Under Fire

“Yes.”

She jerked the hand holding the bottle and the water sloshed against the plastic. “That’s ridiculous. I wouldn’t work for an agency like that. Would you? You’re a Tempest agent. Are you telling me you all signed up for service knowing Tempest had bad intentions?”

“Not knowingly. Did you? How did you come to work at the lab?”

Unease churned in her gut and a flash of heat claimed her flesh from head to toe.

“What is it?” Max hunched forward, bracing his forearms against his thighs.

“Dr. Arnoff recruited me.” She pressed her fingers to her warm cheeks. “He gave me the job because I had nowhere else to go.”

“Why not, Ava?” His dark eyes burned into her very soul.

“I—I had lost my license to practice medicine. I was finished as a physician before I had even started. Dr. Arnoff gave me a chance. He gave me a chance to be a doctor again.” Her voice broke and she took a gulp of water to wash down the tears.

“Why? What happened? You’re a good doctor, Ava.”

His gentle tone and kind words had the tears pricking the backs of her eyes.

She sniffed. “I’m not a doctor. I made a mistake. Someone betrayed me, but it was my own fault. I was too trusting, too stupid.”

He opened his mouth and then snapped it shut. Running a hand through his thick, dark hair until it stood up, he heaved a sigh. “So, Arnoff took advantage of your situation, your desperation to get you to work for Tempest.”

“And you? Simon? The others? How did Tempest recruit you?”

He dropped his lashes and held himself so still, she thought he’d fallen asleep for a few seconds. When he opened his eyes, he seemed very far away. “You’re not the only one who has made mistakes, Ava.”

“So, what is Tempest? What do they do? Wh-what have you done for them?”

A muscle twitched in his jaw, and he ran his knuckles across the dark stubble there. “Tempest is responsible for assassinations, kidnappings, tampering with elections around the world.”

“I’m not naive, Max. A lot of covert ops groups are responsible for the same types of missions.”

“Tempest is different. An agency like Prospero may commit acts of espionage and violence, but those acts promote a greater good—a safer world.”

She crossed her arms and hunched her shoulders. “And what does Tempest promote?”

Max’s dark eyes burned as he gazed past her, his nostrils flaring. He seemed to come to some decision as his gaze shifted back to her face, his eyes locking onto hers.

“Terror, chaos, destruction.”

“No!” A sharp pain drilled the back of her skull and she bounded from the bed. “I don’t believe you. That turns everything we did in that lab, all our efforts, into a big lie. My coworkers were good people. We were doing good work there. We were protecting agents who were protecting our country.”

He lunged from his chair, slicing his hand through the air, and she stumbled backward as he loomed over her, his lean frame taut and menacing.

“Tempest agents do not protect this country. Tempest is loyal to no one country or group of nations. Tempest is loyal to itself and the shadowy figure that runs it.”

Her knees shook so much she had to grip the edge of the credenza. Despite Max’s sudden burst of fury, she didn’t fear him. The man had saved her twice. But she did fear his words.

Maybe he was delusional. Maybe this was how Simon had started. Maybe she should fear Max Duvall.

“I don’t understand.” The words came out as a whisper even though that hadn’t been her intent. She had no more control over her voice than she did the terror galloping throughout her body.

He ran both hands through his hair, digging his fingers into his scalp. “I don’t see how I can be any plainer. Tempest is a deep undercover agency, so rogue the CIA is completely in the dark about its operations and methods. Tempest carries out assassinations and nation building all on its own, and these interests do not serve the US or world peace.”

“Then what is their purpose?”

As if realizing his close proximity to her for the first time, Max shuffled back, retreating to the window, wedging a shoulder against the glass.

“I don’t know. Tempest’s overall goal is a mystery to me.”

“If Tempest is so evil, why are you one of its agents? You said you were recruited, but why’d you stay? There’s no way the agency could keep you in the dark, not...not like me.”

She held her breath, bracing for another outburst. Instead, Max relaxed his rigid stance. His broad shoulders slumped and he massaged the back of his neck.

“You really have no idea, do you? You haven’t figured it out yet.”

A muscle beneath her eye jumped, and she smoothed her hands across her face. She sipped in a few short breaths, pushing back against the creeping dread invading her lungs.

“Why should I know? You haven’t explained that part to me. You’ve made some crazy, wild accusations, throwing puzzle pieces at me, expecting me to fit them together when I haven’t even processed the mass murder I just witnessed.”

Her knees finally buckled and she grabbed for the credenza as she sank to the carpet.

Max’s long stride ate up the distance between them, and he placed a steadying hand on her shoulder. “Are you okay? We should’ve saved this conversation for morning, after some sleep and some food.”

When she didn’t respond, he nudged her. “Can you stand up?”

She nodded, but the muscles in her legs refused to obey the commands from her brain.

He crouched beside her, slipping one arm across her back and one behind her thighs. She leaned into him and he lifted her from the floor and stood up in one motion.

He was careful to hold her body away from his as he carried her to the bed, but for her part she could’ve nestled in his arms forever. She wanted him to hold her and tell her this was all a joke.

He placed her on the bed with surprising gentleness. “Why don’t you get some sleep, and we’ll talk about this over breakfast?”

She grabbed a pillow and hugged it to her chest. “I wouldn’t be able to sleep anyway. Tell me the truth. Tell me the whole ugly truth about what we were doing in that lab and why you stayed with Tempest.”

He backed up and eased onto the edge of the bed across from hers. He blew out a long breath. “I stayed with Tempest even after I discovered their agenda because they wanted me to. Tempest controlled my mind and my body. They still do.”

“No.” Ava squeezed the pillow against her body, her fingers curling into soft foam.

“It’s a form of brainwashing, Ava, but it goes beyond the brain. It’s my body, too.” He pushed up from the bed and plucked up a lamp with a metal rod from the base to the lightbulb. He unplugged it and removed the shade. Gripping it on either side with his hands, he bent it to a forty-five-degree angle. Then he held up the lamp by the lightbulb, which had to still be hot, and didn’t even flinch.

Her eyes widened and her jaw dropped. “Dr. Arnoff’s vitamin formula—stronger, faster, impervious to pain.”

He released the bulb and the distorted lamp fell to the floor. He examined his hand. “So, he did tell you.”

“That’s what he was working on, but he told me it was years from completion.”

He held up his reddened palm. “He completed it.”

“What you’re telling me—” she swung her legs over the side of the bed “—is crazy. You’re saying that Dr. Arnoff’s formula created some kind of superagent and that Tempest sent these agents out into the world to do its bidding?”

“Yes, but I told you it’s more than physical.” He tapped the side of his head. “Tempest messed with our minds, too.”

She bunched the bedspread in her hands. “How? That didn’t happen in our lab.”

“No. That occurred in the debriefing unit in Germany where we went after every assignment.”

She pinned her hands between her knees as her eyes darted to the hotel door. Max Duvall could be crazy. This could all be some elaborate hallucination, one that he’d shared with Simon Skinner. Then her gaze tracked to the metal rod of the lamp, which he’d folded as if it were a straw. So, he was crazy and strong—a bad combination.

“How did they do it? The brainwashing?”

He squeezed his eyes closed and massaged his temple with two fingers. “Mind control—it was mind control and they did it through a combination of drugs, hypnosis and sleep therapy.”

“What is sleep therapy?”

“That’s my name for it. The doctors would hook us up to machines, brain scans, and then sedate us. They said it was for deep relaxation and stress reduction, but...” He shook his head.

“But what?” She wiped her palms on the bedspread. The air in the room almost crackled with electricity.

“It didn’t do that. It didn’t relax us, at least not me and Simon. After those sessions, a jumble of memories and scenes assaulted my brain. I couldn’t tell real from fake. The memories—they implanted them in my brain.”

She gasped as a bolt of fear shot through her chest. “They wanted you to forget the assignments.”

“But I couldn’t.” He shoved off the window and stalked across the room, pressing his palms against either side of his head. “Simon and I, we remembered. I don’t know how many others did.”

He really believed all of this, and he blamed her for administering the serum. Maybe the men at her house had been there to protect her from Max. The pressures of the job had driven them both off the deep end. Simon had snapped, and Max was nearing the same precipice.

“I-is that what drove Simon to commit violence? The implanted memories?”

“No.” He pivoted and paced back to the window, a light sheen of sweat breaking out on his forehead. “The implanted memories were fine. It was the flashes of reality that tortured us.”

If she kept pretending that she believed him, maybe he’d drop her off at the airport without incident. She could make up family somewhere, a family that cared about her and worried about her well-being. A fake family.

“The reality of what he’d done for Tempest pushed Simon past the breaking point?”

“It’s the serum.” He turned again and swayed to the side. He thrust out an unsteady hand to regain his balance. “Simon tried to break the cycle, but you can’t go cold turkey. I told him not to go cold turkey.”

A spasm of pain distorted his handsome features, and Ava tensed her muscles to make a run at the door if necessary. “I’m not sure I understand, Max.”

“The pills.” He wiped a hand across his mouth and staggered. “I need the pills. I’ll end up like Simon without them.”

She braced her hands on her knees, ready to spring into action. The pills, again. He’d been going on about blue pills at the lab when he rescued her, too.

Max was talking gibberish now, his strong hands clenching and then unclenching, his gait unsteady, sweat dripping from his jaw.

“What pills?” She licked her lips. Her gaze flicked to the door. If she rolled off the other side of the bed, she could avoid Max, pitching and reeling in the middle of the room. Then she’d call 911. He needed help, but she didn’t have the strength or the tools to subdue him if he decided to attack her.

“Pocket. The blue.” Then he pitched forward and landed face-first on the floor.

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.”