Under Fire. Carol Ericson

drone for the rest of my life.”

      She folded her arms across her stomach, clutching the material of her blouse at her sides. “There has to be another way. If we get more of the pills and you take smaller and smaller doses, maybe eventually you can break free. You tried taking a half, but it was too soon.”

      “Where would I get more pills? You said yourself you never saw them at the lab. They weren’t administered at the lab. My quick search there revealed nothing.”

      She snapped her fingers. “Max, there has to be an antidote somewhere.”

      “Why would you think that? Tempest had no intention of ever reversing the damage they’d done to us.”

      “Maybe not to you, but Dr. Arnoff tested the T-101 on himself.”

      His heart slammed against his chest. “Are you sure?”

      “I’m positive, or at least I’m positive that he told me he’d tried it on himself. He said he felt like a superhero—strong, invincible, sexually potent.”

      She reddened to the edge of her hairline and waved a hand in the air. “You know, that’s what he said.”

      Sexual potency? It had been a long time since he’d been close enough to a woman in a normal situation to even think about sex.

      He cleared his throat. “If he acted as his own guinea pig, he’d want something to counteract the effects in case things didn’t go the way he planned.”

      “Exactly—an antidote.”

      “We could be jumping to conclusions.” He dragged in a breath and let it out slowly in an attempt to temper his excitement. He’d learned to be cautious about good news. “Maybe Arnoff didn’t develop an antidote. He could’ve dialed back by taking the blue pills—fewer and fewer of them until the cravings stopped and the physical effects dissipated.”

      “That could be, but it also means there must be more of those blue pills floating around.” She dropped onto the bed. “What about the other agents? Can you all pool your resources and wean yourselves off of the serum?”

      He cracked a smile and shook his head.

      “What’s so funny? That’s the first real smile I’ve seen from you all night, and I wasn’t even making a joke.”

      “I just got a visual of a bunch of Tempest agents sitting around a campfire sharing little pieces of their blue pills.”

      A smile hovered at her lips. “Not possible?”

      “I don’t even know who more than half of the agents are.”

      “I do.”

      His gaze locked onto hers. “You don’t know all their names. You don’t know where they live, and most of them are probably on assignment anyway.”

      She shook her finger at him. “You’d be surprised how many of them opened up to me.”

      “Not surprised at all.” She’d obviously been a ray of sunshine for the other agents, too. “But we can’t go knocking on their doors asking them to give up their meds. Unless they’ve already suspected something or had incidents like Simon and I did, they’re not going to see the problem.”

      “I meant to ask you that.” She fell back against the mattress and rolled to her side to face him, propping up her head with one hand. “What made you and Simon realize what was going on?”

      “There were gaps, glitches in our response to the treatment. For me it was the memories. I recalled too much about my operations. The memories they tried to implant in my brain didn’t jibe with my reality. On one assignment, Simon and I started comparing notes and then experimenting with the pills.”

      “Simon didn’t show up for his last appointment with me. He never got his injection.”

      “He decided to make a clean break. He shrugged off the seizures even though I tried to warn him.” He dropped his head in his hands, digging his fingers into his scalp. What would they tell Simon’s fiancée?

      The bed sank beside him, and he turned his head as Ava touched his back.

      “You had to shoot Simon. He would’ve killed you. He would’ve killed me.” The pressure of her hand between his shoulder blades increased. “Now, since you saved my life—twice—I’m going to save yours.”

      He wanted to believe her. He wanted to stretch out on the bed next to Ava and feel her soft touch on his forehead again.

      “And how to you propose to do that, Dr. Whitman?”

      Her hand dropped from his back. “Don’t call me that. I told you, I never finished. I don’t deserve the title.”

      “Ava.”

      “We’re going to find that antidote or a million blue pills to get you through this.” She yawned and covered her mouth with the back of her hand. “But first I’m going to sleep away the rest of what’s left of this evening.”

      “And your family? I thought I was taking you to the airport tomorrow so you could fly out to be with your family.”

      “My family.” She launched from his bed to hers, peeled back the covers and slipped beneath them. “I have no family.”

       Chapter Six

      Ava buried her head beneath a pillow and ran her tongue along her teeth. She needed a toothbrush and a meal.

      “Are you awake?”

      Lifting one corner of the pillow, she peered out at Max sitting in front of a tablet computer at the table by the window. “What time is it?”

      He flicked back the heavy drapes and a spear of sunlight sliced through the room. “It’s around ten o’clock. You must be hungry. When was the last time you ate?”

      “I had my dinner at the lab before...before everything went down.”

      “That was a long time ago.”

      “An eternity. A lifetime.” She retreated beneath the pillow. How was she supposed to do this with Max? Why did her life always manage to get upended?

      She heard his footsteps across the room and the crackle of plastic.

      “I went down to the little store in the hotel and bought you a few things.”

      “A new life?”

      The silence yawned from across the room and engulfed her. She tossed the pillow away from her and sat up.

      Max stood in the center of the room, a plastic bag dangling at his side. “You don’t need to do this, Ava. In fact, I’m going to take you to the airport right now. I’ll pay for a ticket anywhere you want to go. Then you can call the CIA or whatever number the lab gave you in case of an emergency and you can forget about all of this.”