Heart of Danger Read Online Free PDF Page B

sort. They were even banned from wearing U.S. military uniforms. They were only allowed that one tiny badge, smaller than a shirt button. There had been only seven of them in the world, and only one with a thin stripe of gold. The one that belonged to the Ghosts’ commanding officer, Captain Lucius Ward.
    One thing Mac knew—traitor or no traitor, Lucius would have relinquished his Hawk pin only on death or in the direst emergency. Even if he’d betrayed his men, even if he’d sold them out, even if absolutely everything Mac thought he knew about Lucius was wrong, this one thing wasn’t wrong. It would take a cataclysm or death to pry Lucius’s Hawk from his fingers.
    “Do you know what that is?” she asked.
    He searched her eyes for irony but found nothing. She was genuinely puzzled. Well, considering the fact that the existence of Ghost Ops was SCI—secret compartmented information—and that only a handful of people in the world knew about them, and even fewer knew of their secret badge, it was entirely possible she had no idea what the Hawk was.
    “No.” He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. “Should I?”
    “I have no idea.” She closed her hand over the Hawk and held it casually. Not knowing that the little metal pin represented blood, sweat and tears on a vast scale and was the symbol of a man Mac, Jon and Nick had loved like a father. A man who’d betrayed them. Who’d led them into a trap of fire, sacrificed them as casually as you’d swat at flies. For money.
    She sighed. “He was trembling when he gave it to me, as if it were something that meant a great deal to him. But he was trembling before then anyway. The more we communicated, the more motor control he lost.” She raised her eyes to his. “Even more important than the badge, though, it seems, was to find this Tom McEnroe and give him a message.”
    “And what message would that be?” Mac asked, his voice casual, though his heart had begun a low, deep thumping inside his chest. This was way beyond what he had bargained for.
    The three of them had simply assumed Lucius had disappeared with his money to some Caribbean island or some enclave in Southeast Asia. If there was one man in the world who knew how to disappear, it was Lucius Ward. He was a master of the art.
    They’d often bitterly speculated how he would be in some tropical paradise, a rich man, while they lived as outlaws.
    And then it turned out he was in some lab only two hundred miles from here? Hurt and sick? For a moment, Mac battled with himself. The idea of the boss hurt and sick and alone was impossible to bear. He could hardly sit in the same place with the thought and his hands literally itched to get going, to go get the Captain who was . . .
    The man who had betrayed them. Mac had to keep reminding himself of that. The Captain had betrayed them, led them into a trap, left them to die.
    She opened her hand and studied the small badge thoughtfully, as if answers could be found in it.
    “He said—he said I had to find this—this Mac.” She lifted her head and Mac saw pain and sorrow in those huge gray eyes. “He said when I found him to tell him Code Delta. I don’t know what that means.”
    But Mac did.
    Danger.
     
    The huge man leaned back in his chair, fist beating lightly on the desktop. Catherine’s heart rate jumped even though he wasn’t giving off danger vibes. Or rather, though he looked dangerous, very dangerous, he didn’t seem out of control, and he hadn’t threatened her directly.
    Most violent men had their temper on a short leash. It took very little to set them off, and anything could do it. A wrong word, a wrong look.
    Catherine had dated a man once. They’d met in a bookshop, reaching for the same book. They’d had coffee in the in-shop Starbucks and he asked her out to dinner the next night. Catherine was wary of men, but he’d seemed so nice—soft-spoken, funny and smart. They hadn’t touched but she’d