Page 16 of Breaking Danger (Ghost Ops #3)

“Here.” She gently pushed the platter with her zucchini omelette over to him, afraid that if she held it out, he’d see that her hands were trembling. “Have some more.”

He’d already eaten half of her 8-egg omelette. His manners were impeccable but clearly he’d been hungry.

“Don’t have to ask me twice.” He smiled at her and cut himself another wedge.

Oh God. It was the first real smile she’d seen from him and…he had a dimple. It appeared, unexpectedly, in his right cheek. A dimple. Oh this was too much. She took in a deep breath and slid the wooden cheeseboard over to him, as well.

“These are all great,” he said, as he cut himself a slice of goat cheese.

“Yes, well, it’s San Francisco,” she said before she could think her words through.

“Was San Francisco,” she corrected. Who knew when the Ferry Building Farmer’s Market would open again.

If it could ever open again. To open, it would need the rebuilding of a subculture of farmers and cheese makers and vintners.

She gave a crooked smile. “Maybe rat brains cooked over a trash fire will figure large in our future.”

Jon put his hand over hers and squeezed gently.

His big hand was so warm, so comforting.

She looked down at her hand under his. She had a scientist’s hands.

Soft and pale, with only the strength necessary to pipette liquids into vials and pound the keyboard.

His hand looked as if it could haul a tank.

“There won’t be any rat brains in Haven.

Put that image out of your mind. We’re completely self sufficient in energy and water and food.

The refugees will put some strain on us but we have enormous reserves.

Mac and Nick and I are used to military planning and—well, we planned for a siege right from the start. ”

Oh no. Her breath blocked in her chest. Her hand slid from his and her back hit the chairback with a thud. “You knew this was coming?” she whispered. The words would barely come out between numb lips. “You knew and you didn’t stop it?”

He grabbed her hand back. “No, God no. We didn’t plan for this . For a massive outbreak of a deadly virus, no.”

Her lungs expanded on a loud gasp. For a second there she thought—no. Arka had engineered the virus, not some people on a mountaintop in northern California.

She had to wait a minute to be able to speak, though. “Okay,” she said when she could keep her voice even. “Explain why you have a community that plans for sieges.”

He didn’t answer right away. He simply looked at her, his bright blue eyes burning into hers.

He didn’t try to hide his scrutiny, didn’t try to pretty it up.

He just stared so intensely it felt as if he were walking around inside her head, picking at her thoughts.Turning them over. What was he waiting for?

Finally, he spoke. “Okay.” He reached out and tucked a lock of her hair behind her ear. The touch was casual, a friendly gesture, no more. But she shivered.

He noticed. Those bright ice blue eyes noticed everything.

“Two years ago I would have been shot by the US government for telling you this, but I think, all things considered, that soon there might not be a US military to shoot me anymore so it’s a moot point.”

“If you told me you’d have to kill me?” she teased. A thousand movies had used that line.

He wasn’t smiling. “Exactly.” The way he said it sobered her. “If I had talked to you about us two years ago and someone in my chain of command found out, you’d have been tracked down and disappeared. No one would ever have heard from you again. Least of all me.”

This happened in the real world. She knew that. Her smile was gone. “Your chain of command is probably gone,” she said softly.

His jaws clenched. “It’s definitely gone,” he answered.

“So here’s the story. Mac, Nick and I belonged to a deniable military unit.

Deniable means that if we were ever caught, Uncle Sam would deny our very existence.

We were Ghosts. We were off the books, our pasts wiped out, our military records erased.

All photographs tracked down and destroyed.

We didn’t exist. We deployed on missions where the US Government could not be seen as intervening.

Posse Comitatus didn’t apply to us since technically we didn’t exist. Do you know what that is? ”

Sophie nodded. “Sure. It’s the law that stops the military from acting on American soil.”

He gave a sharp nod. “Exactly. But technically we weren’t military. We weren’t anything. So when the military got word that a lab in Cambridge was very close to perfecting a weaponized version of Yersinia pestis , they called us . ”

She gasped. A weaponized version of Yersinia was one of the worst things she could think of. Almost as bad as what was happening outside her windows. “The plague! A genetically modified version of the bacillus that can spread quickly—maybe airborne—it would be a disaster!”

“Oh yeah.” His face tightened. “Believe me when I say that the seven of us—the founders, the plankholders of Ghost Ops—were highly motivated to retrieve the material and shut the research down. We had a very short chain of command. Our team leader, Captain Lucius Ward reported to General Clancy Flynn who reported to the president. So when we got our orders from Lucius, we were ready to go in fifteen.”

“Who were the other three?”

“Three of the best teammates you can imagine. Pelton, Romero and Lundquist.”

Something about the way he said their names…” Did they die in the mission?”

Something dangerous flashed in his icy blue eyes. “No. It might have been better if they had. They ended up on the wrong end of a scalpel. They spent a year under the knife.”

Sophie blinked.

“It was a trap, Sophie.” His voice had been calm up until then.

Now the heat of rage shaded through it. “It was an Arka Pharmaceuticals lab and General Flynn and Dr. Charles Lee wanted to get rid of Lucius and get rid of us. Nobody was weaponizing bubonic plague. They were actually perfecting a cancer vaccine. We were sent into battle under a lie. We were ambushed in a firefight and an explosion took out the lab. Only three of us survived, or so we thought. We thought Pelton, Romero and Lundquist died and Lucius escaped. We thought he’d betrayed us for money.

” His jaws clenched and he looked away for a moment, visibly trying to control himself.

“The thought that the captain would betray us for money—well, it nearly brought us to our knees. Mac particularly. He was recruited by the captain, trained by the captain to head up the Ghost Ops team. Mac would have gladly given his life for the captain. All of us would have. And here we were—betrayed, under arrest, on our way to a secret court martial.”

He looked away, jaws clenched. The memories brought him pain, distress. Sorrow came off him in almost visible waves, though his face betrayed nothing. It didn’t have to, she could see the pain.

Sophie didn’t know what to do, so she did the only thing she could—she touched him.

Since childhood she’d had two different types of touches.

Normal touches, human skin to human skin.

They could be a hug, walking arm in arm, accidental touches.

But over and above that, she could also Touch.

It was an entirely different thing altogether and she still didn’t understand it, even after a lifetime of it.

She’d become part of the Arka research project not just to understand the science of paranormal phenomena, but to understand herself.

To understand how she could heal.

Not all the time and not always fully, because it was erratic, but when she threw a switch on inside herself, something that had no explanation in normal science happened.

She was a scientist and she’d always gotten straight As in everything, including English.

So she should have been able to explain to herself what happened when she threw that switch, but she couldn’t. She could barely describe it.

But Sophie let it happen, this gift she barely understood.

She warmed up in a flash, heat crackling through her in a palpable wave.

The heat was entirely subjective, though, because she’d taken her own temperature during a healing session and it never went above 98.

6. The heat didn’t feel like a fever. Fevers were a reaction to a pathology.

This didn’t feel like pathology, it felt…

right. As if she were throwing a circuit of nature, and power flowed from her to the sick person.

Her first conscious use of her Touch had been at the age of twelve with Fritz, the dumb and the beautiful.

He’d been run over by a car on the street outside their house.

The house had had a fence around it but later they’d discovered that Fritz had dug his way out.

She and her parents had been having breakfast on a Saturday morning when they’d heard a loud thump and then anguished wailing.

Rushing out onto the street, they’d seen Fritzi lying on his side, whining, trying to lick his red hindquarters. Sophie’s father had gathered Fritzi in his arms while Sophie clung to her father’s pants, crying, as he carried the wounded animal to their porch.

While her father took out his cell to call the vet, Sophie threw her arms around Fritzi, burying her face in his soft golden fur that smelled of shampoo and dog and…

something happened. She felt waves of heat that didn’t burn.

She was barely aware of the fact that Fritzi’s whines had stopped and that he’d started licking her arms instead of his hindquarters.

All she knew was that she loved this beautiful dog who’d been a puppy during her own puppyhood.

He stood up.

Sophie had fallen back, so weak she couldn’t stand up, though Fritzi could. She still remembered the look of astonishment on her parents’ faces.