lanced and Rox screamed, then screamed again when he yanked at her white doctor’s coat, tearing the buttons and leaving the garment hanging half off her. Panic-stricken, she kneed him in the crotch, praying he would feel it.
Aztec doubled over with a howl.
Sobbing, Rox yanked away and bolted for the broken front door. She slipped and almost went down on the rain-slicked threshold, but kept going, running into the darkness.
The rain slashed at her, soaking through her clothes within seconds as she fled through the nearly impenetrable fog, headed for the town hall and the RCPD entrance around the side of the building.
The air smelled of the sea, thick and salty. Thunder grumbled in the distance and the wind howled like a living thing.
Rox ran for her life. Tears mingled with the rain on her face as Aztec’s footsteps slapped on the wet pavement too close behind her. He howled something that might have been her name, and she realized she wasn’t going to make it to the police station before he caught up.
No! she screamed inwardly. She put her head down and pushed harder, her legs burning as she pounded up the street.
Aztec closed on her. He grabbed her white coat, but she pulled free and kept going. She had to keep going, had to—
She saw headlights pause at a cross street up ahead. They turned toward her, creating bright halos in the thick fog.
Heart jammed in her throat, Rox waved her arms and ran into the light. “Help me!”
For half a second nothing happened, as if the driver didn’t see her—or more likely couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Then the big black SUV accelerated toward her with a roar. When it was nearly on top of her, the driver slammed on the brakes, slapped the transmission into Park and lunged out of the vehicle, snapping to his companions inside the big car. One of them tossed something to him, and he caught it and spun toward Roxanne, shouting, “Hit the deck!”
Though she couldn’t see his face through the fog, the sound of his voice instantly kicked her back two years, to another epidemic on another continent. Another lifetime.
“Down!” he barked, and she obeyed automatically, throwing herself onto the wet pavement just as Aztec grabbed her hair. His wet fingers slipped and she fell free.
Something hissed over her head and hit Aztec with a sizzling thump. Seconds later, electricity jolted through Rox as the Taser’s 50,000-volt charge transmitted through Aztec and across the wet pavement, giving her an unpleasant shock.
Aztec, though, bore the full brunt of the blast. He gurgled, collapsed in a heap and lay twitching.
The wand hissed again, retracting into its telescoping handle where it would remain coiled like an electrified version of Indiana Jones’s bullwhip. Rox knew this because she knew the weapon, just as, without even looking, she knew the man who carried it.
Luke Freeman, hotshot CDC toxicologist…and the ex-lover who’d deserted her, sick and miserable, in a third-world hospital two years earlier, proving once and for all that “in sickness and in health” wasn’t in his vocabulary when adventure called.
Damn him.
There was absolute, utter silence for a half second, broken only by the sound of the wind and rain. Then Luke muttered a curse and crouched down to touch her shoulder. “Rox? You okay?”
No, I’m not okay, she wanted to snap, because her body was still vibrating with electricity, along with another sort of heat, one that came from memory and hurt. Her stomach balled on a heave of denial and the small, childish wish that she could close her eyes and make all of this go away.
None of it was okay. It wasn’t okay that people were dying in Raven’s Cliff. It wasn’t okay that turning down Aztec’s casual dinner invite had nearly cost her her life. And it was seriously not okay that when the CDC finally got around to answering her call, they’d sent the one person she’d specifically requested they not send: Luke “I’ll love you when it’s convenient” Freeman.
Ignoring his helping hand, she pulled herself off the wet pavement and turned her back on him. She took her time swiping her hair out of her face, trying not to think about what she looked like—sopping wet with the stress and grief of the past seventy-two hours written on her face.
Then again, why should she care? Whatever they’d had between them had died years ago. She was a different woman than the one he’d known, smarter and stronger and far more aware of what mattered and what didn’t in the long run.
Telling herself that their past relationship fell squarely into the “doesn’t matter” category under the present circumstances, she gave up on her appearance and turned to face her ex.
He stood in the street, heedless of the rain, with three other people at his back. Silhouetted against the fog-diffused illumination from the streetlights above, he looked larger than life, like a hero come to the rescue.
And he’d probably practiced the pose, she thought sourly as she limped to close the distance between them, and took stock.
With short brown hair, glittering brown eyes, chiseled features and a mouth that was—as usual—tilted in a crooked grin, Luke looked good. Then again, he’d always held up under even the worst circumstances, so she’d expected him to look good. What she hadn’t expected was the flare of memory that sucker punched her in the gut at the sight of him.
Her chest tightened and heat flashed through her, a complicated mix of heartache, anger and betrayal. She’d thought she was over him, that she’d gotten past wanting some sort of explanation for what he’d done. Now she realized she’d been lying to herself.
How could you leave me like that? she wanted to ask him.
Instead, she lifted her chin and said, “Thanks for the rescue. Then again, you always were good at making a grand entrance.” Implying that his exits weren’t nearly so slick.
His eyes went dark and his expression flattened, but he didn’t rise to the barb. Instead he gestured to Aztec, who had gone limp with the aftereffects of the Taser zap. “I take it this is what you meant by ‘some patients have been exhibiting violent tendencies’ when you called the CDC?”
“Trust me, if I could’ve handled it on my own, I never would’ve put out the SOS.” Her voice was sharp enough to have Luke’s three teammates shifting and looking at each other behind his back.
There were two men and a woman. One of the men was a tall, lean guy with a pronounced right tilt to his aquiline nose, while the other was shorter and stockier, and wore a beard. The woman was dark-haired and pretty, and stood a little apart from the men. All three of them, along with Luke, were wearing jeans and sturdy boots, and blue hooded raincoats emblazoned with the CDC’s sun-ray logo.
Luke crouched down beside Aztec without touching the fallen man. “Talk to me,” he ordered Rox.
So much for introductions, she thought. She sent an apologetic glance toward the rest of the team, but they looked as if they were used to their leader’s rudeness.
Then again, she remembered how that worked. You either figured out how to live with Luke’s mannerisms or you hit the road. It wasn’t like he was going to change.
“Roxie?”
