Dirty Love (11 page)
The room spun. Faster and faster, until it sped to a dizzying pace. Air left her lungs in shallow gulps, until she thought she might pass out, and welcomed the thought.
Maybe it'll all end now.
"Get up.” Cruel fingers seized her armpits, heaved her out of the chair. She lost her balance and crashed against a solid wall of muscle.
The man lifted her. She closed her eyes, desperate to give in to the streaming rush of molten despair that filled her mind and body. After long minutes, whoever carried her pushed her away, then shoved her, hard. She landed violently on her knees. The flesh of her kneecaps scraped against rough concrete.
"Get out of here. Go!"
She splayed her palms out in front of her and rose, unsteadily, on all fours. Blinking up at the man silhouetted in the doorway of a massive red brick building, she shook her head, not understanding.
"You're the most unremarkable woman we've ever tested. There's nothing dangerous about you, except the way you cling to your delusions. A psychotherapist can do more for you than we can. Freak,” he added for good measure before slamming the door and leaving Isy kneeling on the street.
A sharp chill drifted up her body like icy tendrils, making her shake. Her breath whooshed out in frosty puffs. She sat back on her legs and ran her hands up and down her arms in a feeble effort to warm herself. She wore nothing but a tattered pair of shorts and a shirt that was missing a sleeve.
All around her, New York slumbered. The whirr of an occasional motor reached her ears, but otherwise, the city lay dormant. Even the building that had been her prison all these long months appeared harmless as it blended in with the shadows of night.
A streak of purple at the edge of the horizon announced the coming dawn. Against it, silhouetted like a metal behemoth, stood the old Manhattan Bridge.
Groaning, Isy rose. A throbbing twinge speared her knee. She gritted her teeth against it, and headed for the bridge.
Connor thought he understood pain. He'd felt it before, countless times. Passing Phase Travel Investigations’ rigorous training program meant that even a social anthropologist like him would be subjected to numerous bullet and knife wounds. He'd mastered weapons training and had sailed through armed combat like he'd been born with an automatic rifle in his hand. And yeah, he'd spent his share of time in PTI's private hospital wing, getting patched up and hitting on the nurses.
But nothing,
nothing
had prepared him for the agony of seeing suffering etched on the pale features of the woman he loved. It blazed through him like ripples of electric shock, setting every muscle on edge.
"Close up! Damn it, somebody get me a close up!” His roar echoed like that of a provoked lion through the surveillance room.
On the third screen from the left, someone zoomed in on Isabel's face. She looked straight up as though gazing deep into his eyes. Except she was eighty years away, and he knew she couldn't see him. The haunted flickers he glimpsed in her gaze practically tore his heart in two.
"Fuck! What have they done to her?"
He whirled, fists clenched at his sides, looking for someone to punch. At this point, anyone would do.
"We don't know, Con. No eyes in there, remember?"
Flickers of red tainted Connor's vision. He stalked toward his boss and had the distinct pleasure of seeing the older man flinch. Bobby Braddock was in his mid-sixties, just months away from retirement. His motto, at this point, was “Don't rock the boat.” He'd do whatever it took to sail under the radar until he could earn his pension check. The longer he could go without drawing attention from the big boys in Washington who funded the operation, the better.
"We should have never left her in there. I should have gone back, should have—"
"We took your phase teleportation device away for a reason. You couldn't have gone back."
Anger surged in Connor's chest. He'd never felt as impotent in his entire life as he had in the past seven months. Not knowing what was happening to Isy raked at his soul, until he couldn't sleep, couldn't eat. It took effort just to tear himself away from the surveillance screens, which were fixed on the building that housed a secret branch of the Medical Board. A building they'd only discovered six weeks earlier.
"I should have stolen the motherfucking device.” He rammed a finger into Bobby's chest, then fought the urge to step back from the reek of old sweat and cheap cologne that assaulted his nostrils. “And you know what kills me? That I let you convince me she wasn't in there."
Bobby lifted a shoulder in a half shrug. A shimmer of anxiety showed on his ruddy features, and a fine sheen of perspiration glistened on his forehead. “You know the rules, Con."
"Fuck the goddamned rules!” He spun and pointed to the screen, which had been paused on Isy's beautiful face. “Look at her! Look!"
His heartbeat hammered his chest. His pulse thrummed in his ears and pressed against his eardrums, wild and incoherent. He couldn't stop looking at the image showing a mere shadow of the woman he loved. She looked nothing like the vibrant, gorgeous Isy he'd made love to all those months ago. The skeletal figure who'd rolled onto the busted concrete when pushed out by a gruff orderly could have been anyone.
But she wasn't. She was
his,
damn it, and he was going to bring her back to him if he had to bulldoze his way through the entire PTI agency to do it.
Bobby cleared his throat. At the unnaturally loud sound, Connor realized the rest of the room had gone quiet. The eight other agents sat deathly still, and all eyes were focused on Connor and his boss.
He fought the urge to growl at all of them and bare his teeth.
Instead, he loomed over Bobby, leaning in so the other man had to take a step back. “You're going to give me the phase teleportation device. I'm going to get Isabel, and I'm going to bring her here. If you have a problem with that, report me to the fucking president, because I'm going to get this woman if I have to pummel you into the ground to do it."
The color drained from Bobby's face. Something in Connor's eyes must have told him he meant every word, because the man turned and headed for the doors. Connor followed him out.
They walked down a gleaming marble corridor, past a series of laboratories framed in floor-to-ceiling glass, and turned left at the end of the hall. At the elevators, Bobby shoved his hands in his pockets. He wouldn't meet Connor's eyes.
"It wasn't my decision, you know. Pulling you out."
Raging fury simmered just below the boiling point, but beating the man's face bloody wouldn't solve anything now. “I don't care."
Bobby lifted his hands, palms up, in a gesture of surrender. “Look, what were we supposed to do? You know the first rule of PTI."
"Yeah. Don't get caught.” He practically spat the words through gritted teeth.
Bobby nodded. “Your orders were to blend in and observe. Trevor was supposed to analyze DNA samples and report back here so we could all make a decision on the next necessary steps. You failed when you decided to make a simple mission personal."
Connor scrubbed a hand over his face. Four years. He'd spent four years in that forsaken phase. Watching Isabel from afar, loving her from a distance, had been his only salvation. If he hadn't had her, he thought he might have gone mad living in a society that had lost touch with the base elements and emotions that had made them human in the first place.
Personal? Of course it was fucking personal.
She was so much more than a mission. She was everything.
And he'd abandoned her. Not on purpose, but what difference did intent make when it meant she'd had to suffer because of it?
He and Trevor had been literally yanked from her arms by a phase transportation device that had been activated here at PTI headquarters. She'd been asleep, but they'd been watching her, caressing her pretty face, touching her flawless skin. Connor didn't think he'd ever seen Trevor look as happy as he had that night.
The memory made a lump form in his throat. He tasted salt, swallowed it, and forced the anger back to the forefront of his mind. It was so much more useful than regret.
The gleaming elevator doors slid open. Trevor took a step forward, then halted when he saw them.
Dark shadows hovered beneath his pale blue eyes. Strained frown lines bordered his wide mouth. His white shirt and black pants were rumpled, as if he'd slept in them. His normally smooth face sported a three-day-old beard, and even the short hair on his head looked longer and unkempt.
"What?” Trevor barked, fixing Connor with an instantly alert glare. “Is it Isy? What's happened to her?"
He moved as though to step out of the elevator, but Connor's arm shot out, stopping him. Heat from the other man's body traveled into his skin. He could feel the same sizzling fury that had been his constant companion emanate from Trevor, too.
"Come.” Connor shoved Trevor back into the car. The man stumbled, but didn't protest when his shoulder made impact with the wall. “We're getting her back."
With his emotions swirling out of control and his worry for Isy dominating every last thought, Trevor couldn't be bothered to pay attention to the phase landing. Time and space whooshed past him as it always did, in a blur of midnight black and brilliant white. He closed his eyes against the sensory onslaught and waited for the world to slow.
Pain shot up through the soles of his feet as the New York of 2080 flashed to life around him. He couldn't get his bearings quickly enough. The ground slipped beneath the soles of his feet, then tilted, and he ended up sprawled on his belly in the middle of oncoming traffic.
A horn screeched as the pointed nose of a modern Toyota veered a sharp left and missed running over his outstretched arm by a mere inch. The cracked cement bridge beneath his body rumbled on a deep tremor, announcing the impending arrival of another vehicle. A much bigger one.
He swore and rolled sideways, knowing he wouldn't reach the safety of the railing before the oncoming bus turned him into flattened road kill.
A hand grabbed the back of his shirt. He gave in to the momentum of the violent yank and got to his feet a fraction of a second before someone shoved him, hard, toward the edge of the road.
Connor
.
Trevor slammed into the bridge railing. His fingers wrapped around the cold metal bars and he allowed himself a moment of self-pity.
A flurry of feelings roiled together in Trevor's gut. Though he was only a social anthropologist and not a field agent by trade, Connor had always been the leader of their little partnership. At first, Trevor had resented Connor's need to take charge and influence the course of every task they were assigned. As a molecular geneticist, Trevor was the brains behind their dynamic duo. He should have been in charge.
Younger, faster, stronger, better looking, Connor had everything going for him. It would have been so easy to hate him. In truth, Trevor had just done that for months. Right up until he realized that Connor didn't have it all.
He couldn't have Isy.
For that matter, neither could Trevor. Unexpectedly, they'd bonded over their forbidden longings. Instead of rivalry, they'd developed a friendship. A tentative, tumultuous friendship at first, but one that deepened into a solid bond.
No one understood better than Connor how much Trevor loved Isy. And Trevor, for his part, knew Connor would risk his life for hers. They shared a common goal. A common love.
And in the process ... well, Trevor had fallen a little bit in love with Connor himself.
Not that he'd ever admit it. Especially not when the big lug hovered over him like a worried mother, brows wrinkled in concern. “Hey. You okay? That was rough back there."
"Fine.” Trevor made himself unlatch his fingers from around the bridge's railing. “I wasn't expecting to land in rush hour traffic on Manhattan Bridge.” He brushed at the clumps of dirt clinging to his black pants. “Whose bright idea was it to program the phase transmission—"
The words died on his tongue when he glanced up and realized he was alone.
"Isabel! Isabel!"
The sheer terror he heard in Connor's voice set Trevor's pulse to frenzied hammering. He whirled around and took off at a sprint with speed he hadn't known himself capable of, echoing Connor's cry.
Isy. Oh, God, Isy.
Trevor pumped his arms and ran along the edge of the bridge, fully aware of the enormous drop into the river below. His gut twisted, clenched in a frigid fist. He hated heights, feared water. But nothing terrified him more than losing Isy.
A tingling feeling at the back of his neck told him to look up. He did, just in time to see Isy dive from the top of the highest railing.
That's when his world exploded into chaos.
He didn't remember scaling the bridge, but he must have, because the next thing he knew he'd almost caught up to Connor. A moment later they were both flying, soaring through the air, hurtling at breakneck speed toward the glassy surface of the water after the woman they loved.
The woman who'd jumped into the river just seconds before they could have wrapped her in their arms and taken her home.
Dying should have hurt less.
It wasn't the torment of water filling her lungs, or the agony of being pulled beneath the strong current that stifled Isy. No, it was the nagging thought at the edges of her consciousness that told her she'd been moments away from true freedom.
Sure, the Medical Board had let her go once they'd realized she had no magical powers, but New York was as much a prison as the structure in which she'd been held for the past seven months. She'd tasted real freedom, long ago, in the arms of her men.
At once, desperate realization slammed into her. She suddenly understood she hadn't simply given in to her raging libido. She loved the way Connor and Trevor had made her feel. Trevor talked to her, for hours, about everything and nothing at all. And all Connor had to do was hold her and the rest of the world would drop away like it never existed.
