His assailant dragged his head back, until he could see the hideously white teeth grinning through the mouth hole of the ski mask.
“We make a deal,” the dark figue said. “Your wife . . . for Lara Kirk.”
Mean, mean motherfucker.
Miles had tangled with more than his fair share of them. He had the vibe nailed. Now he just had to ooze it, like slime. A tall order, after that claustophobic ten minutes spent huddled in the trunk of the Accura. Utter blackness, mitigated only by the hole made by the shoved down central seat console. He was thankful to whoever decided that car trunks should open from the inside. And thankful, too, for the fact that there appeared to be no security cameras mounted in here. At least none that he could see.
Miles glared at the guy through the ski mask. Mean as a snake. The vibe seemed to be working. Hu’s eyes darted, frantic and terrified.
“What do you want with Lara Kirk?” Hu quavered.
“Focus on Leah,” Miles said. “Tick tock, tick tock. Take me to her, Hu. Right now.”
“I don’t believe you,” Hu burst out. “You’re bluffing.”
Miles shrugged. “You can bet that way if you want.”
“I can’t,” Hu whined. “You’re just going to have to kill me.”
“I’m fine with that. I’ll still find Lara, but Leah will die, because you’re a fucking coward and a loser. But hey, she knows that already. What did she say when you ran out on her? Was she nice? Did she, you know . . .
understand
?”
Hu’s body arched convulsively against his. “Shut up! You asshole!”
“Leah’s going to die today,” Miles said. “Or not. Up to you.”
“I can’t do what you’re asking. They’d kill me!”
“Your problem, not mine. It’s the company you keep, man. Chances are you’d get a call in to Good Sam before they slit your throat, to give them a heads-up. One last good deed for the woman you love.”
Hu’s forehead shone. Miles pulled out his cell, and began texting, without moving his gun hand.
inside compound with hu.
“Who are you texting?” Hu’s voice had a hysterical edge.
“That’s for me to know and you to wonder about,” Miles said.
The phone burped softly. Con’s reply. u crazy bastard
“Who is that?” Hu shrieked.
“That’s my contact at Good Sam,” Miles said. “Bonelli and Singh just walked by in their scrubs, all coffeed up. So, Jason. Is the fence electrified?”
Hu’s mouth worked for a moment. “Ah, yes.”
“Infrared, motion sensors?”
“Just infrared.”
“Where is the control center?” Hu did not respond.
Miles jerked him out from behind the door and jammed the gun up against the guy’s groin. “Maybe you haven’t grasped how committed I am to hurting you, assbag. I’m turning your genitals into pink paste right . . . about . . .
now.
”
“No! Stop! They’ll hear you, and they’ll kill you!”
“I don’t give a fuck. On three. You ready? One . . . two . . .”
“Security is on the ground floor! Entrance on the left side!”
“That’s better,” Miles said. “How many on security staff? How many people in total?”
Hu’s throat bobbed. “Three at the gate,” he said, sullenly. “Three inside. Ten more on staff. Counting me.”
Sixteen people. God help him. “Let’s move,” he said.
“You don’t understand,” Hu moaned. “You can’t use me as a shield. They don’t give a shit about me. They’ll shoot right through me.”
“Then make sure they don’t see me, Hu.”
Miles shoved Hu in front of him, one arm clamping Hu’s neck, the Glock pressed to the man’s nape. He pulled out his knife, and dragging Hu with him, lunged low to stab both back tires of the Accura.
He gave the other cars in the structure the same swift and savage treatment as they passed each one.
“Take me to the security center.” Miles made his voice a harsh, gravely hiss. “One eyelash flicker that I don’t like, and I drop you. And Leah gets suxamethonium pumped into her. Any minute now, Hu.”
“Let me make the call,” Hu begged. “I swear, I’ll—”
“Fuck, no. Move.”
They kept in the shadows of the towering pines as they moved toward the main building, which was perched on the edge of a cliff.
They approached a side entrance. Miles shoved the other man close enough to the door to lift his key card, swipe it. It flashed green.
This had to snake fast. Hand-to-hand or knife work. A gunshot, even suppressed, would bring the cavalry down on him. Miles followed Hu down the dim hallway, paneled with cedar, floored with hardwood planks. Hu stopped at the first door. His eyes darted, panicked.
“You first,” Miles said. He held Hu in front of him while Hu swiped his card. When the door popped open, he shoved Hu inside.
Hu shrieked a warning. The one nearest the door turned—
Front kick to the jaw,
crunch
. The man stumbled back with a grunt. His sandwich flew into the air. Miles followed up swiftly on the ground with a side-hand chop to the nose, and leaped to face the guy coming out of the adjacent bathroom, buttoning up his pants.
The guy’s eyes barely had time to widen before Miles slammed the toe of his boot into the man’s groin. He folded and went down. Miles leaped to intercept Hu, who was diving for the door. Hu shrieked as Miles torqued his arm back.
Snap
.
Hu sagged, whimpering. Miles slammed his boot into the sneaky little bastard’s side,
crunch
. Harder to scream for help with broken ribs.
Guy One lay unconscious. Guy Two writhed, in the fetal position. There was a work station for a Guy Three, who could appear at any moment. Miles pulled plastic cuffs from his side pockets and took a couple of precious moments to cuff Guy Two.
Hu rolled on his side, breath bubbling in tears and snot. “Please, please let me make that call—”
“Shut up, you piece of shit.” Miles leaned over one of the keyboards. Unlocked. God was kind. He checked in the favorites, found the camera control app. Identified the cone of visibility that covered the escape route he meant to take. Disabled the panning function, memorized the direction of the camera’s new blind spot.
He hated leaving those guys lying there, but the conscious one was restrained, and he didn’t have the stomach to kill them. And if he wasn’t out of here in a couple minutes flat, he was fucked anyhow.
He texted. will come down gully cd use a diversion
Hu twisted to stare up at him, eyes rolling. “Who are you texting?”
Miles smiled evilly. “They’re starting, Hu. Say a prayer for Leah.” He grabbed Hu by his injured arm, jerked him to his feet and shoved him out the door. “Take me to her
.
”
Hu staggered down the corridor ahead of him, and swiped his card in the electronic lock of a heavy door. It opened into a cinderblock stairwell. Partway down the second flight, a stairwell door flew open.
The guy who walked through looked up as Miles’ boot connected with his nose. He bounced off the wall, and toppled.
Hu’s breath rasped as he gestured at the door the man had just come through. They entered a corridor, which was lit with sickly fluorescent light. Hu stopped at a door, pulled out a bunch of keys.
The door behind them opened, and Miles felt a painfully familiar eye-popping squeeze in his head.
Anabel.
He spun.
“Help!” Hu shrieked.
Thpptt.
His bullet hit her in the thigh. The scrabbling, squeezing sensation ceased.
Shit,
that was loud, even with the suppressor.
But the cinder block walls might have muffled the sound for the people above them, or at least obscured its source. If he was lucky.
Anabel sagged, clutching her quadricep with reddening fingers. “You idiot! You dickhead!” she spat, to Hu. “You brought him in?”
Miles slammed an uppercut to her jaw that she was in no shape to block, bashing her head against the cinder block wall.
She thudded to the ground.
Miles jammed the barrel to the nape of Hu’s neck. “Open the door, asswipe.”
Hu’s hands fumbled and shook for an agonizingly long time. When the door finally opened, Miles flung Hu into the cell in front of him. He saw a narrow cot, an opening for a tiny bathroom.
A girl crouched, huddled in the corner. Barefoot, naked to the waist, wearing only loose white drawstring pants. She had long, tangled, frizzy, dark hair. Huge eyes gazed up at him. Terrified.
And this was so not the time to gawk at a pair of perfect tits.
“Uh . . . hi,” he said. “I’m Miles. Your ride. Let’s go.”
9
H
e couldn’t be real. Her drug trips always took her elsewhere. The people she saw in her visions never appeared in her physical prison. Even the Lord of the Citadel had never come to her. He did not belong in this hellish place. She always went to him.
And this being couldn’t be a man. A ghost demon rising up from the depths of her subconscious mind, maybe. Looming, black-clad, ski-masked. The wild, hot blast of his aggressive energy zinged through her nerves, like lightning stabbing. A hallucination, an archetype, a myth.
A god.
It must be the formula. Maybe because they’d maxed out the dose. She was crumbling into her component parts. No way could someone have found her. Who would bother to look for her? Mother and Dad were the only two people in the world who might have cared enough to risk their lives for her, and they were both gone. Murdered.
But this wasn’t a wishful fantasy, either, because she hadn’t been wishing for rescue. She’d just been hoping for her Lord of the Citadel to sweep her away into heaven. Eternal erotic bliss. It would be nice.
Hu was huddled on the ground at the ghost demon’s feet. He lifted his bloodied face. “Please!”
“Move!” The dark figure’s voice was brusque. He wrenched his leg free of Hu’s clutching hand. “Get up! Hurry!” He was directing the words at her. He pulled a phone from his pocket, and swiftly texted into it. That prosaic gesture was hardly that of a demon or a god.
She stared. “But I . . . ah, but you—”
“I’m the guy you text when you trip on psi-max,” he cut in. “You’ve been camping out in my head.”
She gaped, blinking. “You? That’s you?”
“Me. On your feet. This is your chance, so take it!”
Hu hoisted himself higher, rolling up to grab the guy’s leg. “You said I could call the hospital if I brought you here!” Hu’s voice was thin and wobbly. “You said you’d—”
“That was before you fucked me over, douchebag. Twice. Too bad for Leah. Better luck in the next life.”
“No! Please. Leah never hurt you!” Hu babbled. “Let me call them and tell them about her reaction to suxamethonium before they start the surgery! Then do anything to me that you want!”
“Correction. I can do anything I want
now.
”
“But you promised—”
“I lied.”
Whack
. The ghost demon slammed the pistol into the back of Hu’s head. Hu thudded onto the concrete, face down.
Lara pulled herself tighter into a ball.
“Lara.” The edge in his voice got sharper. “Do you have a shirt?”
She somehow forced the words out. “If I did, I’d be wearing it.”
“Great,” he muttered. “Are you hurt? Or just stoned?”
“I . . . I . . .” Nothing came out. The circuits were disconnected.
She stared at him, arms up high to protect her face, legs folded to protect her belly. It was a reflex she could no longer control.
“Shit,” the guy muttered. “It’s the mask, right? Creeps you out?” He looked up at the camera pointed down at them from the opposite wall, crouched down before her with his back to it, and wrenched it off.
“This is me,” he said. “Look fast. I’m putting it back on now.”
She gaped. It was him. The Lord of the Citadel. Unmistakably him, with that hawk nose, but so different, with that hot glitter in his eyes, that lean, feral face. Thinner, darker, harder than she remembered from her heated fantasies. “It’s . . . it’s you,” she squeaked.
“Last I checked. Miles, remember? Come on.” He whipped the mask back on, reached for her. “Fast.”
She stiffened when his hands gripped her elbows, lifting her effortlessly. He dragged her past Hu’s prone body, and out of the rat hole. Anabel sprawled in the corridor in a pool of blood.
The man crouched down at Anabel’s feet, tugging at them.
“What are you doing?” Her voice was so thin, raspy, creaky.
“Shoes, for you. Quiet!” Miles shoved blood spattered white athletic shoes at her.
She flinched back. “Is she dead?”
“Do you care?” He pushed the shoes at her again, and shoved at the small of her back when she finally took them, propelling her up the stairs. “Dudes, that diversion would be really awesome right about now,” he muttered under his breath, and shoved the door open. They heard shouts, running feet, getting louder.
“Oh, shit,” he muttered. “Get behind me!”
The running footsteps amplified. It happened fast, and she saw very little from the stairwell, back flat to the wall. The masked guy lunged through the door. There was a shout, grunts, a few sharp thuds.
One of the men on the security staff tumbled past her down the stairs. He sprawled halfway down and lay, unmoving.
The masked guy’s leather-gloved hand yanked her out into the corridor. She clutched Anabel’s shoes to her chest, trying to keep her bare feet under herself and somehow keep up.
A faraway gun cracked. Glass shattered nearby. Again, and again. Huge, shattering sounds came from different levels of the building. Someone was shooting out those huge picture windows. More shouts.
“About fucking time,” Miles said sourly.
He slapped a door open. They ran out into the dark grounds.
She’d forgotten how big the sky was, how loud. Sighing with wind, leaves swishing and bugs clicking and humming. The rocky, thorny ground bit her feet, but she lurched stupidly along behind him, dazzled by the darkness that was not darkness. It was immensely deep, painted in a million textured qualities of blue and gray and black. Wind petted her skin, countless caressing hands. She dragged in chestfuls of the cold, complicated air, so rich in oxygen and earth, plant and sky perfumes. It made her dizzy. So different from the dead, stale air she’d breathed for months.
The ground sloped sharply beneath her stumbling feet. A chain-link fence reared up. Miles veered to the left, leading them sharply downhill, pulling her behind him, so swiftly that she plowed right into his hard, crouching body when he stopped.
He pulled metal bolt cutters from somewhere on his belt, and sliced through the bottom of the chain-link fence with feverish haste.
Floodlights snapped on, illuminating the grounds with brilliant light, making the shadows sharper, blacker.
“Shit,” he hissed. “Now! Go! Slide under! On your back!”
She wiggled on her back, feet first, under the fence. The cut ends brushed across her face and her naked chest, claws raking, just hard enough to sting. Rocks and dirt tugged at her trailing hair. The hill got abruptly steeper on the other side of the fence, and the moment she was through, she lost her bearings and her balance and tumbled, rolling and bouncing down a steep, jagged gully, along with a generous shower of rocks. She landed with a gasp on the nearest place flat enough to break her fall, and clung there, bruised and disoriented.
He landed like a cat beside her a moment later, so gracefully, it was as if he had floated down. “You okay?” he whispered.
She dragged herself up, taking stock. “Not sure yet.”
His hands moved gently over her, assessing the damage. He’d taken off the gloves, and his bare skin was warm, calluses rasping, but his touch was very delicate and careful, sliding over her bare shoulders, goose-bumped in the chill. “You’re cold,” he said.
“I’m okay,” she said, and realized from the wobble in her voice that she was shivering violently.
He peeled off his jacket and his black sweatshirt. “Here,” he whispered. “Take these.”
She shrank back, but he shoved the sweatshirt over her head anyway, wrestling it down until she lifted her arms to help.
It was huge, the neck dangling loose over her bare shoulder, the hem hanging to mid-thigh. So warm. Like being hugged. The back was damp with his sweat. It smelled like a man who’d been running and fighting. Imbued with his vital energy. Shudders racked her chilled body, and her nipples tightened. Tears started into her eyes.
He tried to put the jacket on her, too, and she batted it away.
“No way!” she whispered fiercely. “You use that!”
He muttered something impatient, and yanked the jacket back on, then took her arm and pulled her to her feet.
The first step she took, she stumbled with on the sharp rocks, and fell onto her knees again. He crouched down and touched her bloodied feet with a hiss of dismay. “Shit, Lara!”
“Sorry,” she whispered.
“What happened to Anabel’s shoes?”
Lara shook her head. “Dropped them when I fell.”
Miles looked around. She couldn’t imagine what he could see in the pitch darkness, but after a few seconds he crouched, grabbed her arms and turned, draping them over his shoulders. “No time to look for them,” he said. “Grab on. Legs around my waist.”
She opened her mouth to protest that absurd idea, but the shouting voices swelled, getting closer.
“Lara.” His voice was gravely with exhaustion. “Please. I don’t want to die here.”
That jolted her into movement. She wrapped her arms around his huge shoulders, fingers tingling. He hoisted her legs up.
She hung on with all her strength. It felt so strange, to touch someone again. His contracted muscles were steely hard beneath her face, her hands, her clenched thighs.
She’d never held anyone that desperately close, not ever. Not even ex-lovers. It had been so long, since anyone had touched her at all, other than to slap or yank or kick.
Miles ran headlong down the steep hill in pitch darkness. The rays from the floodlights from above did not penetrate the thickets of foliage below, and he kept to the shadows, zigzagging deftly across the wide, deep gully. Every footfall was light and sure, even on the broken tumbled boulders and the steep rocky hillside.
Her voice jolted jaggedly out of her throat, broken by his thudding footfalls. “How do you see to run so fast?”
“I can see in the dark,” was his reply.
Oh, please. “How?” she demanded. “What, are you a vampire or something?”
Miles’ chest vibrated. “Like I don’t have enough problems. Can we talk about it later? I promise I won’t suck your blood.”
“Sure.” She hid her face against his neck, abashed. His sweaty hair was salty against her lips. He had a hot, animal taste. She liked it.
She hung on, as tightly as she could, her hands locked over the taut muscle and hot, naked skin that his open jacket revealed.
His hair tickled her nose. His body felt so vital, wiry and dense, so intensely concentrated. The bodies of her few ex-boyfriends had not felt remotely like this man’s body. He was a whole new order of being.
His flying strides created a headwind, as if she were galloping on a horse. They tore through thickets, boughs thwacking against their faces, her arms, his chest. She buried her face against his neck. His hair dripped with sweat.
Tears leaked out of her eyes. She tried to stop them, but she shook inside. Something frozen inside her was starting to melt. Just because she was touching another human being.
The first twinge of pain was like a tension headache. It intensified quickly, like a band of steel around her skull tightening.
The fear that was her constant companion ballooned. Darkness rose like a tidal wave, rushing up to swallow her.
Her blood pressure dropped. The pull began. Her arms and legs trembled, then went slack.
Miles caught her arms as she slid off his body, and crouched down to hold her. “Lara? What’s wrong?”
“Greaves,” she gasped. “Doing something. To my head. Pulling.”
“Lara, get inside! Of my mind, understand? Like you did before!”
She could barely speak, with that huge fist squeezing inside her head. “You . . . don’t feel it?” she croaked.
“My shield is really tough,” he said. “So get inside! Come on! Find a way, before he fucks you up!”
Blood was trickling from her nose. Pain filled her consciousness. His pleading voice faded.
Get inside. Like before. Get inside! Lara!
She forced the words out, fighting to stay conscious. “Leave . . . me,” she whispered. “Can’t. He’s got me. Can’t . . . go farther. Run away.”
“No.” He lifted her right into his lap and cradled her, arms clamped around her body. “I can’t run anymore. I’m not leaving you.”
Why?
She wanted to ask, but words were gone.
The last part of her mind that functioned at all came into focus. The grim concentration she’d earned and honed, in those long, dark months of captivity. She’d struggled every day to find her calm center. A place that lay beyond fear, anger, and crushing boredom.
She floated back from the pain, the clutch of compulsion, to that Lara behind Lara, who could not be controlled . . . and the vortex seized her like it had been waiting for her. She took off.
The momentum flung her wide and fast into chaos. She raced through inner space, exulting. Sensed the Citadel, with perceptions that were completely apart from her normal senses. The wall, its massive grinding gears and moving parts. Her dance. Swaying, unerring steps. Over, under, through . . . and she was inside.
She gasped in relief. The pain was gone.
So strange, though. She was still conscious. She was not in a trance. Her vision was still doubled, as if the Citadel were a waking dream, but she was acutely aware that a big, gorgeous, terrifying man was cuddling her on his lap while melding minds with her.
She felt raw, naked, exposed. Confused.
The feedback loop of feelings made her body hot with shame. She was inside his mind now. He had to feel everything that she felt.
“I’m in,” she whispered.
“I know.” His strangled tone said it all.
She was embarrassed by the giddy sexual awareness. All those sex dreams. Months of them. For her, it was as if they’d already had a blazing affair. God knows what it felt like from his side.
He turned his back to her again. “Mount up.”