Chapter Three
Pain and paranoia. He’d seen it happening to Armando. Helen was also exhibiting an interesting side effect that Armando hadn’t had. Chemicals and body chemistry, so unique when broken down in individual biological systems.
A complete spy uses everything to achieve his goals. There are no ifs, ands, or buts, once you accept that mission. Focus your mind and body on the target, Conor, and reach your goal before moving to the next one.
Jed heard his CIA mentor’s calm instructions in his head, as if he were eighteen again—still cocky and brash Conor—and being scolded for getting entangled with yet another woman while working in an operation.
All the right excuses had been on his side.
He was eighteen, after all, with the kind of cocky charm that drew female attention too easily and an upbringing that made him protective about people for whom he cared.
He was being groomed in a trade that insisted on detachment first and nobility second.
It took him a few years to understand that that meant he couldn’t engage himself one hundred percent to another human being, especially a woman, or else, somewhere along a dangerous operation, it’d be his Achilles’ Heel, be it worrying about saving someone when he should be thinking of capturing his target, or being used by the enemy.
Because of his tendency to get physically, and sometimes emotionally, involved with women in his life and because women were drawn to him, instead of moving him away from operations that involved temptation, the trainers had deliberately placed him in more and more such situations, watching him modify his behavior and attitude.
Jed had understood. He was one of their youngest trainees and they had plenty of time to adjust his personality.
That was, if he didn’t die in the process.
He’d learned sexual manipulation and what it could make him do at a very young age indeed.
Since then, he’d learned to compartmentalize himself.
A mission was a mission, no more, no less.
If it involved sex, it was just that, no more, no less.
He’d learned to keep his emotions at bay, so much so he became proficient at seduction for information and had then graduated into the sexual imprint program at the underground CIA labs, and he did so well it’d earned him the nickname of The Ice Man there.
So what are my excuses now? He mockingly saluted his current dilemma. He was certainly not focusing on Helen Roston as if she was a mission. Not by a long shot. It’d been a long time since he’d felt like that young Conor.
He had to back off emotionally and resume control.
Right now. Or this wasn’t going to work.
He needed to establish a sexual bond with this woman in such a way that he could harness her ability to remote view for future operations in virtual reality, an environment that required absolute control.
Having feelings for her would interfere with a mission and endanger lives while he worried about her and didn’t fully focus on his job.
Jed knew she’d spent her free time trying to figure out her mentor’s identity. He’d watched her all these months, knew she ran things over and over in her mind until she found an answer. He’d deliberately been a riddle for her for exactly that reason.
He had to be extra subtle because he knew she’d smell a rat and pounce on him like the wild cat he’d called her. If she’d been aware of what he was doing, there would have been no way he could have progressed so far, if at all.
Sexual imprinting was the absolute focus of mind and body on the target. No ifs, ands, or buts. No half-ways either.
Helen would ask for a session at the CAVE.
Now that she thought she’d identified the man behind the avatar, she was going to turn the tables on him.
Take away the avatar and she’d “see” the man in the shadows who had been training her in the CAVE.
In that environment, he wouldn’t be her equal because she could remote view and he wouldn’t have access to what she was seeing.
Also, he’d told her he had meetings most of the day—a lie—to make her think she had time to prepare herself to remote view on her own.
A very dangerous choice of action for a remote viewer who’d never done it alone, but he hadn’t a doubt she would attempt it. She wasn’t called Hell by her friends for playing it safe when she was out in the field. He’d anticipated it because he needed to gain the advantage by constant surprise.
Jed flipped open the small dictionary in his hand, letting his gaze fall randomly on a word. His lips curled at the synchronicity of it all.
“Trigger,” he murmured. To activate, to set off, to initiate.
Well, nothing subtle about that.
THE CAVE ULTIMATE—CAVE Automatic Virtual Environment—had been Helen’s first taste of total immersion VR. It was a ten by ten by ten room that allowed multiple participants in a simulated exercise, with one person in charge.
Many of her sessions had meant giving her trainer the ultimate control—the inability to move her physical body, for one, was still stressful for her—as he manipulated simulated situations to fit the lesson for the day.
She realized now that most of these weren’t just sessions on loss of control and fear management, but were also part of his mind manipulation game.
Everything he did took her a step closer to where he wanted her. He appeared to her as a shadow. He chose sexual situations that pushed her hot buttons. He ended each session by kissing her—no, branding her.
Helen shook her head. She’d been so caught up with the intrigue of him as she was led along down the path—touching, tasting, thinking about him—that she hadn’t noticed how he’d kept her mind focused on him during their sessions.
Fascination and involvement were the first basic steps in mind manipulation.
And with the brain entrainment machine that connected them during the sleep sessions at Center, they were even sharing dreams now.
A plan had formed while talking to Dr. Kirkland and she’d gone for it.
A session at the CAVE. It was going to be tricky, though.
She would have to pretend to swallow the little pink pill, lie very still, and wait for the right moment.
Usually, when she came to, the virtual program had already been activated and she’d be caught up immediately in the alternate world, undergoing her training sessions with Hades in his shadowy form.
In reality, her trainer would be in another CAVE in control of the session.
Helen smiled grimly. Not this time. The key was in the timing.
She’d suddenly realized, while talking to Dr. Kirkland, that she’d done something new.
She’d bilocated at her house without any help.
She’d never remote viewed on her own; a monitor had always been with her in her sessions, anchoring and guiding her.
She wasn’t sure how she’d managed to do so this morning, especially without getting herself into an altered state with a brain entrainment machine.
But she had. She’d remote viewed, or kind of, because she had definitely seen Jed McNeil. However, the experience had been different. She had trouble seeing clearly, still didn’t have any explanation why she’d felt the need to turn and run, and then there was that devastating headache...
Dr. Kirkland was supposed to call her when he’d gotten hold of her trainer and set up the time. She smiled. Take that, Jed McNeil, and see how you’re going to squeeze a session with me in between your meetings.
In the meantime, she would go to her quarters and use the brain entrainment machine.
If she could fiddle with it, get to that place her brainwaves turned theta and somehow keep her mind at that state until Dr. Kirkland called her.
With the darkness in the CAVE and the way Hades liked to start her out by concentrating on her senses, she might actually be able to jump into remote-viewing mode again, just like she did back home.
It was a gamble. Maybe her experience back at her place was just a fluke and it wouldn’t work again this time.
Then what?
Helen swallowed. She knew exactly what Hades would do if he knew how sensitive her body was and she had no doubt at all about her response. She gritted her teeth. Already, her body was reacting to thoughts about that.
“I can’t let him win,” she whispered.
She had to risk it. Once she had proof that it was Jed McNeil, then she had a fighting chance against letting him sexually imprint her even deeper.
JED SLIPPED HIS CELL phone into his pocket. Kirkland had called. He had an inkling what Elena was up to. He had years on her in the art of figuring out an opponent and hunting him down. And right now, he was her opponent, and she was his prey. It had to be this way.
The mind was like glass. It must be handled with care. Like glass, it could be molded. Like glass, it could also be broken.
He’d accepted the assignment to create a binding mental awareness between Helen and him, so that it could be the bridge for them as she remote viewed in virtual reality.
The easiest and fastest way—seduction. The need for, and the sharing of, sexual release created an emotional bond between couples.
Add that with the need for someone specific, and there was now a powerful mental focus.
Perfect for remote viewing. Perfect for virtual reality.
Keep her focus on him.
Keep that need for release growing.
Then feed it when she remote viewed.
She would be heading for her quarters, thinking of getting her mind ready. Perfect. Gray surroundings. Brain entrainment machine on.