Payback. Harper Allen

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СКАЧАТЬ like his job. The revelation came to her with the conviction of absolute certainty, and behind the glasses her gaze narrowed. No, it was more than that, she thought slowly, taking in the tight set of Asher’s jaw, the barely controlled anger displayed as he raked a hand through short-cropped, burnt-pewter hair. He hated what he was doing.

      Which means we’ve got one thing in common, big guy, she thought as he handed the logbook to the guard and met her watchful gaze before she could avert her eyes. Too bad we’re working on opposite sides or I might have let you buy me a shot of Stoli and told you my reservations about this assignment before buying you a round of warm British beer and letting you fill me in on how you ended up in a dead-end job, baby-sitting your famous uncle.

      On second thought, she told herself as Asher nodded curtly to a younger officer who had stopped his jeep in front of the guard shack and was glancing curiously in her direction, maybe it was better having him as an opponent. His antagonism would keep her focused, and right now that was what she needed most.

      Her headache had returned. This time she couldn’t afford to give in to it.

      “If the paperwork’s screwed, my people didn’t do it.” Without pausing to talk to the young officer exiting the jeep, Asher strode from the guard shack and came to a halt directly in front of her. He continued, his manner barely civil. “I’d advise you to contact whoever sent you here and get them to resubmit your information. Until you do you’re not getting past this gate.”

      The hand he clamped onto her upper arm was like a band of iron…or maybe it was just that her headache had progressed to the point that every nerve ending felt raw. This attack was ten times worse—try twenty times, Dawn thought with a sharply indrawn breath—than those she’d so far experienced, but judging from those previous ones it couldn’t last much longer. All she had to do was ride it out.

      Easier said than done, O’Shaughnessy, she told herself tightly. And it’s not ultrahelpful that Mr. Freakin’ Special Air Services has his damn hand welded to my arm right now. If he’d just ease up for a second so I could concentrate on shutting down the jackhammer that’s pounding away in my—

      His hard tone broke through the thin veneer of control she was trying to establish. “Letting strangers into a restricted area when their credentials don’t check out isn’t the way I work. On your way, lady.”

      Without warning, the pain soared to an unbearable crescendo inside her head, escalating its assault until it took all her energy just to stay upright. No one could endure this, Dawn thought in numb agony, no longer caring whether her face revealed what was happening inside her. She’d been trained to take pain, to resist pain, to rise above pain, and all that training didn’t matter a damn. She wasn’t going to get through this.

      A long way away a voice was speaking, the low and deadly tones searing enough to dimly penetrate the haze of unconsciousness that was shutting down her senses. Faint hope stirred in her. Was the pain losing its grip? Was there still a chance she could win this fight? Drawing on reserves she’d thought were already exhausted, she focused on the voice with the desperation of a swimmer going under for the third time—going under and hallucinating, she thought hazily. Because that voice sounds weirdly familiar, O’Shaughnessy—so familiar that if I didn’t know better I’d say it was your own.

      “Call William London and get this straightened out, dammit! Because if you don’t, I swear I’ll—”

      “Ash! Put the gun down! Lady, back away from him or I’ll shoot you myself!”

      The shouted commands came from the officer who’d gotten out of the Jeep. No longer standing by the shack, he was now only a few yards away and leveling his rifle at her, but as inexplicable as his actions were, Dawn barely registered them.

      Her headache was gone. As instantly as if a switch had been turned off somewhere inside her head, the pain had simply stopped. Shaky relief filled her, but even as it did she stiffened in shock.

      In her hand was a stilettolike piece of steel. The tip of it was pressed to Des Asher’s tanned throat, hard enough so that it was making an impression. She couldn’t even remember snapping the antenna off the hatchback behind her and lunging at him with it, but Asher had apparently reacted with almost the same speed as she’d displayed.

      Because in his left hand was a heavy semiautomatic—a Sig Sauer P226, the weapon he would have been issued upon joining the SAS. The muzzle of the revolver was jammed into the space between her top left rib and her breast, aiming its load of nine-millimeter parabellum rounds toward her heart.

      Glittering gray eyes stared down at her. “If you want to get out of this alive, put down that antenna and tell me again what you do for a living…and this time leave out the biochem assistant crap.” The words were scarcely above a mutter, but with his mouth only inches from hers she had no trouble hearing them.

      She’d blown her cover. The realization tore through the fog clouding Dawn’s brain and icy clarity flooded in. What had happened just now? Why had she gone into attack mode for no good reason? She was a professional, dammit—she didn’t make mistakes like this! Had she lost her edge, as Peters had suspected she might?

      But the answers to those questions would have to wait. All that mattered at the moment was that she was going to have to abort the assignment and return to Lab 33 empty-handed. With no chance now of Aldrich Peters reversing her degeneration in time, she’d as good as signed her own death warrant.

      Not only mine, but Lynn’s and Faith’s, she thought with corrosive self-recrimination. Whatever’s happening to my cells will be happening to theirs, even if they aren’t displaying the same symptoms I’ve been experienc—

      She blinked, her mind racing. Slowly she lowered the snapped-off antenna she was holding, and saw the man in front of her warily do the same with his weapon.

      That was it—the reason she’d gone ballistic just now, that she’d allowed herself to forget everything Lee Craig had ever taught her about her profession. Aldrich Peters had predicted her body would begin to turn on itself, but her guesses about how that would unfold hadn’t gone far enough. Nothing she’d imagined could even begin to approach the horror of knowing that her personality—her impulses, her emotions, her very mind—was beginning to betray her.

      She’d been raised to be Lab 33’s killing machine. She’d just seen a chilling example of what she could expect when the machine finally broke down.

      Correction, O’Shaughnessy: you’ve just seen what’ll happen if it breaks down, she told herself sharply. Now that you know what the problem is, start acting like the professional you are and try to salvage the mission.

      For the second time in as many minutes, hope replaced despair as a plan took shape in her mind. It just might work but there was no time to waste—she needed to get back into the skin of prickly, abrasive Dawn Swanson right away.

      “Don’t you ever put your hands on me again.” She forced flat hostility to her expression. “I didn’t take seven years of self-defense classes just so I could allow myself to be manhandled, and I certainly didn’t accept this position with the renowned Sir William London thinking I’d have to file a sexual harassment suit my very first day!”

      Anger darkened the gray eyes watching her. “Nice recovery, lady. It makes me wonder who the hell taught you to be so bloody slippery. Come on, you and me are going to have a cozy little chat in a quiet room.”

      He had the height, but she had the superior agility. He outweighed her, outreached her and his Sig trumped her whiplike scrap СКАЧАТЬ