Unleashing the Storm (14 page)

He
wished like hell he could contact ACRO and find out more, but communications
with his agency had to remain limited and be carefully arranged with no
deviations from standard operating procedure. Anything else could put his
assignment—and his life—at risk.

Besides,
his assignment wasn’t to assist any of the dozens of ACRO missions taking place
around the world. His objective was to gather intelligence, and since he was
the first to have gotten in—alive and as something other than a prisoner
anyway—he had to let the small fish go and stay focused on the trophy tuna.

It
was a mission that could potentially last for years, and one that could get him
very dead after long hours of painful torture. No fucking way was he ever going
to be tortured again.

So
yeah, whoever that guy had been on the phone, if he was ACRO, he was on his
own. Ryan had bought him some time with his false report to Andrew, but the
dude had better keep his ass covered. The other Itor agent sent as backup
hadn’t checked in, so the next time “Derek” called, Ryan would have to report
the impersonation.

And
Itor would descend on the target in force.

WEDNESDAY
MID-MORNING

Annika
stalked into Dev’s office, her head pounding for a lot of reasons, but the
raging hangover topped the list.

“Rough
night?” Dev asked over the rim of his coffee cup, and she didn’t bother to ask
how he knew. Anyone who considered his blindness a handicap underestimated him
big-time.

“
Rough
is putting it mildly.”

After
Creed had left her spitting mad at the shithole bar, she’d slammed nearly a
dozen shots of tequila, flirted with as many guys, who couldn’t come close to
comparing to Creed, and then when one got a little too friendly, she’d reacted
badly enough to start a brawl. A brawl she’d also ended.

“I’ve
been trying to get hold of you since last night. You haven’t answered my
calls.” She tossed a key onto his desk. “And you changed your locks.”

He
cocked an eyebrow and put down his cup. “You broke into my house ten times
before I gave you a key, and you’re saying you couldn’t get in?”

She snorted.
Yeah, she’d found ways into his supersecure fortress of a house, mostly by
frying his security systems, but every time she broke in, he thanked her for
finding a weakness and then fixed the problem so no one could gain entrance the
same way again. His house was now impenetrable, and he knew it.

“I
finally had to make an appointment to see you.”

“
You
made an appointment?”

“Well,
no. But I thought about it.” For all of two seconds. Then she showed up at
Dev’s office and stared at Marlena until the other woman huffed and buzzed her
in.

The
computer next to him beeped, and he ran his fingers over the touch pad before
asking, “What happened last night that you needed to see me so badly?”

“Nothing
much, really. Just some asshole totally dumped me in this dive. Left me alone
like an idiot with a bunch of psycho strangers.”

Dev
breathed a lengthy, tolerant sigh. “You were assisting CIA operatives on
missions when you were nine, Annika. You were a world-class assassin at the age
of fourteen. You can shock an entire room full of people into unconsciousness
with a single touch. So I know you aren’t asking me to believe you were scared
and helpless.”

She
felt her cheeks heat, because yeah, that line wasn’t going to work and she
shouldn’t have tried. Dev never let her get away with anything other than the
truth. But the truth, beyond the fact that she’d simply not wanted to be alone,
wasn’t something she wanted to share. They’d talked about her past, her
childhood, the things she’d done in the name of national security and world
peace. They discussed things she never opened up about to anyone, but her sex
life had been largely ignored, probably because, ick, it would be like talking
orgasms with a parent.

Not
that she knew what a parent was, since the CIA couple who raised her from the
age of two had gone through the motions to give her a pseudo-normal childhood,
but had never succeeded. Not when the word
love
had never been spoken.
And not when games like hide-and-seek were played with Tasers, and “family”
camping trips turned out to be exercises in survival. And how many parents not
only taught a six-year-old how to play poker, but how to slit a throat with the
king of hearts?

“Why
did you change the locks, Dev? What’s been going on with you lately?”

“It’s
a private matter. I don’t want you involved.”

Private
matter.
Hurt winged through her. He’d
locked her out of his house, and now out of whatever was going on with him.
“Whatever it is, I can help. I want to help.”

“Out
of the question. This is something I have to deal with on my own. The fewer
people who are involved—”

“Who
are they?” Jealousy lashed at her. Control had been drilled into her from an
early age, but restraint had always been an issue, and she didn’t know how to
handle an emotion she’d never experienced. “Why do you trust someone else but
not me?”

Throwing
back his head, he closed his eyes, and she knew why he’d been avoiding her. He
didn’t want to have this conversation. “Annika, you have to let this go.” He
dropped his head to spear her with a fierce stare despite his blindness. “Now.”

“Fine,”
she snapped. “Then send me on an assignment. Get me out of your hair.
Obviously, that’s what you want.”

Another
tolerant sigh stirred the papers on his desk, fueling her anger. She wasn’t a
goddamned child.

“You
know the rules. Everyone takes downtime following a mission, and you need it.”

“How
the hell do you know what I need? Well, you might know if you’d deigned to see
me last night. You might know how the only guy I’ve ever slept with totally
dissed me like I’m not good enough for him.” The sting of tears burned her
eyes, which pissed her off more, because Creed wasn’t worth a single tear. It
wasn’t like there was anything between them. She ground her teeth and clenched
her fists in her lap. “Doesn’t matter. It was nothing but sex anyway.”

“Some
asshole was using you for sex?”

We
were using each other.

“It’s
more complicated than—”

“You’re
having sex?”
he asked, as though what
she’d said had only now sunk in.

“Dev.
Hello…I’m not a kid anymore.”

A
fact he’d apparently not confronted even when he’d learned about her private
lessons with a Seducer when she turned eighteen. It had only made sense that
she learn to kiss, to touch, to blow a guy’s mind as well as his dick, should
the situation arise, if she was going to be a convincing agent. Since she
hadn’t been able to have sex to gain the experience on her own, Seducer
training filled in the gap.

Dev
had acknowledged that fact with dignity, grace and only a little cursing…but
when she went for her next lesson, the Seducer, Adam, had all but slammed the
door in her face. To this day, he paled when he saw her, and she wondered what,
exactly, Dev had said to the poor guy.

“What’s
his name?” Dev demanded.

Annika
almost smiled at the big brother act, because even though she didn’t have a
brother, she imagined one might sound a little like Dev right now. Sure, she
was upset at having been locked out of his life all of a sudden, but now she
knew it wasn’t because he didn’t care about her.

“Do
you tell me the names of everyone you sleep with?” The list would read like a
phone book. She couldn’t count the number of times she’d gone to his house and
had to hang out by herself until he finished with whoever he had in bed at the
time.

He
cursed, long and loud. “Look, I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be in a
relationship right now.”

“What
do you mean, ‘right now’?”

“You’re
young—”

“I’m
almost twenty-fucking-two!”

To
his credit, he looked a little uncomfortable as he shifted in his seat.
“Physically.”

“Oh,
so, what? You’re saying I’m emotionally retarded?”

“I’m
saying that you didn’t have a normal upbringing. You could be vulnerable to
some bastard who doesn’t understand you.” He shot her a pointed look. “Or who
wants you for one thing and you mistake it for something else.”

“Oh,
God. You’re reading way too many chick magazines. Sex isn’t love. I get it.”
And her mistaking sex for love was so not the problem here. The problem was
that Creed was an arrogant asshole who thought he could tease her and then
leave her high and dry. He’d rejected her, when all she’d wanted was sex. It
wasn’t like she was asking for a damned commitment. What the hell was his
problem?

“Just
do me a favor and stay away from men for a while, okay? Especially the son of a
bitch who took advantage of you.”

She
wanted to tell him that Creed had done nothing of the sort, but a glance at her
watch told her she was late for the martial arts class she taught on base to
operatives, so instead she stood.

“Then
send me on an assignment. Anywhere. Anything. I need to get away.” She needed
to be needed. And since Dev clearly didn’t need her for whatever supersecret
bullshit he was dealing with, a job would take her mind off things.

“Annika—”

“Please.”

Silence
stretched, and then Dev gave a slow nod. “I’ll see what I can dig up.”

“Thank
you.”

“Don’t
thank me. I’m not doing you any favors. You need the break.” He sighed. “I can
never say no to you.”

“You
spoil me.” And she wasn’t so spoiled that she couldn’t see that. He’d always
been good to her, even when she didn’t deserve it. “Dev?”

“Hmm?”

“Why
didn’t you put me down?”

His
eyebrows rose half an inch, probably matching hers. She’d been as surprised by
the question as he was, because although she’d always wondered, she’d been
afraid to ask.

“You
were sixteen when you came here. A kid. I wasn’t going to kill a kid no matter
how dangerous you were.”

He
was such a softie. How he managed to run an operation like ACRO with a soft
streak like that was beyond her. “You still didn’t need to keep trying to reel
me in. You could have caged me in a dungeon and let me rot. Killed me on my
eighteenth birthday. It would have been the smart thing to do.”

Especially
after what she’d done to him and several other ACRO agents.

They’d
kept her locked in a training cell, and after she’d seriously injured a couple
of her handlers, they’d resorted to speaking with her through the comms system,
and tranquilizing her for medical appointments. Dev came daily for weeks,
trying to talk her down, but she hadn’t believed anything anyone said to her.
Finally, she settled down, tricked them into thinking they’d won.

And
when Dev came into her cell to talk to her face-to-face, she’d sent enough
volts into him to knock him across the room. She’d escaped, had run out of the
training building and into the main compound, where alarms were blaring and
operatives were swarming. They’d surrounded her, dozens of them. She’d put up
her electrical field so no one could touch her, and she could have gone through
the crowd that way, except that something had held her immobile.

Later,
she’d learned her capturer was a telekinetic named Dawn, but even without the
invisible hold, Annika doubted she’d have moved.

The
people circling her were just like Dev had described. She’d lived her life with
the CIA believing she was unique, a weapon with no function except to kill. But
to her right a man was bouncing balls of fire off his fingertips. To her left,
a woman levitated a foot off the ground. The woman in front of her unzipped her
black flight suit and stepped out of it…and instantly blended into the
background like a chameleon.

Annika
had stood there, openmouthed, gaping at the group, and when Dev pushed his way
through the crowd, limping, his arm at an awkward angle and blood streaming
from a gash in his scalp, she released the power she’d been holding. Dev had
nodded at Dawn, and suddenly Annika was free.

Dev
had held out his hand, and without a word, she’d taken it, allowed him to lead
her to his office, where, after he’d been stitched up and his shoulder
dislocation repaired, he’d explained again what ACRO was about, and how she
would never be used the way the CIA had used her.

He’d
rescued her that day, had saved her life when he’d had every right to take it.
She owed him, and though she was angry at being shut out, she couldn’t be an
outright jerk.

In
fact, she should probably tell him that if he needed anything, she would be
there for him—but then, he knew that.

And
obviously it didn’t matter to him.

WEDNESDAY
6:30 P.M. MST

Deb
was good for something, although if she’d been expecting anything from Ender in
return, she’d have been sorely mistaken.
Sore
being the key word,
because he’d suddenly felt the overwhelming urge to hang a shingle around
himself that read Stud Services Inc. And he was damned tired of drinking water
and Gatorade.