He hesitated a moment before taking it and giving it a shake. A wince rippled across his features as he lowered his arm again. “Nick.”
“I’d say it’s nice to meet you, Nick, but under the circumstances . . .” Circling the table, she seated herself in the chair opposite his.
“Are you a lawyer?”
“No.”
“You here to shrink me?”
“No. I’m just here to talk.”
“Sounds like a shrink to me.”
She forced a smile and, wanting to ensure he really wasn’t a danger to her, began to comb through his thoughts.
Wow. They were all over the place. Totally chaotic and teeming with fear. Fear that the others were right, that he had lost his mind and killed his friends.
“You’re prettier than the other shrink,” he spoke into the awkward silence.
“I’m not a shrink.”
“Then what are you?”
“I’m just a consultant the military occasionally calls in to chat with . . .”
“Victims?” he asked, his expression giving nothing away. “Suspects?”
“Either or,” she replied.
He quieted. “You remind me a little of Cindy.”
As soon as the words left his mouth, the image of a young, pregnant woman flashed in his mind. A snapshot moment in which she smiled for the camera and exposed her big belly.
The maelstrom of his thoughts quieted. Then Heather saw darkness and a man’s head hitting the ground beside a fallen body.
She forced her lips to hold what she hoped was a kind smile. “Who is Cindy?”
The soldier looked down at the table. “Does she even know Wes is dead?” he asked. His red-rimmed eyes shimmered with tears when he raised them. “They won’t tell me. Does she know? Is she okay? Is the baby okay?”
“I don’t know,” Heather admitted. “I can try to find out, if you want me to.”
He nodded. “Thank you. I’d appreciate that.” He blinked back the tears.
“Can you tell me what happened, Nick?”
His lips turned down as his face tightened with a grimace of frustration. “I’ve already told them a million times. They don’t believe me. You won’t believe me.”
“You won’t know that until you give me a try.”
He studied her a long minute, his eyes desperate and hopeless and heartbreaking.
Heather steeled herself against the sympathy that rose within her and kept trying to sift through his tumultuous thoughts.
“It was dark,” he began. “Late. Wes and I were manning the southwest guard tower. Nothing but jungle outside the gates. Just enough moonlight to let you see the tops of the trees.”
She saw the scene come to life in his mind as he spoke. “Go on.”
“You ever seen that TV show Lost?”
“Yes. The first couple of seasons anyway.”
“Remember, in the first season, when the trees would start to jerk and sway as a monster or some shit stomped through the jungle? As if whatever was moving around out there was so big that just bumping up against the trees nearly toppled them?”
“Yes.”
“Well, that’s what happened. We saw the trees in the distance start to jerk and sway as if something plowed through the jungle toward us. I didn’t know what it was. It wasn’t vehicles. There weren’t any engine sounds, and the only way a truck would shake a tree like that was if it slammed into it.” He paused. “We didn’t hear any crashes.”
Snarls and growls and guttural noises rose on the night in his memory.
Heather’s heart began to pound.
“It kept getting closer, so I told ’em to hit the lights. A warning was called over the speakers. Whoever or whatever was coming ignored it, so we lit ’em up. Fired everything we had into the trees. I thought for sure that would stop ’em.”
He braced his elbows on the table, which began to vibrate.
Heather knew that, were she to look beneath it, she would see his knee bobbing up and down even more violently than it had before as his agitation increased.
Hell, she had to fight to keep her own knee from bobbing. The images in his mind were straight out of a horror movie.
“They threw something at the lights,” he went on.
“They?”
“The things coming for us. Shattered all of them so everything went pitch black. Then the explosions started—flashes of light—as they tripped the land mines outside the walls.” He dug the fingers and thumb of his free hand into his eyes as if he wished he could rub away the memory. “Guys started screaming. It was so fucking dark. I couldn’t see shit and grabbed one of the night-vision monocles.” He ceased abusing his eyes and smoothed a hand back over his head. “Budget was tight. We didn’t have enough of the night-vision monocles to go around, so we just kept a couple in each guard tower to be used as necessary and usually never touched the damned things. Didn’t need to, because we always had the lights.”
Heather leaned forward. “What happened, Nick?”
“Guys were screaming. All over. In the other towers. On the ground. I grabbed the monocle and . . . something hit Wes. Took him down. When I turned around . . .” He swallowed hard. “His fucking head was on the floor beside him.”
Had Heather not seen that and worse, up close and personal, lately, she would’ve been sickened by the images she found in his mind then. “Who attacked the base, Nick?” she pressed. “Who was it?”
In his mind, she saw Nick attach the monocle to his scope, raise his weapon, and peer through it.
Oh shit.
“Vampires,” Nick said. “Vampires attacked the base.”
And killed everyone in it except for Nick, whom they apparently left for dead.
A slew of curses filled her mind, spewed by Zach from wherever he was outside the building. Apparently, he really could hear everything that went on in here.
Heather jumped when knuckles rapped on the two-way mirror, her father summoning her back. Panic swamped her. What do I do? she asked Zach mentally. She couldn’t tell them it was all true, that Nick wasn’t lying when he said vampires had attacked the military base. The immortals didn’t want humans—particularly those in the military or mercenary profession—to know vampires existed . . . with very good reason.
More mental curses.
Another rap on the mirror.
Zach?
Don’t tell them it’s the truth, he advised. Tell them Nick is difficult to read because of his current state of agitation, but that he seems to believe the things he says are true. I’ll monitor their thoughts and . . . hell. Hopefully they’ll take that as confirmation that he’s nuts and look elsewhere for the culprits.
And if they don’t?
They aren’t going to believe vampires took out a military base.
Heather supposed it would sound crazy to anyone else. Hell, even after dreaming about vampires every night for a year, she hadn’t believed they actually existed until she had come face-to-face with them.
She rose.
Nick’s hand shot out and gripped her wrist. “I’m not crazy. They were there. They were real.” His eyes begged her to confirm it, as though even he had begun to question his sanity.
Heather tugged her arm from his grasp. “I’ll see what I can find out about Cindy.”
Slumping back in his chair, he returned his gaze to the table.
Heather knocked on the door. The suit opened it, then led her back to the room with her father and Mac.
“Well?” Mac demanded as soon as the door closed behind her.
Heather looked through the mirror. “I had a hard time reading him. He’s very agitated.”
“No shit,” Mac snorted.
Heather shrugged and shook her head. “He seems to believe everything he’s saying.”
Mac swore. “That’s it? That’s all you’ve got for us?”
“Give us the room, gentlemen,” General Lane ordered.
The soldier seated at the table instantly stood and headed for the door. Mac followed.
Once both had gone, Heather forced herself to face her father.
She really didn’t want to lie to him.
But you have to, Zach reminded her.
I know.
General Lane reached over and flipped switches on several instruments. The red light on the camera mounted to the ceiling in one corner went dark. “It’s just the two of us now,” he said, straightening. “Tell me what you heard.” He must be desperate if he would ask her here instead of waiting until later.
Heather crossed her arms beneath her breasts and shrugged. “As I said, he’s very agitated. His thoughts are all over the place. He’s worried about this Cindy, whoever she is.”
“She’s his best friend’s wife. Her husband was decapitated in the guardhouse Nick manned.”
“Does she know?”
“No. We haven’t decided what to tell the families yet.” He sighed. “You didn’t see anything that could help us? No uniforms you could identify or anything that would label those carrying out the attack as terrorists?”
She shook her head. “Just darkness and flashes of explosions and . . .” a man with long, sharp fangs and glowing eyes.
“Vampires?” her father asked.
“Nick’s friend, dead on the ground beside him,” she said instead.
“Can you at least tell me if Nick was in on it?”
“I don’t think so, Dad. If he had been part of the attack, he’d be worrying over whether or not he was going to get away with it. I didn’t see anything like that in his thoughts.”