Under Fire

“You should be glad I was there or Skinner would’ve gotten to you, too.”

Folding her arms across her stomach, she slumped in her seat, all signs of outrage gone. She made a squeaking noise like a mouse caught in a trap, and something like guilt needled the back of his neck.

He rolled his shoulders, trying to ease out the tension that had become his constant companion. “I was at the lab because I found out Skinner was going to be there. We can’t call the police for obvious reasons. I’m deep undercover. I don’t want to stand around and explain my presence to the cops.”

“And your own agency? Prospero?”

“Yeah, Prospero.” If Dr. Whitman wanted to believe he worked for Prospero, why disappoint her? The less she knew the better, and it sounded as if she didn’t know much—or she was a really good liar. “I’ll call them on my own. I wanted to get you out of there in case there was more danger on the way.”

“You seemed convinced there was.”

“We were in the middle of the desert, in the middle of the night at a top secret location with a bunch of dead bodies. I didn’t think it was wise for either of us to stick around.”

She leaned her head against the window. “What should I do when I get home?”

He drummed his thumbs against the steering wheel. If Tempest and Dr. Arnoff had kept Dr. Whitman in the dark, she should be safe. Tempest would do the cleanup and probably resume operations elsewhere—with or without Dr. Ava Whitman.

“Once I drop you off and hit the road, you can call the police.” He frowned and squinted at the road. “Or do you have a different protocol to follow?”

She turned a pair of wide eyes on him. “For this situation? We had no protocol in place for an active shooter like that.”

Maybe the whole bunch of them out there, including Dr. Arnoff, were clueless. No, not Arnoff. He had to have known what was going on, even if he didn’t know the why.

“Then I guess it’s the cops.” Even though the local cops would never get to the whole truth. He pointed to the lights glowing up ahead. “We’re heading into the city. Can you give me directions to your place? Is there someone at home?”

She hadn’t touched her cell phone once since they escaped from the lab. Wouldn’t she want to notify her husband? Boyfriend? Family?

“I live alone.”

He supposed she’d want to be with someone, have someone comfort her. God knew, he wasn’t capable. “Do you have any family nearby? Any friends to stay with?”

“I don’t have any family...here. I’m kind of new to the area and I spend a lot of time at the lab, so I haven’t had much time to cultivate friends.”

Hadn’t she told him she’d been working at the lab for two years? Two years wasn’t enough time to make friends? Maybe she’d been taking some of her own medicine.

“When the police come, they may want to take you back to the scene. You’ll probably have to lead them to the facility.”

She gasped and grabbed his arm. “What do I tell them about you?”

He stiffened and glanced down at her hand gripping the material of his jacket. She dropped it.

Was she offering to cover for him? He figured she’d waste no time at all blabbing to the cops about the man who’d shot Skinner and then whisked her out of the lab. “Tell them the truth.”

No law enforcement agency would ever be able to track him down anyway. Tempest had made sure of that.

“I can always tell them you were a stranger to me, that you wouldn’t tell me your name.” Her fingers twisted in her lap as she hunched forward in her seat.

She was offering to cover for him. Why would she do that, unless she knew more than she’d pretended to know?

“You’d lie for me?”

She jerked back and whipped her head around. “Lie? You’re an agent with a government covert ops team. If I learned anything at the lab, it was how to keep secrets. I never revealed any of my patients’ names to anyone, and I’m not about to start now.”

“I appreciate the...concern.” He lifted a shoulder. “Tell the cops whatever you like. I’ll be long gone either way.”

She tilted her chin toward the highway sign. “That’s my exit in five miles.”

“Then I’ll deliver you safe and sound to your home, Dr. Whitman.”

“You can call me Ava.”

After riding in silence for a while, Ava dragged her purse from the floor of the car into her lap and hugged it to her chest. “What happened to Simon? He looked...dead inside.”

“He snapped.” His belly coiled into knots. If Simon could snap like that, he could snap, too.

“Did you know about his condition somehow?”

“I had an idea, and when I discovered he was heading out to New Mexico I put two and two together.”

“Was it the stress of the assignments? I saw most of you four times a year, but of course you weren’t allowed to discuss anything with me. You all seemed well-adjusted though.”

Max snorted. “Yeah, I guess some would call that well-adjusted.”

“You weren’t? You’re not? Can I do anything to help you?”

She touched his arm again, this time lightly, brushing her fingertips across the slick material of his jacket.

The human contact and the emotion behind it made him shiver. He clenched his teeth. “You can’t do anything to help...Ava. You’ve done enough.”

She snatched her hand back again and studied her fingernails. “This is the exit.”

He steered the car toward the off-ramp and eased his foot off the accelerator. She continued giving him directions until they left the desert behind them and rolled into civilization.

He pulled in front of a small house with a light glowing somewhere inside.

She grabbed the door handle and swung open the door before the car even stopped.

“Hold on. I’ll walk you up.”

“I thought you were anxious to get rid of me.”

He scratched the stubble on his chin. That hour-long drive had been the closest he’d come to normalcy in a long time. He didn’t want to leave Ava, but he had to—for her own safety.

“I was anxious to get you away from the lab and back home. The police can pick it up from here.”

If there was anything left of the lab when they got there. Tempest had to know by now that one of its agents had gone off the rails. The crashes and noises at the lab could’ve been Tempest.

“Well, here I am.” She spread her arms.

He jingled the keys in his palm and felt for his handgun and other gear on his belt as he followed her to the front door.

She dragged her own keys from her purse and slid one into the dead bolt. It clicked and she opened the door.

Apprehension slithered down his spine, and he held out a hand. “Wait.”

But it was too late.

Ava had stepped across the threshold and now faced two men training weapons on her.

And this time she wasn’t behind bulletproof glass.

Chapter Three

Simon was back—in stereo. Ava caught a glimpse of two men with guns pointed at her for a split second before Max snatched her from behind, lifting her off her feet and jerking her to the side.

At the same instant, she heard a pop and squeezed her eyes closed. If the men had shot Max, she was finished.

An acrid smell invaded her nostrils and she opened her lids—and regretted it immediately. The black smoke pouring from her front door stung her eyes and burned her throat.

“Hold your breath. Close your eyes.” Max lifted her and tucked her under one arm as if she were a rag doll.

She felt like a rag doll. The jolt of fear that had spiked her body when she saw the gunmen had dissipated into a curious out-of-body sensation. A creeping lethargy had invaded her limbs, which now dangled uselessly, occasionally banging against Max’s body.

If she was lethargic, Max was anything but. His body felt like a well-oiled machine as he sprinted for the car, still clutching her under one arm. He loaded her into the front seat and seconds later the car lurched forward with a shrill squeal.

“Get your seat belt on.”

Her hand dropped to the side of the seat, but her fingers wouldn’t obey the commands of her fuzzy brain. At the next sharp turn, she fell to the side, her head bumping against the window.

A vise cinched her wrist. “Snap out of it, Ava! I need you.”

How had Max known that those three little words amounted to a rallying cry for the former Dr. Ava Whitman?

She rubbed her stinging eyes. She sniffled and dragged a hand beneath her nose. She coughed. She grabbed her seat belt and snapped it into place.

Without taking his eyes from the road, Max asked, “You okay?”

She ran her hands down her arms as if wondering for the first time if she’d been shot. “I’m fine. Did they shoot at us? How did they miss...unless...?”

“I’m okay. They didn’t get a shot off.”

“I thought— What was all that smoke? The noise?”

“I was able to toss an exploding device at them before they could react. I don’t think they were expecting you to have company.”

“Let me get this straight.” She covered her still-sensitive eyes with one hand. “Two men had guns pointed at us when we walked through the door and you were able to pull me out of harm’s way and throw some smoke bomb into the house at the same time?”

“I had the advantage of surprise.”

Her hand dropped to her throat. “Did you know someone would be there waiting? Because I was sure surprised to see them standing there.”

“Let’s just say I had a premonition.”

She shook her head. “Superhuman.”

Max jerked the steering wheel and the car veered to the right. “Why’d you say that?”

She tilted her head. Why the defensiveness?

“When I saw those guns, I thought we were both dead. Somehow you got us out of there alive. Did I ever thank you? Did I ever thank you for what you did at the lab?”

“Not necessary.” He flexed his fingers.

“Are you going to tell me what those men were doing at my house? Are they with Simon? Did they come to finish the job he started?”

She held her breath. If she had a bunch of covert ops agents after her, what was her percentage of survival? Especially once Max Duvall left her side, and he would leave her side—they always did.

“I’m not sure, Ava.”

The name sounded tentative on his lips for a man so sure of himself. Agent Max Duvall had always been her favorite patient and it had nothing to do with his dark good looks or his killer body—they all had those killer bodies.

Most of the agents were hard, unfriendly. Some wouldn’t even reveal their names. Max always had a smile for her. Always asked about her welfare, made small talk. She looked forward to the quarterly visits by Max—and Simon.

Smashing a fist against her lips, she swallowed a sob. Simon had been friendly, too. He’d even admitted to her that he was engaged, although such personal communications from the agents were verboten. Where was Simon’s fiancée now?

Did Max have a wife or a girlfriend sitting at home worried about him, too?

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

She blinked and met Max’s gaze. They were back on the desolate highway through the desert, and Max’s eyes gleamed in the darkness. A trickle of fear dripped down her back. Maybe those men back at her house were there to save her from Max. Maybe Max and Simon were in league together.

“Are you afraid of me?” His low, soft voice floated toward her in the cramped space of the car.

“N-no.” She pinned her aching shoulders back against the seat. “No, I’m not. You saved my life—twice. I’m just confused. I have crazy thoughts running through my head. Do you blame me?”

“Not at all.”

“If you could tell me what’s going on, I’d feel better—as much as I can after tonight’s events. I deserve to know. Someone, something is out to extinguish my life. I need to know who or what so I can protect myself.”

“I’ll protect you.”

“From what? For how long?” Her fingers dug into the hard muscle of his thigh. “You have to give me more, Max. You can’t keep me in the dark and expect me to trust you. I can’t trust like that—not anymore.”

Tears blurred her vision, and she covered her face with her hands. Hadn’t he just told her to snap out of it? If she wanted to prove that she deserved the hard truth, she’d have to buck up and quit with the waterworks.

“You’re right, Ava, but I have a problem with trust, too. I don’t have any.”

“You don’t think you can trust me?” Her voice squeaked on the last syllable.

“You worked in that lab.”

“The lab that you visited four times a year. The lab that kept you safe. The lab that treated your injuries—both physical and mental. The lab that made sure you were at your peak performance levels so you could do your job, a job vital to the security of our country.”

“Stop!” He slammed his palms against the steering wheel, and she shrank against her side of the car.

“That lab, that bastion of goodwill and patriotic fervor, turned me into a mindless, soulless machine.” He jabbed a finger in her face. “You did that to me, and now you have as much to fear from me as you did from Simon. I’m a killer.”

Chapter Four

Icy fingers gripped the back of Ava’s neck and she hunched her shoulders, making herself small against the car door. She shot a side glance at Max. The glow from the car’s display highlighted the sharp planes of his face, lending credence to his declaration that he was a machine. But a killer? He’d saved her—twice. Unless he’d saved her for some other nefarious purpose.

Her fingers curled around the door handle, and she tensed her muscles.

Her movement broke his trancelike stare out the windshield. Blinking, he peeled one hand from the steering wheel and ran it through his dark hair.

“I—I won’t hurt you, Dr. Whitman.”

She whispered, “Ava.”

He cranked his head to the side, and the stark lines on his face softened. “Where can I take you...Ava?”

She jerked forward in her seat. She couldn’t go home, as if she’d ever called that small bungalow teetering at the edge of the desert home.

But if Max thought he could launch a bombshell at her like that and then blithely drop her off somewhere, he needed to reprogram himself.

Had he really just blamed her for Simon’s breakdown?

“Before you take me anywhere—” she pressed her palms against her bouncing knees “—you’re going to explain yourself. How is any of this my fault?”

He squeezed his eyes closed briefly and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I shouldn’t have yelled, but I don’t know if I can trust you.”

“Me?” She jabbed an index finger at her chest. “You don’t know if you can trust me? You’re the one who whisked me away from the lab, led me into an ambush and then threatened to kill me.”

He sucked in a sharp breath. “That wasn’t a threat. I don’t make threats.”

His words hung in the space between them, their meaning clear. This man would strike without warning and without mercy. The fact that she still sat beside him, living and breathing, attested to the fact that despite his misgivings he must trust her at least a little bit.

“You warned me that you were a killer, like Simon.”

“What exactly do you think the agents of...Prospero do if not kill?”

“You kill when it’s necessary. You kill to protect the country. You kill in self-defense.”

“Is that what you think Simon was doing?”

She stuffed her hands beneath her thighs. “No, but that’s what you were doing when you took him out.”

He nodded once and his jaw hardened again. “I won’t hurt you, Ava.”

She swallowed. His repetition of the phrase sent a spiral of fear down her spine. Was he trying to convince her or convince himself?

“Tell me where I can drop you off, and you’ll be fine. Friends? Family?”

“I told you, I don’t have any friends or family in this area.” She pushed the hair from her face in a sharp gesture, suddenly angry at him for forcing her to admit that pathetic truth.

“I can take you to an airport and get you on a plane to anywhere.”

“No.” She shook her head and her hair whipped across her face again. “Before I get on a plane to anywhere, I want you to explain yourself. What happened to Simon? Why did you blame me? Why did Simon attack the lab?”

“If you don’t know, it’s not safe for me to tell you.”

“Bull.” She jerked her thumb over her shoulder. “Those two men were waiting for me at my house. I wasn’t safe back there, and I’m not safe now. What you tell is not going to make it any worse than it already is. And you know that.”

Lights twinkled ahead, and she realized they’d circled back into the city after a detour on a desert highway so that he could make sure they hadn’t been followed.

He pointed to a sign with an airplane on it. “I can take you straight to the airport and buy you a ticket back home to your family. You can contact the CIA and tell them what happened. The agency will help you.”

“But the agency is not going to tell me what’s going on. I want to know. I deserve to know after you accused me of being complicit in Simon’s breakdown.”

“You were.”

She smacked her hands on the dashboard. “Stop saying that. This is what I mean. You can’t throw around accusations like that without backing them up.”

He aimed the car for the next exit and left the highway. “It’s going to be morning soon. Let’s get off the road, get some rest. I’ll tell you everything, and then you’re getting on that plane.”

She sat quietly as Max followed the signs to the airport. He turned onto a boulevard lined with airport hotels and rolled into the parking lot of a midrange highrise, anonymous and nondescript.

He dragged a bag from the trunk of the car and left the keys with the valet parking attendant.

She hadn’t realized how exhausted she was until they walked through the empty lobby of the hotel.

A front desk clerk jumped up from behind the counter. “Do you need a room?”

“Yeah.” Max reached for the back pocket of his camouflage pants. Without the bulletproof vest, the black jacket and the ski mask, he looked almost normal. Could the hotel clerk feel the waves of tension vibrating off Max’s body? Did he notice the tight set of Max’s jaw? The way his dark eyes seemed to take in everything around him with a single glance? Normal was not a word she’d use to describe Max Duvall.

“Credit card?”

“We don’t use one. Filed for bankruptcy not too long ago.” Max offered up a tight smile along with a stack of bills. “We’ll pay cash for one night.”

The clerk’s brow furrowed. “The problem is if you use anything from the minibar or watch a movie in the room, we have no way to charge you.”

Max thumbed through the money and shoved it across the counter. “Add an extra hundred for incidentals.”

The clerk’s frown never left his face, but he seemed compelled to acquiesce to Max. She didn’t blame him. Max was the type of man others obeyed.

Five minutes later, Max pushed open the door of their hotel room, holding it open for her.

She eyed the two double beds in the room and placed her purse on the floor next to one of them. If the clerk downstairs had found the request for two beds odd, he’d put on his best poker face. Maybe he’d figured their bankruptcy had put a strain on the marriage.

She perched on the edge of the bed, knees and feet primly together, watching Max pace the room like a jungle cat.

He stopped at the window and shifted to the side, leaning one shoulder against the glass.

“Do you want something from the minibar? Water, soft drink, something harder?”

She narrowed her eyes. She hadn’t expected him to play host. Despite rescuing her from mortal danger, he hadn’t seemed too concerned with her well-being. He’d gone through the motions and had acknowledged her shock and fear, but he’d done next to nothing to comfort her. Because he still didn’t trust her.

“I’ll have some water.” She pushed up from the bed and hovered over the fridge on the console. “Do you want something?”

“Soda, something with caffeine.”

The man didn’t need caffeine. He needed a stiff drink, something to take off the hard edges.

She swung open the door of the pint-size fridge and plucked a bottle of water from the shelf. She pinched the neck of a wine bottle and held it up. “You sure you don’t want some wine?”

“Just the soda, but I don’t mind if you want to imbibe. You could probably use something to relax you.”

“That’s funny.” She placed the wine on the credenza and grabbed a can of cola from the inside door of the fridge. “I was just thinking you needed something to relax you.”

“Relax?”

He blinked his eyes and looked momentarily lost, as if the idea of relaxation had never occurred to him.

“Never mind.” She crossed the room and held out the can to him.

When he took it, his fingers brushed hers and she almost dropped the drink. That was the first time he’d touched her without grabbing, gripping and yanking. Although she’d touched him before, plenty of times.

Like all of the agents, his body was in prime condition—his muscles hard, his belly flat, barely concealed power humming beneath the smooth skin. As a medical professional, she’d always maintained her distance but she couldn’t deny she’d looked forward to Max Duvall’s appointment times.

But that was then.

She planted her feet on the carpet, widening her stance in front of him. “Are you going to tell me what this is all about now? Why did Simon go on a murderous rampage, why is someone out to get me, and why did you blame it all on me?”

He snapped the tab on his can and took a long pull from it, eyeing her above the rim. “Let’s sit down. You must be exhausted.”

“I am, but not too exhausted to hear the truth.” She walked backward away from him and swiveled toward the bed, dropping onto the mattress. She had to hold herself upright because out of Max’s tension-filled sphere, she did feel exhausted. She felt like collapsing on the bed and pulling the covers over her head.

He dragged a chair out from the desk by the window and sat down, stretching his long legs in front of him. It was the closest he’d come to a relaxed pose since he’d stormed into the lab in full riot gear.

“What do you know about the work at the lab?”

“Didn’t we go through this already? We support a covert ops agency, Prospero, by monitoring and treating its agents. Part of the lab is responsible for developing vitamin formulas that enhance strength, alertness and even intelligence.”

“But you’re not part of that lab.”

“N-no. I’m the people doctor, not the research doctor.”

He slumped in his chair and took another gulp of his drink. “How do you know you support Prospero? Isn’t that supposed to be classified information? After all, the general public knows nothing of Prospero...or other covert ops agencies under the umbrella of the CIA.”

“We’re not supposed to know, but like I said, people talk.” She waved her hand in the air. “I’ve heard things around the lab.”

“You heard wrong.”

She choked on the sip of water she’d just swallowed. “I beg your pardon?”

“The rumor mill had the wrong info or it purposely spread the wrong info. You don’t support Prospero. You support another covert ops team—Tempest.”

“Oh.” Clearing her throat, she shrugged. “One agency or the other. It doesn’t make any difference to me. They must be related groups, since both of their names come from the Shakespeare play.”

He nodded slowly and traced the edge of the can with his fingertip. “They are related, in a way.”

“So what difference does it make whether we supported Prospero or Tempest?”

“I said the agencies were related, not the same. One is a force for good, and the other...” His hand wrapped around the can and his knuckles grew white as he squeezed it.

The knots in her stomach twisted with the aluminum. “Tempest is a force for evil? Is that what you mean?”