Vendetta Nation (Enigma Black Trilogy #2) (7 page)

“Well, if you need me again tonight, just let me know. It’s kind of nice getting to lie next to someone again. All comfort, no sex. I never thought I’d be happy about that.”

I glanced at Kara, who glared at me. Her hands were situated firmly on her hips, her foot a second away from tapping on the floor. “Our little
talk
was nice, Ian, but I think I’ll be okay tonight.”

“Suit yourself,” he said, stealing a glance at Kara. “I’ll be in the gym if you need me.”

“So…” Kara said after Ian was out of earshot.

“So…what?”

“You and Ian, huh?”

“Absolutely not! Honestly, Kara, do you think I’d go for someone like Ian Grant?”

“What, good looking and smart? You’re right, he’s so not anyone’s type,” she laughed.

“I’m not saying he’s not somewhat of a catch. He’s just someone else’s catch, not mine. I gave mine up to be here.”

“Oh, honey,” Kara said, “when are you going to quit punishing yourself and realize that you have a right to be happy? Just because you’re here, doesn’t mean you have to give up everything good in life.”

“I know, Kara, but it wouldn’t be fair to anyone, Ian or otherwise, if I didn’t go into a relationship with complete and total emotional investment.”

“Well, I think you need to at least try and let the investment come to you after the fact. You may find that if you wait, you’ll end up missing out on something that could have potentially been really special.”

“Hey,” Drew said, entering the sitting room. “Marcus needs to see you down in the lab.”

“Tell him I’ll be right there.” I looked at Kara, who shrugged her shoulders.

“Just think about it,” she said when I walked out of the room to head to the lab.

“Will do.”

Ian was standing a couple of feet inside the doorway when I walked in. “What’s all this about?” I asked.

“Something to do with our suits,” he answered.

“After the incident with Blake, we thought a few modifications were in order.” Victor joined us in the room. “After all, we wouldn’t want anything to happen to either one of you, now, would we?” He eyed me, the tone of his voice more condescending than concerned.

“We know our science isn’t perfect,” Marcus said, approaching us from the back of the lab. He carried something that resembled one of our suits in his arms. As he came closer, he unfolded it, allowing Ian and I to take it in.

“A jacket?” Ian asked, perplexed. “What about our suits? Why not just fix whatever is defective with them?”

“First of all, they’re not
defective
,” Marcus corrected him. “Theoretically, Celaine should be dead right now with as many blows as she took during her last encounter with The Man in Black. Your suits are going to help save your life, but they can only do so much. Until we can come up with a better idea or totally revamp them altogether, these jackets are going to have to work.”

“And you’ll have a chance to test them out tomorrow night,” Victor’s voice lurked from behind us.

“What’s going on tomorrow night?” I asked.

“Inez has uncovered a lead that may potentially put The Man in Black on the outskirts of Washington, D.C. It’s not much of a lead, but it’s something we should look into. Besides, Ian has never gone out on any kind of mission. It will make a nice dress rehearsal for him before the main event.”

“It’s about time,” Ian said.

“Quite.” Victor smirked. “I want the two of you to spend the majority of the day training in the gym. Develop some sort of strategy and teamwork. Your recent performance in the simulator shows that you’re still lacking in that area.”

“We’re doing what we can, Victor,” I stated. “But with all due respect, we can never know for sure what strategy we’re going to utilize until we’re in the midst of the situation for which one is needed.”

“And I understand that, Ms. Stevens, but even you can agree that any strategy is better than no strategy, and a little teamwork would have led to a much different outcome in your last encounter.”

I could feel my face flushing red. Instinctively, Ian’s arm locked around mine. “We’re on our way to work on our teamwork development now,” Ian said to Victor as he dragged me with him out of the lab.

“I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself,” I said, freeing my arm from his.

“Of course you are. Why do you think I pulled you out of there? I was more worried about Victor than you.”

“He doesn’t have to be so crass.”

“No, but that’s Victor, and you just need to get used to it.”

“Getting used to it is not an option…” I began, but stopped short of finishing my sentence just as Ian fell to the floor, clutching his chest in pain. “Ian! Ian! What is it?” He tried to speak, but only a gasp escaped his lips; one gasp, and then nothing. “Shit!” Diving to the ground, I put my ear near his mouth. Nothing. My hand felt his chest for signs of life. Nothing. Then I did the only thing I knew how to do. Pulling Ian’s head back, I cleared his airway and began chest compressions. “Help! I need help over here!” I exclaimed before blowing two breaths past Ian’s lips.

“We’re coming,” Kara’s voice echoed down the hallway in conjunction with the sound of wheels rolling against linoleum. I looked up between compressions to see Dr. Harris and Dr. Martin at her heels, a defibrillator in Dr. Martin’s arms.

“Cardiac arrest,” Dr. Harris said. Kara pulled me off Ian so they could lift him up onto the gurney. “We need to get him back to the operating room now. Kara, we may have you start jolting him on the way there. It’s the only way he’s going to make it.”

“Yes,” Victor said, joining the chaos. “Please see to it that he does make it. We don’t have the time to train another one.”

Something inside of me snapped at that moment. A primal rage, the likes of which I’ve only felt a handful of times, erupted from within. And before I could process the full weight of my actions, my feet had left the ground, and I was running full speed at Victor, unsure of exactly what I was going to do, only knowing that I wanted to inflict damage. But before I could so much as lay a finger on him, a force grabbed hold of me in the form of a hand around my neck. In an instant, the hand closed tightly around me, throwing me against the wall with such brute force that the wind was knocked out of my lungs and my head flung back into the concrete wall. Dazed, I closed my eyes tightly, then opened them again in an attempt to regain focus. Seconds later, Victor’s face came into view just inches away from my own.

“Don’t forget your place here, Ms. Stevens,” he said, a fire burning in his eyes.

With that, he loosened his grip from around my neck, and my body crumpled to the floor.

*****

“Getting ideas, Dr. Matthews?” Madison asked.

“No, no, no,” Chase answered her, continuing his counting of the infants in the nursery. “I’m just seeing where our numbers stand. We’re still well below where we were before the explosion.”

“Does that shock you?”

“Not really. I know we’re a marked institution now. The public is avoiding us like the plague.”

“They’ll come around,” Madison replied.

“Honestly, I don’t think they will,” he sighed. “This town is dying, and I’m not so sure it can ever be resuscitated. As much as I like it here, I think there may soon come a time when I’ll be looking at other hospitals for patients, if not for employment.”

“Will you be taking Miss Paige with you?”

“I’ve thought about it. Why do you ask?”

“You know I’ve always been more of a Celaine fan, Chase. I just want to see you happy.” She hesitated for a moment, unsure whether she should say what was truly on her mind. “There’s talk around here about Paige,” she began after a brief pause.

“What kind of talk?” Chase raised his eyebrow, irritated.

“Not to delve into all of the gossip, but there’s talk that Paige used to date some of the other doctors here. A lot of people say she’s looking for an easy break in life.”

“Well, they’re wrong, Madison. And I ask you to please stay out of my personal life from now on.”

“Yes, Dr. Matthews,” she replied sheepishly. “I just thought that you’d like to know.”

“Well, you thought wrong. Besides, if Paige was anything but honest in the past, she’s different now. She’s an honest woman. And it’s nice to have someone around who is one hundred percent up front with you. Someone who cares about you.”

“Permission to comment on your personal life one last time, Dr. Matthews.”

“Fine, Madison,” he sighed, “get it off your chest.”

“Looks can be deceiving. Despite what you think you saw with Celaine, I know that she truly cared for you. The sun rose and set on you in her eyes, which is why it pains me to see you with someone who may think even just slightly less of you than she did.”

“How you know about what I saw that day in the cemetery, I don’t want to know. But what I saw there was what I saw. Celaine may have cared about me once, but in the end, I wasn’t enough for her.”

“Chase!” Paige’s voice called to him frantically down the corridor.

“Paige?” Surprised, he pulled himself away from the nursery window to meet her halfway down the hall. “What? What is it?”

“Ugh,” Ian groaned. His eyes fluttered open, searching frantically for signs of life.

“I’m here,” I said, rubbing his arm.

“How long have I been out?”

“It’s almost tomorrow,” I answered him.

“Ah,” he moaned as he tried sitting up in his bed. Unbuttoning his shirt, he touched the burn marks on his chest from the defibrillator paddles. “A heart attack?” he asked.

“Cardiac arrest. I had a similar episode shortly after I arrived. It’s most likely from adrenaline overload and the result of us being the walking science experiments that we are. There are days when I swear we’re nothing but ticking time bombs rigged to self-destruct whenever they see fit.”

“The adrenaline,” he said. “Victor said it could do this.” Hearing Victor’s name sent chills down my spine and a throbbing pain across my throat. In response, I rubbed my skin in an attempt to soothe the ache. “Are
you
all right?” Ian asked. “You look like you’re going to be sic…Christ, what happened to your neck?” Ian ran his fingers over the red fingerprints that marred my neck.

“Victor,” I winced.

“Victor hit you?” Ian asked, enraged. “That son of a…Ah!” He rubbed his chest to ease the pain brought forth by his sudden movement.

“In his defense, I was planning on doing him great bodily harm.”

“That’s no excuse to hit a woman…Wait, how strong is he? Did you get any punches in at all?”

“No, that’s just it, he was so…fast. Ian, I’ve never seen anything like it. I had no time to react, no time to think before he threw me up against the wall. It’s almost as though he’s…”

“One of us?” Ian finished my sentence.

“You don’t suppose?”

“It would make sense. Think about it, Celaine, why make us the only superheroes on the block? If you had that kind of technology at your fingertips, wouldn’t you try to benefit from it?”

“If I had another agenda, maybe.”

“Well, then, let’s figure out what that agenda may be,” Ian said.

“Count me in on that.”

I watched as Ian moved his hand over the red scorch marks on his skin until he bumped into the lead situated just inches away from his heart. “For once, I’m happy that they’re monitoring my every bodily function.”

“Yeah, they saw your cardiac episode coming before you collapsed. That little invasion of privacy just may have saved your life.”

“That and the CPR I received.”

My face flushed, matching the shade of the marks around my neck. “You remember that?”

“No, not one bit. I did, however, go back and forth from being completely out of it to being somewhat lucid. I heard Harris and Martin talking about it. You may have saved my life. I guess I should thank you.”

“Don’t mention it. Just return the favor sometime,” I said.

“I honestly hope I never have to.” He smiled his off-kilter smile; a smile that reminded me why he’d been a hit with the ladies back in Norfolk.

“Becca was here for a little bit,” I said, changing the subject. “She left when she was satisfied that you were going to be okay.”

“That’s good to know. I was beginning to think you were the only one who cared enough to see me,” he said.

“Nope, your fan club is still very much with you.” I stood up and stretched, eyeing the door.

“You’re not leaving, are you?”

“I thought about it. You seem better.”

“And you still owe me. It’s my turn to make you spend the night.”

“First of all,” I admonished, “I don’t recall making you stay anywhere.”

“Seriously, Celaine, I’d like somebody here. Almost dying has a way of making you a tad clingy to the living.”

I looked at Ian, seeing a vulnerability I hadn’t been privy to before. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll stay.” I climbed over him to the other side of the bed, situating myself on my left side, the only side I could ever really fall asleep on. “I think we should stay put tomorrow night so you can recoup.”