And Katie saw Teal's fingers blur into motion, fast sign language, just as a guard reached her and dragged her backward toward the waiting plane.

Katie retreated-had to retreat-as the steroid-swollen hulk coming down from the plane sprayed a hail of automatic fire in her direction. He was a terrible shot, but he didn't have to be good to kill her. Just persistent.

Juan yelled at his son in Spanish, and Rudolpho stopped shooting. They must have realized that it put Teal in danger.

Teal's sign language had said, Can't go now, have to find out more, you go with Lena.

G.o.d, Teal was choosing to stay.

More bullets bounced Katie's way, driving her back. The guards were arriving, and they had an angle on her that wouldn't endanger Teal. She had seconds to live.

"Teal, come on! Run! You have to!" Katie shouted, even as she fired at the guards and retreated across the open tarmac. Behind her, Stefan's Learjet was powering up, and she could hear him shouting something, but it was lost over the roar and gunfire.

Something hot grazed her thigh. Katie controlled her flinch and dropped two more gunmen, steadily retreating and facing the enemy the whole way.

Teal didn't-wouldn't-follow. She stood there, watching, until two guards closed in on her and began dragging her toward the other plane, where Juan, his son and the other man waited at the top of the stairs.

"Teal!" Stefan yelled. "Teal, come on!" He was on the ground now, out of the plane. Katie cursed and kept firing until her gun ran dry, grabbed a second clip and changed it on the fly.

"Stefan, get in the jet!" She was twenty feet away. Less.

Instead, Stefan came toward her. Staring toward Teal, oblivious to his own danger.

"Stefan!" she screamed, and in that moment she knew he was right, she was precognitive. For all the good it did.

She saw the bullet strike him in slow motion, low in the chest, and then explode out of his back in a spray of blood.

Stefan staggered, mouth opening, and went down to his knees. He looked confused as he tried to get up, as if his brain simply wouldn't admit what had happened.

Katie screamed, emptied her clip toward the plane, grabbed Stefan with one hand and towed him toward the steps. She had to drop her gun to get him up into the fuselage.

"Go!" she yelled to the pilot, who was standing in the c.o.c.kpit opening, looking frozen. He threw himself into the seat and flipped switches. "Oh G.o.d, no, Stefan-"

Katie sobbed, but she didn't let it stop her. She grabbed the steps, yanked them up and closed and locked the hatch. Bullets were rattling on the skin of the plane, and it was entirely possible they were all going to die here, all of them, but it was out of her hands now and Stefan was bleeding....

Lena was sitting in one of the leather seats, eyes wide, looking terrified. Katie barely registered her presence as she threw herself to her knees next to Stefan and rolled him over to take a look at the wound in his back.

It wasn't gushing, so he had no torn arteries, but it was bleeding badly. Katie stripped off her peasant blouse, wadded it up and jammed it into the wound, pressing as hard as her shaking muscles would allow.

"Don't," she panted. "Don't you die on me, Stefan. Don't you dare die on me now."

His eyes were open, but she wasn't sure he could see her. Her tears fell on his face as she rolled him onto his back, pinning the makeshift bandage in place, and applied pressure to the bullet wound in the front. He was still breathing. There was still hope.

There had to be hope.

"Teal," he said, in a pale thread of a voice. Katie choked back another sob and put her hand on his cheek.

"It's all right," she said. "We have Lena. She's safe."

"Teal," he said again, and his eyes drifted shut. "She stayed. She wants to be a hero."

Katie hung on to him against gravity and the world as the plane hurtled down the runway and into the air.

Chapter 14.

T he only sounds in the hospital room in Los Angeles were the sounds of machines. Stefan's chest rose and fell, draped in white. Katie pillowed her head on her crossed arms and tried to sleep, but despite an extreme amount of weariness, she couldn't close her eyes.

She had the feeling he was an illusion, that the second she looked away, he'd disappear and she'd be left with nothing but tears.

Somehow, he'd hung on during the flight; they'd put down in El Paso, and Stefan had been rushed into surgery. It had taken days before he was strong enough to transfer via helicopter here, to Cedars-Sinai. She hadn't left his side. Neither had Lena Poole, until the FBI had arrived to debrief her, then return her to her family.

Katie missed Lena. The girl had brought warmth with her, a kind of constant cheer that left the world feeling a bit colder in her absence.

Small victories, seeing Lena cradled in her mother's arms.

Small tragedies, seeing Teal's family without that comfort.

The FBI had come and gone. Katie hadn't paid much attention really; she already knew that she was likely to be censured, at the very least, and she had no argument with it. She'd done what was necessary at every turn, and so had Stefan.

And Stefan had paid the real price.

"Katie."

She raised her head. Ben Blackman was standing there, holding out a cup; she registered the warm, nutty aroma of coffee. Another product of Colombia, like the bullet that had torn through Stefan's chest, narrowly missing the tangle of arteries, nicking his right lung but miraculously avoiding any of a dozen fatal bounces.

Stefan's spine was intact, and so was his heart. Hers was near to breaking, though, at the look in his father's eyes.

"I'm sorry, sir," she said, and stood up slowly. "I'm so sorry. I broke my word to you."

Ben put the coffee down and opened his arms. Katie stepped into his embrace, sucked in a deep, uncontrolled breath, and tried-failed-not to cry. It felt good, being forgiven so freely. She didn't deserve the grace.

"My son loves you," Ben said, and moved her back to look into her tear-streaked face. "You do know that, don't you?"

"He barely knows me."

"He knows you better than you know yourself, Katie. And you didn't break your word. My son's still here." He kissed her gently on the cheek and let her go. He walked to the bed and took Stefan's limp hand in his. "I know you can hear me, son. I love you." He smoothed Stefan's tangled hair back. "Angelo sends his love. He even forgives you for the car, but he says you have to pay him back. So you have to wake up. It's a really big loan."

Katie covered her mouth with her hands, tears sparking again. Stefan hadn't moved or spoken since that terrible moment on the plane, and the doctors weren't sure whether or not there had been brain damage from the blood loss. He could wake up five minutes from now, or next year, they'd said. He could be fine, or he could be severely impaired. The brain is delicate. We'll just have to see.

She half expected him to open his eyes, but Stefan just continued to sleep, limp and pale, fed by tubes.

When Stefan's mother came in, Katie retreated, heartsick. She walked down the hall for air, got coffee she couldn't taste and didn't want, and paced. There were a hundred dramas unfolding around her, but she couldn't care about any of them at the moment.

Teal wanted to stay. Stefan hadn't explained that, and she couldn't explain it. It wasn't possible for Teal to have been brainwashed so quickly, was it? Lena hadn't hesitated to take the opportunity to run, but Teal...Teal wanted to stay. Because Teal understood how deep this thing went.

Teal was offering herself as a secret agent, already on the inside.

Katie gnawed on a thumbnail already b.l.o.o.d.y with the habit, and was turning the problem over and over in her mind when she heard familiar voices. She hadn't realized what she was doing, but she'd been gathering herself in again, making herself small, and as a result, the three women standing just a few feet away hadn't spotted her.

Allison, Kayla and Alex. They didn't know she could hear them.

"-Spider files," Alex said. "Rainy's daughter Lynn helped break the code. Looks like Arachne wants those files destroyed, whatever the cost."

"Arachne?" Kayla asked and frowned.

"You probably know her as A, but it's the same woman," Allison said. "Lynn and Kim Valenti from the NSA did a superb job getting as far as they did. Those files are unbelievably difficult to crack. Even as much as they've done, there's still a lot more we can't read yet."

Alex nodded, arms folded. "Let's leave that for another day. What about Morgan? Is he coming?"

"Can't," Allison said. "NSA's got him on another job, but he knows what happened. He tried to get free, but things were too tenuous where he was. He knows Katie's in some trouble, and he's prepared to help sort it out. I think it's going to be up to Athena Force to pull some strings, though. She went way over the line for us."

Morgan? Katie's brother was barely a presence in her life, these days; his job was his life, and even though she'd been through h.e.l.l, he wasn't likely to declare an emergency and fly to her side unless she'd been the one hooked up to machines. Still, it was nice to know he'd thought about it. She'd always thought of her family as more polite strangers than real support, but maybe...

She was still thinking about Morgan, and family, when Allison suddenly looked her way, eyes wide. The other two women stepped back, equally surprised and off balance. "Katie," Alex said, recovering her poise first. "I didn't see you there. How's Stefan?"

"The same." She managed a quick smile. Kayla murmured something polite and left; Alex went with her, casting a puzzled glance at Allison, who shook her head and took a seat next to Katie. After her initial start of surprise, Allison looked self-contained, and if she was feeling sympathy for Katie's suffering, she didn't show it.

"How is he, really?" Allison asked.

"Still in a coma," Katie said. "What are you doing here?"

"Business," Allison said. "To do with you, actually. I need to show you something."

Katie nodded and sank down into one of the hard leather chairs against the wall. Allison perched next to her, reached into her bag and pulled out a small color PDA. "There was a reporter at the airport in Tumaco, taking some unauthorized footage of the drug traffic. For obvious reasons, he didn't want to be identified, but he tried to peddle the video of the shootout to the media. The Colombian authorities confiscated it, and we got a copy. We went over the footage frame by frame, and we found something."

"What?"

Allison hit a b.u.t.ton, and a blurred still image appeared on the screen, a close-up of the Caucasian who'd been on the plane with Tulio and his son. Brown hair and goatee, light-colored eyes.

"I don't know him," Katie said. "Why? What's so important?"

"His name is Dr. Jeremy Loschetter," Allison said, "and we think he's behind the abduction."

"What kind of doctor?"

"Medical researcher. He used to be involved with, of all things, a fertility clinic in New Mexico."

Katie was tired, and it took her sluggish brain a few seconds to catch up. "Zuni, New Mexico?"

"That's the one." Allison looked gratified. "You understand."

"So Teal and Lena-they weren't random. They were chosen deliberately-harvested."

"We think so. It would explain what you told us about the videotaping of Teal's abilities. They did something similar to Lena, too-took video of her lifting heavy objects. Apparently, Lena bench-presses like an NFL linebacker." Allison fell silent for a few seconds, clearly debating something, and then said, "There are things I can't tell you, Katie. Things it wouldn't be safe for you to know. But the point is that the secrets of Athena Academy are coming out, and we should all consider ourselves potential targets now. Especially those of us with-"

"Abilities," Katie supplied. "Like Teal."

"Like Teal," Allison agreed. "Like Lena. Although all of us, to a lesser extent. We don't know what he wants, but he wants it badly enough not to care about the cost in human lives. I just wanted you forewarned, Katie. Watch out for yourself. You're one of the best investigators I've ever seen-if you can find out anything about Loschetter, contact me immediately."

"I will," Katie said. Allison cleared the image from the PDA and put it away. "Do you want to see Stefan?"

Allison busied herself with the straps on her purse. "I'd love to, but I can't. I'm on a schedule. But believe me, I wish him the best. And you." She pulled in a breath and looked up. "When Stefan wakes up, I'm going to need to talk to him about his connection with Teal. I'm going to have to try to take advantage of that."

"You can't. You don't know what it costs him."

"I can't not do it. She's still in danger, and it's up to us-all of us-to see that we get her back safely. I'm going to need you to understand that."

"Understand? Well, understand this, Ally, you're going to get him killed. I saw him walk out into the path of a bullet because he cared too much about that girl. He's not one of us. It's not even his fight!"

"It's yours," Allison said, and her eyebrows raised slightly. "From the little I've heard about him, evidently that makes it his fight, too. Think about it, Katie. Are you really going to walk away from this girl now? Do you think he will?"

She couldn't answer that question. Even trying to made her want to hit something. Allison, sensitive to her anger, quietly gathered her things and walked away. Katie hated it, but Allison was right. Stefan wouldn't quit, if he had any way of being useful. And neither would she, however much she hated putting him at risk.

A group of people pa.s.sed in front of her, chattering and happy; they were escorting a young girl in a wheelchair who had a huge flower arrangement on her lap, trailing a heart-shaped balloon. Katie stared at it blankly for a long moment, then felt a jolt of surprise.

Funny, she hadn't realized it was St. Valentine's Day.

Waking up was a real disappointment for Stefan because the one person he'd wanted to see most of all when he opened his eyes...wasn't there.

"Kiddo," his father said, leaning forward in the chair near the bed. His smile was enough to melt a glacier. "I knew you could hear me. Welcome back."

Stefan's mother stood up and kissed him on both cheeks, wet smacks that were theatrical enough to almost conceal the glitter of tears on her round cheeks. She hated to cry, his mother; she claimed it gave her wrinkles.

She had never looked more beautiful to him...until she hit him lightly on the cheek. "That's for scaring your mother," she said. "I told you, didn't I? I told you I was seeing darkness. Why don't you ever listen to me?"

"Mom," he complained, and struggled to sit up. That was a bad idea, and he decided that maybe lying flat was a better one. Yes, much better. His head felt clouded and luminous at once.... Good painkillers, he was guessing. Once they wore off, he probably would be a lot less cheerful. "How long..." Because his muscles felt lax and weak, and he had a bad moment wondering if months had pa.s.sed, or years, and maybe that was why Katie wasn't here...

Or something worse. Maybe after he'd gone out, she'd been hit....

"Five days," his father supplied. "You had surgery five days ago. I know you like to sleep, but this was getting ridiculous." He was still smiling, but there were tears in his eyes. "Doctors say you're going to be fine."

"Yeah, they always say that," Stefan said, and decided to give sitting up a second try. It took more effort than scaling Everest, but he managed it. "Katie..."

His father immediately looked contrite. "She left about an hour ago. Here, she said to give you this."

It was a red envelope with his name scrawled on the front in a bold, sprawling cursive. Stefan opened it and pulled out...a Valentine. It was brisk and unsentimental-very Katie-and the verse was routine. He fixed on the words she'd written beneath.

In case you wake up before the day's over, Happy Valentine's Day. I'll see you soon.

That was it. No I love you or I want to spend my life with you. This was...businesslike.

He remembered her walking away from him at the warehouse, and felt the day grow colder.