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  It was dark, cold, and clear. The first chopper, which delivered Morales, had landed close to the entrance of the mine. The whop-whop-whop of the chopper blades thundered through the air, its lights a bubble in the darkness.

  Hunt, Taylor in his arms, ran. He ignored the fire in his side and bolted like a sprinter trying to break the three-minute mile.

  Navarro yanked open the door, climbed in, and reached for her. Hunt didn’t want to hand her up, but he had no choice. Navarro took Taylor in his arms while Hunt climbed in. Daklin handed Savage up, then followed her in, yanking the door shut behind him.

  “Go, go, go,” Hunt yelled at the pilot, and the chopper took off in a smooth, vertical lift.

  The medic clambered around the others. He looked from the blanket-wrapped but clearly naked Taylor, to Savage sprawled on the floor, to Hunt’s side. “Which patient should I take first?” he asked.

  “Navarro, see what you can do to contain Savage’s bleeding,” Hunt replied. “Here’s your priority, Doc,” he said, nodding at Taylor. He felt irrational. Insane. Out of his mind with worry.

  “Let’s have a look then, all right?” The doctor’s Afrikaans accent was thick and hard to understand. Hunt needed every nuance to be crystal clear. The doctor peeled off the blanket, leaving Taylor pale and bare against the gray wool blanket. The Blue Star diamonds winked like white fire around her slender neck.

  She looked vulnerable, defenseless, lying there. Hunt wanted to punch something. Someone. “What can I do?” he demanded, feeling helpless as he kneeled on the other side of her.

  “Take the necklace off, okay? I’ll check her out.”

  Hunt fumbled with the clasp, then drew off the heavy jeweled collar and stuffed it into his pocket. He kept his attention on the man’s hands as they traveled competently over Taylor’s still body. Her pale skin looked translucent. Fragile. Her eyes sunken and shadowed, her lips white. She appeared as if every vestige of her life force had been sucked out of her. Ah, Jesus!

  “Tell me her symptoms from the very beginning, will you?” the doctor said, then continued examining every inch of Taylor’s skin as Hunt rattled off everything he’d observed.

  The symptoms sounded almost as bad as watching her experience them. The doctor merely made a sound in response and continued checking her. Hunt’s heart was firmly in his throat as he watched the man’s every move.

  Panic, an unknown emotion, swamped him. He reached over and took Taylor’s limp hand, then noticed that his own hand shook. Bloody hell. His hands never shook. “Navarro, find out our ETA . . . Well?” he demanded, as the doctor took his sweet time.

  “No lesions—not yet, at any rate. Can somebody hold a light? Ja, like that. Danke,” he told Daklin as Daklin trained his searchlight near his hands. “Let’s turn her over.”

  Hunt’s jaw clenched as he eased Taylor over onto her stomach, turning her head gently to face him as the doctor ran his fingers over her back and down her hips and legs all the way to her slender feet.

  “There are a couple of good hospitals closer,” the doctor told him. “But I want to take her to Jo’burg General. They have an excellent poison control unit. Without knowing what the substance is, I can’t risk giving her anything until the lab identifies it.”

  “You can’t just do nothing,” Hunt insisted, feeling his own heartbeat escalate as his fear grew.

  The doctor raised his eyebrows. “The wrong antidote could kill her faster than the poison. Without proper lab work, I can’t even risk giving her fluids. They might speed the absorption rate of whatever is in her system. Do you understand?”

  Yes. Hunt understood. He understood that his heart was being ripped out, as every second Taylor slipped further and further away from him.

  “ETA, thirty-eight minutes,” Daklin yelled over the sound of the blades.

  Too long. Too goddamned long.

  “Taylor will make it,” Hunt said as he met the doctor’s eyes. “She will make it.”

  But the expression on the doctor’s face told him that was highly unlikely.

  Fifty-six

  JOHANNESBURG

  Daklin slung an arm over the chair back next to him as Hunt walked around his outstretched legs. “If you continue pacing like a caged tiger,” he told Hunt. “That ferret-faced little nurse will come back in here and ream you. Again. You just had sixty-some stitches taken in your hide, pal. Maybe you should do what they told you to do. Take a load off. Relax. You’ve scared the shit out of enough people that they’ll hotfoot it in here to tell you the second there’s news.”

  Hunt had to step over Daklin’s feet again since the other man’s long legs were stretched directly in his path. “Why the hell is this taking so long?” he demanded, ignoring his de facto babysitter’s editorial comments. He rubbed a hand across his unshaven jaw. Christ, he hated the stink of hospitals. They all smelled the same. Antiseptic. Fear. Death. He turned around when he got to the far wall—eighteen paces—then went back the other way.

  His skin felt clammy and his heart raced uncomfortably. Admit it, he taunted himself. You are one shit-scared bastard.

  He hadn’t had this fixation, and felt such a bone-deep fear about anyone’s mortality, in twenty years. This kind of nerve-grinding fear was like riding a goddamned bicycle. The feeling was coming back to him in a sickening rush.

  He closed his eyes briefly and prayed. He couldn’t lose her.

  This was taking too long . . .

  “. . . before they stuff you in a bed and strap you down,” Daklin was saying.

  Hunt merely grunted. It seemed that every muscle in his body was rigid with unleashed tension. They refused to let him see Taylor in the isolation ward. Not until they knew precisely what she’d been sprayed with. Jesus bloody Christ. Like he gave a continental fuck about his own health. If she was contagious, he might as well be too.

  Christ, she’d been so pale on board the chopper en route to Jo’burg, her eyes sunken, her lips tinged blue. He’d crouched there, holding her, praying, trying to breathe for her. Only when the doctor on board kindly pointed out that he might break every bone in Taylor’s body holding her that tightly had he loosened his grip on her. A little.

  He was scared. Deep down-to-the-bone fucking terrified that the doctors would come in here and tell him she was dead.

  He pressed a fist to the monstrous ache compressing his chest as he again strode back the way he’d come. Over Daklin’s feet, past the coffeepot, to the far wall, back again. The soreness in his chest felt similar to the dull pain he’d experienced the few times he’d been shot.

  Hunt thought savagely that this ache—in his chest, in his gut, in his heart—wasn’t going anywhere. Not until he’d seen for himself that Taylor was in full recovery. That she was back to her sweet, sassy, brave self again. He needed to see the clear blue of her eyes, needed to hear her laughter, needed to run his hands over that pale creamy skin to assure himself that every inch of the woman he loved was whole and healthy.

  He wanted to press his lips to her throat and feel her lifeblood pulsing through her veins.

  Oblivious to his surrounds, he absently stepped over Daklin’s feet on every circuit. He had to see her. Touch her. Make sure . . . Hell. Will her to live, if that’s what it took. This was one of those situations that he couldn’t control, couldn’t manipulate. He couldn’t shoot his way out of this, or use any of T-FLAC’s considerable resources. There was no gadget, no muscle, no anything within his power that could change the outcome of what would happen to her.

  And his highly prized, much vaulted patience and control had gone down the chute—the longer the doctors worked on her. Nine hours was a lifetime.

  He hadn’t had enough time with her. Hell, they’d barely scratched the surface. He was being cheated here, goddamn it. He wanted to tell her that he loved her. He suspected even when he did, she wouldn’t believe him. Everyone Taylor had ever cared about had left her. Her mother, when the going got tough, and her father, by being irresponsible enough to
pull an armed robbery with two young daughters dependent on him.

  There were millions of things he didn’t know about her. Jesus. He didn’t even know her favorite color, or her favorite books, or movies, or . . . a million other things, large and small.

  Yet he knew the velvety feel of her skin. He knew she loved drinking champagne and eating chocolates before she went to bed at night. He knew she wasn’t afraid of heights and that she favored very brief, very expensive lingerie.

  How had this happened? he wondered. How had this woman crept into his heart where no one had trespassed before? How was it that she was everything he wanted and needed, when he hadn’t known about those wants or needs until meeting her?

  They’d had completely different childhoods, but they both lost their mothers too young. And they both had chosen work that kept them at an emotional distance from those around them. But he was fortunate in that he had friends. Taylor didn’t have any close friends because of what she did.

  She was bright. Self-reliant. And funny as hell. She should be surrounded by people who adored her.

  Instead, she was alone.

  Unacceptable. He could give her companionship, share with her his hard-won friendships with several T-FLAC operatives. He could give her . . . anything she wanted. Everything she wanted and needed. If he was given the opportunity.

  What he found unconscionable—and terrified him the most—was that Taylor didn’t expect things to be any different. She accepted the isolation of what she did. She didn’t realize that she could have the thrill of her job, take care of her sister, and still have a life of her own. She didn’t believe that she could have it all.

  If . . . When she survived, he’d make her understand what he had to offer. He loved her enough to make up for the losses and the loneliness. He needed her. Needed her lush, pale body. Needed her warm arms wrapped about him. Needed her laughter to warm this crushing chill consuming him.

  The pressure in his chest increased. He raked his fingers through his hair in frustration and clenched his teeth against the turbulent emotions ripping through him.

  Please God, he pleaded. A soul is a soul. If you need one, take mine. A straight-across swap. Because I don’t hold with that crap about the good dying young . . . He’d repent for the guilt of taking Taylor into such a dangerous situation later. Right now he could think of nothing other than bargaining, pleading, or bullying God into keeping her alive.

  He’d never get over the responsibility of involving her so deeply with Morales. But without her, they would never have been able to defeat two of the deadliest terrorist cells in the world. Thanks to Taylor, Daklin had deactivated the missile, and Las Vegas was free to continue sinning to its heart’s content, never knowing how close it had been to total annihilation.

  Damn it to hell, they’d been in there working on her for bloody hours. He did a U-turn and started back across the room just as a familiar figure appeared in the doorway.

  “What’s new?” Max Aries asked, strolling in.

  Hunt frowned as though coming up from the pitiless blackness beneath the ocean. “Why aren’t you in Poland?”

  “Brought you this.” Aries handed him a padded envelope. “And got the S.O.S you needed backup. Man, you look like hell.” Max gave him a concerned look. “The situation there wasn’t nearly as exciting as we were led to believe.”

  “Backup?” Hunt took the envelope, folded it a couple of times, then casually stuffed it into his back pocket. He gave his friend a puzzled glance. “We don’t need backup. Op’s over, pal. Mano del Dios is out of biz. Morales neutralized. Missile defused. We saved the world.” He rubbed a hand across his jaw and got to the most important fact. “Taylor’s down the hall in ICU.” He shot Daklin a look. “Get your size thirteens the hell out of my way, I’m too bloody tired to have to take that extra step.”

  Daklin shot him a half smile and withdrew his legs.

  “The doctors figured right away the substance Taylor inhaled wasn’t anthrax,” Asher Daklin informed Max.

  Hunt tuned them out as best he could.

  “Even the heroin-cornstarch mix was everyday fare around here,” Daklin continued. “It’s the ricin that they discovered in the mix that’s the concern right now. We’re waiting for the lab results.”

  Hunt went to the window and stared out at the parking lot. Cars came and went. People in the hospitals lived or died.

  “Do they think Morales tampered with or altered the genetics of the ricin to include a virus of some kind?” Max asked behind him.

  Hunt’s fist clenched against the window frame. The ricin could be made even more deadly if someone had screwed with the genetics. If it was mutated, not only could Taylor die, but they could well be faced with a situation that would kill who knew how many people before it could be contained. There were a hell of a lot of fucking ifs. Even in death, José Morales was wreaking havoc. Hunt turned away from the window and resumed pacing. He’d seen a polar bear in a zoo in Russia many years ago. The memory had stayed with him to this day of that too-small cage and that large beast, frustrated and frantic to move. It had gone around and around in circles until it went mad.

  He knew just how it felt.

  “She makes him laugh,” Daklin told Max as Max went over to the half-filled coffeepot.

  “No way,” Hunt’s friend mocked. “Thought that was just a rumor.”

  “I shit you not,” Daklin drawled. “Witnessed the impossible myself. Several times. He’s got it bad.”

  Hunt glanced at his watch. Nine hours eight minutes seven seconds. He wanted to punch something. He needed to run ten miles or swim a hundred laps.

  “Before you ask,” Max said, drinking from his cardboard cup, “I put in a call to Paradise; Amanda Kincaid is fine, she and Kim are having a blast, and apparently Marnie showed up with A.J. for some R&R as well.”

  It took Hunt a couple of seconds for the words to be heard and computed. “Thanks for that. Taylor will want that news the second she opens her eyes.” Please God.

  “From what I heard, she saved your ass.” Max handed Hunt a paper cup.

  Hunt took the coffee, although he knew he wouldn’t drink it. His lips curved into a stiff smile as he started another lap. “Taylor was, in a word, amazing.”

  Max took his own coffee and settled into the chair next to Daklin like he had all the time in the world. “Why don’t you come sit down and tell me all about it?”

  Hunt’s laugh was hollow as he massaged the stiffness that had settled at the nape of his neck. “What? Now you’re my therapist? No thanks. Swear to God, if I don’t keep moving I’ll detonate.”

  He vaguely noticed the inquiring glance Max shot Asher Daklin as he resumed his manic marathon. “Sixty-two stitches for a knife wound,” Daklin filled Max in unnecessarily. “Four cracked ribs. The usual dings and dents. He’ll live.”

  Max settled back in his chair. “Pretty much a hangnail for us tough guys. Of course, at this rate, he may walk himself to death.”

  Fifty-seven

  The green-painted hospital room smelled like spring. A dozen vases held huge bunches of brilliantly colored blooms, many of which Taylor didn’t recognize. Since the only people she knew in South Africa were the T-FLAC team, she presumed the flowers were from them.

  She knew there were several men in the waiting room. The doctor had told her so. She hadn’t asked if one of them was Hunt because logic dictated that he’d be long gone, on to his next assignment. And since she knew him to be a decent and honorable man, he’d left a couple of his buddies here to keep an eye on her.

  The thought made her want to cry.

  Focus, she told herself sternly. Focus, get better, get out of here. She’d known the separation would hurt like hell. This wasn’t a surprise. She wasn’t sad, she told herself. She was ticked off that Hunt hadn’t at least had the decency to tell her good-bye face-to-face.

  The door swung open then, and she almost got whiplash turning to see who had come in. Hunt. Carrying a brown
paper bag. Her difficulty breathing had nothing to do with what she’d inhaled in the mine and everything to do with the sheer, unadulterated joy she experienced seeing him.

  “You look worse than I feel,” she told him. Oh, Lord. He had come in person. Her hungry gaze took in his lean, far from elegantly dressed body, his disheveled hair, jeans, and too-small T-shirt. He was not his usual sartorially splendid self, but seeing him brought a lump to her throat. The sight of the bandage beneath his obviously borrowed shirt made her frown, and she pushed herself up off the pillow to sit upright. “You’re hurt!”

  “It’s nothing.” He came toward the bed. “The doctor gave you a green light.” His British accent was back in spades. “The muscle weakness was expected, but they say you insisted on walking a few steps anyway. To stay on the safe side, they want to keep you here a couple of days for observation.”

  You don’t want to be here, do you? Taylor thought, the pressure in her chest unbearable as she sensed him distancing himself. “I know. The doctor told me. Thanks for stopping by.” She thought she was doing a credible job of sounding sophisticated and casual. Unfortunately, she felt the pressure of tears behind her eyelids, and the steel band around her chest hurt like hell. “I guess you’re on your way to somewhere exciting—”

  “How are you feeling?”

  Ridiculously disadvantaged, sitting here in bed with an extremely unattractive, threadbare surgical gown exposing my behind. “Okay,” she told him brightly.

  Apparently he was displeased with that response because he scowled down at her.

  “Fine,” she assured him. “Better.” A heart was merely a muscle, she assured herself for about the billionth time in the last few hours. Muscles did not break. People left people all the time. Nobody had ever died of a broken heart. She didn’t think . . .

  Hunt placed the large brown paper bag in her lap, then stepped back and shoved his hands into his front pockets. A very un-Hunt-like thing to do. Oh God. Here comes the kiss-off. She braced herself. It wasn’t as though she hadn’t expected the “great-knowing-you-but-we-were-just-ships-that-pass-in-the-night” speech. But she had the childish urge to put her fingers in her ears and sing loudly so she couldn’t hear it.