Retribution (SSU Trilogy Book 3) (The Surgical Strike Unit) (18 page)

In fact, Gabby believed Rafe’s intelligence had improved slightly. He appeared more alert when performing the tasks his cognitive therapists requested of him. Two days ago, Rafe had been shown Gabby’s photo again. His only reaction had been a clenched jaw and hands that opened and closed into fists.

Yesterday, the curtain had been pulled back on the special observation window, allowing Rafe to see Gabby. He’d started, then stared at her with narrowed eyes. The medical team’s sensors had reported accelerated breathing, but after a few minutes of intense scrutiny, Rafe had turned his back and walked away, leaving Gabby strangely bereft. Yet more determined than ever to be allowed into Rafe’s room with him. To be the one friendly face among the strangers treating him.

Mindful of her safety, Gabby had waited with barely leashed impatience as she repeated the through-the-glass encounter several times a day for three days. Until finally the psychiatric team agreed that it appeared safe for Gabby to attempt a face-to-face meeting.

Gabby took a deep breath. Today it was time to show Rafe know he wasn’t alone.

“Are you sure about this, Gabby?” Kai asked. “Rafe may have regained enough cognition to be playing dumb in hopes of luring you inside.”

“I’m sure.” She patted the oversized pocket of her cardigan. “I’ve got the tranquilizer gun and the security team will be right outside in case something goes wrong. But the majority of his psychiatric team agrees that he’s starved for contact with a human being who is not part of his medical team.” Just thinking about how long it had been since Rafe had a normal, casual relationship with another person made Gabby’s voice wobble on the verge of tears. Rafe had been such a gregarious man before his capture. She imagined the social isolation was as much a punishment as the physical torture he’d endured.

She firmed her voice, refusing to let her emotions make her appear weak to Kai. That was the surest way to have him ask Ryker to pull her off the project for lack of objectivity. And she needed to do this.

“He needs a friend. Hopefully, he’s calmed down enough that he’ll remember the positive time he spent with me, rather than the punishment Kaufmann inflicted on him. If I’m right, my scent should help break through any lingering conditioning.” She’d overdosed herself with the cherry vanilla body lotion she’d been wearing the night they made love.

As they reached the door to Rafe’s room, her heart fluttered in her throat. She’d insisted on seeing Rafe h
ere, in the environment that was becoming his home, instead of in the more sterile holding room where he’d met Niko. And she’d chosen the middle of the night so his biorhythm would be slower.

God, she was scared. What if Rafe ignored her? That would almost be worse than if he attacked her.

“Ready? Keep your hand on the tranquilizer gun. There was a mild sedative in his dinner, so he should remain calm. There’s also a restraint tying Rafe’s leg to the bed, so keep at the distance we discussed and he won’t be able to reach you. We’ll be standing right outside. If we see or hear anything that indicates you’re being threatened, we’re pulling you out.” Kai had four security guards with him, all armed with tranquilizer guns and restraints.

Gabby nodded. “I’m ready.”

One of the security guards opened the door and let Gabby inside.

T
he chime at the entrance to his room woke Rafe from a deep sleep.

Danger!

Rafe bolted from his bed and looked around wildly. His heart beat triple time as he tried to locate the threat he’d been expecting for days.

He checked the room once. Twice.

No one was there. The drapes were closed against the window. Everything appeared as he’d left it before sleep claimed him.

The lights overhead turned on, momentarily blinding him and sending him into a panic as he sensed someone enter the room. He held himself still, trembling on the edge of panic and aggression, while his eyes adjusted to the light.

A woman stood with her back pressed against the door, one hand in the pocket of her blue sweater. She stared at him with uncertainty. “Hi, Rafe.”

He flinched. Her voice was soft, familiar. It filled him with a need to get closer. To hear her speak again. He stepped forward, his heart beating too fast.

“Do you remember me?” she asked.

His eyes flew to her face. Memory stirred. Her face… Yes. He remembered her face. Her smile.

Pain lanced through his head.
“If you ever meet this woman, kill her,” the Voice ordered, showing Rafe a photograph. “She is a traitor to this lab. If she catches you the pain will be unimaginable. To survive, you must kill her.”

Rafe trembled. The people holding him in this new location had told him the woman was not his enemy. She was a friend. The new white coats had also shown him her photograph, watching for his reaction.

Friend. Enemy. He hadn’t known what to believe. So he’d forced himself to stay still, which seemed to please the white coats.

The next day the woman had appeared at his window. Again he’d heard the Voice in his head.
“Kill her.”
But the new white coats were trying to help Rafe and they insisted the woman was a friend. He’d struggled to find the truth, but the pain in his head had been too much. The need to kill had started to grow. Yet the woman had been on the other side of the glass, out of his immediate reach. Instead of breaking the glass and attacking her, which might make these white coats abandon their gentler ways and hurt him, Rafe had turned his back and walked away.

But now she was here. And there were no white coats in the room. The voice inside his head telling him she was a friend became drowned out by the Voice.
“Kill her!”

Rafe lunged toward the woman. The strap that had been fastened around his ankle broke with the force of his movement.

With her back already to the door, there was nowhere for the woman to hide. No chance she could escape him. He saw her hand start to pull something out of her pocket, but he slammed his body against hers, trapping her hand where it was.

Snarling, he wrapped his fingers around her neck and squeezed.

That’s right,
the Voice whispered.

The woman’s squeak of alarm turned into a choked-off gasp. Her fingers clawed at his hands. Her hazel eyes widened in fear, but there was something else there, too. Something that made him hesitate and lessen the pressure.

“Rafe, please don’t kill me,” she gasped. “I’m Gabby. Remember? You helped me escape from Kaufmann. We m-made l-love the night before you left.” Her eyes pleaded with him to remember. To have mercy.

Rafe shook his head. Those eyes. They…shouldn’t…fear him. There was something wrong with her being afraid. It brought the memory of frightened eyes. Of him putting his arms around her to soothe away her tears.

“Rafe, I won’t hurt you,” she whispered. “I’m your friend. Your…lover.”

Kill her,
the Voice said inside his head.
She’s lying. Just as she lied to you before. She told you to obey Kaufmann and the pain would go away. It got worse, instead. Punish her. She’ll bring pain. Spill her blood onto your hands. Then you’ll be safe.

Rafe’s fingers tightened again on her throat.

Tears leaked out of her eyes, wetting his hands. “I won’t ever hurt you,” the woman repeated. “I love you.”

Love. He knew what that word meant. Agony. Electric shock. Cold so pervasive he couldn’t think. Painful convulsions.

Yes, the men in white coats had taught him all about love.

The woman went slack in his hands. He continued to squeeze, waiting for the life to drain, when a scent barreled through his rage.

He paused. Sniffed. Moved his nose to the neck of the woman.

The scent was on her skin. He inhaled deeply and felt the red haze of rage recede, replaced by a curious calm that somehow silenced the voices. Instead, he heard soft laughter. Breathless moans of excitement. A sigh of bone-deep satisfaction.

The Voice tried to drown out the memories, making Rafe’s head ache. But when he inhaled again, drawing the scent into his body, the voices went away.

Pain lanced through his head, followed by a strange sense of peace. This woman was important to him. Good. The Voice was wrong. Killing her would be wrong. He was supposed to protect her.

The new white coats were right. This woman was a friend.

He released her neck and lifted her limp body into his arms, tucking her face up near his shoulder and lowering his head slightly so he was closer to the special scent.

He carried her to his bed and set her gently on top of the covers.

The door at his back burst open. Pinpricks of pain blossomed along his back and upper thighs. He roared and turned around.

Soldiers rushed into the room. He knew what to do with soldiers.

Take them down.

He lunged toward them so fast, he saw surprise in their eyes. He grabbed the nearest man by his throat and flung him against the wall. Took down the next two. Felt more pinpricks of pain and looked down to see darts sticking out of his chest.

“We’ve got her.”

“Get her out of here.”

A man hurried to the door, the woman in his arms.

“No. Mine!” Rafe bellowed, trying to reach him. The woman was his to protect. But there were three men in his way. By the time he fought his way closer to the door, the man carrying the woman had disappeared.

Rafe lost it. He grabbed a chair and swung it into the men blocking him, then threw the chair against the large window. He overturned his bed and shoved it at the next wave of men, knocking them all down.

“Someone fucking restrain him, already!”

“What the hell do you expect us to do? The drugs aren’t working. And Christ, he’s strong as Superman even with the damn sedative in his supper. No wonder the restraint holding him to the bed failed.”

He fought, but the drugs slowed him down.

Rafe kicked one of the men so he fell against the leader. They collapsed to the floor. Rafe raced toward the door. He needed to find the woman. To make sure she was okay. But three steps from the door he staggered, then fell to his knees as the drugs took effect.

“No!” he protested. He struggled back to his feet, but gravity slammed him face down on the floor.

He felt a boot on the small of his back and the nose of a rifle at the base of his skull. “Sorry, Rafe buddy,” a vaguely familiar voice said. “This really is for your own good.”

Cold plastic restraints snapped around his wrists, but all Rafe could manage was an enraged growl.

“This proves my point,” a haughty male voice sneered. “He’s an animal.”

No, Rafe thought hazily as the drugs dragged him under. He
wasn’t
an animal. He was still human. Just…different…

Chapter 15

Later That Morning

Dr. Kaufmann’s Lab

Blue Ridge Mountains

D
r. Kaufmann watched his office door close behind the two Russian scientists who had worked at a lab run by Dr. Nevsky’s Russian colleague, Dr. Ivanov. Arrogant bastards. They pretended not to speak very good English unless it suited them. Why they had a problem with him, he didn’t understand. They should be grateful they weren’t rotting in a Russian jail. But did they thank him for giving them the opportunity to continue their work?

No.

Instead, they stared down their aristocratic noses at him and informed him that Dr. Ivanov’s program had been much more advanced than Kaufmann’s program, so their talents were wasted here.

Worse, the machine that could read the microchip Jamieson’s man Tonelli had brought out of Russia had finally arrived. The chip held notes about an experiment to test how Ivanov’s subjects fared in arctic temperatures. Not Nevsky’s research.

Which meant that Kaufmann still didn’t have the critical formula he needed to create more of Nevsky’s drugs.

He shoved the report away from him and surged to his feet. He needed Nevsky’s formula. His supply of the drugs that he’d stolen from Nevsky’s lab was almost gone. Only with a regular series of injections of the drugs did the mind control retain its grip on the subjects. He’d tried rationing the drugs for one or two batches of subjects, but the weaker dosages had failed to achieve the desired results.

Rafe Andros had received the full dosage of the drug, yet Kaufmann didn’t know if the mental block his team had created would succeed in preventing Andros from remembering details about the program. Kaufmann paced around his office, unable to sit still. According to Jamieson, not only had the SSU retrieved Andros, but Dr. Montague was working with the SSU to reverse the work done on Andros.

Kaufmann knew that Dr. Montague had stolen notes and samples before she left. There was no denying her brilliance, but even she didn’t have a chance of fully reverse engineering the drugs without Nevsky’s data. Unfortunately, since the microchip didn’t contain Nevsky’s notes, the chances of the SSU having access to the real microchip were high. If true, then Dr. Montague might succeed in creating a formula that would not only fix Andros, but all of Kaufmann’s subjects.

That outcome was unacceptable. His credibility relied on the fact that once his teams of altered men were in place, no one could divert them from their mission.

He needed both Andros and Dr. Montague eliminated. But not before Dr. Montague was forced to return and to strengthen the mind control without Nevsky’s formula.

Because he very much doubted that Jamieson was ever going to be able to deliver Nevsky’s microchip to him.

The Next Day

SSU Laboratories

Georgia

“D
r. Montague should be removed from the program,” Dr. Winthrop insisted, scowling at the video screen showing Ryker in his Washington, D.C. office.

Gabby ignored him, while Kai sat back, crossed his arms over his chest and remained silent.

“Her reckless action ended in disaster. Patient Andros is now non-responsive. Truly little more than an animal.” Dr. Winthrop shot Gabby a look that was clearly meant to make her quiver in her shoes and slink away.

“Sir, look at this section of video,” she croaked. Her voice was hoarse and the words hurt coming out of her bruised throat. Rafe had nearly crushed her windpipe yesterday, but she was determined not to let Dr. Winthrop run her off.