"Why would you know anything about me?" He was a member of an elite military team that operated completely under the radar. They were not given credit for any mission. Few knew of their existence. Only those with the very highest security clearance would know anything at all about Sam Johnson. Azami Yoshiie shouldn't know any real particulars on an individual soldier. He expected that she would know about the GhostWalkers because she wouldn't sell a satellite to just any company and she was plugged into the military--she'd sold a few satellites to them. But there was no reason whatsoever to know anything about an individual member of that elite unit.
Thorn shrugged, her breath catching in her lungs. She was in murky waters now. If she'd read Sam wrong, she could blow everything. He was truly a man who could go from totally relaxed to full-out attack in a split second, and she had no doubt that he was an intensely loyal man. She was dismayed to find she wanted him to be loyal to her. She didn't want him to be so suspicious of her, and yet she was immensely pleased that he was.
Thorn had never felt so conflicted. If he didn't have the intelligence he possessed, or the skills as a warrior, she would never be able to respect him--or be attracted to him. He had to be suspicious or she would have dismissed him as she did nearly everyone else.
She spoke the truth, knowing she was deliberately misleading him. "Dr. Whitney attempted to purchase a satellite from our company about two years ago. Of course we don't do business with anyone we don't meet." That much was true--but Whitney had refused the meeting. He'd gone so far as to offer more money and said he could handle the software installation and the training of the technicians to run the software--which made her brothers shake their heads at his enormous ego.
"He has one of your satellites?" Sam asked.
She shook her head. "No, we did not go through with the sale. My brother was not impressed with him. His manner is disrespectful." Again that was strictly the truth, and anyone knowing Dr. Whitney would know he had an ego the size of Europe and was totally rude to anyone he considered inferior--which basically meant everyone.
Sam frowned at her. His expression gave nothing away, and she made a mental note not to try to play poker with him. She could keep her serenity all day and few could ever see what was going on inside of her, but she wasn't going to bet her life--or those of her brothers--that Sam couldn't read her. He'd been suspicious of her from the very moment he'd laid eyes on her.
"Were you ever alone with him?"
Her heart jerked hard in her chest. Memories flooded her mind, the silent screams of a small child, the pain wracking her body, a knife slicing through her chest. Her heart ceasing to beat and then jerking awake, just as it was now. She slammed the mental door shut hard. That way lay madness. She never looked at those memories unless they served a valuable purpose and there was no such reason now.
"We are a traditional family in many ways," she replied enigmatically, avoiding a lie. She wasn't above lying to serve her mission, but not to Sam, not if she could help it.
His eyes warmed. "So we're back to you giving me instructions on how to properly court you. Do I ask your brothers' permission?"
He was stealing her heart with his sincerity. She shook her head. "I am not a woman who would be practical in your life, Sam. You need a home and family . . ."
He laughed, interrupting her carefully chosen words. The sound was pure masculine amusement, sending a curling heat through her and making her forget everything she was going to say.
"I'm a soldier, Azami. That's who I am. What I am. My woman will be my home--my family. Beyond that, who knows? I believe you're that woman."
Thorn swallowed hard. Now her breath was coming too fast, her lungs burning. He shook her like no one else ever had with his stark admissions. His honesty. Who in the world was like him? "You are an intellectual like my brother. What drives you to put your life and your tremendous brain on the line?" She couldn't prevent that little bite in her voice. He was made for great things and yet he chose combat.
"You tell me," he fired back.
"I have a duty to perform that is sacred to me. Perhaps the attraction between us is strong because our values are so very close."
She wanted that to be the reason--or that for the first time in her life she'd met a man she truly couldn't resist. Her attraction to Sam Johnson had nothing to do with Dr. Whitney. The idea was simply impossible. She'd been thrown away long before Sam had applied to the GhostWalker program. Even had Whitney paired Sam with Thorn, he couldn't have paired Thorn with Sam. The wild churning in her stomach settled a little. Her attraction to Sam had to be the real thing, not manufactured by a monster for his own purposes.
"I understand duty," Sam said. He looked around him. One helicopter down. Two Jeeps and many soldiers dead. The cleaning crews would hopefully be able to identify where the threat had come from. "Do you think these soldiers came after your brother?"
Thorn's gaze followed his careful study of the battlefield. Did she believe the soldiers had tried to kidnap her brother? Nothing else made sense. The soldiers hadn't attacked the compound where Lily and her child resided and they'd retreated the moment help had come. It was actually a very well-coordinated attack. They couldn't know that Sam's GhostWalker team had strewn the forest with hidden bunkers or that she and Sam would be able to teleport so skillfully.
"Yes. I think someone with a great deal of money has orchestrated this attack in order to kidnap Daiki. It is the only real possible explanation that fits." She waited a moment and then into the silence breathed his name. "Sam." It was improper to address him by his given name, as he did her, but these were extraordinary circumstances. She waited patiently until his eyes met hers. She needed to look into his soul when he answered her.
"Do you work for Dr. Peter Whitney? Are you affiliated with him in any way?"
His frowned deepened. "Dr. Peter Whitney has committed indescribable crimes against humanity with his experiments. He's operating outside the law. The man is a criminal and needs to be stopped. He's our greatest enemy."
"Then why are you working with his daughter?" Thorn asked, her voice dropping low with accusation.
Sam pushed a hand through his hair. He looked tired, a great oak tree, swaying in the wind. She'd almost forgotten his wound and loss of blood. The Zenith had helped, stopping the bleeding and providing the adrenaline needed to keep going, but the drug was wearing off and Sam needed medical attention.
"Is that what you think? You're so far off base. You came here thinking she would be just like her father. Lily is as much a victim of Peter Whitney as everyone else he's ever come in contact with. She works harder than anyone else to uncover his location, but he's got powerful friends who help to hide him."
She could see that was all the information she was going to get out of him on the subject. He was fiercely loyal to Lily and despised Peter Whitney. He hadn't bothered to disguise the loathing in his voice.
"You might want to sit down, Sam," she advised softly. "The Zenith kick is fading and you're going to crash hard."
Thorn couldn't prevent herself from stepping forward and slipping her arm around his waist. "If we get to the tree line, your people can find us easier, but we'll still be protected. Do you think you've got enough left to make it to the edge of the road?"
His arm circled her shoulders and he pulled her beneath his arm, but she doubted the gesture had anything to do with weakness. He didn't feel weak at all. His body had no give to it, muscle flowing beneath his skin, almost as if he were made of steel. He didn't lean on her, but she couldn't let go of him. They walked in silence through the forest, avoiding the areas where there were dead bodies. She had no doubt the cleaners wouldn't find anything useful to identify them. If the men in the Jeep had come back to kill the two fallen Mexican soldiers, fingerprints would be useless.
"You know they shot those soldiers to keep us from questioning them," Thorn said.
Sam nodded, concentrating on each step. He wasn't going to appear weak in front of he
r; after all, he did have some pride.
"The enemy didn't want to leave anyone behind who could help us unravel the conspiracy." The first bullets had gone to kill the dying soldiers, giving Azami and Sam a few seconds to escape. They'd been lucky. "We have dental and faces, even if no fingerprints. We'll get a hit. And no one will lose our tails. We have one on the Jeep and one on the helicopter," Sam assured. "We're pretty good at what we do."
Thorn looked up at his face and his breath caught in his throat. The sun slid through the heavy foliage and kissed her flawless skin. Her lashes fanned down, two thick crescents and her body moved against him in a rhythm that sent the now familiar heat coursing through his veins.
"I'm sure you are," she replied.
With another woman he might consider she was throwing out an innuendo, but Azami didn't flirt. What she'd given of herself to him had been freely given. She was extremely composed and very private. He counted himself very lucky that she'd responded to him at all.
"Daiki is . . ." She hesitated. "Important to the world. His work is unsurpassed by anyone as of yet and many countries would love to get their hands on him. It is virtually impossible to infiltrate our company. Our staff is kept small and is moved from country to country when needed."
"How can your security be that tight? You have to hire . . ."
She was already shaking her head. "Sam, we are our own security. Everyone who works for Samurai Telecommunications is known to us since our childhood. The majority were trained by my father from the time they were children, and after his death, by one of his children. We employ family and family of family--if that makes sense."
Sam knew it was a common business practice in Japan for employees to work for the same company for years and their children and children's children to follow suit. He snuck a peek at the distance to the road. He could just make it if he concentrated and kept putting one foot in front of the other. He'd managed to block out the pain for some time, but now it was pounding at him hard, demanding acknowledgment. He didn't want anything to interfere in the last hour or so he had alone with Azami. Once they were back in the compound, they might very well become enemies. Certainly, until they had satisfying answers, he would have to protect his team.
"It makes sense. And it's smart. If Daiki is responsible for what I understand is groundbreaking software, who developed the optical lens? From what I understand there is nothing even coming close to it on the market?"
Azami glance up at his face. "I believe Lily has that information."
"I didn't think to ask her. I only know they were talking very excitedly about the satellite and what it could do for us."
Azami shrugged. "He's written up in all the magazines. It isn't a secret. Eiji developed the lens. Between the two of them, there isn't much they can't do."
"So Eiji is every bit as valuable as Daiki in the making of the newest satellite system. If he were to fall into the wrong hands, your company would pay a great deal to get him back. Or he could be forced to reproduce the lens to enable another faction to reproduce the satellite."
The trees lining the road seemed to be getting farther away, not closer, which made absolutely no sense. Every step was like wading through quicksand, and if he remembered correctly, he was in forest, not swamp.
His mind seemed to stay sharp enough and his focus remained on Azami--every breath she took, the scent of her enveloping him, the way her soft hair slid against his arm and chest. He felt her tighten her arm around his waist. She was surprisingly strong for such a small woman. He shook his head. No, something important was eluding him, slipping through his mind so fast he couldn't grasp it long enough to discover what it was.
He moistened his lips and looked down at the top of her silky head. "You're really beautiful, Azami."
Thorn looked up at Sam's unguarded face. He was crashing fast. He'd lost too much blood and the Zenith had kept him going, but he was going to need medical attention fast. "Sam, call in your people now. Tell them you need a medic and blood." She enunciated each word carefully. "Tell them you're wearing two patches of second-generation Zenith."
"That's the important information." He smiled down at her, as though happy she'd helped him remember.
Thorn nearly groaned. He was very far gone. "Sam. Call in your people right now. Tell them to come now."
He stumbled to a halt and stood there swaying, rubbing at the frown lines between her eyes with his fingertip as if that was far more important than his wounds. "How would you know about second-generation Zenith being in existence? Only we know about that. And how did you have access to it?"
"Sam." She used her sternest voice. "We need your team now. Call to them."
He went down, a giant oak tree chopped off at the trunk, his legs completely giving out and he was on the ground, staring up through the heavy canopy at the clear blue sky, eyes wide-open. Thorn went down with him, trying to cushion his fall, a thread of desperation running through the calm. He must have lost more blood than she'd first thought. She should have pushed him much earlier to call his team, to let them know he was injured. She hadn't because . . . well . . . she just hadn't been smart.
"Sam, open your mind to mine. All the way, let me in." She used her voice shamelessly, a warm honeyed tone, slipping inside his mind to settle there. He had to let her inside. She searched for threads, anything that might lead her to his team. She knew, without a doubt, that he'd communicated telepathically with them. She'd never tried to get inside another mind deep enough to find a path to someone else. If she didn't, help might be too late.
She understood that his team's first obligation would be to rescue Daiki and Eiji, transporting them quickly to safety. The cleanup team could take its time. And anyone coming to get Sam might think they could drive. They needed a helicopter and a medic fast. Second-generation Zenith didn't break down the body and cause it to bleed out as the first generation had done--Sam wouldn't need an antidote, but that didn't mean the blood loss wouldn't eventually kill him. The drug had forced his system to speed up, not slow down, and any wound inside his body--and he had a hole through him--might continue to bleed internally.
"Sam." She caught his shoulders and put her mouth next to his, so that she felt every warm breath that he took. His skin felt cool, all that wonderful heat slowly dissipating.
His eyes focused on her. "Kiss me."
The whisper was so soft she might not have heard it, but she felt the words formed against her own lips. She crossed those scant inches, settling her mouth on his, opening her mind to his, allowing him to slip into her. She refused to get lost in his kiss, pushing for him to open his mind more fully. The moment the barrier slipped, she poured in fast, afraid even as consciousness slipped away, he would close his mind to her. He was very disciplined, very trained, and she doubted he was a man who would give in to torture, yet his mind was unguarded when he kissed her.
She found that elusive thread to his leader. Captain Ryland Miller--Lily Whitney's husband. She was ashamed of herself for hesitating. Would she allow Sam to die because of her mission? There had to be a line one didn't cross. Letting them know of her abilities would complicate things, but Sam already suspected too much about her. She couldn't live honorably if she allowed him to die just to keep her secrets.
I am Azami Yoshiie. I am with Sam Johnson. He's wounded and needs a medic immediately. He's lost a tremendous amount of blood. You'll need several units. To stop the bleeding and keep him on his feet I administered two second-generation Zenith patches. The surge has worn off and he's crashed from blood loss. His pulse is weak, his skin cooling fast. He hasn't completely lost consciousness.
Her heart pounded in her chest. The small silence seemed like hours when it wasn't more than a few seconds before a deep voice filled her mind.
We'll have a helicopter in the air in three minutes. ETA to you, ten. Medic and blood on board.
She should have been disturbed that he didn't ask her questions about how she had managed to tap into his mind--
that meant he was a pro all the way. He didn't even ask her about the Zenith and they had to be both outraged and shocked that not only did she know about it, she actually had some in her possession.
Medic wants to know if there's arterial bleeding.
Not that I can see. I think there might be internal bleeding.
Roger that.
There was another short silence. She realized he was communicating with someone else.
Keep him talking, try to make him stay with you. Has he responded to you verbally?
No. Thorn felt frantic. She could feel him slipping further from her. She knew the pathway to Ryland Miller, so she didn't need to include Sam, but as long as she was in his mind, she could monitor his brain function. He's slipping in and out.
He's strong. The voice was utterly calm. He's a soldier. He'll respond to commands. Talk to him. Force him to stay with you.
Thorn framed Sam's face with her hands and pressed her forehead against his. "Sam, listen to me. They're coming for us and we won't have much time. I will not show affection to you in public, in the way Westerners do. In my family, courtship means nothing."
His lashes fluttered and she found herself looking into his dark eyes. She was fairly certain Ryland had meant she was supposed to bark commands at Sam to keep him alert, but their connection was far more elemental, far more primal, and he responded to her instinctively--or she liked to think so. In any case, she had his attention.
"Only a proposal of marriage is treated with the utmost respect. If my brother doesn't cut off your head and accepts such an outrageous suggestion, you will be considered family and must treat my brothers in the same manner. Such an arrangement is not taken lightly in our family. You mustn't mention courtship when we are back with the others."
She pressed her mouth against his. "And no more kissing."
For one moment, her heart nearly stood still when she swore his lips curved beneath hers, the lightest of movements, but then he was fading again. Panic welled up. "Don't you dare die on me, soldier," she snapped, forcing a crisp, sharp command into her voice. "Open your eyes and look at me, Sam."