Rendezvous at Midnight (6 page)

She wasn’t saying anything of the kind. A tirade of anger and frustration poured into Lisa, persuasion, cajoling, anything if she would find her mother’s killer and get her revenge.

Before she could ask, or even remonstrate, the tirade was cut off as though someone had flicked a switch. She was alone in her head.

Or almost alone. She felt Michael’s presence, like a calming breeze cleansing her of the violence that had occupied her a moment before.
She was losing it. I have her now. She’s not making any sense any more. She’s been waiting her for this chance for thirty years, she says.

What chance?

I don’t know
. He sounded worried, but he seemed to have things in hand.

A hard thump echoed around the room, one of the phenomena she was more used to, after a year of investigations in haunted houses. It was almost a relief. But she behaved as she knew she was expected to. She gasped and jumped, exclaiming, “What was that? Did you hear that?”

Cliff and Brant murmured that they had. Another thump, softer. She went into her usual routine. “Is there anybody there? Will you tell us if you are? Try to communicate.”

“An orb!” Spirit orbs were strange little glowing globes often appearing when ghosts were present. One shot down toward her, slanting in from somewhere to her right, and floated across her body until it was lost in the shadows of the floor.

“Turn off the lights,” Brant ordered. The illumination was dim, but there was more chance of catching the globes on camera if they stood in total darkness. He reached for his other camera, the night-vision one, and hit the power button. “Nobody move, whatever else you do. The swimming pool is six feet deep at this end, and you could break a bone if you fall. So when you turn off the lights, don’t move.”

“I’ll do it.” Michael moved to the wall, where two switches were down. He flicked one up and then touched the other.

Lisa felt his pain as the electricity jolted through him, shocking him into insensibility. He fell forward, his finger still in contact with the button.

Without giving herself time to think, Lisa grabbed the big boom mike from Cliff and swung it at Michael, aiming for his chest.

She hit her mark and knocked him aside, so he fell backward onto the concrete floor. Only then did she allow herself any emotion. Panic and terror hit her like a wave, and she ran forward, only to be shoved aside by Cliff.

“I’ve taken first aid courses. Get some lights on but don’t touch the panel! Hit it with something!”

Chapter Five

When Michael blinked and opened his eyes, Lisa bit back a cry of relief. He’d been out for hours. His first word was a muttered curse.

“What the fuck happened?”

She could have smiled, but the men who had arrived, Lord knew how, spoke first. “You had an electric shock. One that would have killed you had you not managed to contact Gareth.”

Lisa swallowed. The two strangers had just—arrived and taken over. One of them scooped Michael up as if he weighed nothing while the other, older man, led the way to his cabin as if he knew where to go. Lisa had followed behind, only just slipping through before the door slammed shut.

What she’d seen had shocked, alarmed, and scared her. The older man tore off Michael’s shirt and held his hand over his heart. Tears poured down her face, unchecked, while the other, younger-looking man stood back, eyes grimly fixed on the scene before him. He only spoke once, briefly.

“You’re here because he wants you here. No one else is coming in.”

“Sh-should I lock the door?”

He shook his head. She felt—actually felt, like waves of energy pulsing through the room—the power of the older man. He wore a tailored suit, but he’d dragged off his jacket and tossed it carelessly to the floor. The pulses came from him. Powerful and inexplicable but most definitely there.

She had no idea how much time had passed before the younger man touched her arm. “He’s past the worst.”

Then the older man stepped back and Michael opened his eyes. “What the fuck happened?”

The older man smiled gently. “Ah, tactful as always.” He glanced at her and the other man before returning his attention to Michael. Lisa got the impression of piercing gray eyes, eyes that missed nothing. “An attack by the Anti-Sensitives, I think. Which makes your job a little easier. You would have died if you hadn’t linked to Gareth. He relayed the attack to Basil and he brought me.”

“How did he flash-blind?”

Michael’s question sounded vaguely obscene to Lisa. She decided she didn’t want to know.

“I was with him. We managed,” was all the response he got. “The shock was full-on and burned you too deeply for conventional medicine, so we had little choice. You’ll be fine now.”

Michael lifted his hand and she began to walk to him before even thinking about it. It seemed natural for him to want her and natural for her to go to him. But before she reached him, a knock sounded on the door.

“Lisa? Unlock this door! What’s going on? Who were those people?”

She stared in alarm at the other two and the older man spoke calmly. “Go outside and talk to them. We’ll be listening, in case you need help. Tell them he is fine, but he needs to rest. Then come back. He wants you.”

That was probably the best thing. Michael knew these men and was comfortable with them. She felt him resting in her mind, a gentle presence, reassuring her. Leaving the room quietly, she confronted the grim-faced crew standing outside. Ayesha and the other cameraman and soundman had joined Cliff and Brant.

Brant glared at her. “What’s going on?”

She paused. Then inspiration struck. “Security. They were patrolling the area.”

“Shit, they know they shouldn’t have been there. How can we tell ghostly footsteps from theirs if they do that?”

Typical. Brant’s first consideration was the show and his business.

Ayesha touched her arm. “Don’t mind him, honey. How is Michael? Do we need to send for a doctor?”

Lisa shook her head. “He’ll be okay. It wasn’t too bad of a shock. I must have gotten to him in time. He just needs to rest. One of the security men knows first aid, and he says Michael’s okay.”

“I never saw them before.” Brant frowned. “I don’t like this. I don’t like it at all. What’s going on in there?”

“Nothing. The man checked him out. Michael wasn’t even burned by the shock, just laid out for a couple of minutes.”

“Maybe the spirits don’t like him.” Ayesha’s dark eyes were filled with concern.

“I don’t think it’s that. He fell earlier, and maybe he slipped again on the floor. It could be something as simple as his shoes, they could be too slippery.” She smiled and found calm in it. “I’ll check them out.”

“Do that. Can we see him now?”

“N-no, he needs to rest,” she began, but the door opened behind her and the two men emerged. Now the game would be up. The older man wore an immaculate business suit and the younger one was in expensive casual wear. Neither looked in the least like security staff.

But when she turned to look at them, she could have sworn they were dressed in cheap navy blue uniforms and blue shirts, with heavy leather belts containing flashlights slung around their hips. She blinked, and she saw them as they had been in the room, but it was hard to dispel the image of the two friendly but definitely blue collar security men.

“He should be okay, ma’am,” said the older man, his carefully clipped accent turned into a Texan drawl. “You got to him in time to save him. He wants to thank you.” He touched the peak of his non-existent cap. “Weren’t nothin’ much, really.”

The younger man grinned, showing uneven, yellowed teeth, which she knew he hadn’t had inside Michael’s room. “Good thing we just come on duty, ma’am. George here used to be a paramedic.”

“Retired,” the older man confirmed. “It’s a young man’s game. This is usually much more peaceful.”

“Didn’t the last shift tell you not to come here?” Brant demanded.

The men looked at each other and shrugged. “Nope.”

“Well if you’re on tomorrow night, don’t come into this part of the ship unless we call you.” Brant sounded more than angry, and Lisa felt indignant for the men. They didn’t deserve that.

“Won’t be here tomorrow. It’ll be somebody different.”

“Make sure they know, you hear?”

They shrugged again and turned away, ambling up the hallway toward the main body of the ship. Lisa blinked. They were ambling, all right, but moving a lot quicker than they seemed to be and if she concentrated, she could see their true forms. She heard a voice in her head.

You did well. You’ll be seeing us again
.

***

Lisa managed to get rid of the two cameramen and the soundmen by suggesting they go back to work with Ayesha while the spirits were so active. Once Ayesha assured herself Michael was all right, after asking him at least three times if he wanted to go to the hospital, she left with the others in tow but not before declaring the swimming pool off limits, something Lisa wholeheartedly agreed with.

Alone, she felt suddenly shy, unsure of herself. Part of her didn’t want to leave Michael alone, but the events of the evening had bewildered her and she needed to think. He patted the side of the bed.

“Will you join me?”

“What?”

“I have a few things to tell you but I want to be holding you when I do. Hell, I just want to hold you. Lisa, I know you’re confused, but you still know me. I’m Michael, the same person you’ve been working with for the last twelve months. I haven’t changed, just concealed a few things.”

“I’ll say.”

“Please, Lisa.”

“I-I don’t know.” She bit her lip and watched the gleam in his eyes intensify. “Am I going to like this?”

“No way of telling.” He moved in her mind, soothing and sweet. “Don’t you want to know?”

The best way to deal with fear was to confront it.

Lisa started to strip, knowing she wanted him holding her as much as he wanted to hold her. She wanted to feel him for herself, assure herself he was fine, no damage done. She couldn’t fool herself any longer. She’d wanted him for a long time now, and she had to give him a chance to explain all this.

When she got to her underwear, she stopped and flushed. “I wore the appropriate underwear for the outfit.”

His burning gaze gave her no doubt of his need for her. “I’ll say,” he managed, his voice hoarse. “Does that belong to you?”

She glanced down at the girdle, a white elastic concoction she privately considered an instrument of torture, and couldn’t see the attraction. “I have to roll this thing off. Don’t tell me you like it.”

He gave a short laugh. “I prefer what’s inside it.”

She got the girdle off a lot faster than she’d got it on, not bothering to undo the fasteners for the stockings, and dragged the whole lot off at once. Underneath, she wore the horrible conical bra and ordinary panties. She got rid of the bra, undoing the four hooks at the back, acutely aware of Michael’s eyes, avidly watching. “I wish I was wearing nicer underwear,” she murmured, more embarrassed in the stuff than out of it.

“I might ask you to wear it again.”

She couldn’t doubt his tone or his hungry look. “You like it?”

He licked his lips. “Oh, yeah.”

No longer in control of her faculties, she slid her panties down her legs and took the two steps to the bed to slip in beside him.

He held her as if she’d had the accident, not him. “God, I needed this! Lisa, sweetheart, I’m going to tell you the truth. All of it. Mr. Smith has agreed, and after I’ve told you, you can decide whether to retain the memories or lose them. You might decide you’re better off not knowing.”

She lifted her face and kissed his chin. He moved so their mouths met, but his kiss was soft and sweet, rather than passionate.

“I should have died tonight,” he murmured, his lips so close to hers she could feel them move. “But my colleagues arrived in time to save me. The older man you saw is Mr. Smith, who runs a division of the CIA. The other is a…a man called Basil Rostov.”

“CIA? You’re an agent?”

“No, only a consultant. But you already know some of the things I can do.”

She swallowed. “You can do more?”

“Some. It’s my heritage. The gifts seem to be a genetic trait in my family. My mother’s family, the Hungarian side. We’re part of The Company so we can support each other. There’s another organization calling themselves the anti-sensitives and they call people like me deviants. They think these gifts are unnatural, and a few years back they turned to violence. They’re killing us, just because of who we are.”

“That’s terrible!”

He hushed her with a gentle, breathy kiss, a bare touching of his lips to hers. “Yes, it is. The attack tonight, the second attack, was the anti-sensitives. Smith and Rostov are going to turn off the electricity to the pool and examine the light fixture, but Mr. Smith is pretty sure it was rigged to give me the shock.”

“If I’d been closer, I would have used it.”

He closed his eyes, his long, dark lashes sweeping over his high cheekbones, before opening them again and gazing straight into hers. “That’s right. They don’t much care who else they take out. But I do. If they had killed you, I would have killed all of them.”

The statement astonished Lisa.
Killed them
?

“I already know I love you.”

Just like that, so simply, he said it. She saw the apprehension in his eyes, felt his hesitation in her mind. “I love you, too.”

She did. It seemed so easy to tell him now, and she knew this was the real reason he wanted her in his arms. So he could see her reaction when he told her.

“I was going to wait, take you out on some dates, court you if you like and let you get used to the idea. I wanted the memory of Brant to fade before I said anything. But tonight all that changed. I could have died without telling you. I couldn’t handle the thought of it.”

She reached a hand up to cup the side of his face. “I wasn’t sure. I knew I liked you. It was when I saw you fall to the ground, when I knocked you away from the switch, I knew for sure. Life without you would have been unbearable.” She smiled. “We would have got there eventually.”