Free Cut and Run by Lara Adrián Page B

a cloud of blinding dust,” Ethan murmured. “I see the line of black vehicles with diplomatic plates—Christ, I have time enough to count all nine of them, but I can’t turn them back. I can’t make it stop. By the time the last SUV passes, the clock has run out. The explosion is…hellish. That’s the only word for it.”
    Tori squeezed his hand. “Oh, Ethan.”
    “The fire washes over me,” he said woodenly. “It burns my face, my hair. It melts my skin right off my bones. And all I can think of, as the flames engulf everything, is that I failed.”
    She felt sick for the misery his gift had caused him, at least with this horrific vision. An Armageddon-style nightmare that he’d been suffering through repeatedly for three years.
    “Have you told anyone about this premonition?” she asked. “Maybe there’s someone in the CIA who can help you.”
    “There’s no one. No one left in the Company that I can trust.” A sharp, weary sounding sigh gusted out of him. “The director of the Phoenix program, Henry Sheppard, gave explicit instructions on how to handle a potential betrayal of the program. ‘Go to ground. Trust no one. Assume all is lost.’ That was the message he sent me the day I disappeared. He would’ve sent the psychic distress call to all of the agents in the program that day.”
    Hope kindled to life. “If there are others in the program, Ethan, maybe we should try to find them. Maybe they will understand what the vision means.”
    “We,” he said gently. “Tori, this isn’t something you can be involved in. I won’t allow it, especially not when there’s a hired gun on my trail already. Shit, thanks to your involvement with me this far, you’re already under more risk than I can accept. You’re going home to Maine in the morning, before you’re dragged any deeper into trouble that doesn’t belong to you.”
    “And you?” she asked, too stung to pretend it didn’t hurt to know her time with Ethan would be ending in just a few more hours. “What will you do? Where will you go?”
    “I don’t know. I’ll keep moving.” He shook his head. “Even if I thought it might be safe to trust any of the other Phoenix members, I wouldn’t know where to find them. I’ve never seen any of them in person—not that I’m aware of, that is. We were referred to only by codenames. I was called Zephyr. And as far as I know, only a handful of our codenames were privy to anyone besides Sheppard.”
    “None of you met one another in your work for the program, not even briefly?”
    “Aside from combat training exercises and other directives at The Farm, Phoenix operatives were kept apart,” he explained. “It was done deliberately to avoid group-thinking our visions. The program required pure data from each of the agents in the field. We lived relatively normal lives once we were out of training, but it was our duty to stimulate our ability while we were on the outside by keeping up on current events, studying various sciences and arts, reading just about anything that caught our attention. We reported in regularly with any precognitive images or intel those exercises generated.”
    Another piece of the puzzle that was Ethan Jones clicked into place for her just now.
    “That’s why you were so well-read, and so informed on just about every subject under the sun. God, you must’ve thought I was an idiot that I never caught on to any of this.”
    “I never thought that.” When she glanced away from him, he caught her chin and brought her gaze back. “Never. You were the only woman who ever challenged me, stood up to me. You always called me on my bullshit.”
    “Someone has to,” she muttered, wishing he wasn’t able to charm her so easily.
    He didn’t let go of her face, but his touch became a caress. “You’re tougher and smarter than I can ever hope to be. Given the same training, you’d be one hell of a partner, I have no doubt. But this isn’t your fight, Tori. It’s not