Blake’s gaze dropped to the photo again. Alexia’s face stared back at him. An official government ID shot, her brilliant hair was pulled back, but wayward curls escaped to dance happily around her face. The photo captured the brilliant brown of her eyes, the same brown that haunted his dreams. Her smile, with that sexy overbite, was just this side of wicked. He remembered how soft those lips had been under his. How sweet and sexy she’d tasted.
He tried to bank the fury savaging its way through his system. Emotions had no place on a mission. Not a successful one. And this one, he promised himself, would be a success.
He met the admiral’s eyes, his own hard with determination.
“I’ll bring her back, sir. Safe, sound and secure.”
* * *
IF SHE COULD JUST KEEP breathing, Alexia promised herself, she’d survive with her life, her sanity and maybe—by some miracle—her faith in humanity.
Eyes closed, carefully inhaling through her teeth to try to block the rancid smell in the room, she focused on calming her mind.
In.
Out.
Just keep breathing in and out.
Don’t think about anything but breathing.
“You’re going to hyperventilate if you keep sucking in air like that.”
Her next breath slid through her teeth with a hiss as she slitted her eyes open to glare at the man across the dining table from her.
The source of the rancid smell, his scent perfectly fit his personality. She’d memorized his features as a part of her promise to herself that she’d not only get out of this nightmare, but that as soon as she did, she’d have as much ammunition as possible to fry his ass.
Short, probably about five-seven, he had that small-man syndrome, flexing his power left and right. Dark hair, brown eyes, a nondescript face marred by a small scar on his chin, he had the beady-eyed look of a rat. Which made sense, since he had the personality of a rabid rodent.
A rabid rodent with a large contingent of creeps on his payroll. The creeps who’d grabbed her on the sidewalk in front of her condo. The creeps who’d put a hood over her head, hauled her to the snowy regions of hell, aka the wilds somewhere in Alaska. The creeps who’d taken turns guarding her when she was locked in her room or the makeshift lab they’d set up. Or, she slanted a look sideways at the big bruiser leaning against the wall of the large dining room, wherever she happened to be. Then there were serving creeps, administrative creeps and, she’d discovered when she’d stood on the back of the chair in her tiny room to peer out the tiny barred window, a tidy number of creeps guarding the perimeter of the icy compound.
“You might as well say something,” the rat instructed, his bored tone at odds with the irritated tapping of his glossy fingernail on the arm of his chair. “You’re not going back to your cozy room until you detail the progress you made in the lab today.”
A seven-by-seven space with no heat, a cot-sans-sheets, a blanket and a spindle-backed chair and rickety floor lamp didn’t quite say cozy to her. But to a rat, maybe that was heaven.
Alexia deliberately took a deep, loud breath in, then exhaled. But she didn’t speak.
He tapped louder.
She almost smiled. These tiny rebellions were pointless, but they were all she had. It’d been four days. Four long, nerve-shattering days since she’d been grabbed. Someone had to notice she was gone by now. Michael would have alerted their father. He might not be much in the way of a great parent, but when it came to protecting the interests of the United States and its citizens, he was hell on wheels. Which meant he’d get her out of here soon. At last that’s what she’d been promising herself.
For four days.
The first day, exhausted from terror and travel, she’d begged to know why they’d abducted her, pleaded to be released. The rat had said he’d fill her in on what she’d need to do to stay alive in the morning. After she had a nice little rest and time to think about all the possibilities, he’d gloated. Then he’d locked her in that dark, dank cozy room.
The second day, fury overshadowing her bone-numbing fear, she’d tried threats as soon as he unlocked her door. The rat had laughed in her face before instructing her to follow him to the dining room. Couldn’t have her wasting away from starvation until she was done with her new job.
Since the Science Institute had refused his many legitimate requests, he’d decided it was time to get what he wanted the illegitimate way. Through force and kidnapping. Since she was the public face of the institute’s subliminal project, she was clearly—at least in his mind—the expert. It would be her duty, he’d explained over smoked fish, runny eggs and undercooked bacon, to develop a new subliminal program. One that would take the technology she’d been developing for sexual healing and use it to stimulate and heighten anger.
She’d tried to reason with him. The science of true subliminally enhanced emotional response was new, she’d explained. Unlike the cassette tapes of years gone by with their spoken message whispered through soothing music, actually effecting a specific, targeted emotional change via brain waves. Her psychological focus was human sexuality, not anger. She’d never studied how sound related to human perception of negative emotions. She wasn’t a neurologist, she didn’t know where anger was triggered in the brain, so she couldn’t create a program that would target it.
He’d pointed a fork dripping with egg and bacon grease her way and suggested she get her ass to learning before he lost patience. Then he’d had her escorted to what he called her new lab. A room barely bigger than the one she’d slept in, it was fitted with a desk, a workbench and two chairs. A used and slightly beat-up-looking stack of audio and digital equipment littered the bench, including a processor, data streamer and a closed-loop stimulator. Next to that was an array of psych books and a digital tablet.
After ordering her to work, he’d left her there until this morning. With bargain-basement equipment that did her no good, a pile of books that meant nothing, no research access and a ton of time for her brain to scramble between terrified images of what would come next, to blinding hope that someone would get her the hell out of there before she had to face the rat again.
But here she was, pretty much running out of hope.
So she was tuning him out. The games, the threats, the fear. Four years of yoga breathing and tapping into her long-abandoned meditation practice were all she had left.
With that in mind, and yes, because she’d seen the irritation on his face, she closed her eyes again and inhaled deeply through her teeth.
“You’re doing it wrong,” the whiny voice snapped. “You’re supposed to inhale through your nose. It’s a filter. Are you sure you’re a scientist? You don’t seem to know very much.”
Alexia’s eyes popped open, followed quickly by her mouth. Luckily, she saw the gleam in his beady eyes before she spit a word of defense.
She clamped her lips shut.
“I’m not surprised, actually,” he mused, contemplating the slab of bloody red steak on his fork. “Disappointed, but after your lack of progress these few days, not surprised at all.”
Shifting that same contemplative stare to her face, he wrapped his fat lips around that huge chunk of meat and chewed. A trail of blood dripped down the side of his mouth, over his receding chin, then plopped on the front of his white shirt. He didn’t seem to notice.
He was waiting for her to rise to the bait.
Alexia refused.
His eyes gleamed, as if the more defiance she showed, the happier he was.
“I’d have thought a woman like yourself, with all those fancy degrees and who’s made a show of thumbing her nose at her family, would be a little smarter.”
Alexia’s