Havoc - v4 Read Online Free PDF Page B

the CDC he imagined she’d been in some rough country before, but he doubted she’d seen anything like this. Yet she’d shrugged off her car getting shot up as though it was a mere inconvenience. That kind of confidence came from experience. He doubted the CDC prepared people for this kind of thing, so he guessed there was something else in her past—military training, perhaps.
    That made him feel a little better about driving her north. While he only had one weapon with him, a Beretta 92 pistol, he sensed she wouldn’t freeze if he needed to use it. And for all he knew she had her own gun.
    The sudden image of her holding a drawn pistol spiked his pulse. It was the capacity for violence juxtaposed with her delicate features and that sensual mouth. Uncharacteristically, he acknowledged how attractive she was. Uncharacteristically because Mercer hadn’t thought of a woman in those terms in a long time, not since a woman he’d thought he’d loved died eight months ago.
    He then found himself circling the same argument he’d faced since her death. He hadn’t told her he loved her until after she was gone, until after there were no consequences to the declaration. He still didn’t know what that meant, or if it had meaning at all. He’d talked about it with his best friend. Harry’s advice was that he should mourn her for a while, miss her probably forever, but not let his guilt make her more than she was. Usually taking advice about women from Harry was like asking a vegan to name a good steak joint; however this time the old man had a point. Harry knew Mercer better than anyone alive and knew how guilt drove him more than any other emotion.
    The truth was it was a fear of guilt that drove Mercer, the fear that he could have done more, but hadn’t. That is what pushed him so hard in his professional life. He feared not being able to face the mirror knowing that somehow he had failed at something, really, at anything he attempted. And rather than back down from challenges, Mercer continually set himself tougher and tougher goals. He had no obligation to return north other than his own desire to help those who couldn’t help themselves.
    Yet like so many men, he avoided the challenges of his own emotional life. Rather than take time following Tisa Nguyen’s death, he’d buried himself in work. Soon after her funeral he’d returned to the Canadian Arctic where he was under contract with DeBeers. Then it was off for two months on behalf of the Brazilian government to head a task force investigating illegal gold mining in the Amazon rain forest, and then six weeks consulting in Jo’Burg followed by another couple of months working with geologists at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain Nuclear Repository. As he’d known, the distractions hadn’t healed the wounds, but he felt the scars were less raw, which was why he could see Cali Stowe as an attractive woman.
    A gush of diesel erupted from the gas tank and Mercer quickly shut the hose’s valve, his thoughts snapped back to the present. He looked around, chagrined. People were struggling for their very lives while he was rediscovering the first flicker of his libido.
    He coiled the hose around the bracket mounted behind the cab and hauled himself into the truck. He slid out of his wet raincoat and stuffed it behind the seat. Cali had changed into a dry bush shirt and had used makeup to cover the dark circles under her eyes and freshen her lips. She was probably in her mid-thirties, but the freckles made her look like a teenager. Mercer smiled at her efforts.
    “Yeah, yeah. I know. Typical woman, can’t go anywhere without makeup. For your information I’ve been a field researcher for the CDC for five years in some places that make this look like paradise. My makeup kit weighs exactly six ounces and I don’t go anywhere without it.”
    “With your fair complexion it’s a good idea.”
    Cali stopped and looked at him, her mouth creased upward in a surprised grin.