Free Lover Unleashed by J. R. Ward Page B

went past it, he saw the first of the video cameras.
    While they progressed at a snail’s pace, a strange fog rolled in from nowhere in particular, the landscape blurring until he couldn’t see more than twelve inches ahead of the car’s grille. For chrissakes, it was like they were in a Scooby-Doo episode out here.
    And then there was a curious progression: The next gate was in slightly better condition, and the one after that was even newer, and number four looked only a year old, tops.
    The last gate they came to was spit-and-shine sparkling, and all about the Alcatraz: Fucker reached twenty-five feet off the ground and had high-voltage warnings all over it. And that wall it cut into? It was nothing for cattle, more like velociraptors; and what do you want to bet that its concrete face fronted a solid twelve or even twenty-four inches of horizontal stone.
    Manny swiveled his head around to Jane as they passed through and began a descent into a tunnel that could have had a “Holland” or “Lincoln” sign tacked on it for its fortification. The farther down they went, the more that big question that had been plaguing him since he’d first seen her loomed: Why fake her death? Why cause the kind of chaos she had in his life and the lives of the other people she’d worked with at St. Francis? She’d never been cruel, never been a liar, and had no financial problems and nothing to run from.
    Now he knew without her saying a word:
    U.S. government.
    This kind of setup, with this sort of security . . . hidden on the outskirts of what was a big enough city, but nothing so huge as New York, LA, or Chicago? Had to be the government. Who else could afford this shit?
    And who the hell was this woman he was treating?
    The tunnel terminated in an underground parking garage that was standard-issue, with its pylons and little yellow-painted squares—and yet as large as it appeared to be, the place was empty except for a couple of nondescript vans with darkened windows and a small bus that also had blackouts for glass.
    Before she even had his Porsche in park, a steel door was thrown open and—
    One look at the huge guy who stepped out and Manny’s head exploded, the pain behind his eyes getting so intense he went limp in the bucket seat, his arms falling to the sides, his face twitching from the agony.
    Jane said something to him. A car door was opened. Then his own was cracked.
    The air that hit him smelled dry and vaguely like earth . . . but there was something else. Cologne. A very woody spice that was at once expensive and pleasing, but also something he had a curious urge to get the fuck away from.
    Manny forced his lids to open. His vision was wonky as hell, but it was amazing what you could pull out of your ass if you had to—and as the man in front of him came into focus, he found himself staring up at the goateed motherfucker who had . . .
    On a fresh wave of fucking-OW, his eyes rolled back and he nearly threw up.
    “You’ve got to release the memories,” he heard Jane say.
    There was some conversating at that point, his former colleague’s voice mixing with the deep tones of that man with the tattoos at his temple.
    “It’s killing him—”
    “There’s too much risk—”
    “How the hell is he going to operate like this?”
    There was a long silence. And then all of a sudden, the pain lifted as if it were a veil drawn back, all that pressure gone within the blink of an eye. In its place, memories flooded his mind.
    Jane’s patient. From back at St. Francis. The man with the goatee and . . . the six-chambered heart. Who had shown up in Manny’s office and taken the files on that cardiac anomaly of his.
    Manny popped open his lids and lasered in on that nasty-looking face. “I know you.”
    “You get him out of the car,” was the only response from Goatee. “I don’t trust myself to touch him.”
    Hell of a welcome wagon.
    And there was someone else behind the big bastard. A man Manny was one hundred