Page 20 of I Dream of Danger (Ghost Ops #2)

“Didn’t you say you had some work at home to finish up tomorrow morning?”

“Well…yes. But nothing I can’t put off.”

Elle stacked her spine. She felt weak and groggy but she was not going to make Sophie drive in tomorrow morning just for her. “No, I’m fine. See you tomorrow afternoon in the lab, okay?”

Another searching gaze and Sophie relaxed. “Okay. See you tomorrow.”

After she left, Elle sat for another ten minutes, then realized she had to get herself home now or sleep over in the lab. It wouldn’t be the first time. But right now, she fiercely wanted her little apartment, its familiarity and its comforts.

Elle made it home before collapsing. Just. She walked straight through the door, made a beeline for the couch, dropped purse and briefcase on the floor, and fell onto it, rather than sitting down. She tilted her head back, trying to let the past 24 hours wash over her.

She had to take a shower and she had to eat, but right now, she was too exhausted to do anything but sit there, staring at the ceiling.

It reminded her of her first year in San Francisco, waitressing by day, attending night courses.

She’d been younger, though, and stronger.

And excited at the thought of getting her degree.

Back in San Francisco, she was still fueled by the energy of exploring the world after so many years in a state of stasis looking after her father.

She’d imagined she would finally start… life .

Study, find a job she loved and a man she could love.

Start a family, just like everyone else.

The study and the job had worked out. The family, not so much.

Actually, she hadn’t had much of a love life. To be brutally honest, she hadn’t had any kind of love life.

When she looked in the mirror, she saw an attractive woman.

Judging by the way men reacted to her, she knew she was attractive to men.

In the beginning she went on tons of dates, with every guy who asked her out.

She was anxious to start dating because what Nick had shown her was so enticing, she knew she wanted more of it.

Except it seemed that the sex she’d had with Nick was exclusive to him. To her horror, nobody came even close to making her feel the way he did. Elle had actually felt repulsion with a lot of guys, not even wanting to be touched.

She wasn’t gay, so that was out. She was a heterosexual lock and the one key that opened her was gone, forever. So she came home every night to her pretty, tiny apartment and tried not to wish that she were not so relentlessly alone.

She was so tired she fell asleep, right as she was, on the couch, with her coat on. And dreamed.

It was that day again. She’d relived it endlessly over the past ten years.

After months of cold gray weather, it was finally sunny again. The sun shone off the snow and lit her bedroom with a brilliant light that glowed even behind closed lids.

She smiled, yawned, stretched. Dramatically threw the covers back.

Smiled some more. Her body felt sore, used, great. Warm from Nick’s touch still. Warm. She was warm down to her bones. Warm and—and light. A great heavy burden had been lifted and she could move with ease.

She opened her eyes and looked at the rumpled bed, the folds of the sheets and covers making dramatic lights and shadows in the brilliant morning light. Things gleamed in her bedroom, the bright sun catching glints in a silver vase, the mirror over the vanity, the brass lamp.

She gleamed. She felt all shiny and new.

And she had a shiny and new love. Nick.

Who wasn’t in the bedroom or the ensuite bathroom.

Or downstairs.

Her heart was beating fast now, the beat of imminent danger.

The beat of dread. She looked and looked, the drumming of her heart covering the icy silence of the house.

Her cheeks were wet as she called Nick’s name.

She swiped at her cheeks impatiently, the beating of her heart so loud her ears rang…

Elle started awake, gasping loudly in the silence of the night.

Ashamed that once more, she’d woken up with tears in her eyes.

She could keep the tears away easily during the day.

She’d rather submit to torture than cry.

But at night, in her sleep, she was caught with her defenses down and she hated it.

The ringing didn’t stop. It always took a minute or two to come back into herself whether she’d lost herself in a dream or a Dream.

She fumbled for her purse, hands awkward and clumsy, another residue of the dream state. She checked the display and saw the photo of Sophie’s smiling face, hand holding a glass of champagne high, a picture Elle had taken at the reception thrown by Arka for the kickoff to the program.

Elle coughed to loosen her throat so it wouldn’t sound froggy, and thumbed the ‘off image’ button so Sophie wouldn’t see her face with its tear tracks. She’d say she’d just put on a masque.

“Hey, Soph,” she said casually, “What’s?—”

“Elle, listen to me because I don’t have much time.

Put me on vid.” Elle clicked and Sophie’s drawn face came on, bobbing up and down as she moved around her bedroom.

She was pale, sweating, eyes huge and haunted.

Her voice was a low whisper, tone rough with anxiety.

She glanced quickly over her shoulder then back into the display.

“Joss and Henry aren’t playing hooky. And Isabel has disappeared too.

They’ve been captured and…and taken somewhere.

I don’t know where but it’s not good, Elle.

It’s like we’re being…rounded up!” She was moving frantically, from room to room.

“I got a call a quarter of an hour ago from Nancy who got a call from Isabel. It was only a few seconds, but Nancy said men dressed in black were in her house. They were armed. She was hiding out in the closet. Now she’s not answering, her phone is dead.

And Isabel, Joss, and Henry are unreachable too.

Listen Elle, get out. Get out as fast as you can.

I don’t know who they are but it’s not good.

And Nancy told Isabel our sensors are tracking devices.

I don’t—” She froze. Even Elle heard the sound in the background. Something crashing to the floor.

There wasn’t even a pretense at stealth, which frightened Elle even more.

The image on her phone blurred, shadowy figures appearing suddenly.

“Dig the sensor out, dump your phone and get out!” Sophie screamed and her phone went dead.

Elle held her own phone in her shaking hand—a thin slab of transparent plastic that had inexplicably become as dangerous as a rattlesnake.

She opened her hand and it dropped to the floor. It didn’t break, of course. It was the latest generation and there were videos all over the net of it working after having been shot with a bullet. It was made of the same polymer as the blast-proof vests worn by bomb squads.

It gleamed there, on the floor. She could be tracked through it.

Get out!

Good thinking. Get out, escape. But not if she had something inside her that could let them track her.

No turning the lights on, but it wasn’t necessary.

She knew every inch of her home. She rushed to the kitchen, pulled out a small knife she kept razor-sharp, and ran to her en suite bathroom.

It didn’t have an outside window, so once she pulled the door shut, no light would betray her if someone was watching outside.

Hurry hurry hurry! She chanted to herself as she doused her left bicep with disinfectant.

She pressed her finger on the almost-invisible dent in her skin and felt it—a tiny chip Arka had said was a biosensor.

The biosensors were to be surgically removed after a year and the recordings placed on a graph.

It was randomized. Half the staff of volunteers had taken SL-61, the experimental drug, and half placebos. Elle had no idea which camp she was in, but it made no difference if the sensor was also a tracking chip. It had to come out, now.

There was nothing to dull the pain. She had only a rudimentary first aid kit in the bathroom. Above all, she had no time.

Gritting her teeth, she slid the knife into her skin and stopped, brow beaded with sweat, trying to get used to the pain, red-hot, almost electric.

There was no getting used to it. There was only getting through it as quickly as possible.

She turned the tip of the knife and cut at a right angle then stopped, head bowed over the sink.

The pain was so sharp it was nauseating.

She waited for the nausea to pass, then lifted the flap of flesh she’d cut out, reaching into the bloody meat of her bicep with thumb and index finger.

It was deeper than she thought and she had to actually dig to find it.

Twice she had to stop because she was about to pass out.

Finally, finally , her index fingernail touched the edge of the sensor. She was in almost halfway up the first knuckle. She looked up. The mirror showed her a bloodless face, white lips, face drawn in pain. Taking a deep breath, she curled her fingernail under the edge of the chip and pulled.

She screamed, knees buckling. Only her left arm hooked over the bowl stopped her from falling to the floor. That hurt! Magnitudes more than cutting into herself. It felt like electrical wires transmitting pain down to her bone.

God, Sophie had said to hurry! But she couldn’t go anywhere as long as she had this…this thing inside her. There was a keening sound inside the bathroom and it took her a full minute to realize it was her own voice, panting and sobbing with pain.

She couldn’t pull her fingers out from her flesh because she’d never have the nerve to dig them back in. With her right hand she pulled, harder and harder, feeling the resistance of the chip, almost as if it were alive.