Breaking Danger by Lisa Marie Rice Page B

big hand was so warm, so comforting. She looked down at her hand under his. She had a scientist’s hands. Soft and pale, with only the strength necessary to pipette liquids into vials and pound the keyboard. His hand looked as if it could haul a tank.
    â€œThere won’t be any rat brains in Haven. Put that image out of your mind. We’re completely self-sufficient in energy and water and food. The refugees will put some strain on us but we have enormous reserves. Mac, Nick, and I are used to military planning and—well, we planned for a siege right from the start.”
    Oh no. Her breath blocked in her chest. Her hand slid from his and her back hit the chairback with a thud. “You knew this was coming?” she whispered. The words would barely come out between numb lips. “You knew and you didn’t stop it?”
    He grabbed her hand back. “No, God no. We didn’t plan for this . For a massive outbreak of a deadly virus, no.”
    Her lungs expanded on a loud gasp. For a second there she thought— No. Arka had engineered the virus, not some people on a mountaintop in Northern California.
    She had to wait a minute to be able to speak, though. “Okay,” she said when she could keep her voice even. “Explain why you have a community that plans for sieges.”
    He didn’t answer right away. He simply looked at her, his bright blue eyes burning into hers. He didn’t try to hide his scrutiny, didn’t try to pretty it up. He just stared so intensely, it felt as if he were walking around inside her head, picking at her thoughts. Turning them over. What was he waiting for?
    Finally, he spoke. “Okay.” He reached out and tucked a lock of her hair behind her ear. The touch was casual, a friendly gesture, no more. But she shivered.
    He noticed. Those bright ice blue eyes noticed everything.
    â€œTwo years ago I would have been shot by the U.S. government for telling you this, but I think, all things considered, that soon there might not be a U.S. military to shoot me anymore, so it’s a moot point.”
    â€œIf you told me, you’d have to kill me?” she teased. A thousand movies had used that line.
    He wasn’t smiling. “Exactly.” The way he said it sobered her. “If I had talked to you about us two years ago and someone in my chain of command found out, you’d have been tracked down and disappeared. No one would ever have heard from you again. Least of all me.”
    This happened in the real world. She knew that. Her smile was gone. “Your chain of command is probably gone,” she said softly.
    His jaws clenched. “It’s definitely gone,” he answered. “Mac, Nick, and I belonged to a deniable military unit. Deniable means that if we were ever caught, Uncle Sam would deny our very existence. We were Ghosts. We were off the books, our pasts wiped out, our military records erased. All photographs tracked down and destroyed. We didn’t exist. We deployed on missions where the U.S. government could not be seen as intervening. Posse comitatus didn’t apply to us, since technically we didn’t exist. Do you know what that is?”
    Sophie nodded. “Sure. It’s the law that stops the military from acting on American soil.”
    He gave a sharp nod. “Exactly. But technically we weren’t military. We weren’t anything. So when the military got word that a lab in Cambridge was very close to perfecting a weaponized version of Yersinia pestis, they called us.”
    She gasped. A weaponized version of Yersinia was one of the worst things she could think of. Almost as bad as what was happening outside her windows. “The plague! A genetically modified version of the bacillus that can spread quickly—maybe airborne—it would be a disaster!”
    â€œOh yeah.” His face tightened. “Believe me when I say that the seven of us—the founders, the plankholders