She laughed, and it was not a pretty sound.
From the corner of his eye, he noticed both Dallas and Devyn closing in on his sides. He held out his hands to ward them off. “No.”
Mishka reached up and caressed a fingertip over his cheekbone, down his scar, and along the column of his neck. Where she touched, he tingled.
“Good-bye, Jaxon,” she said sadly.
He didn’t have time to reply. Something sharp dug into his vein.
His eyes widened as realization set in. Furious and shocked, he slapped her hand away. “Mishka.”
“You’ll thank me one day.”
“Goddamn it! You drugged me again.” The words were slurred, far away.
“You should have believed me when I told you I was bad for you.”
A black web began to fall over his vision. Thickening, connecting. His muscles weakened and dizziness assaulted him in increasingly intense waves. He swayed. “Stay with me,” he managed. Even to his own ears, the plea was little more than a whisper. “Don’t go.”
“Get him out of here,” Mishka said coldly, just before his world crumbled to nothingness.
CHAPTER 15
A week later
Three more infected women had been found and were currently the residents of sector twelve at A.I.R. headquarters. Despite Jaxon’s warnings to Jack to wait, those women were being studied and tested in hopes of finding a cure or, at the very least, a vaccine.
Jaxon cared, but not as much as he should have.
Some government official named Senator Kevin Estap had sent the doctors and scientists, desiring to work with A.I.R., not against (or so he claimed). Jaxon suspected Estap was Mishka’s boss. How else would Kevie boy have known so much about the case? Yet everyone denied knowing Mishka.
Jaxon cared, but again, not enough.
Actually, the doctors acted ignorant about everything. The Schön, the virus, the effects of both. Jaxon was surprised they knew how to dress in the morning and feed themselves throughout the day. They said they were there to “gather samples” and had no concrete conclusions about anything.
How was that for working together?
So far, Jaxon had talked to two of the women. He’d learned nothing new.
So far, he knew of two planets that had been destroyed by the Schön: Delenseana and Raka. Was Earth to be the third? What’s more, would testing those infected women begin a chain reaction of sickness and demise that couldn’t be stopped as he suspected?
He was afraid of the answers, but he still couldn’t bring himself to care as he should.
As an agent, a paid hunter, a night stalker, he’d seen terrible things. Children slaughtered, women beaten, men raped. Bodies drained of blood, organs stolen and sold on the black market, death in every incarnation.
He’d eliminated those responsible to the best of his ability, sometimes forgoing food and sleep, always killing when needed. As Mishka had once said, weapons could be a man’s best friend, and his best friends helped keep the world safe. But how was he to fight an insidious monster that struck silently and without warning? How was he to fight a virus? Doctors and scientists could, perhaps, find a cure as they hoped.
But how many would die in the process?
Countless, most likely, but once again Jaxon just didn’t care enough.
He sighed. Right now he sat at his desk, elbows propped up, head in his upraised hands. Upon his return to the real world he had been debriefed, examined, sent to a shrink, and reactivated for duty. Not that it had done him any good. Nolan had not contacted him, and his search for the Schön had failed.
The worst, though, was that Mishka had not contacted him, either, and she’d removed the tracking device from her phone so he could no longer pinpoint her exact location. That was where most of his concern lay. Mishka’s absence.
He’d searched for her, called every government contact he had. Nothing. He was tormented with questions. What was she doing? Who was she with? What were they doing together?
Then he’d begun to think she was in danger of being ordered to fight the Schön as long as the virus-carrying bastards were out there, so he’d stopped looking, was now concentrating on the aliens. But not looking for her was killing him.
Jaxon hungered for her, dreamed of her, had to have her again. Couldn’t think about his job the way he should and didn’t consider the victims—past, present, or future—the way a good agent needed to do. She was his biggest concern. He needed her back in his arms. He needed to be inside her again. He needed to know she was safe, not rotting somewhere in pain and punishment.
He just flat needed.
Mine. Every instinct in his body screamed it. True or not, he could not function much longer without her. She’d knocked him out, yes. She’d sent him away as though she didn’t want him, yes. Deep down, he knew she’d done it to protect herself and him. That, he understood. Might have even done it himself were the situations reversed. But that didn’t mean he was going to let her get away with it.
“This what Jack pays you for? Meditating?”
Jerked from his torturous musings, Jaxon glanced up. Mia Snow stood in his doorway, lovely as always. Her black-as-night hair was pulled back in a ponytail and her ballerina features glowed healthily. A tiny thing, she radiated an I-could-break-at-any-moment aura. Funny thing was, she could snap a man’s neck with a simple twist of her wrist.
Kind of like Mishka.
Frowning, he rubbed his chest to tamp down the sudden ache. Would he see her again? His jaw clenched. He’d see her again; he’d make damn sure of it, one part of him vowed.
Forget her, the other part of him beseeched. Truly, he didn’t need her in his life. He had friends who didn’t delight in drugging him into a stupor. Friends who didn’t lie to him, who definitely wouldn’t shank him in the jugular if ordered. Of course, those friends hadn’t given him the greatest orgasm of his life. Those friends didn’t look at him as if he were part hero, part villain and their life hinged on his touch.
Forget her? He wasn’t sure he could and didn’t like the idea of trying.
“What?” Mia splayed her arms. “I’m that terrible a sight?”
He was scowling, he realized, and forced his features to relax. “Sorry. It’s not you.”
The glint in her fierce blue eyes sharpened like a sword for attack. “Thinking about her?”
No need to ask who “her” was. “Yeah. So?”
Mia crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m disappointed in you, Jaxon. You’re letting your dick lead you around.”