"Fuck personal. Spit it out, Captain."
David was hesitant to talk to Monroe about his relationship with Noelle. It wasn't that he worried about getting his ass chewed for breaking protocol. He couldn't care less about that. What he did care about was tainting what he and Noelle had shared by airing it in public. He liked remembering making love to her, knowing it was something only they shared.
Still, David knew that it might help figure out the password guarding the data on the disk, and that alone was worth tarnishing good memories. "She said something about the first time we made love."
If Monroe was surprised by that news, he didn't let it show in his face. "What about it?"
David slammed his fist down onto the workbench, making circuit boards jump. "Dammit, I don't know!"
"Try to remember. What were her words?'
David tried. His memory was foggy, but he could remember that kiss she gave him—the one so full of love it damn near made him tear up just thinking about if "She said I had to remember what she said that night."
"What did she say?"
"A lot of things. She talked to herself while she was working. Most of it was garbage to me."
"What did she say to you?"
They hadn't shared many words that night. She'd woken him up looking at those scribbles on his arms. He'd tried not to give in to his lust, but he'd failed. He'd pulled her under his body and that look on her face—so open and eager—he was doomed. But, he'd made sure it was what she'd wanted. He'd demanded that she tell him it was what she wanted.
David stilled, seeing her face in front of him as if she were here. Her eyes were a deep, slumberous green. Her skin was flushed and her mouth was wet and ripe. "No regrets," whispered David.
"What?"
He looked at Monroe, shattering the sweet image of Noelle. "She said 'No regrets.'"
David flew across the room to the tech-heads. "Type in the password 'no regrets.'"
A short, pimply-faced kid who couldn't have been more than nineteen obeyed the fastest. Blue light flashed across his blemished skin, reflecting against the little round glasses he wore. "That's it. We're in."
David felt the rush of victory give him renewed strength. "Now, type these coordinates into her program and print out the results."
The tech did. David pulled the sheet out of the printer before it could finish spitting out the white space. The printer crashed to the floor behind him, but he didn't care. He was already out the door.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
David saw the armed guards walking a perimeter of the old compound in Russia and knew he was too late. The Swarm had gotten here first.
Night cloaked the movement of his team. They wore black and had parachuted in over a mile away. That hike had been the fastest of his life. He could still hear a couple of the men struggling to quiet their labored breathing from keeping up the grueling pace he'd set. His arm burned where the bullet had hit him, but he pushed the pain away until it no longer existed.•»
Caleb and Grant flanked him, and he had never been more grateful to have them at his side. As it was, he was barely holding on to rational thought knowing Noelle was inside that building with the Swarm. All he wanted to do was rush in there and get her out. It was only the knowledge that his impatience might get Noelle killed that kept him restrained.
"I count fifteen," whispered Grant, looking through his night scope.
"Me, too," confirmed Caleb. "Heat signatures show another six inside."
David grabbed the scope that could see through the metal walls and aimed it at the aging building. There were indeed six figures inside. Two of them were moving. Three were standing in a cluster, and one was off to the side, seated and unmoving and smaller than the rest.
Noelle.
David realized he was trying to move in when he felt Caleb's big hand holding him down. "Not yet. We go in together or she doesn't stand a chance. Don't go getting stupid now."
Grant checked his watch and pinned David with a look of understanding. "Thirty-eight seconds, Wolfe. We all move in together then. You can wait thirty-eight seconds."
They were the longest thirty-eight seconds of his life.
Noelle was freezing to death—literally. She could no longer feel her fingers or toes, and the shivers that wracked her body were so extreme that she was sure they were damaging muscle tissue. At least she could no longer feel the stinging of the dozens of shallow cuts over her arnts and legs.
They hadn't even hurt her to gain information. The drug they'd given her had made it impossible for her to keep silent about the coordinates she'd seen on the screen. before the men attacked. She wished she hadn't had a good memory for numbers and that she hadn't been able to give them the coordinates, but in the end, she'd had no choice.
And still they had cut her. The scarred man said he just liked to hear her scream. She had a beautiful voice. Noelle had tried not to give him the satisfaction, but in the end, she'd failed there, too.
She was naked, gagged, soaked with a bucket of icy water and left bound to a metal chair in the center of a room that hadn't had a functioning heater in more than a decade. Her stomach cramped and she was so physically exhausted that even the involuntary shivers were beginning to subside. After so many hours, her body just didn't have the strength to fight any longer.
Only the thought of David kept her going beyond where she would have surrendered. If he was alive, he would be coming for her. She never doubted that for a second.
She forced herself to stay awake, looking for anything that would interest her enough to keep her mind alert. When David came, she needed to be awake and able to help him in any way she could. She was not going to go down without a fight.
Noelle looked around. The building was some sort of bunker made of metal plates that would have been easy to tear apart and transport elsewhere. The structure and everything in it was designed to be portable.
But as interesting as that might have been to her atone point in her life, right now, it was the only thing keeping her from focusing on the searing cold that sank into every pore. Already, she was feeling a heavy, sleepy lethargy she knew meant impending hypothermia. As deaths went, it was a horrible one—or would be until she just gave in to the urge to sleep. Then it would all be over.
Water dripped steadily from her hair into a shallow pool at her bare feet. Her eyelids slid down and she struggled to open them again. She told herself she had to stay awake. David was coming.
Faith in David was all she had left, and she was clinging! to it with every ounce of strength she possessed.
Suddenly, the metal doors burst open, followed by a sharp staccato of gunfire. She couldn't lift her head enough to see who it was, but she didn't have to.
David was here.
Finally, David was able to act. Grant, sniper extraordinaire, was able to take out four men guarding the entrance before the rest of the group could even close the distance. David ignored the rest of the enemy guards outside, knowing they were the targets for his team. His goal was to get inside, eliminate the hostiles near Noelle and get her out. Caleb was right at his side.
Reports of downed hostiles filled his ear, but he tuned out the sound, putting all his focus into his part of the attack.
Caleb and David burst through the doors, shooting anyone who wasn't Noelle. Three men fell before the first enemy had a chance to return fire. One ducked for cover behind a metal partition and the third sprinted across the room, toward Noelle.
David saw her there, bloody, naked, tied to a metal chair. A pool of blood glistened under her chair.
David nearly lost it right there. It was like staring at Mary all over again. Beaten. Tortured.
Dead.
He nearly doubled over in pain, fighting off the urge to vomit. This couldn't be happening again. He wouldn't survive losing Noelle.
The day Mary died, a monster had been born inside him. Over the past two years, David had fed that monster a constant diet of guilt and grief and regret. The monster had grown, swelling inside David until there was little room for the man he used to be.
Noelle had somehow found that man and breathed into him a spark of life. But now, staring at her tortured body, everything human left in him died, screaming in torment. All that was left was the monster, prowling inside him, waiting for its chance to strike.
David forced out every shred of emotion left lingering in his heart. He couldn't stand to feel anything right now. If he did, it would destroy him—make him weak. He had to be cold. Hollow. A machine set to kill. He was going to take out every one of the bastards here and pray he died in the process.
A bullet whizzed by his head, and if it hadn't been for Caleb jerking him out of the way, it would have hit its mark.
"Get a grip," growled Caleb, using his larger body to cover David's from gunfire. They were pressed into a little alcove by the door, which was their only cover.
Caleb crouched, dragging David with him. "She's alive," said Caleb. "See her shivering?"
David peered around the corner, needing to see for himself. Caleb was right. She was still alive.
A sense of relief tried to take hold inside him. David squashed it fiat, pounding it down mercilessly. He couldn't bear the thought of believing Noelle would be okay, then having her end up like Mary. He wouldn't survive that sort of pain again. It was all he could do just to keep breathing.
"I'm going after her," David told Caleb, his voice flat and hard.
"Right," said Caleb, knowing better than to try to argue. "On three."
Caleb gave David covering fire while David raced across the room toward Noelle. He'd never felt stronger or faster in his life. He lived for a single purpose—saving Noelle.
Behind him, he heard the pained grunt of the man who had taken shelter behind the partition. Caleb calmly reported another hostile dead over the comm unit stuck inside David's ear.
That left only one enemy in the building.
The blond man who had come David's way jumped out from behind a file cabinet where he'd hidden and used Noelle's body for cover. And in case that wasn't enough to stop them from firing on him, he lowered a pistol directly against Noelle's temple. "Stop," said the man.
David stopped, skidding over the concrete floor. Inside him, the monster howled in frustration.
He was going to kill that man.
David stared at him, waiting for his opening. Recognition flared bright in David's memory. The man was horribly scarred now, but David was sure this was the man who had held Mary captive. The same man who had killed her.
"I thought I'd killed you," said David. His voice was hollow, emotionless.
Noelle's eyelids fluttered in response to his voice but David refused to acknowledge it. He had to stay focused. She was going to be okay. He was going to make sure of it, no matter what.
The blond man smiled, causing the scar along his cheek to stretch into gruesome ridges. "Not quite. That fire you set nearly did me in, but I managed to escape, even with a bullet in my chest." He stepped to the side and crouched, putting himself more completely behind Noelle. David didn't have a clean shot. "I knew you'd come for the woman.
You always come back for your women."
Noelle moaned and David gritted his teeth against the urge to reach out for her.
"You can't imagine how many times I've dreamed about killing you," said the man.