Dominated By Desire (23 page)

I only wish to ask you to try something. I don’t care if you tell me or not but if you two are noticing a clairvoyance developing between you, develop it as much as you can. Test it, see what grows from it. It could help you later.” The doctor turned around and walked away then. His words made Storm wonder what he knew.

Chapter 13

Heather sat up quickly when she realized she wasn’t in her room with Storm. Then it came back. She touched her ribs to find them completely healed. Her shoulder moved with ease. Looking to her left, she found Storm with his eyes closed. He looked so uncomfortable in the chair.

Her heart skipped a beat at how he reacted to her dream last night. Even though he didn’t believe she had seen the future he knew whatever she had experienced affected her and wanted to help her calm down. Right now he guarded her against whatever he could stop.

Too bad it wasn’t the dreams.

He didn’t know she had dreams like last night before. That they were warnings to protect her. Each one she had saved her life somehow, although she couldn’t say that for everyone involved. Many times when the dream started to unveil in real time someone ended up dying in her place, but that was at the beginning when she didn’t really know how to interpret them.

Now she did. But that was the first time she had ever feared for someone else’s life like that. Normally it was only about her.

She needed to get back to their room and meditate, more of the dream would come to her when she relaxed and opened her mind.

“I see you’re awake.” Storm stretched in the chair and sat up.

“Yes.” She swung her legs off the bed and stood. “Did you sleep well?”

“No, but I’m not the one to worry about.” He stood. “Are you okay?”

“Yes.” She smiled up at him as his hand touched her face. “But we do need to talk about the dream.”

She saw a fleeting look of concern cross his face.

“I agree, but we have an appointment.” He gave the doctor a smile as he ushered her out the door.

“If you don’t mind, Storm, I’d like to make sure everything is healed before you take off with her.” He ran a quick scan and nodded. He unsealed her suit and removed the small metal device from her ribs. “You are fine now, but let me know if you have any trouble.”

Heather nodded. Storm took her arm again and practically dragged her out the door.

“You don’t trust anyone do you?”

“They knew too much about the mission, Heather.” He kept his voice slow so only she could hear him. “They knew which bike you’d be riding, when we were taking off, our course and destination. Information I didn’t give one person. Was it out there to be learned if you knew who to go to, probably, but they had to work to get that information and that worries me.”

“Because they did?’

“Exactly.” He contacted everyone to meet back at the transport. “You’re going to be stuck in that uniform a little longer.”

“I know.” She brushed her hands against the material. “Very durable outfit.”

“They’ve been known to stand up against a lot of firepower, but I don’t want you to test it.”

“Promise.” She followed him as fast as she could, but found his long legs kept widening the distance between them. He would notice from time to time and stop to give her a chance to catch up.

“Want me to carry you?”

“No.” She tried to look indignant but knew the smile on her face belied any frown she might have tried to muster. “Look, I might not be as tall as you people are but I can keep up. Right now you are just pushing too hard.” He took her elbow and slowed his pace enough so she could keep up without doing a mad dash.

“You’re afraid.” She said it so matter-of-factly.

“What?” He looked around to make sure no one heard her. “I fear for your life, my heart. They’ve tried to kill you now.”

“But what if that wasn’t the goal?”

“Your dream?” He looked down at her.

“Yes. I have impressions of emotions, bits and pieces of conversations that are running together. I need to sit down and analyze it better. See if I can make some sense of it all.” The transport loomed in front of them. “Didn’t realize that thing was so big.”

“Holds a full battalion for our missions, plus the backup crews running communications and weapons.” He banged on the hull. “This is my home away from home.”

The floor lowered so they could walk up the gangplank into the belly of the ship. He led her to a large oblong table.

“I don’t know how much time you need but I’ll try to leave you alone so you can meditate.”

She nodded and sat in the first chair to her right. Clearing her mind, she brought up the strongest emotion she felt when she woke from it. Her fear for Storm’s life. She wasn’t sure why the man in the dream hated Storm so much. Had he hinted to it? Said something she needed to isolate to find?

The voice was distorted so she couldn’t recognize it, but she was sure it was male. It was in the way he talked to her about her and her relationship with Storm. He was jealous of their relationship. But why? She never had a real relationship before this. Never had anyone tell her that someone was interested in her for anything other than sex. So she didn’t understand what he would be so jealous of. He had her at that time and Storm didn’t. It didn’t make sense.

She could see a woman wanting to do this, but a woman wouldn’t keep her alive. Get rid of the competition.

Voices came from the background, letting her know some of the team had started to arrive. Too bad. She felt she was getting somewhere.

She smiled as they came and joined her at the table. They were concerned for her, hoping she was feeling better.

Once everyone had arrived Storm sat next to her. The fact that one chair next to her had remained empty hadn’t gone unnoticed.

“We’re going back to the site.” Storm brought up a three dimensional image of the forest area. “The data collected yesterday has been analyzed and loaded into the handhelds in front of each of you.”

“You think we missed something?”

“I’m hoping.” Storm crossed his arms. “You were very thorough in your search, but we didn’t have Heather’s eye witness report to help us pinpoint more details that could have been overlooked.” She wasn’t sure what she could add to their findings. Everything happened so fast.

The ship landed in the same clearing and the bikes, minus Heather’s, were brought out. “Now, did anyone pay attention to the lineup?”

“Not really.”

“Who went to what bike? And in what order.”

They all walked to the bike they used. Storm made notes on his handheld before walking to the new bike where Heather’s would have sat. “We ride together.”

He climbed on first then slid back so she could climb in front.

“You know it would have been easier if you let me get on first.” She had to swing her legs over the front of the machine to get seated properly.

Once she nestled against him, Storm fired it up. They put on their helmets and set the seals.

“I know, but this way I can get a little extra contact since I haven’t been able to touch you in almost twenty four hours.”

“Is this going to be another up against the door because you couldn’t wait times?” She said it like it was a common occurrence.

“I have only done that to you once.” He wrapped his arm around her as the bike took off. “And if you keep rubbing that derriere against me like that it might.”

“You’re the one who had me move up front so you get to suffer.”

“Um, sir. Your mike is open.”

He laughed as Heather’s head dropped. It figured everyone heard that.

“Take us to where the drones started.” The laughter still laced his voice.

She took control of the bike and headed in the direction she had gone before. Looking at the readings she got the bike to follow the exact flight she programmed into it the day before. “The drones started here.” She pressed the popup screen to start a clock.

“That goes with the ones we had set up.” He touched the screen a few times as well and new information joined the clock she had started. It showed how many drones were released, the intervals of each release and the location they came from. “The goal was to outrun them.”

“Right. There were three behind me.” She waited until she passed a certain spot. A lot of it was all visual for her. The information had been streaming in her helmet but she hadn’t really focused on the data. She touched the screen again, starting a second clock and showing the location of where the other drones had come from. “Then I started noticing them coming from in front of me to the left.”

“That’s about the time your bike started to show signs of acting up. Did you follow your coordinates all the way?”

“Yes. I had to adjust altitude a little to avoid the second set of drones which might have shown up as erratic behavior but I stuck to the path.” Storm steered the bike to where the trajectory put the weapons at. He turned off the bike and walked around. “Did you see or hear anything out of the ordinary?”

“Besides missiles coming at me?” She couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of her voice. “No. Everyone had already moved beyond my line of sight and I was trying to catch up.”

“How did that happen?” He gave her a serious look that showed his displeasure at that bit of information.

“No one knew. I didn’t even notice the bike wasn’t working at its full capacity until the missiles started coming at me and I couldn’t dodge them the way I should have. Until now I thought it had something to do with your plan to down the bike later.” She pulled her helmet off. “Oh, and I had never flown one so was checking everything out before I took off. That put me a little behind everyone.”

“When you checked the bike did you notice anything out of the ordinary?”

“No.” But did she? She needed a few moments to think.

Everyone else landed in the same area.

“You know what to look for.” Storm pulled his helmet off as well and walked around the perimeter. She wasn’t sure what he was looking for.

Heather walked back through when she approached the bike. There was no one around the bike which should have caught her attention. Normally there was a technician standing by. She went through the check points she had been given and everything was in the proper perimeter but if she had paid attention she would have noticed all the items she was to check were on the low end of the spectrum. Heather let Storm know what she remembered.

Storm made notes in his hand held. “So the shooter waited until you were by yourself. He could have set it up so you were the last bike to come through here.” He called three of the men forward. “I want the three of you to go back to the landing site. One of you is to set your bike to these parameters and I want you to come this way. Push the bikes just like you did during the mission. I’ll signal you when I want you to land.” They nodded and took off. Within minutes they were flying overhead, not much of a difference in their speed.

“Come on back.” He said in his mike. Storm put more info into his system before looking at her. “The bike with your settings was the bike in the middle so those readings have nothing to do with the speed of your bike.

How would he know you would be last?”

“Isn’t that the way you had it set up?” asked Heather.

“It wouldn’t have mattered.” Storm shook his head. “The bikes were identical, the suits with the helmet on makes everyone look the same. How would he know who was who? Unless someone in camp alerted the shooter to your location.”

“Then why didn’t they finish the job? They could have sent another one of those drones while I was falling and that would have been it.” The look on his face was something she had never seen before. Her words caused a strong emotion she could feel emanating from him. Having everyone around stopped him from grabbing her and showing her how happy he was to know she was alive. She wanted to tell him it was okay. She was here and his and nothing was going to change that.

He stood there for a moment before he ignored everyone and reached for her. His lips found hers, drinking in the soft feel of her mouth. His tongue delved into the recesses of her mouth, caressing hers. He held her so close. Afraid if he let go she’d fade from sight.

No one said a thing. Work was being done around them. Both oblivious to anything else.

He finally broke the kiss. With a gentle caress of her face he regained his composure and took control of the mission once again.

“There isn’t much here, sir. Footprints, pad marks from the mechanism that housed the weapons. That’s about all.”

Storm nodded. Heather found he kept her in his sight the whole time.

Her one comment knocked him for a loop. He stepped up to her. “What happened next?”

“I went around a tree.” She used the three dimensional display on her hand set so show which one she was talking about. “I saw the missile coming at me and knew it was going to make my life miserable. I turned my suit up to max and launched myself off the back of the bike.”

“And you landed where?”

She headed back to where she thought the bike blew up. It didn’t take long before she found the branch she hit on her way down. She gave it a little kick. “That thing hurt.”

“What probably hurt the most was that medical remote. You must have landed on that when you hit the branch. Shattered it to pieces.” Storm held up the remnants of the device.

“You’re kidding me. I didn’t realize it had been damaged. I thought the chain had been broken and I just lost it.” She rubbed her newly healed side.

“That would explain the broken ribs though.”

“So what happened next?”

“I wanted to look for the medpack in the bike, but then I heard a noise.

I figured you would send someone after me to try to keep me from reaching the safe house so I put the suit in camo and hid. The guy walked right past me. I thought he was a horrible soldier since he didn’t try to disguise himself. He just started walking.” She looked in the direction he had headed in. “I followed him, figuring if he was in front of me then he wouldn’t be able to capture me.”

“That made sense.”

“I moved in this direction. Once I cleared the wooded area I slowed down but still kept the soldier in view.” She swallowed as she chose her next words. “I saw Fridon off to the left of me. He just stood there. I’m not sure what set that AI off so he knew Fridon was there, but I was too far away. I watched his face shield shatter.” She walked to the spot where she found him. “I got to him as quick as I could without being detected and turned on his medic seal. I wasn’t sure how well it would work with his helmet destroyed but I had to try.”