Читать книгу Under Fire - Carol Ericson - Страница 11

Chapter Five

“Max!” She launched off the bed and crouched beside him. If he decided to grab her now, she wouldn’t have a chance against his power.

His body twitched and he moaned. He had no power to grab her now. She could make a run for it and call hotel security. The hotel would call 911, and he could get help at the hospital from a doctor—a real doctor.

Max’s dry lips parted, and he reached for her hand.

And if any part of his story was true? She knew the secrecy of that lab better than anyone. Those two men with the automatic weapons had been waiting at her house, for her. Max had saved her.

She curled her fingers around his and squeezed. “I’ll be right back.”

She ran to the bathroom and grabbed a hand towel. She held it under a stream of cool water and grabbed a bottle of the stuff on her way back to Max. She swept a pillow from the bed and sat on the floor beside his prone form.

He’d rolled to his back, so at least he wasn’t unconscious.

Pressing two fingers against his neck, she checked his pulse—rapid but strong. She dabbed his face with the wet towel and eased a pillow beneath his head.

“Can you drink some water? Are you in any pain?” She held up the bottle.

“The pills.” His voice rasped from his throat.

They were back to the pills? “What pills, Max?”

His hand dropped to his side, and she remembered what he’d said before he collapsed. His pocket.

She skimmed her hand across the rough material of one pocket and then the other, her fingers tracing the edges of a hard, square object. She dug her fingers into the pocket and pulled out a small tin of breath mints, but when she opened the lid no minty freshness greeted her.

Five round blue pills nestled together in the corner of the tin. She held up the container to his face. “These pills?”

His chin dipped to his chest, and she shook the pills into her palm.

He held up his index finger.

“Just one?”

He hissed, a sound that probably meant yes.

She picked up one pill between two fingers and placed it into his mouth. Then she held the water bottle up to his lips, while curling an arm around the back of his head to prop him up.

He swallowed the water and the pill disappeared. His spiky, dark lashes closed over his eyes and he melted against her arm. Her fingers burrowed into his thick, black hair as she dabbed his face with the towel.

His chest rose and fell, his breathing deeper and more regular. His face changed from a sickly pallor to his usual olive skin tone, and the trembling that had been racking his body ceased.

Whatever magic ingredient the little blue pill contained seemed to work. She peered at the remaining pills in the tin and sniffed them. Maybe he was a drug addict. Hallucinogens could bring on the paranoid thoughts.

His eyes flew open and he struggled to sit up.

“Whoa.” Her arms slipped around his shoulders. “You just had a very scary incident. You need to lie back and relax.”

“It passes quickly. I’m fine.” He shrugged off her arm and sat up, leaning his back against the credenza. He chugged the rest of the water.

“Are you okay? I almost called 911.”

“Don’t—” he cinched her wrist with his thumb and middle finger “—ever call the police.”

Her heart skipped a beat. She should’ve run when she had the chance.

His deep brown eyes widened and grew even darker. He dropped her wrist. “I’m sorry. I scared you.”

She scooted away and rested her back against the bed, facing him. “And I’m sorry you’re going through all this, but there’s nothing I can do to help you. You need to see a doctor, and I—I’ll go to my family and contact the CIA about what happened at the lab.”

“You are a doctor.” His eyes glittered through slits.

“Not exactly, and you know what I mean. You need to go to a doctor’s office, get checked out.”

“You mean a psychiatrist, don’t you?”

“I mean...”

“You don’t believe me. You’re afraid of me. You think I’m crazy.” He laughed, a harsh, stark sound with no humor in it.

“It’s a crazy story, Max. My lab was just shot up and two men tried to kill me—or you.”

“Both of us.”

“Okay, maybe both of us, but I don’t belong in the middle of all this.”

“You’re right.” He rose from the floor, looking as strong and capable as ever. “Try to get some sleep. I’ll take you to the airport tomorrow.”

“And you?”

“I’ll keep doing what I’ve been doing.”

“Which is?”

“You don’t belong in the middle of this, remember?” He tossed the pillow she’d tucked beneath him onto the bed and took a deep breath, the air in his lungs expanding his broad chest, his black T-shirt stretching across his muscles. “Would you like to take a shower? I need to take one, but you can go first.”

“I would, but I can wait.”

Still sitting on the floor, she’d stretched her legs in front of her.

Max stepped over her outstretched legs on the way to the bathroom and shut the door behind him.

Blowing out a long breath, Ava got to her feet and grabbed her purse. She could get a taxi to the airport before he even got out of the shower.

* * *

MAX BRACED HIS hands against the tile of the shower and dipped his head, as the warm water beat between his shoulder blades.

She’d be gone by the time he came out of the shower. And why shouldn’t she be? She thought he was crazy. She didn’t trust him. And she was right not to.

If she stayed, if she believed him, she could probably help him. She didn’t seem to know about the pills, but she’d worked with Arnoff. She might know something about those blue pills that stood between him and a complete meltdown like Simon.

He’d warned Simon to keep taking the pills, but his buddy was stubborn. He’d wanted nothing more to do with Tempest and its control over their lives.

Max faced the spray and sluiced the water through his hair. Maybe he’d made a mistake showing his hand to Tempest. As soon as he’d refused his last assignment, Foster had suspected he’d figured everything out—not everything. He and Simon hadn’t realized quitting the serum would have such a profound effect on their bodies and minds.

He cranked off the water and grabbed a towel. At least he’d been able to save Dr. Whitman—Ava—from Simon. Stupid, stubborn bastard. Who was going to tell Simon’s fiancée, Nina?

He dried off and wrapped the towel around his waist. A few hours’ sleep would do him good, and then he’d reassess. He could contact Prospero, but he didn’t know whom he could trust at this point. He didn’t blame Ava one bit for hightailing it out of here.

He pushed open the bathroom door and stopped short.

Ava looked up from examining something in the palm of her hand. Her gaze scanned his body, and he made a grab for the towel slipping down his hips.

“You’re still here.”

“Did you expect me to take off?”

He pointedly stared at the purse hanging over her shoulder. “Yeah.”

She held out her hand, his precious pills cupped in her palm. “What are these? They have a distinctive odor.”

“They should.” He adjusted the towel again and glanced over his shoulder at his clothes scattered across the bathroom floor. He couldn’t risk leaving her alone with those pills another minute. She might just get it in her head to run with them. She probably thought he was a junkie.

Her body stiffened and she closed her hand around the blue beauties. “Why would you say that?”

“They’re a milder form of the serum you inject in us four times a year.” He cocked his head. “You really don’t know that?”

The color drained from her face, emphasizing her large eyes, which widened. “Why would you be taking additional doses of the serum?”

“Weaker doses. To keep up. To be better, faster, stronger, smarter. Isn’t that what the serum is all about?”

“Did you know what they were when you started taking them?”

“By the time the pills were introduced into our regimen, we didn’t care what they were for. We needed them.”

“They’re addictive?” She swept the breath-mint tin from the credenza and funneled the pills into it from her cupped hand.

Max released the breath he’d been holding. “More than you could possibly know.”

“Then tell me, Max. I deserve to know everything. I stayed.” She shrugged the purse from her shoulder and tossed it onto the bed. “One little part of me believed your story. There was enough subterfuge in that lab to make me believe your wild accusations.”

“Can I put my pants on first?” He hooked his fingers around the edge of the towel circling his hips.

Her eyes dropped to his hands, and the color came rushing back into her pale cheeks. “Of course. I’m not going anywhere.”

He retreated to the bathroom and dropped the towel. Leaning close to the mirror, he plowed a hand through his damp hair. It needed a trim and he needed a shave, not that he’d given a damn about his appearance before Ava came onto the scene.

He pulled on his camos and returned to the bedroom.

Ava had moved to the chair and sat with her legs curled beneath her, a look of expectancy highlighting her face.

He’d memorized that face from his quarterly visits with her. Dr. Ava Whitman had been the one bright spot in the dark tunnel of Tempest. He believed with certainty that she had no idea what she’d been dosing them with. At first, he’d been incredulous that a doctor wouldn’t know what was in a formula she was giving her patients, but her story made sense. Tempest sought out the most vulnerable. The agency used blackmail and coercion, and in Ava’s case, hope, to recruit people.

Dr. Arnoff had kept her in the dark, had probably shut down her questions by reminding her that she wouldn’t be working as a doctor if it weren’t for the agency and then using the illegality of that work to keep her in line.

And she’d been good at her job. He had a hard time remembering the two missions he’d been on last year, but he could clearly recall Ava’s soft touch and cheery tone as she checked his vitals and injected him with the serum that would destroy his life.

Ava cleared her throat. “If the blue pills are a weaker dose of the T-101 serum, why are you still taking them?”

“I have to.”

“Because you’re addicted? Why not just ride out the withdrawal?” She laced her fingers in her lap. “I can help you. I—I have some experience with that.”

He raised his eyebrows. She had to be referring to a patient. “It’s more than the addiction. I could ride that out. You saw Simon.”

She drew in a quick breath and hunched forward. “Simon went over the edge. He lost it. The stress, the tension, maybe even the brainwashing—they all did him in.”

“It’s the...T-101, Ava. Is that what you called it? Without the serum, we self-destruct. Another agent, before Simon, before me, he committed suicide. Tempest put it down to post-traumatic stress disorder because this agent had killed a child by mistake on a raid. Now I wonder if that was even a mistake or his true assignment.”

“Adam Belchik.” She drew her knees to her chest, wrapping her arms around them.

“That’s right. I thought he was before your time.”

“He was, but I heard about him.”

“He was the first to go off the meds, and he paid the price. He had a family, so he killed himself before he could harm them.”

“Is that why you were jabbering about cold turkey? You can’t quit cold turkey like Simon did, like Adam did. You have to keep lowering your dosage by continuing with the blue pills.”

“That’s it.” He pointed to the tin on the credenza, the fine line keeping him from insanity and rage. “I find if I take one a day, I can maintain. I tried a half, and it didn’t work.”

“You have only five left.” Her gaze darted to the credenza and back to his face.

“Four now. Four pills. Four days.”

She uncurled her legs and almost fell out of the chair as she bolted from it. “That’s crazy. What happens at the end of the four days?”

He lifted his shoulders. “I’ll be subject to incidents like the one you just witnessed until they kill me or I snap...or Tempest gets to me first.”

“And if they do?”

“They’ll either kill me or I’ll be their drone for the rest of my life.”

She folded her arms across her stomach, clutching the material of her blouse at her sides. “There has to be another way. If we get more of the pills and you take smaller and smaller doses, maybe eventually you can break free. You tried taking a half, but it was too soon.”

“Where would I get more pills? You said yourself you never saw them at the lab. They weren’t administered at the lab. My quick search there revealed nothing.”

She snapped her fingers. “Max, there has to be an antidote somewhere.”

“Why would you think that? Tempest had no intention of ever reversing the damage they’d done to us.”

“Maybe not to you, but Dr. Arnoff tested the T-101 on himself.”

His heart slammed against his chest. “Are you sure?”

“I’m positive, or at least I’m positive that he told me he’d tried it on himself. He said he felt like a superhero—strong, invincible, sexually potent.”

She reddened to the edge of her hairline and waved a hand in the air. “You know, that’s what he said.”

Sexual potency? It had been a long time since he’d been close enough to a woman in a normal situation to even think about sex.

He cleared his throat. “If he acted as his own guinea pig, he’d want something to counteract the effects in case things didn’t go the way he planned.”

“Exactly—an antidote.”

“We could be jumping to conclusions.” He dragged in a breath and let it out slowly in an attempt to temper his excitement. He’d learned to be cautious about good news. “Maybe Arnoff didn’t develop an antidote. He could’ve dialed back by taking the blue pills—fewer and fewer of them until the cravings stopped and the physical effects dissipated.”

“That could be, but it also means there must be more of those blue pills floating around.” She dropped onto the bed. “What about the other agents? Can you all pool your resources and wean yourselves off of the serum?”

He cracked a smile and shook his head.

“What’s so funny? That’s the first real smile I’ve seen from you all night, and I wasn’t even making a joke.”

“I just got a visual of a bunch of Tempest agents sitting around a campfire sharing little pieces of their blue pills.”

A smile hovered at her lips. “Not possible?”

“I don’t even know who more than half of the agents are.”

“I do.”

His gaze locked onto hers. “You don’t know all their names. You don’t know where they live, and most of them are probably on assignment anyway.”

She shook her finger at him. “You’d be surprised how many of them opened up to me.”

“Not surprised at all.” She’d obviously been a ray of sunshine for the other agents, too. “But we can’t go knocking on their doors asking them to give up their meds. Unless they’ve already suspected something or had incidents like Simon and I did, they’re not going to see the problem.”

“I meant to ask you that.” She fell back against the mattress and rolled to her side to face him, propping up her head with one hand. “What made you and Simon realize what was going on?”

“There were gaps, glitches in our response to the treatment. For me it was the memories. I recalled too much about my operations. The memories they tried to implant in my brain didn’t jibe with my reality. On one assignment, Simon and I started comparing notes and then experimenting with the pills.”

“Simon didn’t show up for his last appointment with me. He never got his injection.”

“He decided to make a clean break. He shrugged off the seizures even though I tried to warn him.” He dropped his head in his hands, digging his fingers into his scalp. What would they tell Simon’s fiancée?

The bed sank beside him, and he turned his head as Ava touched his back.

“You had to shoot Simon. He would’ve killed you. He would’ve killed me.” The pressure of her hand between his shoulder blades increased. “Now, since you saved my life—twice—I’m going to save yours.”

He wanted to believe her. He wanted to stretch out on the bed next to Ava and feel her soft touch on his forehead again.

“And how to you propose to do that, Dr. Whitman?”

Her hand dropped from his back. “Don’t call me that. I told you, I never finished. I don’t deserve the title.”

“Ava.”

“We’re going to find that antidote or a million blue pills to get you through this.” She yawned and covered her mouth with the back of her hand. “But first I’m going to sleep away the rest of what’s left of this evening.”

“And your family? I thought I was taking you to the airport tomorrow so you could fly out to be with your family.”

“My family.” She launched from his bed to hers, peeled back the covers and slipped beneath them. “I have no family.”