Reach For the Spy (15 page)

“No, lie still for a
while.” His fingers still pressed against my pulse.

Spider skidded around
the corner, white-faced. “It’s open. Ambulance is on the way.”

“Good.” Kane picked me
up off the floor and carried me toward the door.

“What did I tell you
about carrying me?” I demanded. “Put me down, for crying out
loud.”

“Oh, thank God,” Spider
quavered.

“Aydan, shut up,” Kane
said. I opened my mouth to express outrage. “Please,” he added
quietly.

Something in his face
made me subside. I clearly didn’t have the whole story here. I lay
passively in his arms while he carried me up the stairs and through
the open time-delay chamber.

“What happened?” I
asked, trying to distract myself from the stares of the bystanders
while we passed through the lobby.

He laid me onto the
stretcher. “We’ll talk later.”

When the paramedics
brought me into the hospital, I recognized Wing B, the area
reserved for Sirius Dynamics covert personnel. Déjà vu. After my
repeated visits in the spring, I’d hoped not to see it again for a
while. A long while.

Dr. Roth’s piercing
eyes raked me as she strode along beside the stretcher. “Are you
causing trouble again?”

I grimaced.
“Apparently.”

She briefly checked the
IV the paramedics had inserted in my hand on the way over and eyed
the digital display on the monitors. “Take her straight to the
MRI,” she told the porter, and he nodded and wheeled me away.

Outside the MRI, I
managed to persuade her I was able to get off the stretcher and
change into a gown instead of having my clothing cut off. Little
victories.

“I’m fine, really,” I
assured her. “Nothing hurts. Well, except my chest.”

“That happens when you
get CPR,” the doctor responded wryly. “Are you claustrophobic?”

I frowned at her in
confusion. “Yes, but what does that have to do with CPR?”

“Nothing. It has to do
with the MRI. I’ll give you a sedative, and then we can get
started.”

“Can we skip the
sedative?”

She frowned. “Why? If
you’re claustrophobic, I think you should have it.”

“I hate being sedated.
And I want to be able to drive home.”

“Okay,” she agreed
dubiously. “We’ll see how it goes.”

She wedged my body in
place on the table of the MRI, and my heart began to pound when I
eyed the opening. It looked really small.

Dr. Roth glanced at the
monitors and gave me a sharp look. “Your heart rate is increasing.
Do you want that sedative now?”

“No, I’m fine.” I took
a deep breath.

The MRI was just a
hollow tube. Open at both ends. I could get out if I had to. No
worries.

The doctor pressed a
soft object into my hand. “If you feel panicky during the
procedure, don’t move, just squeeze this.”

I sucked in another
shallow breath when the table slid smoothly into the body of the
machine. The inner curve of the opening was only a couple of inches
above my face. My heart contracted with instinctive panic, and I
clamped my eyes shut on the confined view.

Just a hollow tube.
Nice fresh air moving across my face. No problem.

“Aydan, are you okay?
Your heart rate is still climbing.”

“I’m fine.”

Breathe. In. Out. Ocean
waves.

Dammit, this was taking
for-bloody-ever. I lay rigidly. Don’t move. Breathe.

“Aydan? Do you want the
sedative? We’ll just run it into your IV line. It’ll be working in
a few seconds.”

“No, I’m fine.”

Breathe.

A second voice.
“Doctor, her heart rate just hit 165. Still climbing.”

“Sedate.”

“No...” I muttered as
the warm fuzziness drowned me.

When I opened my eyes,
Kane was sitting beside my bed. I fought my way through the
haze.

“I really hate
sedatives,” I mumbled.

He chuckled. “You hate
anything that might make you sacrifice your independence.”

“Well, duh.” I pawed at
the oxygen mask and struggled to sit up.

“Stay.” He held me down
with a heavy hand on my shoulder.

I sighed, and my eyes
closed again without my permission.

When I opened them
again, the oxygen mask was gone. Dr. Roth stood at the foot of the
bed. “Everything looks fine. We’re just going to keep you here for
another half hour or so while you recover from the sedative, and
then you can go.”

I squirmed, and she
pointed out the controls on the bed. “If you want to sit up, you
can use these buttons. But stay in bed,” she added severely. “Until
I give you the all-clear.”

I nodded and used the
controls to raise the head of the bed while Kane watched, his eyes
twinkling.

“I should get some of
that sedative,” he joked. “It makes you very cooperative.”

“Don’t even think about
it,” I growled. I glanced around to make sure there was nobody
within earshot. “What the hell happened?”

“I was going to ask you
the same thing.”

“Everything was black,
and then I couldn’t breathe.”

He frowned. “We saw the
blackness on the monitor. We couldn’t see you, and you weren’t
saying anything. Then your body fell off the chair. I thought you
were trapped in the network again, so I slapped you to try to get
you out as fast as possible. I knew you wouldn’t wake to anything
but a pain stimulus, so I hit you pretty hard.” His hand reached
for my cheek again, but stopped without touching me. “I’m
sorry.”

I shrugged. “It’s okay,
I didn’t feel it.”

“I know.” His eyes were
troubled. “You didn’t feel it because you were dead.”

“Say what?”

“You weren’t breathing.
Your heart wasn’t beating. You were dead.”

“Oh. Yeah. I guess I
did hear my heart stop.”

“Dammit, why didn’t you
come out of the sim?” he demanded. “Why do you have to be so damn
stubborn? I keep trying to tell you, this isn’t worth it!”

I leaned my head back
and closed my eyes, fighting sleep. “I actually was trying to come
out. But I couldn’t see. I couldn’t find the portal, and I couldn’t
breathe. I tried. Believe me, I tried. Suffocation is not a nice
way to go.”

His hand closed around
mine. “I’m sorry.”

I sighed. “It’s okay.
Natural assumption. Stubborn is my best thing. So that’s why you
were beating up on me when I woke up. CPR.”

“Yes. I started CPR
right away, and Webb got the ambulance and opened up the
time-delay.” He frowned at me. “What do you think happened? You
can’t go back into the sim until we figure this out.”

I struggled to stay
coherent. I hate sedatives.

“Nothing happened. It’s
a sim. I just wasn’t concentrating. I panicked. It was my own
stupid fault.”

“Aydan, don’t be so
hard on yourself. Let’s think about this for a minute. Is there
anything else besides the claustrophobia that’s making it harder
for you to concentrate?”

I blinked slowly. God,
I was tired.

Oh. Duh.

“I haven’t been
sleeping. I think I’m just too tired to concentrate properly.”

“Can you find a way to
sleep better?”

“Yeah, if I can stop
being claustrophobic.”

He shook his head,
looking puzzled. “What do you mean?”

“I mean it’s a vicious
circle. The worse things get during the day, the worse I sleep at
night. Then I’m more tired than ever, and the next day gets worse.
And the next night. And so on.”

“I’ll talk to Stemp
again,” Kane said. “If he sees that this is literally killing you,
he might rethink his decision. In the mean time, you’re going home
today, and you’re not coming back to Sirius until Monday. Not for
anything.”

I clutched his arm.
“But what about your agent? What if...”

“Oh!” He smiled
suddenly. “I meant to tell you, and then all this happened. We
retrieved the agent. He’s going to be okay.”

I slumped back against
the pillow. “Oh, thank God!” The relief was so intense I had to
turn away for a second to blink back tears. “That’s so good. Thank
God.”

“No, thank
you
,”
Kane corrected. “If you hadn’t decrypted that document, we wouldn’t
have gotten there in time. You saved him.”

I squeezed his hand.
“We saved him.”

Dr. Roth cleared her
throat from the foot of the bed, and I realized Kane and I were
holding hands and beaming at each other. I resisted the urge to
snatch my hand back like a guilty child, and casually let go as I
turned to her.

“Can I leave now?”

“Yes. The MRI came back
fine. You don’t seem to have suffered any ill effects. But take it
easy for the rest of the day, and don’t drive or operate dangerous
equipment for twenty-four hours. You’re considered legally impaired
until then.”

“This is why I didn’t
want the sedative,” I growled.

She shrugged, unfazed.
“The wellbeing of my patients comes before their convenience. You
might not have wanted the sedative, but you needed it.”

“Hmmph.”

The doctor turned to
Kane with a smile. “Get this grumpy patient out of here.”

“With pleasure,” he
agreed.

They both withdrew
while I got dressed. When I pulled the curtain aside, Kane was
waiting with a wheelchair.

“Aw, come on, you’ve
got to be kidding me,” I complained. “I’ll walk. Never mind the
wheelchair.”

“You have two choices,”
Kane said severely. “You can sit in the wheelchair like a good
little patient, or I can carry you out. Which would you
prefer?”

“Now you’re just
showing off,” I ribbed him.

The corner of his mouth
quirked up. “If that’s the way you want it.”

“No, I’ll behave.”

I sat in the
wheelchair, feeling foolish while he wheeled me to the hospital
doors. On the sidewalk, he deftly manoeuvred the chair into a shady
spot and locked the brakes.

“I’ll go and get the
Expedition,” he said. “I’ll pick you up from here.”

“I can walk to the
parking lot,” I protested.

“Or I could carry
you.”

“All right, all right,”
I grumbled as he strode away, grinning.

The warm fresh breeze
wrapped gently around me and I let my eyes drift closed. I eased
back in the chair, moving carefully against the painful bruise.

“Aydan!”

My eyes flew open and I
jerked upright with an involuntary grunt of pain as I clutched my
chest.

Tom squatted down
beside my chair, looking into my face with horrified eyes. “Aydan,
what happened? What...” His eyes narrowed as he surveyed my face.
“He beat you. That lousy dirtbag was beating you last night, wasn’t
he? That was you screaming. I’m going to find him and kick his
sorry butt from here to-”

“Tom,” I interrupted.
“Stop. Nobody was beating me.”

“Aydan.” He placed his
hand against my cheek, his callused palm barely touching my skin.
“You have a huge red handprint across your face. A handprint that’s
bigger than my hand. And I have big hands.”

“Oh.”

Shit.

I went for damage
control. “Tom, it’s not what it looks like. I swear to you, Arnie
never hit me.”

“Then who did?” His
face was hard with anger, his normally sky-blue eyes the colour of
arctic ice. “Tell me, Aydan. You’re not doing anyone any favours by
protecting him.”

I sighed. My brain
waded sluggishly through the remains of the sedative. “It wasn’t...
I was at work, and I fainted. Kane was trying to wake me by patting
my face.”

“Kane? John Kane? The
guy who showed up in your driveway and commanded you to come with
him like he owned you? That’s a heck of a pat.”

I sighed again and
squeezed my eyes shut, trying to focus. “It only looks bad. I have
very sensitive skin, and the slightest touch makes it go red. In a
couple of hours, you’ll never know there was ever a mark on my
face. Here, I’ll show you.”

I turned my wrist up
and scraped my fingernails across it. The scratches turned white
before blooming into livid red a few seconds later.

“See? I barely touched
the skin.” I held my wrist up for his inspection.

He frowned, obviously
unconvinced. “When I startled you, you flinched like it hurt you.
Do you have an explanation for that, too?”

I was saved from
replying when the Expedition pulled up at the curb. Kane got out
and came around to stand beside me. Tom rose from his crouch beside
the wheelchair and stood to his full height, only a couple of
inches shorter than Kane. The two men locked eyes.

“Do you care to explain
this?” Tom inquired mildly, gesturing toward my face. His tone
reminded me of the way his soft denim shirt had felt over those
lean, hard muscles. Only soft on the surface.

Kane’s posture stayed
relaxed, though I knew he’d caught the subtle threat. His eyes
flicked to me, and I gave him a tiny nod.

He met Tom’s gaze
squarely. “Aydan collapsed at work. I was trying to revive her. I
guess I was more scared than I realized, and I patted her face
harder than I intended to. I feel terrible about this.”

Tom held his eyes for a
few seconds longer, and Kane returned his look levelly.

“What else did you do?”
Tom asked in the same quiet voice. “Why is she moving like
somebody’s beaten her up?”

“Probably because she’s
badly bruised. Her heart stopped, and I had to give her CPR.”

“
What?
” Tom
swung a worried gaze back to me. “Your heart just stopped?”

“No,” Kane lied
smoothly. “She got an electrical shock, enough to stop her heart
for a few seconds. She’s been fully checked out, and she’ll be
fine. We have to go now. She’s been sedated, and I have to get her
home.”

I let my eyes drift
closed again and swayed a little.

“Do you need help?” Tom
asked.

“No, that’s fine, I can
manage,” Kane replied.

He helped me into the
Expedition and buckled me in, and then closed the door and went
around to the driver’s side. I slumped against the door and lifted
a listless hand to Tom as we drove away.