sensory biochip, courtesy of the crew of eggheads that Lloyd Ryker kept on tap at the Foxfire lab. Max had trained hard to master a huge range of human steroids, hormones and man-made chemicals. When carefully recorded, they presented a picture of the subject’s recent activities, where they took place and the emotions that were present at the time.
To a civilian it would look like witchcraft, images pulled from thin air. But every scan had its price, demanding absolute focus as well as psychological risk. Like Truman, Max’s amped-up senses were vulnerable to every stray chemical, whether human-based or manufactured. For his own protection, gloves were required gear, keeping his senses clear for mission work. At the beginning he had missed casual skin contact; now it was his normal mode.
He felt the hairs stiffen at the back of his neck as cool air brushed his palm. It felt odd to have his hands free. It also felt damnably sensual.
Frowning, Max shoved that thought from his mind. Skin was skin and a woman was a woman. There was no big deal about either.
Through his sensitized fingers he picked up the faint sweetness of her spilled perfume and the tang of sweat, some of it his own. Even without touching her, he knew he’d find a welter of female hormones layering her skin. If somewhere in those tangled scent layers he found Cruz’s markers, something Max had been keenly trained for weeks to pick out…
In that case, he was under orders to extract all possible information via any means necessary. No questions would be asked later, as long as he succeeded in his mission. Ryker had made that clear.
And Max was committed to success. This was his first mission since the incident in Malaysia that had taken his jump partner’s life and left Max in a surgical ward for eighteen hours. This time, failure was not an option. He had too many debts to repay—and too many demons to silence after the harrowing, predawn raid that had taken seven lives.
In the darkness the pilot shifted as if he was in pain. When his blanket fell, Max straightened it, careful to use his covered hand. In the narrow space every movement seemed loud, each rustle of fabric sharp. Even breathing seemed intimate.
It was strange how often you came to feel a physical connection with your subject, Max thought. When the hormones came into focus, you picked up fragments of over-the-counter sleeping pills or antihistamines, hair dye and sunscreen. In a wave that seemed to come out of nowhere, you knew your subject better than you knew your own friends or family. People thought your smile was just a sign of polite interest or concealed boredom. They didn’t suspect that you were picking up their medical history, reading their whole life in a simple handshake.
In the Middle Ages this sort of thing would have gotten you burned at the stake. In the Navy, it earned you a medal—even if it happened to be a medal that no one saw, because the whole program was code-restricted to a handful of outsiders.
Frowning, Max focused on the woman’s face. Even in sleep she was in motion, her eyes fluttering, her hands moving back and forth across the wrinkled shirt with the outrageous red flowers and pink parrots. When her hands curved, he had the feeling she was dreaming about holding something. A camera? She’d had enough equipment in that big leather bag he’d found drifting in the water.
She muttered a name—Vance or Lance? Her mouth thinned and she shoved at the wall, banging her elbow. Max saw his moment and took it, curving his palm over the skin just behind her ear and under her hair.
Information washed over him, swift details of disparate chemical nuances. Hair spray. Wax, probably from an expensive candle, judging by the high amount of distilled perfume oil. She’d touched coconut oil recently, the food-grade kind, thick and unhydrogenated, without perfume additives. Below that was a layer of some kind of silicone.
Max frowned. Expensive mascara. Also some kind of high-quality hair dye. He didn’t move, settling down into a spiral of hexones and fragrance oils as he picked up the threads of her life. There was some kind of personal-use lubricant, scented and very thick.
His lips twitched as he searched his memorized catalogue of ingredients. Was it regular moisturizer or the kind of lubricant you bought for a rough and wild Saturday night with your latest lover? His hand tightened and he forced his gaze away almost instantly. You never second guessed the layers. You kept the sensory flow straight and clear, chemicals and hormones only, no counting on outside cues from clothes, complexion, age or anything else.
Clean and simple. That was rule number one.
Max figured that the rule applied to a whole lot more than his Foxfire observations. In life, clean and simple was the only thing that made sense. It was too bad more people didn’t seem to know that.
But there was more to feel and he needed to work fast before she awoke. He moved his hand inside the curve of her ear, gentle as a whisper of air, searching for any chemical signature that would connect her with Cruz. The rogue Foxfire operative hadn’t known that one of his last chips was a scent marker designed to convey information unnoticed by the human nose but registered clearly by a trained government animal like Truman.
Or by a special forces agent trained and enhanced the way Max was.
He traced her ear gently, finding the small curves where wax clung, the places most likely to hold other scent clues. He found a hint of cigar smoke, the coconut oil again, more of that damned expensive perfume she seemed to love. Sunscreen. A little bit of very dry champagne, as if someone had sprayed her recently.
A wild midnight party?
But there was nothing else. Not a hint of Cruz’s marker. Nothing that suggested the special lubricants used in the stolen inertial guidance system. Nothing even remotely close to what Ryker was looking for.
Max wasn’t sure whether to be irritated or relieved as he knelt beside her on the ground, watching her hair fan across her cheek and the faint trace of veins beneath her eyes.
Feeling her skin, feeling her pulse. 98.4—she was probably in deep theta, given her heart rate. She’d had dental surgery within the last month. One or two fillings, since he could pick up the faint but acrid hint of mercury on her skin. That was one of the first ingredients he’d been taught to identify.
She sighed and turned onto her side. Her hair spilled over his wrist, warm and soft, the sudden contact like a fist slammed into his chest. He picked up the hormone array of a vital woman in childbearing years. He read estrogen and cortisol, from stress and physical exertion, but he figured she was also a coffee drinker because he picked up kona notes, too.
What would it be like to drink in those layers, to feed her chocolate and a fine roast coffee, letting the taste hum right down through her senses into his? Through her, lifted from her mouth and skin—
He cut through the image, disturbed at his primal male reaction to her. When had his thinking turned personal? His Foxfire training had eliminated the concept of personal from his physical contacts.
Or so he’d thought.
Something pricked at the back of his neck. He was trying to figure out the source of that sharp sensation when she turned and flung up her arm, hitting him in the shoulder. The breath whooshed out of his lungs as he was caught in blurred impressions. Sea water and sunscreen. More of that damned Chanel No. 5, but still nothing that connected her to Cruz.
He stood up quickly, catching his breath, distinctly disoriented.
She reached out, this time her arm slamming against the cool earth wall. The impact made her breath catch and Max heard her gasp. Her eyes fluttered.
He leaned down to check the man she’d called Dutch so she wouldn’t realize that he’d been touching her neck.
She came fully awake and frowned at him. Anger blazed over her face. “What are you doing to him?”
“Be quiet,” he said tightly.
“Why do you keep saying—”
“Do it.” Cold. Leaving her no doubt that he was deadly serious.
She glared at him, then lifted her shoulders in an irritated shrug. Even this she did