers.
Nick and Jon exchanged a glance. No talking. The rule for those who came to them but weren’t of them yet. Any voice would echo in the huge chamber. Nick simply put his arm around Elle’s waist and started walking to the elevator, Jon keeping step.
The elevator was a miracle of technology. The elevator lifted two thousand feet in the air so smoothly that it was entirely possible that Elle didn’t realize she was in an elevator.
The elevator, together with most of the infrastructure had been designed by a talented engineer, Eric Dare. Eric had spent years writing report after report about the structural weaknesses of the Bay Bridge in San Francisco. When the ’28 Halloween quake struck, the bridge collapsed, killing forty people. Eric’s reports vanished and he was blamed for the collapse. A multimillion-dollar lawsuit was filed against him but there was no one to sue.
Eric had made it to Mount Blue, where he built them a comfortable, beautiful impregnable fortress. Haven.
There was no ding at the top, just a silent opening of doors onto Haven’s atrium.
If they weren’t outlaws, and if Haven were a public place, the atrium would win a slew of city design prizes. A huge, airy, plant-filled plaza, with terra cotta pavestone paths winding through unexpected small squares, with a flower bed here and an organic tomato patch there, the benches flowing metal and wood sculptures by the famous sculptress Kloe, on the run from her very rich and very abusive husband.
Overhead was an invisible arch of roof made of graphene, one molecule thick, studded with tiny solar panels that provided light in the evening and helped keep the atrium at a steady 72° all year round. The atrium was ringed with balconies, behind which were offices and homes. Some housed families, and some, like Nick’s pad and Jon’s pad, were glorified bachelor officer quarters, though more spacious and definitely better looking. Whenever a space needed decorating, everyone turned to Nancy Parsons, whose decorating firm was destroyed by her husband and partner who ran off with every cent and the secretary, leaving Nancy holding a sackful of debt her husband owed the mob, no way to pay for it, and the mob on her heels.
On the third floor was their war room, and Nick and Jon made their way through the paths of bright vegetation. It was four a.m., too late for the owls and too early for the larks. Mac and Catherine would be up, though, waiting to debrief.
Even if there had been people, not many would think twice about Nick and Jon marching a hooded figure across the great plaza. At one time or another, many honored members of Haven had been marched hooded up to the war room.
Another elevator let them out on the third floor. Nick kept his arm around Elle to guide her and also…because.
Because he was still finding it hard to believe that she was here, with him. Pissed at him, sure. She had every right to be. But against all the odds she was safe and alive and that’s how she was going to stay. He’d found her, he’d fought for her, he’d waited for her for ten long years. She was his.
Jon went ahead, his biomorphic profile opening the door. Elle’s wasn’t programmed in. Yet.
Elle sensed that there was a threshold and she stopped dead. The war room was straight ahead of her, the corridor behind. Her new life, her old life. Straight ahead of her Mac and Catherine were waiting, as Nick knew they would be. They’d stayed awake all night, even Catherine, who was three months pregnant. She wouldn’t leave Mac, who wouldn’t go to bed until his men were home. Mac wouldn’t even have tried to convince Catherine to lie down because she wouldn’t, and he knew that.
To one side was a serving cart with a number of dishes with silver covers.
Stella. Bless her. She’d once been a world-famous actress, until a stalker slashed her face to pieces. No one at Haven even noticed her scars anymore because everyone loved her. She was smart and kind and ran the extraordinary communal kitchen with a lot of help. No one ever wanted to get on her bad side, because access to Stella’s cooking was basically access to heaven itself. On the run and hunted, the people of Haven ate better than most millionaires.
From here on in, Elle was his, and he was going to take care of her and that included feeding her. Before bedding her.
At the thought, his dick swelled.
