Page 106 of Hot Intent

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Common sense told him to back away from his mother’s house very slowly. To melt into the night and disappear. To leave behind everyone and everything he’d ever known and never look back.

Alex’s head felt like it was going to explode as he watched the only two women who’d ever been important in his life through the window of that house. He was so full of conflicted feelings and thoughts he couldn’t make sense of any of it. What the hell was he supposed to do, now? Surely, Claudia dangling Katie as bait to suck him inside, but it looked as if their conversation had turned into more than a one-sided interrogation of Katie.

Was it all an act? Had the two of them been working together all along?

Think. Work through the logic. Except logic refused to come. Instead, feelings bombarded him from every direction. Voices. His father’s voice. André’s voice. Katie’s. Dawn’s. The voices of the people he’d killed. Those he had yet to kill. The cacophony deafened him.

He mashed his hands against his ears, but nothing would silence the babbling chorus. All of them pushing and pulling athim, tugging him one way and then another. Back and forth like a rag doll. God, they were tearing him to pieces.

He squinted at the house, brightly lit from within, barely able to make it out as everything spun wildly around him. Something warm brushed past him. He threw a hand out to steady himself and his fingers sunk into thick, coarse hair. The damned cow was back, looking for food.

He clung to its back for balance, for sanity, until it shifted away from him uncomfortably. But the animal had done its job, given him something concrete to focus on. Given him a second to find himself.

Slowly, laboriously, Alex pushed every thought out of his mind. Every sensation. He took a breath. Held it. Exhaled slowly. Again.

When all else failed, he returned to the beginning. To the most basic act of existence. Breathing. Cold air filled his lungs but was hot in his nostrils when he blew it out.

Better. He stretched his senses to include the night sky above him. It was black since the moon wouldn’t rise for a few more hours. Tiny pinpricks of light peppered it. Stars. Stable, predictable stars.

He expanded his awareness to include the darkness around him. The dew-covered grass soaking wetness and cold through his shoes. The rough warmth radiating from the cow a few feet away, its earthy smell.

House. Barn. Trees. Light. One by one, he added the objects around him to his awareness. Cautiously, very cautiously, he added thought.

Katie was inside. His mother’s men had snatched her. Bait. They were holding her to lure him out.

Decision. He had to make one. Leave Katie to her own devices. Or rescue her.

He loosed the reins on his mind enough to let it evaluate the threat. Not great odds of success if he went in. Better to make them bring her out.

The exercise of forcing his mind into a semblance of discipline was exhausting. More so than he’d expected. Faint surprise registered. Was this what it felt like to go mad?

He’d wondered a few times in the past if he’d been losing it, but he’d been wrong before.Thiswas what total loss of mental and emotional control felt like. The scientist within him registered and catalogued sensations and observations.

He started when abrupt movement filled the living room window. Two men, previously not visible to him, stepped out of the corners of the room to take Katie by the arm. They would take her out back, to the barn. That was where he would execute a prisoner. Out of sight. Sound muffled.

Except the men headed for the front of the house. Pushed her out onto the porch. Ahh. Getting frustrated with her little fishing expedition, his mother was. Tired of this game, she was. Claudia was going to force the issue. Maybe have her guys shoot Katie in the kneecaps.

His odd detachment retreated a little. The idea of Katie in pain burned away some of the haze shrouding his brain. Or was that haze actually shock?Was this shock from the inside looking out?

The physician within him took notes for the next time he had to deal with a trauma patient in shock.

Now what?Katie’s trademark question floated through his mind. If he wasn’t going to let them kill her, he probably shouldn’t let them maim her. It would be a useless waste of her body.

But something stubborn deep within him, some part of him determined to survive, and furthermore to win, rebelled againstmeekly surrendering to those bastards. He spied the tall, slender form of his mother rising from her seat to follow Katie outside.

Now.

His body went into motion of its own volition, propelling him at a silent sprint toward the back of the house. His instincts had spotted the opening before his conscious mind had. His body had started exploiting it before his thoughts even began to catch up to his training.

Roman might be a bastard, but he’d trained a hell of an operative.

And what his father hadn’t accomplished, his mother and her cronies at the CIA had finished off.

He was a creature of the night. Of shadows and stealth. Of cunning and violence. He was exactly the son his parents had raised him to be. For the first time in his life, he embraced what he was with a certain measure of peace.

They’d each wanted a killer for their separate reasons—and they’d gotten one. But he was better than either of them could even begin to dream of.

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