Extreme Danger (McClouds & Friends #5)(103)

“Ah, unfortunately yes,” he admitted. “Diana Evans, the anesthesiologist who I had chosen for my team. She, ah…she—”

“Has proven to be less than worthy?” Zhoglo finished smoothly.

“She’s become erratic and unpredictable,” Mathes said, reluctantly. “I think that she’s close to a total breakdown.”

“Ah. I see. Sad. She is pretty. I saw pictures. I could have told you not to go into partnership with a woman that you are f*cking, Doctor.”

Mathes swallowed down his angry response before he realized that he had done it, and was left with nothing left to say. Jaw flapping.

Maybe it was the scene at the island that intimidated him. A man could hardly be blamed for being a tad unnerved by throat-slashed, bullet-ridden corpses strewn left and right. Even Dr. Richard Mathes.

“You will be able to manage without her, I presume?” Zhoglo asked. “The team I assembled for you is adequate, no?”

“Yes,” he admitted. He had not yet met the members of the secret surgical teams, all of whom were from Eastern Europe, but he had studied their CV’s. All of them were superbly qualified. It made one wonder how Zhoglo had managed to hire so many fine doctors.

He had a sudden flash of the two Parisian girls, tied to the bed, throats gaping red. Nigel Dobbs, smiling cordially in the foreground.

Perhaps it was not such a mystery. All those doctors had families.

“I’ve given her sedatives,” he said. “She should sleep for several hours today.”

“Meaning that you want me to hurry up and clean up your mess for you, Doctor? By rights, you should put her down yourself.”

Mathes was utterly taken aback. “I—”

“Yes, I know.” Zhoglo sounded bored. “You are not competent. Such things require a specialist. I will send someone to take care of it. Is there anything more?”

Diana’s mysterious double flashed through Mathes’s mind, and just as quickly he dismissed it. His situation was bad enough as it was. “No.”

Zhoglo waited another moment and grunted. “Very well. I am not impressed, Doctor. Your Diana is not the security risk. You are.”

Mathes hurried to excuse himself, flustered. “I am sorry—”

“Do better, from now on,” Zhoglo said. “I do not tolerate failure. The effect of further failure upon your family would be…unfortunate.”

The connection broke. Mathes let the phone drop from a hand that was numb with an emotion he barely remembered. Fear.

He’d awakened a beast by poking a stick through the bars of its cage, just for fun—only to discover that the cage door hung wide open.



Becca woke up with an odd feeling of well-being. Her body felt boneless and warm, limp. She wiggled, felt the deep ache in her groin that was beginning to feel almost normal. The feeling she always had after a mad marathon of hot, crazy sex with Nick. Wow.

Not that the sensation was unpleasant. In fact, she squeezed, flexed, stretched, savored it. Her muff hurt quite a bit less than it had the previous mornings. It would seem that she was getting in shape, sex-wise. For the first time in her life.

She reached out across the bed, found it empty. Her eyes popped open, searching for him.

There he was. And how. He sat cross-legged on the rumpled sheets of the other bed, from which he’d stripped the covers. Not a stitch of clothing. He contemplated a large screen laptop. The screen illuminated his somber face with an eerie glow. The room was dim, lit only by the sunlight that glowed around the borders of the blackout curtains.

In the gloom, Nick looked like a naked space-age monk deep in meditation, with that supernatural focus in his eyes. His concentration was laser sharp, slicing through whatever he saw. Including herself.

His pose was outwardly relaxed, but the profound stillness of his body gave her the sense that he could explode into movement in a fraction of an instant. Explosive, volcanic emotions, hidden behind his steely fa?ade, under constant, relentless pressure.

He was so beautiful. It was outrageous. Every detail, those smoldering dark eyes beneath the thick, straight black brows that winged straight back, the hard, sealed mouth, the sharp cliff of his cheekbones. The bumpy terrain of his nose. And his body, all that hard, slabbed, ripped complexity of his heavy musculature. He was so lean, every muscle, every tendon visible, ready and willing to do its job. Not a speck of pinchable fat on him. Which was hardly surprising, since he forgot to eat for days at a time.

Speaking of which. She was startled to realize that she’d done the same thing. Her last chance to eat had been lunchtime the day before, and she’d sacrificed that opportunity to go to the mall and buy slut lingerie. Not that she regretted it, but still. She was ravenous.

And not just for food, either. She’d developed a host of other appetites. She wanted to grab and stroke and caress every inch of that man’s succulent, sinewy body. But she’d probably have to tie him down with rope to get the chance, he was so sexually aggressive.

Tying him. Hmm. The idea had merit. She started to grin. Ten to one, he wouldn’t go for it, control freak that he was, but the resulting argument would be, well, stimulating. And the final outcome would be a lot of fun. She squirmed, just imagining it.

Nick sensed the intensity of her gaze and glanced over, giving her a slow smile that made a string of inner firecrackers detonate inside her. Heat, sparks, colors. Excitement, confusion, fear.