Cherry Adair - T-flac 09 (15 page)

She couldn’t think of a logical, safe way to go through with this pregnancy and keep the baby. Or even go through the next six months and then give the child up for adoption. She couldn’t risk another life, she just couldn’t.

So the decision had been made. And she’d stick to it.

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“By two tomorrow it’ll be over.” They’d told her to bring someone to drive her home afterward.

There was no one.

Substituting efficiency for emotion, Heather had arranged for a limo service to pick her up at the clinic.

Despite her tight budget she hadn’t had a choice. A cab wasn’t dependable. She’d gone grocery shopping yesterday, stocking up on multiple comfort foods, there were fresh sheets on the bed, and new magazines on the bedside table. She was ready. It wasn’t as though she’d be incapacitated for days or weeks. It was a simple procedure…

God. Her throat ached with unshed tears and her chest felt unbearably constricted and tight.

She was incapacitated already.
“Ring, damn it!”

Human contact, a voice, even an
angry
voice right now would at least cut through some of her self-pity and the dreadful silence that seemed to throb with the sound of two heartbeats.

“Caleb Edge, where
are
you?”

THESASSI, MATERA

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FRIDAY, APRIL14

1900

Caleb avoided being mauled by a hair, two seconds, and his ability to teleport the hell out of Dodge. He shimmered outside PDQ. But not before one of the killer dogs attempted to take a chunk out of his leg.

Still feeling the hot fetid canine breath on his exposed skin, he thumped against the stucco wall at his back, waiting for his heart to go back down his throat. Holy crap. That was
close.

Dogs.

Shaw had a pack of f-ing dogs in there.

Rotties? German Shepards? Damn Dobermans? Caleb hadn’t bothered to find out. They’d come at him fast and furious, their barks serious as they charged to attack in a cacophony of sound loud enough to wake the sleeping men, and alert the ones who weren’t.

Pandemonium reigned.

Men couldn’t see him, but dogs sure as shit
sensed
something was there. Something dangerous.

Something threatening.

He didn’t TiVo that little encounter. Not that it really mattered. No one had seen him, and dogs frequently went off, barking at nothing. The thought of getting everyone up and running, only to find zip, amused him. Which made him feel marginally better about freaking when the dogs had come at him.

“Yo,” he greeted Dekker, his internal “wizard radar” detecting the other man as he shimmered to Caleb’s location outside.

“That you?” Dek was referring to the reason the dogs were still barking deep inside the cave. Faint, but
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unmistakable.

“Yeah.”

“Get bit?”

“Suit’s ripped.” Practically unheard-of. The LockOut suit, invented by T-FLAC’s science guy, Jake Dolan, was a modern miracle of fabrication and engineering. It was practically indestructible. He hadn’t realized he’d been bitten, but then again the dog’s teeth had been damn sharp.
Better the suit than me,
he thought, just as he felt warm blood dripping down his thigh. Damn. In a second, when the adrenaline rush passed, it was going to smart like hell.

“Medic?”

“Nah. Just a scratch.” He’d had worse. Much worse. Limped out of that firestorm in Madrid six months ago with a shattered kneecap. Yeah. He’d had worse. A bullet to the knee trumped a dog nibble hands down.

“Don’t suppose you got Shaw before you played with the nice doggies?”

“Negative.”

“Damn,” Dekker muttered harshly, disgust evident in his voice. “Where
is
this fucker? Could he have slipped past us?”

“No way. Unless he has some secret escape route.” His stomach tightened. What kind of super brain only had one exit from a wormhole? But they hadn’t located anything. “Okay, it’s possible, but unlikely—Anything?” he asked as Rook shimmered to them.

“Nada.”

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A dog yipped in the distance, probably in response to the ruckus inside. A noise no human would hear through the soundproof walls. A radio’s tinny voice softly played a love song. Caleb’s mood, crappy for months, shifted up a notch to foul.

“Shit.”

Caleb easily recognized Farris’s quiet curse. The gang was all here. Since they all maintained invisibility, he could only sense where each man stood. “Regroup,” he told them. As in how in the hell were they going to extract Shaw? Huff and puff and blow his house down? The four of them immediately teleported to a house they’d commandeered across town.

“Fuck it,” Dekker muttered as they materialized in the living room of their safe house. “Let’s just burn the son of a bitch out.”

Hannah might be in there.“Can’t,” Caleb reminded him, grabbing the large can of Brazil nuts he’d left on the table before they left. He flipped off the lid. “Too densely populated.” He poured several nuts directly into his mouth and crunched down. Better.

When he glanced up because it was suddenly quiet, he saw the others staring at him. “What?”

“What the flock is your obsession with those things?” Farris asked, pointing at the can Caleb had in his hand. “You must’ve eaten ten pounds of that shit in the last couple of weeks.”

Caleb popped another fat nut into his mouth. “What’re you? My mother? You don’t like nuts?”

“I like nuts just fine. But I’d puke eating
that
many.”

“Yeah, well I picked up some stomach thing last month, and these things make me
not
puke. Be happy.”

He glanced at the others as he poured a few more into his palm then closed the container. “Anyone else like to lodge a complaint about my f-ing eating habits?”

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He got a lot of head-shaking in response.

Caleb peeled off the headgear of his LockOut suit and ran his hands through his flattened hair. His head itched, his chest ached, his leg stung like fire, and he was so pissed off and frustrated he wanted to chew glass. At least the Brazil nuts had eased the slight queasiness he’d been experiencing lately.

He ignored the fact that his annoyance and frustration were disproportionate to the job at hand because he was normally a patient guy, and waiting around to get things done was part and parcel of the job.

It wasn’t the job. It was…Hell. He didn’t know.

It was as if his life had somehow gone slightly out of focus. As though there was something missing.

Something out of kilter. And he had no clue
what to do about it.

Had he imagined those bites were shrapnel because that’s where his head was because of the tangos he dealt with every day? Or had she been telling the truth?
Had
she been bitten when she was a kid? Had Brian Shaw had those goddamned dogs when Hannah was eight? He understood the need for guard dogs. But those were not the kind of dogs one allowed anywhere
near
a child. Caleb glanced down at the sluggish blood oozing from his thigh, and thought of the scars on Hannah’s shapely butt.

Not dog bites. Worse.

He blinked the image away.

He grabbed the first-aid kit. Forcibly, he pushed the thoughts of Hannah, her ass, and her pale creamy skin out of his mind so he could concentrate. Absently he rubbed his palm over his chest. Unwilling to admit his true fears to the others, he simply said, “We’re going to have to come up with a better way to do this. Too many civilians around.”

He hadn’t sensed her inside the house, hadn’t seen her, but he wasn’t going to take that risk. Not even for T-FLAC.

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Duty o’er love—

Yeah. That, he thought sourly.

“He’s got to leave sometime,” Keir Farris pointed out, doing the LockOut suit gyration to peel the tight black fabric down his body. It looked as though he was peeling away his shadow.

“Why?” Caleb put the box he was carrying on the table, and wrenched the cap off a bottle of water with more force than necessary.
Be careful what you wish for,
he thought, feeling feral. Damn, he should be used to it by now. He’d felt like this for goddamn months. He wasn’t a touchy-feely kinda guy. He’d never been one to analyze his emotions. Jesus. He was doing nothing
but.
Emotions! He was losing it.
Get
a grip. Just get a grip.

He’d wanted to get back into the thick of things.
Well, sucker, here you are. In the thick of things.

How’s that working out for you?!
Shit.

“Think Shaw does his own grocery shopping?” he asked rhetorically, downing the water, before getting down to the business of checking out the damage to his leg. He was tempted to slap a Band-Aid over the punctures and call it good, but he didn’t want to end up foaming at the mouth, or getting delirious and crying out some woman’s name.

“Those two old women make the trek up the path with handcarts lugging food and supplies every morning. No one’s come out in the two days we’ve been there.”

“No shit, Rook, we know. We all saw them together, remember? Back to the drawing board.” Farris stood there, bareass naked, his suit a black puddle around his feet. He was a big man, with a head of curly dark hair, a poet’s eyes, and a crooked nose. Man was a brawler. He had one of the vilest tempers Caleb had ever witnessed. And the most control. He was one scary dude.

Caleb considered Keir a good friend. But he didn’t need to see him naked.

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Farris stepped out of his suit, hooked it with his foot, flung it in the air, caught it, and started toward one of the bedrooms. Hopefully to get dressed.

“The only way into his stronghold is through the front door. Right?” His voice, quiet as it was, carried across the room just to the other’s ears. Remarkable.

“Been there, done that.” Caleb pointed out, seating himself at the kitchen table—now their command center—and opening the first-aid box. He’d have to strip as well. It was useless trying to cut into the suit, no matter how sharp the scissors. The dog’s teeth had slit it, though; he’d have to tell Jake to do an upgrade.

If he wanted to treat the leg out here he’d also have to get out of his suit. When had his life turned to shit? Maybe around the time Hannah had left—he rose, deciding he’d be more comfortable in shorts.

The leg throbbed and pulsed. Had to be his bum leg of course. “Be right back.” He strode into the other bedroom to change.

He came back a few seconds later wearing shorts, sat down, and expertly tended the bite. Since he couldn’t heal his own wounds, he had to do it the old-fashioned way. The gash was four inches long, the skin around it already bruising. No big. He cleaned it and stuck a couple of butterfly bandages on it, preferring those to his own not-so-neat stitches. He put the items away and focused on work.

“Gather around, children.” His sat phone vibrated on the table.

“Lark,” he told the others, picking it up. “Hey beautiful. Whatcha got? Yeah, knew about them—Okay.

Hang on, I’ll put you on speaker.” He punched the button and laid the phone in the middle of the table.

“Want to go on screen?” he asked, reaching for the hookup to the computer.

“No thanks, I’m in the tub.” Without waiting to see how that comment had been received, she continued. “Listen up, boys and girls,” Lark sounded as if she were standing right with them in the room.

Which was a little disconcerting for her operatives. “Research has just handed me what they swear on their mother’s lives is Shaw’s full banking client list.

“For those of you who whined because this op was too tame,” she said dryly, “here’s the good news.

We already knew about Six March, Algeti National Army, and the Blue Wolves. Shaw has the Who’s
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Who of Terrorists on his client list. But we’ve had a couple of surprises. You guys are gonna love this.

Worse
than the Sharks and the Jets,” she told them almost with relish.

The Sharks and the Jets from
Westside Story
were Lark’s barometer on the tango scale. Right up there near the top. The sound of water splashing came over the speaker and Rook wiggled his eyebrows.

“Whoever’s doing that,” Lark snapped, “stop it!”

“You have ears like a bat, Larkie.”

“That’s
Miss
Larkie to you, Anthony.” Her tone went back to business. “Listen up. Because I love you guys the best, I’m giving you a special treat. We’ve just added a few more bad guys to Shaw’s client list.

Fazuk Al-Adel. Also Saif and Muhsin El-Hoorie. How do
those
three nasty boys float your boats?”