Virtually His (22 page)

He had pissed her off, standing there like that, not doing a damn thing to help her. Not that she needed his help. It was those eyes looking at her with disdain, like he knew she would be a problem. And then to find out he was going back down for “unfinished” business—that irked her the most, that he’d been sent to do something she hadn’t been capable of doing.

It was her fault that the operation had gone somewhat chaotic. If she had cancelled that man in the vault, there wouldn’t have been any alert about what was happening and she wouldn’t have had to fight with that operative in the elevator, and this Number Nine fellow wouldn’t have had to move from whatever position he was in so he could save her ass.

She supposed she had to thank him for that. The idea of saying that to his face filled her with dismay. Maybe she could send him a postcard.

Dear Number Nine, thank you for saving my ass.

Helen chuckled quietly as she jumped down the last few steps. She didn’t even know his name.

“Are you all right, Hell?” De Clerq asked.

They were probably wondering why she was laughing when she was supposed to be urgently running down the stairs. “I’m almost down at the ground floor,” she told him. “Then I’ll look for the emergency exit that was on the blueprint we were looking at in the plane, over.”

“Copy that. How’s the leg?”

She almost stopped in surprise. How did he know? “Did Number Nine tell you about my leg?” she asked.

“Affirmative. He said you might need help if you were required to jump into the van, over.”

Need help to jump—Helen felt like turning around and running back upstairs to find the man. “Please tell him that I rolled down the last ten flights of stairs,” she retorted, trying to keep the edge of anger from her voice. “I could probably roll myself into the van, thank you very much.”

“He was just reporting in on your condition when Dr. Kirkland asked.”

“Dr. K. could just have asked me,” Helen pointed out.

“I’m doing good. Serum working like the eighth wonder. No pain.”

And let out an involuntary gasp as she tried not to fall down the stairs.

“What is it, Hell?” De Clerq demanded.

“I don’t…know,” she managed. Her heart was beating erratically and she could barely think clearly. “Danger. I just sense danger.”

“Is someone in the stairwell after you?”

“No.” She gasped again, her breathing uneven. “No one. I can’t explain this, De Clerq.”

She felt the hair on the back of her neck standing. Her “warning” sense had never been so alarming before. Goose pimples. Heart pumping as if she were in fear, but she wasn’t feeling scared at all.

“You’re nearly there, Hell. Come on, you can do it. The exit isn’t too far,” De Clerq urged.

Helen stumbled down, trying to concentrate while trying to control her breathing. One of her eyelids fluttered uncontrollably. What the hell was happening to her?

Shit! Pause! Pause!

The images running in his head were muddled, crisscrossed with lines. His eyes hurt.

“Agent 51, what’s wrong? Your hands are covering your eyes and you’re moaning.”

“Pain.” He had changed channels and had appeared on what was a stairwell. He had felt the electronic key and had zapped down that flight of stairs in his phantom body. Then he’d slammed into—something hard. But that was impossible. “I can’t see!”

“What do you mean you can’t see? What are you doing, 51?” his monitor demanded. “We need you to focus. Are you with the key?”

He could feel all the precious recorded images melting inside him. No!

Pause! Pause!

He had to fight through this, get back his sight, so he could get out of here. His head pounded. He could hear his monitor talking about him.

“He’s shaking like a leaf. It’s the serum.”

“Fuck! We’re so damn close, we can’t lose the key now! What do we do?”

“Another shot will kill him. Agent 51, listen to my voice. Focus on my voice. Focus. Change channel. Change channel and come back. Do you hear me?”

He heard the guiding voice in the chaotic darkness and focused on it like a man drowning. “Yes,” he said obediently.

“Go to the closest exit and tell me where you are then come back.”

He let his senses reach out to see which direction to go. Down. The vice around his head tightened and he screamed. He had to go down! But that thing was down there, too.

Change channel. Change…
He screamed again at the pain in his head and he felt himself tumbling like a drunk acrobat. Down, down, down, somersaulting through the ether.

There was a glimpse…he could see something.

“What do you see, Agent 51?”

“The sign…says…” He tried to pronounce the German, panting the words out.
“Westlicher Ausgang.”

“Good. Now come back.”

He gratefully did so, opening his eyes, and looking around at the interior of the van. His monitors weren’t paying attention to him anymore as one shouted to the driver. The pain was receding, but he was still shaking from whatever it was that had attacked him. He looked down. He’d wet his pants. For the first time ever, he was afraid.

Helen forced herself to go even faster. She could do this. She had trained for this for two years and her body could take the punishment. All the while, her whole insides felt like a giant fist clenching tighter and tighter. It wasn’t painful—just tremendously uncomfortable—and it played havoc with her ability to think at all.

She had no idea what was happening, just that something was crying out to her to move quickly, that something was wrong. Instinct, latent sixth sense, whatever.
Get out! Get out!

She saw the exit and breathed a sigh of relief. Her eye had stopped doing that weird fluttering, thank goodness. For a moment there, she’d thought she was having a seizure of some kind.

She opened the door. At the same time, the awful squeezing sensation inside her stopped suddenly. She saw the CCC disguised vehicle she had arrived in heading down the alley toward her. The side doors opened and one of the operatives she had seen on the plane appeared.

The squeal of tires to the right. She turned. A dark brown truck, looking like it was a UPS truck or something, had just turned the corner. It could be making a delivery, except that it was speeding straight at her.

Everything went slow-motion in her head. She leapt into action, heading toward her agency’s vehicle, which was slowing down.

A man from the speeding truck hung out of the passenger window. She gasped as she felt the shot hit her side. She fell on her knees and did a body roll, then got up immediately. The operative from her agency had jumped out and was running in her direction, shooting at the van behind her.

“Hurry!” he yelled, his hand reaching out.

Helen’s legs felt like lead and she couldn’t seem to move any faster. The slow motion was real, she realized suddenly. Her movements were slowing down, as if…she had been drugged.

With the last of her energy, she flung herself toward her rescuer.

“Can’t…move…fast,” she gasped out as she grabbed him.

She wasn’t sure he heard her as he turned and calmly fired his weapon at the oncoming van, causing it to swerve, before turning to her. Then he half-dragged, half-carried her toward their waiting vehicle.

They launched themselves through the open doorway, hitting the floor, and Helen’s partner immediately climbed on top of her.

“Hey!” But her protest was muffled by the carpeting.

Helen heard the squeal of wheels as their van gathered speed. More shots, some of which hit the side of the vehicle with metallic thuds. She realized that the man on her was protecting her. There was the slam of doors and her body was no longer trapped. She lifted her head.

“Status, status, dammit!” De Clerq’s urgent voice piped up.

Helen frowned. That didn’t come from the earpiece. She then realized that it must be coming from the van radio.

“We’ve got her with us. A truck is right behind our vehicle. Better alert Number One and Number Nine at ground zero. I shot a GPS tag at it, so let’s hope it’s attached. The shots we exchanged are going to get Deutsche’s security operatives swarming around the scene,” the man beside her reported. He belly-crawled to the back of the van and peeked out of the back window. “Tell Number Nine I’m not in the building to help with retrieval. Question—shall we let that van follow us all the way or do we find a way to retrieve them for questioning, too? Over.”

“Copy on Hell’s status. Copy on alert to Number One and Number Nine. Our men around the perimeter are reporting high activity. Keep driving while I communicate with the others, over.”

“Copy.”

“Who are they?” Hell asked.

“No idea,” the man said.

“Umm, I think I was shot with some kind of drug. I can’t move very well.”

The man turned to her again. He checked her body, turning her on her back, lifting her arms and finally pulling something out of her side. “Tranq,” he muttered. He studied her. “You should be out like a light by now.”

“Yeah, well, supersoldier-spy and all that,” she quipped, with a weak grin. “Like the Energizer Bunny, I just keep going and going.”

“No pain?” he asked her.

“Nope.” She closed her eyes. “But your mentioning that I should be out like a light is making me feel weaker.”

“Of course,” he muttered. “Psychological.”

“Dr. Kirkland’s going to have a hell of a time when I get back,” she said with a smile. “The serum’s a success, though.”

“Hmm,” the man said. “They didn’t want to kill you. They fired real shots at me, but not you.”

“Probably wanted to capture me,” she suggested, opening her eyes. “They know about the key, then.”

He nodded. “I think it’s a good assumption that their plan was to get either you or the key, or both.”

“Thanks for coming to my aid,” she said. “What’s your name again?”

He paused, then replied, “Heath.” Abruptly, he stood up and said, “Why are we slowing down?”

“The vehicle behind us just turned left, sir.”

Heath looked back briefly. “Guess they’re giving up for now. Helen, you still have the item, right?”

“As far as I know,” she said. “There’s a small pocket inside my suit.”

He came to kneel down by her again. “Which side?”

She sighed. “I suppose you want to put your hand in my clothes.”

“Just to make sure it’s there. You were in some kind of trouble before you came out of the building.”

“There was no one with me,” Helen said. But how could she explain what had happened in there? She shrugged. “The drug was probably bothering me. Right side.”

She watched as he pulled down the zipper of her bodysuit. He adjusted his position so he could slide his hand inside. Their eyes met.

“You know, Heath, I usually don’t let my men touch me there on the first date.”

A glimmer of amusement touched his lips. “Your men?” he asked, raising his brows. He moved his hand and she felt him nudging the card against her chest. He continued holding her gaze as he pulled her pants back out, then added softly, “There’s touching, and there’s touching.”

Helen blinked and studied him for a second. Built like an athlete. Nice square jaw. His eyes reminded her of her favorite dog, Mimo, whose angelic eyes hid an imp that would rip apart a whole trash bag to go after the bone in there and then look at her with those heartbreaking hazel eyes when she got home. Mimo always got what she wanted from any man, woman or child by just looking at them, whether it was a gruff pat from the surly neighbor or a child to share his ice cream cone. Mimo was evil like that. And she had adored her.

“De Clerq, status has turned green,” Heath said, as he stood up. “Our pursuers tranqued Helen, so there was another agenda. I’d make a list of those people who would know about our Hell and RV program. Give me status of others, over.”

“Number One is on his way to airstrip. Number Nine retrieved just one target. The others escaped and there wasn’t time to run after him. Number Five’s waiting at airstrip. We want to know Helen’s status. As for the list, do you know the names that are going to be on it? Some of them are major players in the agencies, over.”

“Not my problem,” Heath said, looking down at Helen. “Helen can’t walk just yet, but she can talk. She might need to be carried. Maybe Number Five will make himself useful today. He hadn’t done much.”

Helen grinned. Number Five was Flyboy. Good to know these guys had a sense of camaraderie. From De Clerq’s report, she was getting a fair idea of what the rest of the “team” was doing. She had done her task and they were doing theirs. She frowned. Except for Number Nine. He didn’t retrieve somebody—who? One of two. The Cummings. Her frown deepened. Her fault, maybe. She’d caused him to lose time.

“Actually, Number Five has taken off to collect some satellite pictures of your chase. Your GPS dart hit its mark. Good work. You, too, Hell. We might get some more useful info about the people that attacked you, Hell, over.”

“Good,” she said. “I’d like to know that myself. Especially if it’s one of our agencies causing the trouble. What’s next on the agenda?”

“We all get home and you get to show off to the big brass what you’ve retrieved for them.”

“Okay, but will I ever know what the hell this operation’s about, besides getting a stupid decoder key?” she asked. “The mission is over so giving me details won’t interfere with my RV sessions.”

“We’ll discuss that during debriefing.”

“Heath, will you be there?” she asked.

His gaze roved over her prone body. “I have another task to do,” he said, before turning his attention back to the front.

Too many details destroyed objectivity in remote viewing because then the viewer would be creating the reality rather than collecting information. Once a session was over, the rest of the details would be provided, mostly to satisfy human curiosity. Sometimes, during her CIA sessions, they would just give her the percentage of success, without much else to tell her whether she “saw” the right target, or not.

She hoped CCC wouldn’t do that. She lay there, staring at Heath’s back. He was never there in the meetings. Was he her monitor?