Deadly Sight (20 page)

Her declaration stopped him cold. She thought she was the one hurting him? He was the one who kept lashing out at her in his pain and grief. Not that he wasn’t still furious that she’d poked into his past without asking him first. And not that his saying no would have stopped her.

His thoughts derailed. Truth be told, nothing would have stopped her. She was a researcher for a living. Did he seriously think she wouldn’t eventually want to know what made him such a head case? He’d been deluding himself to think he could keep his past a secret from her. What had Jeff Winston been thinking to send someone like her to help him? Sure, her eyesight had been enormously helpful, but Jeff had to know she would ultimately pry into his personal—

Of course. That was exactly why Jeff had sent her. Mentally, he called his old fraternity brother every foul name he could think of. Gray tried to stay angry at Jeff, but enough of him could understand Jeff’s impulse to help that he couldn’t work up a real head of steam against the guy. Jeff should’ve stayed out of it. Left well enough alone. Gray had been doing fine without his frat brother’s interference. Or Sam’s.

He walked down the hall to her bedroom, which was already a tornado of half-packed clothes. The woman didn’t waste any time once she’d made up her mind. “Don’t go, Sam.”

He couldn’t believe he was saying it, but the words had unquestionably come out of his mouth.

“Why shouldn’t I?” she asked tersely.

No doubt she was hoping for an apology and a declaration of how much he cared for her and couldn’t live without her. His jaw tight, he answered, “Because Miss Maddie will ask questions and start all kinds of rumors. And given how closely Proctor’s scrutinizing us, it could tip him off that we’re heading for the endgame.”

“Right. The mission,” she replied bitterly.

As he’d thought. She’d been hoping for the whole I-can’t-live-without-you speech. He was assailed by the same feeling he got when perched on the edge of a cliff. One part of him wanted to back away very carefully. But a tiny part of him was tempted to take one more step forward. To leap off the cliff and see what it felt like to fly, even if only for a few seconds.

His old friend and comfort, Suicide, wasn’t getting the job done this time around. Somehow, it seemed like an empty gesture now. Dammit, Sam had ruined even that for him. How was he supposed to go on without the safety net that the prospect of killing himself provided? If he did it her way, he would have to live with the pain. Live with the grief. Hell, how was he supposed to find a way to go on? Sam made it sound so damned easy. But he knew—he
knew
—it wasn’t easy at all. Yet, she seemed to believe he was capable of it. Was she right? Was he strong enough, after all?

He backed away from the cliff in more haste than grace and headed back toward the kitchen. She wanted this thing over? So be it. He picked up the phone with grim determination and dialed a number from memory that would set the wheels in motion. One way or another, he’d either be dead or rid of Sam in a few days. He’d never have to face her and the things she made him feel again.

Chapter 15

S
am was losing her mind. Being in the same house with Gray, who’d become a total stranger to her overnight, was killing her. The revelation that she’d found out about his family’s murder had completely shut him down emotionally. She didn’t have the faintest idea how to scale the walls of the fortress he’d thrown up around himself. Finally, in desperation, she called her boss.

“Jeff, I have a confession to make. Gray’s in bad shape, and it’s my fault.”

“Did you poke into his past?” Jeff asked immediately, startling her mightily.

“Uhh, yes. I did.”

“Excellent. I knew you would.”

“But you ordered me not to!”

“Sam, I’ve worked with you for a long time. What’s the one way to be absolutely sure you’ll tackle a problem with everything you’ve got?” She mumbled something inaudible as he answered his own question. “Tell you something can’t be done. If I told you in no uncertain terms to leave alone something that had to be killing you with curiosity, there was no way you’d follow that order. You’d run in the opposite direction as fast as you could. And you did. Good girl.”

“Not good. I think I’ve really hurt Gray. He’s a mess. He won’t speak to me and just sits and stares out the window like he’s contemplating the most efficient way to kill himself.”

“He was already a mess. I needed someone to shake him up. Give him a swift kick in the pants and force him to come out of his shell.”

“I’m pretty sure I drove him way deep into his shell, boss. He about took my head off when he found out that I knew.”

“He yelled at you?” Jeff asked in surprise.

“Yes. He was really angry.”

“Outstanding!” Jeff exclaimed.

“Excuse me?”

“He hasn’t shown a real emotion since the day Emily and the kids died. He’s been holding it all in. And it’s killing him. I knew you could draw him out. Force him to finally feel something again. To start living.”

“I don’t know about the living part, but I definitely made him feel some things. Like rage and betrayal. He hates my guts.”

“That’s fantastic!”

“Speak for yourself,” she grumbled.

Jeff fell silent. “Oh, no. You like him, don’t you?”

“He’s a pretty great guy when he’s not being all stoic and withdrawn.”

“I just assumed...you being fresh off your breakup with that Rocket guy that you wouldn’t fall for him... Oh, jeez. I’m so sorry, Sam.”

She squeezed her eyes shut in mortification. “Hey. I’m an adult. I knew what I was getting into. I just bit off a little more than I could chew with this guy. He’s too damaged for me to fix. I just hope I didn’t make a bigger mess of him than he already was.”

“Sending you to him was a last-ditch effort on my part, Sam. If you can’t reach him, nobody can. Don’t beat yourself up over it.”

Yeah, well, she was. But for all her self-flagellation, she didn’t have a clue how to make it up to Gray. He’d retreated further into his own private little hell than she was able to reach. She’d lost him. And she feared he’d lost himself for good this time.

She asked Jeff, “Do you know anything about this business of him counting down days?”

Jeff swore under his breath. “Where is he in his count?”

“Nineteen.”

Her boss answered heavily, “He’s counting down the days until he can kill himself. He makes these bargains with himself where he sets a date that, if things haven’t gotten better by then, he gives himself permission to commit suicide. He said it helps him deal with the pain.”

Great. She’d made the guy suicidal. She hung up, more depressed than ever.

Three more days counted down while they waited for the NSA to approve Gray’s request to turn off the satellites pointed at the NRQZ. Jeff had recalled an ops team from somewhere overseas, and they were due in any minute but had yet to arrive.

Sam began to suspect she was obsessing about Gray’s countdown more than he was. Sixteen. The number loomed huge in her mind as she woke up near sunset. A little over two weeks. They had to finish this case, and soon. Give him time to get far away from her and get some breathing room to recover from the hurt she’d caused him before he got to zero.

She couldn’t take it anymore. She jumped out of bed, dressed and barged into the kitchen to confront him. “Gray, I’ve had it. I can’t take this anymore. I’m calling Jeff and getting that satellite shut down now.”

“What can’t you take anymore?” he asked emotionlessly.

“You!”

He frowned. “What have I been doing?”

“Nothing. And that’s the point. I’m not sitting around here one more day watching you wait to die. I can’t do it. You’re making a stupid decision, and I won’t be part of it. If you plan to kill yourself, you can bloody well do it on your watch.”

His eyes flashed briefly, the first sign of life she’d seen in them in days. Maybe that was the key to breaking him out of the funk he’d fallen into. Maybe she ought to pick a massive fight with him. At least then he’d feel
something
.

She picked up the phone.

“Wait.”

Hark. He’d spoken to her. It was a single word, but it was more than he’d said to her for the past several days. She looked over at him expectantly.

“The NSA approved the shutdown a few hours ago. It goes offline at 2:00 a.m. tonight. A memo’s gone out that the satellite is being taken offline so a software upgrade can be installed.”

“And when were you planning to share that information with me?”

“I wasn’t planning to.”

“You were going to try to sneak out and leave me here?” she asked ominously.

He shrugged.

“Has anyone told you recently what a self-centered jerk you are?” she snapped.

His mouth quirked for just a moment. “Not recently.”

“Well, you are. I get that a horrible thing happened in your past. But you don’t have the corner on that particular market, Sparky. My life hasn’t exactly been a picnic, either, but you don’t see me moping around counting down the days until I can slit my wrists.”

She
knew
she got a rise out of him. Irritation glinted in his eyes and his shoulders went tense, but still he said nothing. Frustrated nearly to the point of screaming, she battered at the walls he’d built around himself. “Do you think you’re the only person who’s ever suffered a terrible and violent loss? Pick up a newspaper. Terrible things happen to good people all the time. It’s not pretty, but it’s part of being human. But you know what people do? They grieve and they suffer...
and they go on
.”

Gray shifted in his chair uncomfortably, but she wasn’t about to let him get up and leave. Not until she had her say. She aimed a glare at him and dared him to try to walk out on her. He subsided in his seat.

“People who’ve lost every bit as much as you get up in the morning and they paste a smile on their face and wait for the day when it becomes a real smile. And it does, eventually. Sure, it takes time. And the hurt never leaves entirely. But that hurt also adds a sweetness to the good times to come. You learn to appreciate life a little bit more. But you have to let yourself live again first.”

He opened his mouth. Closed it.

“Don’t give me some crap about not deserving to be happy. You didn’t kill your family. Some psycho, probably paid by another psycho, did it. You couldn’t have stopped the killer. If not that night, he’d have waited for some other time, some other night you worked late, to murder them. The guy was a pro, and you had no idea he was out there waiting to strike.”

Gray threw up his hands. “Do you seriously think you’re the first person who’s ever said any of this to me?”

“Of course not. But I am the first person who could’ve made you happy again. We could’ve had something really good together, Gray. But you wouldn’t let yourself reach out and take what was right in front of you. I have no need to replace your wife and kids, and I know not to bother trying. I’d have been okay with their ghosts being part of our family. You really could’ve had it all.”

She turned to leave and stopped in the doorway only long enough to add, “I’m going with you tonight. And then I’m out of here. I give up, Gray. If you want to count all the way down to zero and give in to your cowardice completely, you’re going to have to do it without me.”

* * *

Call him a coward and then sail out of the room like a queen, would she? Gray was so furious he could hardly think, let alone breathe. But a tiny part of him had to admit that this fire in his belly felt better than the ice-cold nothingness of the past few days.
Lord, that woman knew how to make an exit.

Why couldn’t she leave well enough alone? But then, that wasn’t her style. At all.

His irritation gave way to amusement as he headed for his room to check and pack the gear he’d need tonight. He was going in armed to the teeth, particularly if Sam was coming—

The thought startled him. What did she have to do with anything? How could he still feel protective of her, even after she’d made it crystal clear she was out of here the minute this op was concluded? Obviously, logic had nothing to do with his impulse. But then logic rarely had much to do with Sammie Jo. She’d made him feel a hundred different sensations in the past several weeks, but anything remotely resembling reason was not one of them. Mostly, she made him crazy.

He stocked up his rucksack with freshly wound rope and new cyalume sticks.

She made him mad, too. And frustrated.

He sheathed a freshly sharpened field knife in a side pocket and tucked several flares into a waterproof pouch sewn into the pack’s lining.

Of course, she also made him laugh. And got him all hot and bothered....

He slammed his hand against the wall. The stinging pain in his palm snapped him out of his ridiculous ruminations. He could
not
afford to be this messed up in the head hours before a dangerous mission. He checked over his night-vision goggles and put fresh batteries in them; he had faith he’d need every bit of help he could get to keep up with Sam tonight.

He was not wrong. Promptly at 2:00 a.m., she climbed out of the Bronco without saying a word to him and set a blistering pace through the woods around the north end of the Proctor compound. They’d never approached from this direction before. It required more time in the woods, but it also put them beside the fence closest to the barn that was their target tonight. They’d still have to traverse an alarmingly wide patch of tilled soil without being spotted. But he’d decided that speed might ultimately be more important than stealth. The satellite would be out of commission for approximately two hours. It was the best the NSA could do for him without compromising other security needs.

Sam had insisted on going first, and her head swiveled constantly as she marched along. She seemed relieved when she stopped abruptly and pointed out a trip wire to him. He stepped over it gingerly. Had Proctor been warned about the coverage gap tonight and taken additional precautions?

She spotted two more trip wires as they approached the fence, and they easily avoided both. Gray consoled himself with the notion that he’d have spotted the wires on his own. Of course, he’d have been moving at a fraction of this pace.

Finally, they crouched at the fence. There’d been a brief debate at the kitchen table over cutting their way through the fence or digging under it. He’d wanted to cut through, Sam wanted to dig. As they examined the fence, though, the bottom was sunk in concrete buried in the ground. Cutting it was.

He pulled out wire cutters, already taped and padded to ease the job, but Sam put a restraining hand on his arm. His biceps tensed involuntarily at her touch, and she jerked her fingers away.

“There’s a sensor wire,” she whispered. “I’ll reroute it while you cut.”

He nodded and got to work while she efficiently pulled out a spool of wire and claw clips to reroute the sensor. He was shocked at how good it felt to cooperate with her on something for a change. They’d been pulling against each other so hard the past few days he’d almost forgotten what it felt like to be on the same team with her.

She nodded her readiness, and he snipped through the sensor wire. No sirens or floodlights exploded to life.

“Are we good to go?” she whispered.

He shrugged. “No way to tell except having company in a few minutes. And we’re on a short timetable. No time to sit around and wait.” He pulled back the panel of hurricane fencing and held it for her while she crawled through. He passed the packs to her and then followed, pulling the panel back into place behind him.

As they’d agreed upon, Sam took a quick look around. When she signaled an all clear, they took off running across the field. The dirt was soft and deep, and they left footprints a three-year-old could track. But there was no help for it. And hopefully, they’d be out of here long before it mattered.

He and Sam dived into the shadow of the barn, breathing hard. Now for the padlock on the door. That was his field of expertise, and Sam played lookout while he picked the lock.

He almost had it when Sam whispered, “Routine patrol passing between the dormitories.” He froze as she continued under her breath, “One guy. On foot. And he’s out of sight now.”

Gray’s pulse pounded nonetheless as he finished the lock. It clicked open quietly. He eased the big sliding door open just far enough to slip inside. Sam pushed it shut behind them, and they both froze in horror as it gave a hefty squeak.

“Keep moving,” he murmured. “If someone heard it, there’s nothing we can do about it.”

Sam nodded, but she looked scared. “I can buy us a little time, just in case.” She looped the lock through a hasp on the inside of the door to prevent anyone from opening it from the outside. They’d decided she would search the computers while he checked out the rest of the building, and they both set to work.

She draped a piece of black fabric over a computer monitor and ducked under it to boot up the system. Using his night-vision goggles, he popped a tiny, two-inch cyalume stick and used its scant light to have a look around.

He jolted as five pairs of red eyes glared at him out of the darkness. He pointed the cyalume stick at them and two rabbits, a squirrel and a fox stared back at him from a line of cages. Proctor’s inexplicable wild animal rescue program was alive and well.