Shatter (18 page)

He didn’t understand. His mind simply couldn’t work that puzzle. It went against human nature, even for someone on the run. She had the means to be comfortable. She could have sought out help for her powers, at least enough to find a way to allow a relationship and friends.

Mitch sensed more secrets. More lies.

That’s when something staring him in the face suddenly came into sharp focus—something he’d been looking right past all this time. “That bad dream last night . . .” An eerie crawl worked its way through his body. “That wasn’t a dream. It was a
vision,
wasn’t it?” He turned and dropped his arms. “You saw
my
future again.”

Her face slowly drained of color. She heaved a breath, but didn’t answer.

Mitch opened his mouth to ask what she’d seen, then remembered her fear as she’d woken, and wasn’t sure he wanted to know. Of course, given the situation, he
had
to know.

“Tell me, Halina. Was it the accident again?”

“No.” She returned her gaze to his, her eyes challenging, but the color in her face still absent. “It was a good glimpse of your future.”

Good? How good could it have been? “What was in it?”

Her lips pursed. A veil shielded the emotions in her eyes, making her seem impassive at best, annoyed at worst. “You have a nice future awaiting you, Mitch. Not much different from the life I imagine you’ve been living.”

“You mean the one you’ve been watching me live. Why would you do that?”

“I don’t stalk you, Mitch.” She laughed softly, but without humor. “Your handsome face is always popping up in the society pages. You’re a little hard to miss.”

“My face does not come up in a Washington—”

“My coworker has a subscription to the
San Francisco Examiner,
” she said, her whole disposition changing as if the exhaustion had finally hit her. “I’m lucky enough to get the paper delivered to work every . . . single . . . morning.”

No wonder she knew so much about his life. Not a particularly pretty picture when he thought about it viewed from her perspective.

“What did you see?” he asked. “In the vision last night?”

A dry smile lifted the edges of her mouth and she leaned back in the chair, her gaze distant, her mood subdued. “Just you, at some highbrow event, looking every bit San Francisco’s most eligible bachelor in your designer tuxedo as you were seduced by one of your gorgeous women.”

His brows fell.

“And you were so . . . happy.” Her gaze had gone distant, like she was remembering. “Just . . . top-of-the-world
happy
. . .” She almost whispered the last word as if in pain. But she pushed her lips into a smile.

Mitch took another drink of beer, realizing he should have started the morning with something harder from the case Christy had shown Halina.

“So no worries about where your future will lead,” she said. “No matter what the outcome of last night between us, your life will stay as sparkly, magical, and sex-filled as ever.”

He jerked the bottle from his mouth, spilling some of the beer. He wiped it off his chin with the back of his hand, glaring at her. His life wasn’t remotely sparkly or magical. And that’s all he had—sex. Never anything more. The life had always left a frustrating, painful hollow inside him. And now, after being with Halina, it felt like a fucking chasm.

He didn’t want to go back to that existence. But he wasn’t interested in a life of deception, either.

She had no fucking clue how empty his future looked to him right now.

“And you
believe
these visions?” he asked, incredulous. “You, the hard-core scientist. You’ve created a life of isolation based on these
visions
?”

Her gaze cleared and her eyes were like blue ice. “I believe these visions because every single one of them has come true. Every one for seven years, no matter who I have them of or what they show, it’s happened.

“I believe them because they’re
accurate
.”

Mitch opened his mouth to argue, then thought about how Halina had described them. She saw the
events
of a person’s possible future. She wasn’t empathic, like Kai, so she didn’t know how people felt. She wasn’t clairaudient, like Keira, so she didn’t know how people thought. She only knew what showed on the outside. And Mitch knew he was a great showman—mainly because he didn’t give a shit what anyone else thought of him. He went into a situation for a specific outcome and became whoever, whatever was necessary to achieve the goal.

Of course she thought his life was sex-filled, magical, and happy. That was exactly how he’d meant to project it—to everyone, including himself.

He finished off the beer and changed the subject. “When and how were you exposed to the chemical?”

She pulled her knees into the chair and wrapped her arms around her legs. With her chin on her knees, she stared blankly at the table. “An accident at the lab. About a month before I left.”

The second jab hit his gut and forced him to refocus. “You had these powers
before
you left me?”

“Yes, but I didn’t know what they were. I thought I was going insane from the stress.”

He lifted his hands to his face and rubbed again. “Halina, you
had
to be involved in the project if you were exposed.”

Her light eyes swung up and held on his face. “Your belief in me is refreshing, Mitch. But you’re wrong.” She held up a hand, eyes closed. “Hold on a second, I’m savoring the words . . .
Mitch, you’re wrong
.” A blissful smile lit her face. “Man, that really has a ring to it.”

“Ha-ha,” Mitch said.

When Halina opened her eyes, the humor was gone. “I was looking into Rostov’s work after hours and I dropped a tray of slides. I wasn’t wearing my lab jacket and I had on a top with spaghetti straps. The chemical splashed all over my chest and arms.”

“You told me you weren’t working with Rostov,” Mitch countered, “but now you’re saying you were checking on his work.”

“He was my competition. I wanted to see how far he’d come. I had to re-create the slides I’d destroyed or he would have known either Gorin or I had broken into his secured area.”

“Competition?”

“He was trying to alter chromosomes with chemicals. I was trying to alter the chromosomes with natural processes. I didn’t believe in using chemicals. Knew there would be serious side effects.”

This just got deeper and deeper. She knew so much more than she was telling him. “How do you know that?”

“Because I know the chemical. It originated in the area of uranium mines in Kazakhstan, on the southern border of Russia. I grew up hearing stories about what happened to the men working in those mines—exposure to the raw chemical causing disintegration of limbs, blindness, fatal deformities, mental illness, death. At least once a year some horrific accident would kill thousands.

“And the chemical had to go through a radical stabilization process before Rostov could use it in the lab. Nothing that needs to be altered that severely should be used in genetic engineering—at least not in my opinion.”

There were those damn morals again.

He just wasn’t buying this bullshit story she was trying to sell. Mitch had yet to meet someone who could compartmentalize their values and core personality characteristics so completely to only certain areas—or certain people—in their life.

“Classified supplied the chemical for Schaeffer,” he said as if he knew, but was guessing.

She paused, bit the inside of her lip. “No. They performed the stabilization.”

“And if I had exposed Classified with my case in the DA’s office, Schaeffer couldn’t have used the chemical in its raw form. I’d have cut off the supply of chemicals to the project.”

She nodded, then murmured, “And thanks for not calling it
my
project.”

She’d tried to save his job. She’d suffered through that torment with Schaeffer so Mitch could hold on to the job he loved. The job that could have led him to bigger, better opportunities.

That
was the Halina he’d known and loved. Not the one who’d broken his heart with a fake husband and lies upon lies.

His gut, the one that gave him all his solid hunches and insightful intuition, told him the prior was the real Halina. And that the woman she now presented was only a façade she wanted him to buy into. He had no idea why. But he knew enough to know he still had a lot to uncover.

“If you have visions with sex, and you had your powers before you left me . . .” Mitch said, and took another drink of beer, wondering if he really even wanted to know, but unable not to ask. “You must have had visions of my future.”

She didn’t respond, just stared at her hands where she picked at her cuticles.

“And?” he prodded.

She sighed. “And you’re just one example of how I know my visions are accurate. You’re living the grand life I saw you living before I left, filled with success, money, travel, friends, a family who loves you.” She paused. Her jaw jumped. “And of course, lots and lots of women who can’t get enough of you.”

“All right, you two.” Christy came sauntering down the aisle in all her long-legged glory and Mitch sat back, gripping the arms of the chair to hold his frustration in check. “We’ll be landing in a little bit. If you want to use the showers, it’s going to have to be fast and now. Mitch, your things are at the back of the plane. Halina, yours are in the front. Given the trouble signals I’m getting from you two and the lack of time, you’re staying in different bathrooms.”

Mitch pushed to his feet. “I feel like I’m at sixth-grade camp.”

“No, Mitch.” Christy turned him toward the back of the plane. “Here you won’t be sneaking into the girl’s bathroom.” She pointed. “March.”

Mitch wandered toward the bathroom and glanced back as Christy guided Halina toward the other bathroom, then sat nearby and rained attention on Dex.

In the shower, Mitch thought over all the surprises Halina had delivered this morning.

The way she’d stayed and cared for her sick lover made Mitch feel like he’d never mattered to her. Her visions of him with other women made him feel like a bottom-feeder and gave him a little more insight into why she might have run without him. There was no incentive to stay if she’d believed they’d only end up apart. Mitch couldn’t fault her for being scared or taking care of herself. Even her reasons for not coming to him with the problem were on target.

But being fired hadn’t taken away his knowledge of the law. Having a black X next to his name on Capitol Hill didn’t mean he couldn’t have reached out to other sources for help. He hadn’t been rendered useless. And after all that shit had come down on him, he’d needed her emotional support. She’d stayed and supported the other guy through his cancer. Yet, even knowing how much she’d been hurting Mitch at the time, she’d abandoned him anyway.

Wasn’t the heart of a solid relationship believing in someone even when all the chips were down? The way Alyssa had believed in Teague when he’d been convicted of murder. The way Keira had taken a chance on Luke even when she knew their fundamental differences wouldn’t change. The way Jessica had changed her whole life to start over with Quaid, a man who didn’t even remember her as his wife.

But a few hard knocks and Halina had turned away. She hadn’t trusted him enough to lay her deepest troubles at his feet. In fact, she hadn’t even trusted him enough to have a sit-down, heart-to-heart about Classified Chemical. There were so many reasonable ways for her to have asked him to back off the case other than stealing his files . . .

His mind caught. The image of that cardboard file box housing the Classified files filled his mind. He pictured it in his office by his desk.

He shut off the water, toweled off, and dressed quickly. He emerged from the bathroom with a knot of anxiety burning beneath his sternum. This was a ridiculous long shot. Halina walked toward him from the opposite end of the plane and made his stomach do a twisted roll at the same time his chest tightened up.

She paused beside their seats, a thoughtful frown on her face, then took a slow look down his white button-down and khakis. Not exactly his style, but they fit well and they were comfortable. When her gaze returned to his, she was smiling in approval, a hot little simmering grin. “You clean up nice, Foster.”

“Ah, yeah . . .” he breathed. “Was thinking the same . . .” He had no idea what he was trying to say.

She wore light jeans cut low on her hips and fitted to those sleek legs. A top that could have been considered lingerie. Really just sheer fabric a shade darker than her eyes that hugged her torso like a second skin. A second skin with tiny straps over her shoulders and a bodice that cupped her breasts into sweet mounds that made Mitch’s mouth water. And sexy, strappy heels that made his mind go completely haywire.

His hands clenched and flexed at his sides, remembering how he’d had them on all that beauty last night. All that and more. But he hadn’t appreciated it near as much as he should have. Especially given the realization that he’d probably never get another chance.

Regret created swampland out of his gut. He swallowed past a tight throat.

“Took my mouth right out of the words . . .” he murmured, then realized what he’d said and laughed. “You know what I meant.”

“Yeah,” she said softly, the first real smile he’d seen on her face in seven years, her Caribbean gaze sparkling with happiness. “But I like what you said better.”

She’d left her hair down, in a loose braid that she’d pulled forward over her shoulder and swooped low enough on her forehead to cover most of the colorful bruise. She still didn’t wear a speck of makeup, and that alone would have filled Mitch’s groin with blood. But when she turned to slide past the aisle seat before lowering into the one by the window, Mitch caressed a look over her shoulders and the crisscross straps that created a ladder over the upper half of her back. She wasn’t wearing a bra. His whole body had gone weak by the time his gaze paused on her ass and thighs, perfectly fitted into that soft denim.