Veil of Justice, Shadows of Justice Book 3 (9 page)

He didn't answer and she didn’t press. Rest
would probably do him more good. Unless what she interpreted as
weary was the effect of the drug. God! Couldn't anything be
clear?

His condition went beyond her scope of
knowledge. Neither of them could've expected this. A glance was
enough to know it wasn't a simple matter of a few good meals and
some exercise. One more part of her plan shot to pieces. He needed
help, but she didn't know where to find it.

She pushed out of the car and paced. The
movement helped her think.

Petra was out since anything she knew might
get passed inadvertently to Kristoff. Her own childhood home was
compromised – even if Nathan could make a trip that far.

She looked heavenward, praying for…what?
Help? Or just a big lightning bolt to end the dilemma? She just
didn't know which dilemma, Nathan's or her own. Refusing to venture
down that mental mine field, she moved to the trunk to find the
extra license plates.

Maybe if she stayed off the main highways,
they could make a little progress today. She wanted them out of
here, wanted him safe so he could rehab his body and spirit. She
wanted to get on with her own goals of vengeance and mercy.

Mostly she wanted to get away from the
heartbreaking sight of him. It shamed her and would infuriate him
if he knew, but she could hardly hold back the waves of pity. She
couldn't imagine the price he'd paid for a mission that might never
get resolved.

She popped the trunk and rummaged around.
After last night's wild ride, nothing was where she'd originally
packed it. Just as she found what she wanted, a weight fell onto
her back, nearly dumping her into the trunk.

She twisted around, one arm up in defense,
the other cocked, ready to strike. She pulled the punch when she
recognized Nathan. "What the hell are you doing?" she asked,
reaching out to support him.

His hands braced on the open trunk lid, his
legs trembled against hers. His lips parted, but the words were in
her head rather than her ears. "
Remembering how to
walk
."

His mouth twitched and she realized he was
trying to remember how to smile. "Did it work?"

She let her head drop, along with all her
defenses, and just laughed out loud at the absurdity of it all.
Telepathically, she heard him laughing too.

But laughing while in an awkward position and
covered with a rather heavy body wasn’t so easy. Gasping for air,
she pushed against his shoulders, instantly hating the bony feel of
him.

"
You didn’t used to hate me
."

"Don’t – hate – you," she gritted. It took
all her strength to ease him over until the car bore his weight.
Then she smiled at him to prove the truth of her statement. "I hate
what prison did to you. Read me right or not at all."

As his battered eyes locked with hers, she
expected to be scolded for being grumpy. Instead her lips grew warm
and her nipples pebbled beneath a silky, invisible caress.

She didn’t close her eyes and arch into him
like she wanted, like she'd done in their past telepathic
encounters. "That's a good memory you've got."

"
I thought so
." In her head, he
sounded as breathless as she felt. His ghostly pale face told her
how much this little test had cost him.

"Can you remember how to get back in the
car?"

"
Just give me a minute
."

It took closer to ten, but he made it,
leaning heavily on the way. She only had to help him balance a
couple times. "Now will you rest?" she asked when he was buckled
into the passenger seat again.

His head just flopped back onto the seat.

She took that as a 'yes'.

* * *

Nathan struggled against the suffocating
sensation of claustrophobia. Reminding himself this was his car,
the pet project he'd rebuilt from the chassis, didn’t help much.
Logic didn’t seem to have any effect against the unreasonable
terror that clawed in his gut and scraped his nerves.

He tried to focus on the positive, tried to
find anything uplifting within his reach. The exercise proved he
could feel more than just the momentum of the car. He could feel
the purr of the motor humming through his muscles. It wasn’t much
improvement, but it was enough to keep him hoping that he’d beat
this damned virus sooner rather than later.

The Paracuron Kristoff had used to paralyze
him was definitely of the smart variety. Now that things had calmed
down, he could feel it searching out and trying to latch onto his
more vulnerable areas. Like this claustrophobia thing.

It clearly wasn’t designed to kill him, since
his heart and lungs were still functioning. It must not even be
designed to mimic death for long. He came to this conclusion
because Kelly had finally stopped shaking him to see if he was
breathing. Now she just ran her fingers over his face and muttered
in a voice too low to make out the words.

Spending so much time on the telekinetic
driving effort wiped him out. His systems were overwhelmed and his
body out of shape. He’d worry that even Kelly’s thoughts were
muddled and cloudy, except he felt himself drifting in that
twilight between awake and asleep.

Again her fingers caressed his cheek, the
sensation cool and comfortable. "Just rest. We’ll get help
soon."

He took a slow breath, willing his lungs to
fill just a little deeper this time. He wished for the umpteenth
time that he’d developed a passion for limousines. The Mustang felt
way too small. But rest was good. He could do that. Help he wasn’t
sure about, it sounded like too much work. Rest was better. He
dozed off, thinking of Kelly.

Beautiful, careful Kelly filled his dreams
and ignited his fantasies. Her dark, glossy hair fell like silk
over his face and chest, a curtain enfolding just the two of them,
keeping the world out. Her wide black eyes glistened with emotion.
He wished like hell he could move. He wanted to touch her, to
deliver with his body what he’d once promised with his mind.

Her mouth covered his, hot and possessive,
her breath drowning his. Her hands skated across his chest, his
neck, firm and demanding. He willed himself to respond, to find a
way to give her what she wanted.

"This isn’t funny Nate. C’mon back," she
ordered, her hands thudding against his chest.

He tried to tell her he’d do anything for
her, but she clamped her mouth over his, impeding his attempts at
speech.

Again her breath became his, filling him,
fueling an onslaught of desire and need. He banded his arms around
her, felt her breasts crush to his chest, felt her breathing catch.
Ah, that was more like it. His lips found hers and he plundered,
taking her like an open offering. He tasted and teased, mating with
her mouth as he so desperately yearned to mate with her body.

She wriggled, her hips grinding into his
throbbing erection. She jerked and gasped, but he held tight.

He used her surprise to his advantage,
pinning her beneath him. His mouth found the smooth column of her
throat and he inhaled the untamed fragrance that was hers alone.
Aiming lower, determine to feast on the sweet swells of her breast,
her heated words finally registered on his lust-deafened ears.

"Not the time, Burkhardt."

Her hands weren’t clinging, weren't bringing
him closer, they were pushing him away. "
What the hell
?"

"You tell me," she answered, gripping his
face in her hands, her eyes searching his. "One minute you’re
squealing like a car alarm. The next you’re hard as iron and ready
to do it right here on the road."

He blinked a couple times, staring down at
her. "I can see you." He combed his fingers through her hair. "It’s
not just a memory or visualization. It’s real. Right now real."

He shifted his hips, nearly sighed as his
erection found the perfect nest between her thighs. If he never
felt anything again, he could die a happy man.

She caught her lower lip between her teeth.
"Nothing gets past you." She pushed at him. "Except maybe that
we’re lying in a ditch and it’s nearly dawn."

Reluctantly, he slid to the side, but he kept
an arm around her waist. The cool earth immediately chilled his
side, if not his ardor. "It’s damp too."

"Gee. Didn’t I mention that?"

He sat up and brought her with him to sit in
his lap. She was a delicious pressure torturing his long-denied
physical needs. She scowled but he didn’t let her move. "How did we
get out here?" He glanced around, but the tree-lined ditch didn’t
give away much about the location. "Where is here?"

She stared at him as if he’d just dropped
from the sky.

"What?"

Her tongue darted out and slid over her lip.
Her gaze fell to his mouth and he knew his eyes were reflecting the
same hunger radiating from her. How was he supposed to ignore such
a blatant invitation?

"Kelly," he said slowly, struggling to keep
his voice steady, "why do I feel almost normal?"

"I don’t know."

Her hands skimmed his shoulders, bringing his
attention to his torn shirt. He gave her a little shake. "Tell me
what you do know."

"You –" She picked at the corner of the
uppermost vital stat sensor on his chest. "You – well these things
– started squealing. From what I know, they only do that when a
patient flat lines in respiration or heart rate."

He nodded, beginning to understand. He’d
learned the same basics during his military training.

"I pulled over, hauled you out of the car and
started life saving measures."

"Like mouth-to-mouth?" He gave her his
cockiest grin.

She scowled. "You would’ve preferred to
suffocate?"

"Not at all." He stole a quick kiss. "Thank
you for saving me."

In the poor light it was hard to tell by her
face, but her body language said she was blushing. "So how’d you
deactivate the virus?"

"No clue." She shrugged. "I thought you did
that. Especially when you suddenly...umm..."

"Did this?" He kissed her, languidly this
time, exploring her mouth and every delicious response in his body
and hers. He kissed her until he felt her pulse racing to match his
own.

"Yeah, that," she said breathlessly, when he
released her.

He’d imagined this countless times during his
incarceration. As the mission deteriorated, he’d lived from one
moment of their link to the next, always hoping for more. More
time, more detail, more depth. That hope, that search kept him sane
in the bizarre and dangerous prison system. Now he understood that
all he’d hoped and imagined paled in comparison to being with her
in person.

He smoothed her hair behind her ears,
thrilled to move without laboring over each twitch of muscle fiber.
"Your beauty stuns me, but your spirit leaves me humbled."

Her eyes widened and her kiss-swollen lips
gaped. "Who said that?"

Nathan let his fingers roam over her dark,
pixie-fine features while he debated his answer. "Can’t recall," he
fibbed. "Someone old and dead by now, I’m sure." He certainly felt
older after prison and without her he’d surely be dead. "Isn’t the
thought alone worth another reward?"

He made an exaggerated pucker, watching her
eyes warm and soften, giving him every reason to hope for a willing
intimacy from her. Then her head swiveled toward the sound of a
large truck or transport lumbering up the road.

She pushed up and away, but not before he
caught the shadow of regret in her eyes. "We need to keep moving,"
she said, licking her lips again. "You ready?"

"Yes, ma’am, more than. Can you tell me what
you did while we’re moving?" Nathan jumped to his feet, marveling
at his quick and apparently complete recovery. Nothing hurt. Not
his head, not his feet, though they still looked like hell. He
didn't even have any hunger pains.

The scowl he associated with her thinking
deeply, flashed across her brow. "It must’ve been Mira."

He heard her voice, but didn’t register the
answer. He was suddenly absorbed in the disaster zone that was his
Mustang. "This baby’s not cut out for off-roading." When he’d left
for this assignment it was in mint condition. "Good Lord! What
happened?" he asked, running his hands gingerly over the rear
fender, brushing at the top layer of mud. "She’s a mess."

"That I can explain. Now, get in the
car."

He didn’t respond to her authoritative tone.
He couldn’t. He just walked a slow circuit around his baby, feeling
tears well up in his eyes. All the hours he’d put in. Hours that
added up to days, weeks, and months of searching and installing
every part. He’d lived and breathed every inch of restoration to
make this classic Mustang a work of art.

"She’s a mess," he repeated, rubbing at the
dull ache lingering in his temple.

"I’ve taken good care of her," Kelly
insisted. "I don’t like it any more than you do. I just had to make
her blend in around here."

"Calisto, how could you?"

Her head snapped up. "Pardon me? What did you
call me?"

Reluctantly, he looked away from the car to
the woman. Face pale, her full lips compressed into a disapproving
line, he struggled to recall what he’d said. He’d thought
‘
Kelly
’, but something else had come out of his mouth.
"Calisto. Cali?" He paused as information and impressions rushed
his consciousness. "Your real name. Your real, ah, self."

Her eyes flashed hot with temper and
something that might’ve been worry in a lesser woman. Then she
ducked into the car and the engine roared to life.

At least that sounded like the masterpiece he
remembered.

He heard the brake release and stood
dumbfounded as the car slowly rolled forward. Yanking himself back
to action, he reached for the door and jumped in, barely gaining
his seat as she shifted into second gear. She was seriously pissed
off.