Cut and Run (6 page)

Ethan did as she asked while Tori washed her hands. He parted his legs to allow her space as she moved in close to inspect the injury. Carefully, she peeled away the tape and gauze and uncovered his wound.

“The puncture was deep, but it could’ve been much worse.” She wet a fresh washcloth and dabbed gingerly around the area, knowing it still had to be very painful. She was satisfied to find only the expected inflammation and fluid leakage along the seam. “If you take care of it, you should heal up just fine.”

Ethan didn’t say anything. He watched her intently, his muscled chest rising and falling in a slow but heavy rhythm.

As she stood between his spread thighs, Tori was suddenly acutely aware of the intimate position they were in. Against her will, her heart began to gallop, all of her senses tuned to this man she should not want, but could not seem to deny.

She felt, more than saw, his hand lift toward her. Before he could make contact, she abruptly withdrew, moving out of his reach. Despite her desire, she was still angry and suspicious of him. Still hurt.

She tossed the used tape and bandages in the nearby waste can, then rinsed out the cloth and folded it over the edge of the sink. Without looking at him now, she cranked the hot water and viciously scrubbed her hands.

Ethan rose, and came up close behind her as she cut the tap and picked up the hand towel.

God, she couldn’t think with him so near.

All she could hear was the drumming of her pulse in her ears. All she could feel was the heat of his bare chest behind her, the warmth of his breath against her nape.

“Hoshi thinks I was crazy to let you kiss me today. She says I’m crazy to be anywhere near you.” She lifted her gaze to meet his reflection in the medicine cabinet mirror. “Maybe she’s right.”

Ethan took her shoulders in his strong grasp and slowly turned her around to face him. “Did it feel crazy to you when you were kissing me?”

Tori arched a brow at him. “You kissed me, as I recall it. And no, it didn’t feel crazy.”

It felt electric, intoxicating. It felt like taking her first breath of air after three years of waiting to exhale.

Ethan’s gaze bore into hers, intense, too powerful to break. “There has never been anyone who’s affected me the way you do. No one.”

She huffed a short sigh and shook her head. “Too bad you didn’t feel that way when you left my house that morning without any explanation.” Once the words slipped out of her mouth, she couldn’t stop the rest. “How could you do that to me, Ethan? Do you know how that wrecked me? Do you even care? I didn’t know what happened to you, or where you’d gone. Were you dead? If you were alive, were you stricken with some awful condition that made you forget where you belonged?”

He let her rail, gave her time and silence enough to get it all out. She’d held that anger and fear—the ache—inside her for so long, it left her trembling and breathless to have finally let it out.

“You were gone, and all I had were questions. No scenario I imagined for what you did made any kind of sense. I look at you now, Ethan, and I have more questions than ever. Then you go and kiss me like you did today—as if you still have the right to touch me, to be inside me…” She shook her head and whispered a harsh curse. “I gave you my heart, Ethan. My whole heart. You’ve given me nothing but lies and pain.”

“I never wanted anything bad to happen to you,” he said, his deep voice more solemn than she’d ever heard it. “I hate that I hurt you the way I left. There was no other way. I couldn’t give you the truth then, for many reasons. Not the least of which was out of concern for you. From the moment I saw you in the pub that first night we met, I’ve wanted only to keep you safe. To protect you, Tori.”

She scoffed quietly. “I never needed your protection. I’ve been taking care of myself for a long time.”

“Yes, but that doesn’t mean I care any less.” His gaze searched hers, a flicker of uncertainty in his typically unflinching confidence. “Do you remember the brawl that happened while we were dancing that night at the pub?”

“I think so.” She’d been more focused on the attractive stranger who’d been staring at her for half an hour before he finally strode over to talk to her.

“I wasn’t looking for a relationship,” he murmured. “Damn, Tori, you were so pretty. And then you smiled at me. That smile killed me. Still does. But I might not have made my move that night at the bar, if it wasn’t for the fight that broke out.”

She recalled the way the evening had played out, but Ethan’s timing seemed off, to hear him tell it now. “No, that’s not right. You came over to me before then. We were already dancing when the fight happened.”

“Yes,” Ethan replied slowly, carefully. “I asked you to dance because I needed to get you out of the path of the drunk who was going to crash into the bar, directly where you’d been sitting.”

Tori frowned. “I don’t understand. You couldn’t have known that would happen.”

“Yet I did,” he said. “I saw the fight play out exactly the way it happened.”

“You
saw
it.”

“In my mind, Tori.” Ethan reached over and closed the bathroom door now. His eyes held hers, grave and earnest. “Just before I went over to ask you to dance, in my mind I saw the drunk being shoved back into you at the bar. I couldn’t let it happen.”

“What are you trying to say?”

“I have an unusual ability. A gift for precognition.”

“Precognition? As in ESP?” She cocked her head, pushing out an incredulous laugh. “Come on, Ethan. You don’t believe in that unscientific, new age bullshit any more than I do.”

“You wanted the truth, Tori, and I’m trying to give it to you. I need you to trust me—”

“Trust you? All you’ve done since I saw you today is feed me one lie after another.” She crossed her arms over her breasts, incensed that he would think she’d buy this as anything close to the truth. “I’m not an idiot, and just because you might’ve had a hunch about a fight breaking out in a bar, that doesn’t make you a psychic. And none of this explains or excuses the way you walked out on me—on us, damn you—without ever looking back. As far as I’m concerned, the man I thought I knew might as well have never existed.”

That stung him. She could see the regret in his expression.

It edged his deep voice too. “I had no choice but to leave like I did. I was part of something secret, Tori. Something I couldn’t share with you.” He muttered a curse, low under his breath. “I wanted to protect you from what I was doing, but now my secret could get you killed.”

Tori stared at him. He believed every word he was saying; that much was clear. But the pieces still hadn’t clicked into place for her.

“I don’t understand, Ethan. What exactly are you saying?”

“I was part of a classified CIA program that utilized precognitives like me as counter-intelligence operatives. We predicted terrorist activity, averted all manner of disasters. In a few cases—more frequently than anyone would care to know—the program’s agents thwarted global war.”

“You were working for the CIA?” God it sounded outrageous even saying it out loud. “So, you did this kind of work down in New Mexico, before you took the job at the college?”

He gave a vague nod. “Before I began teaching in Portland, yes. And during. I would still be part of it now, but the program was betrayed. I don’t know by whom, but I need to find out.”

“You were an agent in the CIA,” Tori said again, needing to repeat it in order for it to truly sink in. “An agent with psychic abilities.”

“Only precognition.”

“Oh, well. Only that,” she replied, unable to curb the biting sarcasm in her tone. She studied him with a suspicion that put an odd ache in her chest. “How long were you in that program before I met you?”

He seemed to think back for a moment. “They recruited me soon after my first deployment overseas with the Army. My CO noticed my intuition skills were off-the-charts accurate. When they realized what I could do, they yanked me from my combat unit and I found myself being interviewed and tested at The Farm.”

Tori listened, then gaped when another revelation sank in. “Wait—you were in the Army too? You never mentioned that in all the time we were together either.”

“Because at the time, you didn’t need to know,” he said flatly. “I enlisted when I was seventeen. I wanted to save the world. I suppose I still do—if I don’t wind up on a slab first.”

Tori didn’t even want to consider that possibility.

She couldn’t deny that what she was hearing—if it really was the truth—did little to put her mind at ease about Ethan or the relationship they’d shared before he left. He’d still deceived her from the start, even if he wanted her to believe it was out of care and concern for her.

He’d lied about who he was, about his past, about everything.

And now he wanted her to accept that he had a special gift for telling the future?

“If you know what’s going to happen before it does, then why didn’t you know you were going to be stabbed today? Why keep running and hiding if you have the power to avoid any danger before it happens?”

He shook his head. “The gift doesn’t work like that. I don’t see things that are going to happen to me. And there are things I never see at all.”

“Show me.”

“What?”

She spread her arms. “Prove it to me. Tell me something you see, right now. How about you give me the winning lottery numbers so I can cash in before I have to fly home to Maine tomorrow? For that matter, why not use your super powers to amass a fortune for yourself? Then you can build a super-spy fortress and not worry about anyone being able to find you.”

Shadows dimmed his serious, hazel eyes. There was a glimmer of anger there too. “It’s a skill that requires concentration, respect. It’s not a crystal ball, Tori. I can’t just wave my hands and conjure up a vision for you. It’s not something I need to prove. Not to anyone.”

She nodded slowly, letting her arms relax back down at her sides. “Okay,” she said. “You’re right, you don’t need to prove anything to me. I mean, who am I to ask anyway, right? I’m just the woman you practically lived with for a year. The woman you lied to every time you opened your mouth. The woman you fucked and walked away from without a second thought. I’m nothing to you, and I probably never was.”

She pivoted to grab the knob on the door.

“Hoshi has the tea kettle on in the kitchen,” Ethan murmured. “It’s going to boil in three, two, one—”

From elsewhere in the apartment, the whistle on Hoshi’s Hello Kitty teapot began to howl.

Tori whirled around to face Ethan. “You could have heard her out there. You could’ve known she was making a cup of tea…”

Ethan’s expression was grim. Ruthlessly so. “She’s not paying attention. The cup is going to slip off the counter—”

His words were punctuated by a sharp clatter and crash in the kitchen.

“Shit!” Hoshi cried. “That was my favorite china teacup!”

Tori gaped at Ethan. “Oh, my God. Everything you said…”

He didn’t look smug or triumphant, merely stared at her with sober acceptance. He reached past her and opened the door, expectation in his inscrutable gaze.

Tori moved away from him, stepping out into the hallway.

Ethan said nothing, just slowly closed the door between them.

8

Ethan cursed as he struggled into his T-shirt. His movements were impatient, agitated. Too hasty, when the stitched wound in his chest screamed with even the slightest tension.

The pain wasn’t the cause of his anger.

He was furious with himself.

He had fucked things up badly enough when he deserted Tori three years ago. In truth, his fuckup had started earlier than that—when he’d first allowed her to get under his skin. To get into his heart.

He couldn’t call that mistake back. And he couldn’t change the hurt he’d caused her either.

But what he was doing to her now was even worse.

This unexpected reunion had entwined their lives like never before. Now, Tori was helping him, sheltering him—touching and kissing him, for crissake—in spite of all the things she’d found out about him today.

Not the least of which being his most dangerous secret.

The one that could get both of them killed.

He’d rehearsed in his mind half a dozen ways he could have explained to Tori about his ESP ability and his role in the Phoenix program. It wasn’t easy to swallow; he knew that.

He should’ve known a woman like her—someone with a mind grounded in science, and sensibilities honed by good old-fashioned Yankee pragmatism—would need to see his gift to have any faith in it.

To say nothing of the fact that he couldn’t actually expect her to have a lot of faith in him at face-value either.

Instead of easing her into this part of who he truly was, he’d pissed her off, then got defensive when she doubted his word.

Way to go, asshole.

The parlor game demonstration of his gift had been real smooth too.

He hated squandering his ability like that. Over time, he’d learned to be careful with his gift, using it only in the line of duty as a Phoenix member. He rarely forced it to rouse, and then, only in cases of extreme emergency.

When opened on command, his precognitive skills functioned something like a spigot with a faulty washer ring. Visions dripped into his consciousness, abrupt and uncontrolled.

Vague splashes of a premonition danced at the edges of his mind’s eye now, as he stood at the sink and smoothed his T-shirt down over his abdomen.

At first, he wasn’t sure what he was seeing.

When it became clearer, Ethan’s blood ran cold.

He stalked out of the bathroom and found Tori in the kitchen, sweeping broken shards of china into the garbage while Hoshi mopped up the spilled tea on the floor.

“We have to leave. All of us. Right now.”

Tori gaped at him. “What’s wrong?”

Ethan didn’t have time to explain. “The GPS chip on your phone. Is it turned off?”

“I don’t know. I—”

“Give it to me. Now, Tori.” She retrieved it from her purse and handed it to him. He disabled the locator and glanced up at her. “Get your things. You too, Hoshi. The apartment’s not safe.”