gloves. She wasn’t concerned for her safety. She was always prepared
for any emergency. Caution was a way of life for her, and she’d been
trained since birth to be composed under extreme circumstances.
With a bulky gloved finger, she pressed the entrance code, and the
chamber pressurized. The inner door opened and she stepped into the
lab. She nodded to a colleague working at a nearby station, sequencing
a variant of Ebola. After connecting an overhead airline to the suit’s
port, she made her way down the aisle, the line following behind her
like a colorful yellow umbilicus. She’d volunteered for the night shift
six months previously, establishing her routine, arriving a little early,
leaving a little later. Her colleagues appreciated her diligence and
her willingness to take the graveyard shift for longer than the usual
mandatory rotations. At her station, she booted up her computer and
retrieved the samples she planned to run on the gel plates that night,
along with a second rack of tubes. Over the past six months she’d been
carefully siphoning off micro-aliquots of avian flu stock, too tiny to be
noticed by anyone else, until she had a single test tube half-full of one
of the most virulent synthetic contagions ever produced.
When she left at the end of her shift, she’d slide the tube into a
fold in her suit beneath her arm and secure it in place with a strip of
the special adhesive they kept for emergency repairs if one of the suits
should be accidentally torn. Like a tire patch, the instantly self-sealing
adhesive would provide enough protection until the lab worker could
get to the decontamination chamber. Tonight, the lifesaving material
would allow her to secrete out a virus capable of killing thousands. She
wasn’t really interested in the deaths of thousands, however, only one.
President Andrew Powell stood for everything she despised—a
spokesman for the rich, a defender of the privileged, a champion of
those without morals or values. Her father had taught her and her
brothers and sisters the right path, raising them to be survivors. He’d
encouraged them to excel, schooling them at the camp with the children
of other survivalists, setting them on the path to positions where they
could someday make a difference. She’d always known she had a
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mission, and now she was going to fulfill it. She would help him make
his message heard—America for Americans—and now that a leader
had emerged, they would have a president who would speak for the
righteous. She would help make that possible.
The digital clocks at the far end of the room simultaneously
projected the time and date in New York City, Washington DC, Los
Angeles, Hong Kong, Sydney, New Delhi, Berlin, London. Seven p.m.
in Atlanta. Twelve more hours and the first stage of her mission would
be complete. Soon the reclaiming of America would begin.
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chapter twenty
Evyn handed Wes the last slice of pizza. “You finish it.”
“I’m stuffed.” Wes sat on the bed with her back propped
against the wall. Some of the shadows around her eyes had faded, but
her cheeks were still hollow, and her fingers trembled slightly as she
reached for a napkin.
“You need the carbs—eat.” She hated seeing Wes hurt. Wes didn’t
complain—she wouldn’t, and her attempt to feign normalcy only
made Evyn want to punch something. She had to do something, even
something mindless, or she’d do something they’d both regret. She
stacked the remains of their meal—crumpled paper napkins, a couple
of paper plates, the pizza box. “I’ll take the empty box to the trash. The
pizza was great, but I’d rather not smell the aftermath all night.”
The room was generous by motel standards—two slightly larger
than single beds separated by a two-drawer nightstand with a peeling
brown lacquer finish. A goosenecked reading light, dusty shade askew,
sat on the water-stained top. The bathroom had been carved out of the
closet area—a small toilet jammed in next to the sink, a two-and-a-half
square foot shower stall, and a solitary overhead light. The closet held a
few bent wire hangers and nothing else. Neither she nor Wes had taken
anything from their go bags other than toiletries.
“Need a hand?” Wes asked.
“I got it,” Evyn said, not looking at Wes. She’d sat on the far end
of the bed during their takeout dinner, a meal she’d shared a hundred
times in a hundred nondescript rooms just like this one. She’d never
been as grateful for the pizza box sitting open between them as she had
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been tonight, though—every time she looked at Wes and remembered
the way she had looked slowly spinning deeper underwater, she wanted
to touch her. Just to assure herself Wes was warm and safe.
She gathered the trash and stood. “Need anything?”
“Nope. I’m going to grab another shower.”
“Still cold?”
Wes grinned wryly. “I’m not really sure. Feels that way, but it
might just be my imagination.”
Evyn checked the thermostat on the wall above the dresser, a
vintage fifties maple affair with wooden knobs on the drawers and a
rickety mirror. Seventy degrees. The room was toasty. Wes still wasn’t
fully recovered. “Take your time—use all the hot water if you need to.
I’m good.”
“Okay.” Wes rose, glanced at the door. A frisson of anxiety shot
along her nerve endings. She’d never minded being alone, but she
didn’t want Evyn to walk out that door. She’d paced the room during
the ten minutes Evyn had been gone getting the pizza and hadn’t been
able to relax until Evyn appeared again, a spark of triumph in her eyes
as she’d held the pizza box aloft like a trophy. She’d looked vibrant
and vital and sexy. Wes clamped down on the surge of heat that tingled
down her thighs. “So I’ll see you in a few minutes.”
“Right.” Evyn reached behind her and fumbled for the doorknob,
her gaze locked on Wes. “I’ll be here.”
Wes broke eye contact first and disappeared into the bathroom.
A second later the water came on in the shower. Evyn imagined Wes
sliding out of her clothes and stepping naked into the heat. She’d seen
enough of Wes’s body through that thin, damp white towel back in
the locker room to have a pretty good idea of exactly what Wes would
look like naked. Ordinarily she didn’t have any problem populating
her fantasies with women she knew, but she chased the enticing image
of Wes’s body from her mind. She didn’t want to fantasize about her.
What she wanted to do was kiss her. She almost had—would have, just
then, if they’d been any closer. She had quite a lot of practice reading
women’s eyes, and she’d read desire in Wes’s. All the same, she hadn’t
had such a bad idea in longer than she could remember. Sleeping with
Louise when she hadn’t been one hundred percent present didn’t hold a
candle to the insanity of kissing Wes.
Wes had had a serious shock just a few hours ago—had almost
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drowned. She was vulnerable. Physically depleted. Battered and bruised.
By her own admission, not really on top of her game. She didn’t need
Evyn coming on to her—she needed a solid night’s sleep and probably
a talk with someone about what had happened. Evyn wasn’t one of
those agents who found psych support to be intrusive or threatening.
Her older sister was a psychologist and one of the best listeners she’d
ever met. She’d learned when she was struggling with the kinds of
identity issues all adolescents face that talking with her sister helped.
And when she’d told Chris she was a lesbian, her sister had been cool.
Hell, she talked to Gary when things got really hairy—when the stress
and the insane schedules and the lack of a personal life started to make
her crazy. She wanted Wes to get any help she needed—and making a
move on her did not qualify as helping.
Evyn pulled on Wes’s jacket, not so much because she wanted to
keep dry in the still-falling snow but because she liked wearing it. An
unusual intimacy for her—wearing someone else’s clothes. Silly, but no
one needed to know. The jacket was a little big. Wes’s shoulders were
a little wider, her arms a little longer, but she wasn’t so much bigger
their bodies wouldn’t fit together seamlessly. Wes’s breasts were just
the right size for their torsos to meld perfectly, Wes’s thighs just long
and tight enough to wrap around hers with no space between them. The
fist of want in her belly tightened, and she dashed outside, welcoming
the blast of cold wind and icy snow. The storm had picked up. Two
inches of wet powder covered the parking lot. No cars passed on the
two-lane. The road remained unplowed.
After tossing the detritus into the open maw of the dented blue
Dumpster tucked behind the end of the building, she ran back along the
row of darkened rooms. She stamped her feet to clear the snow from her
boots and jumped inside their room, shutting the cold night outside.
Wes stood in the middle of the room with a towel cinched above
her breasts, leaving her upper chest, sculpted shoulders, and a lot of
thigh exposed. A sliver of light slanted through the partially open
bathroom door behind her, highlighting her strong curves and sinewy
planes. The red-green glow of the motel sign flickered through the
open slats on the blinds hanging on the single window beside the door,
leaving Wes’s face mostly in shadow. Evyn flashed again on the picture
of Wes wrapped around her, nothing between them. Her skin tingled
and heat flooded her core.
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“Better?” Evyn backpedaled until her ass hit the wall. She couldn’t
read much in Wes’s face, but she bet hers was easy to decipher. She’d
had more control when she was fifteen than she did now.
“Yes,” Wes said. “How is it outside?”
“Snowing pretty heavy.” Evyn couldn’t move. Couldn’t take her
eyes from Wes’s face.
“Your hair is wet.” Wes took a step closer, ran her fingers through
the hair at Evyn’s temples. “You should’ve put the hood up.”
Evyn laughed shakily and rubbed her hair with a hand. “I thought
I could outrun the snowflakes.”
Wes laughed. “Why does that not surprise me? Do all federal
agents think they’re capable of superhuman feats?”
“Only the ones who are, like me.” Evyn grinned, watching the
smile reach Wes’s eyes. She loved making her smile. Still, she looked
strained, as if she’d been pulling doubles for a week. “How are you
really feeling?”
Wes shrugged. “Like I had a really long day. Nothing some sleep
won’t cure. I’m not that out of practice working twenty-four on—I still
cover the ER pretty regularly.”
“Yeah, but you aren’t usually physically accosted in the ER.”
“I wasn’t today either,” Wes said gently. “I took a header off the
boat—none too proud of that actually. I should have ducked. I saw it
coming.”
“For how long—a second?” Evyn shook her head. “You never had
a chance.”
“And neither did you.” Wes brushed a loose curl away from the
corner of Evyn’s mouth. “You must have hit the water pretty hard to
bruise your face.”
“You hit a lot harder.” A pulse beat rapidly in Wes’s throat,
matching the crazy rhythm of Evyn’s heart. Evyn started to sweat. Wes
was inches away. She wanted to touch her. “You should get dressed
before you get chilled again.”
“You should get undressed before you end up the same way.”
Wes reached out and unzipped the windbreaker. “I left a little hot
water. You need it?”
“I’m good,” Evyn said, never having made a less true statement in
her life. She didn’t know what she was, but it wasn’t good. Turned on,
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desperate to ease the shadows Wes couldn’t quite hide, aching to hold
her. “Wes, I—”
“I want to get one thing clear,” Wes said.
Evyn drew up short. Here it came. The no-fraternization-at-work
speech. Her own rule, the one she should have been remembering, and
the one she forgot every time Wes was within a mile of her. “You don’t
need to say anything. I agree with you.”
Wes’s eyebrows shot up. The corner of her mouth lifted. “Do you?
I didn’t realize you were psychic as well as superhuman.”
“Another big bad federal agent skill,” Evyn said as nonchalantly
as she could manage. “Always a bad idea to complicate a working
relationship. No need to go there.”
“You’re right, we do agree.” Wes’s tone was soft and serious, but
her eyes were partly amused. “Although I was going to say that what
happened out there this afternoon was an accident. No one could have
predicted it. No matter who set up the exercise, no one was at fault for
that cable snapping and me going overboard.”
A hot surge of embarrassment flooded Evyn’s belly. Hell, she
couldn’t have been more wrong about what Wes had intended to say,
and now she’d tipped her hand and probably made a fool of herself. “I
won’t argue. Obviously I can’t win.”
“It’s not about winning.” Wes stroked the backs of her fingers over
Evyn’s cheek, just beneath the bruise. “How about just believing it?”
Wes’s mouth was so close, all Evyn could do was watch her lips
move and struggle to make sense of what she was saying. Her mind
heard the words but her body translated them into something else.
Want, desire, an unfamiliar need. “Wes. I’m a little off balance here.”
“I know.” Wes’s voice was barely above a whisper. “So am I.”
Evyn went completely still.
“You saved my life today and I’m grateful. I know you were doing
your job, and I would’ve done the same.” Wes watched the muscles
