Fatal Strike (McClouds & Friends #10)(4)

He fed wood slowly into the fire, too zonked to think. Then he felt that hot, shivery tingle on his skin again. He rose, scanning the trees that circled his clearing.

Luminous cat eyes flashed eerily in the firelight. The sounds of the night swelled as his perceptions amplified. He felt no sense of menace, just a hushed, cautious awe, but he pulled the loaded Glock 23 out of his pack all the same. It was too small a caliber for a cougar, but it was better than nothing. He’d have to shoot her right through the brow or the eye if she came at him.

God forbid it should come to that. She was so damn beautiful.

He sat slowly down again, facing her, and fed twigs into the fire. Wind sighed and tossed the treetops, driving shifting swatches of cloud across the glittering smear of uncountable stars. His eyes wanted to close so badly, but the cougar’s presence gave him that persistent little zing of adrenaline that kept them open.

The big cat was fascinated with him. She wanted to figure him out, make sense out of him. Good luck with that.

They’d told him that depression was normal after a brain injury. God knows, PTSD flashbacks would drive anybody half bonkers. He had iron-clad excuses for everything that was happening to him. But the sex dreams in his sleep were hard enough for him to justify. If Lara started haunting him while he was awake, too . . . oh, Jesus.

That bumped him up to a whole new level of crazy.

He’d taken on the task of finding and rescuing Lara as soon as he’d been capable of functioning after the Spruce Ridge debacle. Lara was another victim of the psychic freak squad that had attacked Miles. It had been Lara’s own mother, Helga Kasyanov, who had developed psi-max, the psi-enhancing drug that augmented latent paranormal ability, thereby setting this whole mess in motion. Helga had been murdered by Rudd’s people. Miles had been the one to find the mutilated body of Joseph Kirk, Lara’s father. Chained up in his own basement.

So Lara had been orphaned, as well as abducted. It made him angry, sick, and sad, which touched off a useless but uncontrollable urge to save the princess. Too many video games in his egghead youth.

He’d tried to find Lara Kirk harder than he’d ever tried anything in his life. He’d found exactly squat. She had stayed stubbornly lost. No clues, no breaks, no hints. Just a smooth, obdurate brick wall.

It burned his ass. No one better than he knew what she’d been up against, what she might have suffered. How could a guy know that, and just take it easy, convalesce? Sorry lady, I need some R&R to get my brain swelling down before I can rescue you from the slobbering monsters.

And why did he still give a shit at all, with his shield up? He managed not to care about anything or anyone else.

Because everyone else is outside your shield, dickhead. She keeps sneaking inside. At which point you bone her brains out. What a prince.

That thought stank of schizo delusion. He refused to think it.

Sleep was like a hand, pressing down hard on his head. He fought it, which left him less willpower to withstand the impulse to grope in his jacket for the plastic envelope. It held a photo, a copy of the headshot on Lara’s website. She was a sculptor. Had been a sculptor. He knew every piece in her online catalog. He’d studied them. Pored over them.

He stared at her haunting dark eyes, and then started cursing, low and long, picking up steam. His tantrum culminated in tossing the photo at the fire. He choked it, of course. The picture fell short, landed at the edge of the embers. The plastic envelope began to melt and twist.

He plucked it out of the coals, defeated. Waved it until the plastic solidified. Stuck it in his jacket, defeated. So much for his hissy fit. Why did he even try.

He was keeping his eyes open by brute force of will alone when the images started again, just like it had while he was climbing. Like a dream, but he was not asleep, and he could not stop them. He just watched her, moving through the guts of the big machine that housed him. She wore that gauzy, impractical white thing, like a fairy-tale princess, pale, over-the-top froth. Her hair hung long, tousled. Long, slim legs. The dress swung and fluttered as she sidled through gnashing gears, arching, bending, ducking . . . and she was inside.

Of him. While he watched, wide awake. Holy shit. His muscles contracted. Oh, man. This was so weird. So bad. Crazy bad.

In his dream, or image, or whatever it was, she was in a control room, like the bridge of a futuristic spaceship. A relic of all his late nights with the sci-fi channel, no doubt. She drifted around in the room, twirling knobs, pushing buttons. She sat in a big swivel chair that looked suspiciously like a space captain’s chair, and began typing onto a terminal that took form before his eyes.

He started to sweat. She’d never spoken in the dreams. Not that he’d given her a chance, the way he came on. Conquering barbarian style. She hadn’t been able to do much more than whimper and gasp.

He’d left a message on his analogous mental computer only once. It had been for Nina, on that fateful night at Spruce Ridge. More a thought experiment than anything else, just to see if it would work, and he’d been privately appalled, at the time, to find that it had.

That had been his one glancing brush with practical telepathy, and he had not wanted to repeat the experience, not ever. He had enough problems. He didn’t want this to go any further. Oh please.

But the message glowed on the screen, beckoning.

where r u?

He shouldn’t answer it. He should not encourage a split-off part of his own f*cked-up prefrontal cortex to talk to him. That played along with the fiction that it existed separate from his own consciousness, and it didn’t, goddamnit. It was just Miles Davenport and his own complicated baggage. No more, no less. But his response rattled out onto the screen anyway. piss off i dont want 2 play