She opened her eyes suddenly. “Can you hear it?”
“Hear what, baby?” Rick glanced down at her before continuing to look for the tiny reflector patches that mapped out the tunnel routes.
“A wind chime,” she whispered.
“Hmm?”
“A wind chime. Listen, Rick.”
“Darling…”
“No, stop for just a sec. Listen.”
He wanted to move on. The outside access was around the corner and he wanted Nikki out of there, in the open, where he could see her. But for her, anything. He stopped and stood quietly with her in his arms. The semidarkness around them added to the eerie sensation of time standing still. And then he heard it. A very soft, clear melody that resembled a wind chime, its notes far away but resonant in the heart of darkness, floating like a distant dream from nowhere.
“There,” Nikki whispered again, shifting a little in his arms.
“I hear it, too,” he whispered back.
“That’s the center, Rick, perfect harmony. That’s what I heard when I was all alone and afraid, and it brought me back.”
He placed a soft kiss on her forehead. “Back to me,” he told her, just to make sure.
She tucked in under his chin. “At long last,” she agreed, closing her eyes again.
Rick reached underneath the outside access easily. Jed and his men had already opened the manhole, shining a long shaft of light through. He stood in its beam and squinted up.
“Yo!” Someone shouted from above. His voice echoed and reverberated. “We’re lowering a harness for the fire victim. Then we’ll get to you next. Does she have any broken bones? Is she conscious? Over.”
“Negative,” Rick called back. “She appears to have smoke inhalation problems. Might have some cuts and bruises, I can’t tell, but she’s conscious and coherent. Over.”
“A-OK. The medics will take care of everything once you get her up here. Over.”
“Ten-four. Over.”
Nikki didn’t want to leave him down there. She wanted to stay in his arms, wanted to feel his warmth and strength, but the harness was for one person and she reluctantly let him secure her in place. Her voice was hoarse from too much smoke, and she couldn’t speak without her throat aching.
“I’ll be up there after you,” Rick promised.
The light showed him for the first time her shocking physical appearance. She was covered in blood, so much that he could tell that it hadn’t come from her, or she wouldn’t be talking right now. There was a dark patch on her forehead. Cut? He couldn’t tell. And her hair. He bit down hard on his tongue, hid his fist behind his back as he watched her slowly going up. She looked like a forlorn battered doll, and the need for revenge slammed into him. Someone was going to pay for that. Someone was going to pay for what they had done to her.
“Hurry up,” she said, struggling to make the words come out. She didn’t like leaving him down there. “I don’t want them touching me. I don’t want them probing and asking questions without you by my side.”
And she started to cry from the aftermath of her ordeal. Her adrenaline had finally petered out as she watched him growing smaller and smaller below her. There was confusion when she reached ground level. People touching her. People yelling questions at her. Shining light. Poking. Touching.
Nikki started to struggle. Someone screamed no. Her head ached as she tried to push away hands and older memories of rougher hands. She shook from the smell of blood and sweat and her eyes squeezed shut as images rained in her mind.
“Rick!” She realized it was she who was screaming his name over and over, her body shaking uncontrollably.
A grim voice penetrated her hysteria. Sharp staccato orders. Suddenly no one was touching or yelling at her anymore. Relieved, she started to cough hard.
“It’s me, Jed, Nikki. No one’s touching you.” She recog
nized the voice, turned toward it blindly. “No one will bother you till Rick’s here. Open your eyes for me, hmm?”
She obeyed. The silver eyes looking down at her glittered like hard gems. “You’re angry,” she managed to whisper.
“Not at you, little one. I hope you got the one who did that to your hair.” His hand combed through her knots. “On second thought, I hope you didn’t. The pleasure will be mine.”
“Too late,” Nikki said tiredly. “His body is down there.”
“Then the firefighters will retrieve it so I can return it to his boss,” Jed said, and his voice now held that dangerous ruthless edge that Nikki and all her covert teammates recognized. “Do you think I should send him back in pieces?”
“Do you know the boss?” Rick interrupted.
“Rick.” Nikki lifted her head eagerly as his familiar outline squatted down by her.
“I’ve looked at your disk,” Jed said as he got up, letting Rick take his place by Nikki. “We’ll talk about this later. Both of you to medical. Now.”
Jed signaled and a soldier appeared. “I want them guarded, as well as the other man with the admiral. No one questions them, not even Internal Investigations. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Any problems, refer them to Admiral Madison.”
“Yes, sir.”
Rick watched silently as he listened to further instructions on how to secure the scene. One day, when he had the time, he would gather information about Jed McNeil. The man might be wearing torn-up jeans and scruffy boots, but he was no ordinary operative. He had the air of someone used to authority and commanding officers. And it was interesting how he cloaked all that with a casual shrug. As now, when he turned back toward Nikki and him. The military crispness slipped seamlessly back underneath that low-key façade. No ordinary bastard at all.
In his arms again, Nikki had finally drifted off. Jed studied her for a long moment before saying softly, “I don’t want to see her like this again.”
“I second that motion,” Rick agreed.
“I trust these men guarding you. You’ll be safe. The admiral and I will handle EYES tonight. Rest up for tomorrow, you two.”
“Thank you.” Rick followed the medic and the soldier a few feet, then said over his shoulder, “Oh, McNeil?” He waited a beat. “Thanks for the chimes. They calmed her.”
Jed’s eyes glinted like a cat in the dark. “Chimes?” he asked. “Do I look like a man who owns a wind chime? Better get checked out ASAP.”
“My mistake,” Rick apologized easily and turned away, satisfied, as he continued on his way to the ambulance. He hadn’t said they were wind chimes. He thought he heard a chuckle behind him, but of course, with all the commotion, he could have been mistaken.
N
ikki drifted in and out, hearing bits and pieces of conversation.
“Was she…?”
“…obvious blunt trauma…contusion to the forehead…”
“Blood on her face and head appear to be arterial.”
“Is it from her head wound?” That was Rick’s voice, and Nikki felt his hand stroking her forehead. “She’s bleeding worse than Erik Jones.”
She opened her eyes. “They shot Erik in the head,” she told him weakly. “He’s dead.”
“He’s alive, Nikki. Were you shot too? Where did he hurt you?”
“Erik’s alive?”
“Yes, he is.”
“What about Cam and Patty?”
“We can’t find them. But tell the medic where you’re hurt, baby.”
“It’s not my blood,” she said, and closed her eyes again, turning her face into Rick’s hand. “It’s his…Clean me up, please.”
She floated in a dreamlike world, capturing things people said about her, but too exhausted to respond. Voices. They were talking softly, almost out of range.
“Has she said anything? I heard they scraped some blood
from under her nails. That’s the only man Agent Erik Jones couldn’t identify. Are her injuries serious?”
“She’s still out, admiral. They put her in a hyperbaric chamber for a bit just to make sure her bloodstream is clear of smoke and carbon. Other than that, some cuts and bruises. She’s going to have a whopping headache from that goose egg. How about Erik?”
“He’s one lucky young man. Shot twice but the Kevlar saved him and the other bullet shaved a few layers off his head. All that blood. I thought he wasn’t going to make it but they told me head wounds bleed like the devil, even the cuts. Damn lucky, like I said. A few inches lower, he would have been dead for sure. I’ve put him under heavy protection. The kid has found out a lot, especially with shipments, and he knows some of the names involved. Here, I retrieved your laptop from the scene and Erik said you told him to hold on to this box.”
“Let me show you what’s in here, Jake.”
There were a few moments of silence, then a softly issued curse from the admiral.
“Admiral, can you do me a personal favor?”
Nikki tried to concentrate but that only made her headache worse. She gave up and allowed herself to drift off again. Rick was with her.
Her grandmother looked taller than she remembered. Her hair was white and long, longer than she remembered. She was smiling.
“When the center and the heart find each other, no more hungry ghosts.”
Nikki woke up feeling sore all over. She moved her head carefully to the right and immediately relaxed. Rick was asleep in an armchair by a window, an open file in his lap. He must have heard or felt something because his eyes opened, instantly alert. When he saw that she was awake, he put away the file and crossed the room to her bedside.
“Hey.” The rims of his eyes were red, and there were lines of worry around his mouth.
“Hey, yourself.” She lifted her hand to touch him and he captured it, bringing it to his lips. “You look terrible.”
A faint smile hovered over his lips. “You should see yourself.”
“Get me a mirror,” she said. She had to know.
That immediately chased away the soft humor on his face. “Are you sure?”
She hesitated and looked at her bandaged wrist. “I couldn’t do anything. I knew he would use me to get to you. I didn’t want to put you in danger.”
He tipped her chin and she met his green eyes. “You were the one in danger,” he reminded her softly. “When are you going to stop putting me first? I was so afraid I’d lose you all over again—not knowing where you were, not knowing who to call.”
“I knew you were calling me but I couldn’t get to the phone in my pocket. It gave me strength, just knowing that you were out there. Every time I felt that I was in an impossible situation, the buzzing gave me hope. I didn’t give up this time.”
Rick leaned down to kiss her but Nikki shook her head. As he read her silent request, his green eyes darkened, then he scooped her into his arms and carried her to the private bathroom. She stared at her reflection for a few long seconds.
Her forehead had a huge purple and green bruise. It stood out magnificently against the paleness of her skin. She recalled pounding her head on the workstation. There was a long red scratch on one side of her face. She got that from shaking her head ferociously when the brute was hacking off her braid. Her hair—she had been afraid to look at it.
“You’re beautiful,” Rick told her, his eyes meeting hers in the mirror.
“He was a bad stylist,” she joked mildly. She angled her head one way, then the other, gauging the damage. Someone had washed and combed out the shorn locks. The uneven lengths looked strange. Part of her mourned the missing length, the familiar weight, but she tamped it down. She was alive, after all. “I’ve had worse bad hair days.”
She closed her eyes when he dropped a kiss against her hair. There was no point crying about it. She laid her head against his heart as he carried her back into the room, but this time, he sat down in the armchair with her on his lap.
“You took care of the bastard that did this to you,” he told her in a low voice, muffled a little by her hair. “Let me take care of the rest. I’ll make sure that every one of them is caught and punished for what they did to you.”
Not just to her. “I remember you told me Erik is alive. What about Cam and Patty?”
She turned too quickly and saw stars for a few seconds as her head spun. Rick muttered a curse even as he fingered through her hair soothingly.
“Shhhh, take it easy. Are you all right?” He waited till she nodded before continuing, “Nobody knows where Cam and Patty are. We’ll find them, Nikki.”
She fell silent, worried for the missing couple. She felt responsible. If she hadn’t asked for Patty’s help, they wouldn’t be in danger now, or worse. Rick seemed to sense her pain, folding her fully against him in comfort.
“I decoded the encrypted disks,” he told her, changing the subject. “Erik Jones also gave us more files.”
“So do we have the name of the double agent?” It was so surreal talking like this, enveloped safely within his arms. Did she really kill a man?
Rick sank deeply into the armchair, his hand caressing her shortened hair absentmindedly. “If I told you who she is, you wouldn’t believe it.”
His fingers were doing magic things to her headache but she wanted to know everything. “She?” she prompted.
He reached out and retrieved the file from the nearby table. He opened it and leafed through several pages before pointing to a specific one. Nikki quickly read it, then went through it a second time.
“It makes horrible sense,” she finally said, “but no one is going to allow this to come out. And it says here that you’re the last person to talk to her. Please don’t tell me they’re going to suspect you like they did with Gorman’s case.”
“EYES would probably want to lay this at my door. It looks better to have me as a traitor than a blue-haired little old lady,” Rick said. “However, even they can’t pin this on me since all the shipments and verification of shipments from Gorman go through the Directorate of Administration. The files Jones downloaded had all the dates of armament and monetary deliveries that were approved under the table, gone unchecked for years.”
“It’s a very clever operation,” Nikki agreed, as she thumbed through the file. “All these years, Gorman relates information from Task Force Two’s operations through Task Force Two’s secretary to the Directorate of Administration. It would look normal to anyone checking up since administration handles delivery of weapons and tools. Meanwhile, Greta—the connection between all the information going back and forth—passes this on to her own handler, playing middleman right under everyone’s noses. Who would suspect that she would process the information? Who would guess that she’s the one giving orders to two powerful men?”
“Yes, Gorman and the director of administration were in cahoots all these years selling our weapons and using our government warehouses to launder these sales. That’s how they make their money on the side while also selling state secrets. Remember I was the one up against Gorman for a promotion? It all started then. They had gone up the system’s hierarchy, and in the process, built an entire network for themselves.” Rick gave a sigh. “It’s not going to go down well when the DOD and Congress find out that our own planes and equipment had been used to finance arms dealers and our enemies, that our secrets could have been leaked for so long.”
Nikki frowned. “But how could that happen? Sure, a few signatures can hide caches of money being laundered, but shipments require planes, trucks, and a paper trail.”
“Drugs and weapons too, Nikki.”
“But how? We can’t just drop shipments everywhere without lots of people knowing. There are pilots and other personnel involved.”
“Not if the orders were to drop relief shipments for victims of war or weapon relief for freedom fighters,” a voice interrupted from the doorway.
Nikki and Rick looked up. Jed moved from the doorway and sauntered into the room with lazy grace. Nikki wondered how long he had been standing there, listening in and watching them. No sound had betrayed his presence until then.
His usually hard and implacable expression softened as his gaze dwelled on her face. Then he gave Rick a nod. “You both look terrible,” he remarked casually before taking a seat nearby, stretching out his long legs, “but not as bad as the body they found in the vault.” His expression hardened slightly before he added, “As well as the two men who were in there with Agent Erik Jones.”
“Where were they?” Rick asked.
“The one who delivered that box didn’t even know the whole operation was coming down on his head. He was at home watching the news about the fire when I dropped by.” Jed’s tone of voice was pleasant, conversational. “The other was still dropping off his deliveries. Put up a little fight. Slightly injured.”
“Where are they now?”
“They’re in the hospital and will be ready to answer questions soon. We’re tracing their drop shipment orders, looking for signs of Agent Candeloro and Patty Ostler. I’m sure those two wouldn’t mind volunteering information to assist you.”
Nikki marveled at the way the two men spoke their coded messages to each other. Why were men always so protective at the wrong time? “I’m perfectly able to understand what’s going on, you know,” she remarked. She raised a brow at Jed’s quizzical expression. “If you beat the shit out of them, how are they going to testify? And if you let Rick take his turn, how are they going to survive?”
Jed’s lips lifted into a ghost of a smile. He said in the same pleasant voice, “They’ll survive.” He looked past her at Rick. “Ready?”
Rick’s hand soothed the back of her neck but his voice had the same ruthless edge.
“Ready. Who’s going to guard Nikki while we’re gone? The men outside and around are fine, but I’d prefer someone I know here.”
“She’ll have someone we both know here,” Jed replied.
“Good.”
Nikki collared Rick with her arms as he stood. “Can the two of you at least tell me what’s happening?” she asked, frustrated.
He settled her into the bed, tucking the sheets. He framed her face with his hands, his thumb rubbing her temples rhythmically. “In your writings, you talked about feeding ghosts. Let me go put away mine. Rest for now. They’re waiting to debrief you as soon as you’re able.”
“Promise me you won’t do anything violent.” She didn’t want him put away. Not now.
His eyes glinted and his jaw tightened. After a moment, he said, “I promise.”
She smiled and relaxed into her pillow. “With Jed and you together, I feel bad for those men. You promise to tell me everything when you get back.”
“Yes.”
She watched as they walked out, the two men who meant so much to her.
“She did that to me, too, you know,” she heard Jed say.
“What?”
“Wrapped you around her finger. Made you promise; now you can’t hurt those guys.”
“You didn’t.”
“Surrogate fists. I like that.”
The door closed. Nikki shook her head helplessly.
Outside the room, Rick found a contingent waiting. Four women and a man crowded the small area among the medical monitors, staff and security guards. He raised an eyebrow in recognition. Steve McMillan, who recently had worked under him at Task Force Two, stood next to Marlena Maxwell. He didn’t know the other women but they were all studying him intently as Jed and he approached them.
“What are you doing here, Trouble?” Jed addressed the
youngest of the women, who looked like she should be in school.
She tilted her head, chocolate brown eyes regarding Jed seriously. There was a deep dimple in her chin…Rick paused. This was the little girl in the photograph, all grown up. This must be…
“I came to see Nikki,” the girl answered calmly. “She’s injured. You didn’t even tell me, Jed.”
Rick frowned. She called her father by his name? Jed didn’t seem to mind as he put his arm around her shoulder. “Didn’t stop you from finding out, did it?” he countered dryly. “Harden, McMillan will be guarding Nikki. You’ve met Marlena. This is T. And the other two are O. and S.”
“Chief,” Steve greeted. Rick nodded. They still weren’t on the best of terms.
“And I’m G.,” Jed’s daughter chimed in, amusement etched in her voice. “We’re the Alphabet Soup Gang.”
“Then you should know how to spell ‘trouble,’” Jed said in the same amused tone. “G-R-A-C-E. Now go on in to say hi to Nikki before the others.”
Grace didn’t argue, just gave her father a knowing smile and sauntered off after a mocking sing-songy, “Yes, Dad-dy.”
“Did you have to tell her now?” Jed addressed the woman called T. There was mockery in his voice. “I thought you were on assignment. Where’s Diamond? Hasn’t he found you yet?”
“I don’t appreciate your sending him after me, darling.”
“Oh, but I didn’t. You two will just have to settle this thing between yourselves.”
Rick’s eyes narrowed. This was the infamous T., the one who had orchestrated Gorman’s capture. She was not quite how he’d imagined her—all golden, with the sinuous glow of a model, slanted tawny eyes with lurking laughter. It didn’t fit the image of the hard-assed negotiator on the other end of the phone bargaining Steve McMillan’s freedom with a promise that he’d get answers about his past.