Maverick (Elite Ops 2)

“Have the fucking car brought around,” he ordered again as he tucked the sheet around her, then bent and eased his arms around her.

Risa wrapped her arms around his neck, buried her face in his shoulder, and fought the tears that wanted to fall. She shuddered as the scent of disinfectant disappeared. She could smell Micah now. His scent, warm and male, wrapping around her as he removed her from the room.

The sheet protected her against the chill that would have penetrated the hospital gown. His body heat seeped into her, wrapped around her, and eased the almost mind-numbing horror that threatened her sanity.

There were protests. She could hear the nurses, perhaps a doctor.

“She’ll be looked after,” Micah snarled to someone. “You are no longer required, Doctor.”

She heard the swish of the door, felt the cool night air as it bit into the thin covering, then, seconds later, more warmth as Micah bent and moved into a car.

Her arms tightened around him.

“It’s okay,” he whispered against the top of her hair. “Jordan had a limo standing by. You’re safe. Trust me, Risa. It’s okay.”

It was okay. Her mind was still groggy; the sedative she had been given made it so hard to think. She knew it was a sedative; she remembered it from the clinic. Strangely, she remembered the doctor arguing with her father over his choice of drug.

“Same thing,” she whispered against Micah’s shoulder. “The sedative. The same thing Jansen ordered at the clinic.”

He stiffened against her. “Are you certain?”

She nodded. “I know how it feels.”

She knew because the doctor at the asylum had always put her on another sedative after her father left. One that didn’t cloud her mind so much, one that allowed her to retain memories, impressions of what was going on.

“I’ll get on that, Micah,” Jordan said. “We’ll know exactly what the sedative was within twelve hours. It takes a while to complete those tests on the blood.”

She shook her head. She knew the name of the drug. It was on the tip of her tongue. She remembered Jansen talking about it once.

“We have her records from the clinic as well as the hospital she was taken to after her rescue from there.” Micah’s voice drifted through her mind. “It should be in there.”

“The drug they found in her system after her rescue from the clinic isn’t the same,” Jordan stated. “I already questioned the doctor tonight concerning that. The drug that was found in her system from the clinic was milder.”

“Not always.” Risa had t

o force the words past her lips, but it was getting easier to think, easier to make sense of what was going on around her, though she was still groggy. She would be groggy for a while.

“What do you mean, ‘Not always’?” Micah asked.

She breathed in, out, tried to force her mind to clear enough to tell him.

“The doctor.” Her voice was halting, a little slurred. “When Jansen wasn’t scheduled in. He changed the sedative. The other, it would damage me, he said. He didn’t want to damage me. Jansen didn’t care.”

She was still locked in that in-between place. Not really here, not really there.

“You had halperidol in your system when you were taken from the clinic,” Micah said.

Risa nodded. “GHB before Jansen’s visits.” She frowned; why hadn’t she remembered that before? “He injected me with GHB.” She knew what GHB was. “The doctor called it GHB. Said he could kill me with it.”

She heard their voices in her head, insidious whispers she couldn’t escape. Jansen’s laughter, the doctor’s concern. And she heard the other man. Snide, his voice imperious but with an underlying accent.

“Don’t take me back, Micah,” she whispered, feeling the grogginess becoming darkness. “Don’t let them touch me.”

“I have you, Risa.” His arms tightened further around her. “I have you.”

She drifted off into that never-never land, aware of the tension that had invaded Micah’s body. She would ask him about it later, she told herself. If she remembered.

Jordan stared at that girl in Micah’s arms, aware of the way the agent held her, the possessiveness in his hold and in his eyes.