Ken ran, feeling with every step he took the weight of the knowledge that he was the one who had shot the woman. If she died, he would never be able to face Briony, Jack's wife. He loved Briony. She accepted him with his ugly face and body, never flinching away or averting her eyes. But more than her acceptance, she'd changed Jack's life. She'd brought happiness and hope to both of them when their world had been bleak and unforgiving.
Briony and her twin sister had been two of the orphans Whitney had experimented on, and he had separated the twins, keeping Marigold and giving Briony up for adoption. Briony was frantic to find Mari, and if Ken had killed her, he had no idea what that would do to their family. He sent up a silent prayer as he jogged, trying to ignore the smell of blood and the feel of it soaking into his shirt.
They had been looking for Marigold, unraveling the clues leading to her for weeks now. They'd started with the premise that Whitney still had her locked away in one of his many compounds. The locations were secret and difficult to find, as he had a high security clearance and someone very high up was helping him cover his tracks. But they had the name and registration number of the private jet that had gone down in the Congo carrying the senator. And there had been a private jet carrying the team of men who had chased Briony across the country.
The jets were owned by two different corporations. The company in Nevada had a secretary who simply stated that the owner, an Earl Thomas Barlett, was not available. He signed all the documents and owned a home, yet there was no public document on him, not even a driver's license. Strangely enough, the company in Wyoming mirrored the one in Nevada. Both consulting companies were represented by the same attorney, who had purchased the jets for each.
The corporation in Wyoming owned a great deal of wilderness in the Cascades, inaccessible by anything but small planes landing on the very expensive airstrip or by a rapid and dangerous river. The senator just happened to own a hunting cabin on the adjacent land and have landing privileges given by the Wyoming consulting company. The same attorney had been used to acquire those privileges.
Jack and Ken had been on their way to do a little recon when the orders came down to protect the senator. Their team had taken a helicopter into the remote area and set up surveillance and an exit plan. The senator had insisted he and his wife should continue their hunting trip in spite of the danger, and she had concurred, turning down the team's recommendation to move to a more secure area.
Ken tried not to think about the woman slung around his shoulders, or how her body felt against his. He didn't want to touch her skin or feel for a pulse, or acknowledge the slide of silky hair along his jaw where her head bounced. She seemed to envelop him, and the scent of her soaked into him through his pores, his lungs, deep into his tissues and bones where he knew he'd never eradicate her.
He wanted to stay numb for the rest of his life. He didn't want to have to face another trial by fire. He wasn't certain he was strong enough to overcome the rage living and breathing inside of him. He couldn't afford to feel. He couldn't afford to want or need. He lived for the job. He lived to keep Jack safe, and now Briony and the twins she carried. Life for him had stopped almost before he was born, and it was much safer for everyone that way.
This unknown woman, already the enemy, could destroy not only him, but his family. It was through no fault of her own, but he didn't dare allow compassion to sway his course. He was not going to become more of a monster than he already was. Inch by slow inch, his life had been compromised, until his outside skin reflected the dark shadows inside him where no one could see.
The hounds have been unleashed, Kadan warned. Not one stayed to go after the senator. They're coming after you. I don't dare leave the senator, just in case this is a setup, but watch yourself. I'm not certain who your sniper is, or why he's so important, but get the hell out of there. You're in enemy territory. And he'll be able to communicate with them if you don't get him out of range.
Copy that, Jack said. He'd dropped back even farther to protect them as they raced toward safety. And our him is a her.
Ken didn't bother to acknowledge. He splashed through three narrow streams and up a steep embankment, grateful for the fact that he was genetically enhanced. He could run long distances without fighting for air, and carrying the woman, as small as she was, was no problem. But soldiers coming up behind them were enhanced as well, and they carried guns. He tried to stay to the heavier foliage when at all possible, deep in the trees, careful not to expose his body as he ran toward the rendezvous point.
The sound of the helicopter reached him. It was flying in low and fast. Kadan had held the other team off to give them the break they needed.
They might double back on you out of sheer frustration, Ken warned Kadan.
Nico flew over that stretch of land the corporation you were talking about owns. It's a military training facility, Kadan announced. Watch yourself, they may track you in the air.
Ken swore softly and moved into position just on the edge of the clearing, where he could stay covered by the foliage. Jack came up behind him, but faced back toward the way they'd come.
"You need to get out of this, Jack," Ken said. "I'll have Nico drop me at a safe house and you get home to Briony. This most likely isn't going to end well."
"I'm not running out and leaving you in a hornet's nest."
"And what if we have to kill her? What then? Just go home and you're out of it. You never have to tell her we found her sister."
"Lie to Briony? Live a lie with her? That's what everyone else did to her all those years. I'm damned if I do. I promised her I'd always tell her the truth, and no matter how messy this gets, she gets told everything just the way it happened."
"You don't have to be in it."
"We don't change things at this late date. Briony wouldn't want that and neither do I. Whatever you're thinking, Ken, forget about it. If there's a chance to pull Briony's sister out clean, we'll do it. If we can't recover her, then we have no choice here and we'll accept that."
"Briony won't."
"She's stronger than you think she is. She doesn't want Whitney to get his hands on our children any more than I do. I'm not leaving, so drop it."
Ken kept his gaze on the helicopter as it dropped into the clearing. Nico was in the doorway, hands steady, eye to the scope to cover them as they ran.
CHAPTER 2
Marigold Smith seemed to be floating in a sea of pain. It wasn't entirely unusual to wake up that way, but this time her heart was pounding in utter and total fear. She'd botched her mission. She hadn't managed to speak to the senator and plead their case. She hadn't protected him, and when she was captured, she hadn't managed to end her own life. She had no idea if the senator was safe, or if he'd been murdered. It wouldn't be so easy for anyone to get through Violet to him, but then Marigold hadn't considered that she herself be unsuccessful either. Briefly she let that failure shake her confidence in herself. She wanted to keep her eyes closed tight and just wallow in misery. She had been taken prisoner by the enemy, and it was too late to end her life and save the others. That left her one option--she had to escape.
Her leg, her back, her chest, and even her hand throbbed and burned. Worst of all, she didn't have an anchor to keep the psychic overload from frying her brain. She was wide open to assault, and that was more frightening than all the physical wounds in the world. She felt rather than heard movement near her and kept her eyes closed, her breathing even. There was no sound of footsteps, but she had the impression of someone large and very powerful leaning over her.
She wanted to hold her breath, self-preservation rising sharply, but then he would know she was awake. She drew in her breath and took him into her lungs. He smelled of death and blood and spice and outdoors. He smelled dangerous and like everything she didn't want--everything she feared. But her heart accelerated and her womb clenched and her stomach did a frightening little flip. Her eyes flew open, in spite of all her resolve. In spite of the danger. In spite
of her years of training and discipline. Her gaze collided with his.
His eyes were the most frightening she'd ever seen. Cold steel. A glacier, so frozen she felt as if the cold burned her skin everywhere his gaze touched. There was no mercy. No compassion. A killer's eyes. Hard and watchful and utterly without emotion. They appeared gray, but were light enough to be silver. His lashes were jet black like his hair. His face should have been beautiful--it was constructed with care and attention to detail and bone structure--but several shiny, rigid scars crisscrossed his skin, running from under both eyes to his jaw and across his cheeks and up into his forehead. One scar dissected his lips, nearly cutting them in half. The scars ran down his neck and disappeared into his shirt, creating an unrelenting mask, a Frankenstein effect. The cuts were precise and cold and had obviously been inflicted with great care.
"Have you looked your fill, or do you need a little more time?"
His voice made her toes want to curl. Her reaction to him was disturbing and not at all that of a soldier--she was reacting entirely as a woman, and she hadn't even known that was possible. She couldn't tear her gaze from his, and before she could stop herself, the pads of her fingers traced one rigid scar down the length of his cheek. She braced herself for the psychic backlash--the onslaught of his thoughts and emotions, the shards of glass tearing into her skull that always accompanied touch, or even close proximity to others--but she could only feel the heat of his skin and the hard ridges that had been sliced into it.
He caught her wrist, the sound of flesh slapping flesh loud. His grip was vise-like, but for all that, surprisingly gentle. "What are you doing?"
She swallowed the lump in her throat threatening to choke her. What was she doing? This man was her enemy. More importantly, he was a man, and she detested men and everything they stood for. She could respect and admire soldiers, but not relate to them at all when they were off duty. Men were brutes without loyalty, in spite of the camaraderie among the soldiers. She was not going to feel compassion for an enemy, especially one who obviously couldn't feel sympathy for others. He was probably the interrogator, a sadist bent on hurting others the way he'd been hurt.
She should have pulled her arm away, but she felt helpless to do anything but soothe him. His mask was just that, a layer over the strange masculine beauty of his face. He seemed so alone. So cut off and distant. "Does it still hurt?" Her thumb slid in a small caress over his arm where the ridges continued. Her voice was unnaturally husky and she had no idea what she was doing--only that when she touched him, the pain in her body receded and everything feminine inside her reached out to this one man.
He blinked. His only reaction. There was no change of expression. No smile. Nothing but that one small downward drift of his lashes. She thought he might have swallowed, but he turned his head slightly, his peculiar light eyes drifting over her face, seeing inside of her, seeing how vulnerable she felt, more woman than soldier, half-ashamed, half-mesmerized.
He hadn't pulled his arm away from her, she realized. It was like touching a tiger, a wild, exhilarating experience. She coaxed his cooperation with that small caress, the pad of her thumb brushing gently back and forth over those terrible, relentless scars, keeping him from whirling around and perhaps killing her with one stroke, or bolting into the underbrush, forever lost before she could uncover his secrets and know the man behind the mask. He trembled, the smallest of reactions, but she felt it, rather like a great untamed predator shuddering beneath a first touch.
He turned his hand over, wrapping his fingers around hers, effectively stilling her efforts. Again, she was struck by the gentleness of his touch. She hadn't known gentleness in her life. She'd never touched another human being the way she had him. She looked down at their joined hands and saw the scars running up his arm and into his sleeve. The moment seemed somehow surreal and distant from her. Her life had been filled with training and exercise, a narrow tunnel of expertise and little else other than duty. His life seemed exotic and mysterious. There was a wealth of knowledge behind those cold eyes. There was something hot and dangerous burning beneath the glacier of ice that called to her.
His thumb slid over the sensitive skin of her inner wrist. A single stroke. Feather-light. She felt her womb spasm. His touch was electric. The smooth silk of her skin in contrast to the violent scars of his. She wasn't without flaws, but that small touch made her feel flawless and beautiful when she'd never felt that way. She wasn't whole or complete, but he made her feel it when nothing else ever had.
Where the pad of his thumb passed over her skin, tiny flames licked and spread until she felt the burn rushing up to her breasts and down lower to the junction between her legs. One touch. That was all it took and she was utterly aware of him as a man and herself as a woman. She pulled her hand away, stricken at the break in contact, but afraid of giving too much of herself away.
Her gaze remained locked with his as if he held her there mercilessly, in the bright spotlight. She tried not to flinch, tried not to moisten suddenly dry lips. She'd been interrogated a hundred times--more, even--and she'd never felt so nervous.
"Why did you want to kill the senator?" His voice was mild, not accusing, the inflection almost gentle.
The question shocked her. She stared at him wide-eyed, frowning a little, trying to assimilate why he would ask such a thing. "You were there to kill the senator. We were protecting him."
"If you were there to protect him, why did your entire team leave him behind when we acquired you?"
She bit down on her lip. She didn't know how he could be genetically enhanced without being part of their unit, a special unit of the military designed for covert operations, but she'd never seen him before. And he was enhanced. She could feel the strength and power in him even without physical contact.
"I can't answer that," she said truthfully.
"You weren't there to assassinate the senator?"
"No, of course not. We were his protection team."
"A protection team doesn't pull out and leave the client when one of their team goes down or is captured. Your unit did just that."
"I can't answer for my unit."
"Why did you think we were there to kill the senator?"
Without his touch, pain was closing in again. Her leg hurt bad enough to bring tears burning behind her eyes. She risked a look at it. The leg was swollen, but it had been worked on. Her clothes had been cut off, which meant no hidden weapons. She wore only a long T-shirt. "Am I going to lose the leg?"
"No. Nico worked on you before the doc got here. You'll be fine. Your hand is broken too. You didn't give me much of a choice. Why would you try to kill yourself if you were there to protect the senator?"
"I can't answer that."
No flicker of impatience crossed his face. He didn't blink, watching her intently with glacier-cold eyes. She wasn't afraid of him in the way she knew she should be.
"Let me help you sit up. We've given you fluids, but you should try to drink on your own. You lost a lot of blood." Before she could protest, he slipped his arm underneath her back and helped her to sit, arranging pillows behind her.
She breathed him in and felt an instant electric current run between them. She swore little sparks danced over her skin. His gentleness disarmed her. He was a straight-up killer. She'd been a soldier all of her life and she recognized a lethal predator when she saw one, but when he touched her, there was no sign of aggression or the need to brutalize or dominate. He simply helped her, when he could have stood back and watched her struggle.
"Ken?" The voice came from the other room and her captor half-turned to face the doorway. "Briony says to bring her sister home and she sends her love."
She looked past the man standing by the bed and her heart nearly stopped. The face of the man standing in the doorway was everything Ken's should have been. Strong. Handsome. Classically beautiful. It was the face she imagined on an avenging angel--the bone structure, the lines and masculine perfection. The stranger had the
same eyes, the same mouth. She had avoided looking too much at Ken's mouth because she might have fixated on it. The scar that marred the soft fullness of his lips ran from the top lip to the bottom and down his chin in a straight line, and had the same precise symmetry that the other scars had.
The man in the doorway stopped. "I didn't realize she was awake."
Ken turned back to her, his arm still cradling her body, as he picked up a glass of water. "Can you manage with one hand?"
She could shoot a gun or throw a knife with one hand. She certainly could drink water, but having Ken close to her was intoxicating. She'd never been intoxicated before either. She allowed him to hold the glass to her lips. His hands were rock steady. She was trembling. Whatever was affecting her certainly wasn't doing the same to him.
Mari hesitated, staring at the clear liquid with a sudden thought that she was a prisoner and they wanted information. As if reading her mind, Ken brought the glass to his lips and took a long drink. She watched the glass slide against his mouth, the way his throat worked as he swallowed, and she couldn't help noticing those same horrific scars on his neck and, lower still, reaching under the shirt. Where else did they go?
She let him put the glass to her lips, astonished at how good water could taste. She hadn't realized she was so thirsty. All the while she drank, she had to force her mind from straying to Ken. She tasted him on the glass, felt him through the thin material of the T-shirt--or maybe it was his T-shirt. Maybe that was why she felt him imprinted deep in her bones.
She held the glass to her forehead, fighting for air. With every breath she drew into her lungs, a sharp pain stabbed through her chest.
"You're lucky to be alive," Ken said, taking the glass and setting it on a table beside the bed. "If you hadn't been wearing two vests, you'd be dead right now."
Cami had insisted she wear two vests. She'd have to remember to thank her friend for that. She touched the painful spot. "Was it you?"